New Testament Stories

If there is anything in the world that strikes me as ludicrous, it’s to hear somebody say that the Bible is out of touch with reality. People do say that occasionally...people who obviously don’t know it very well.

You can stay away from it just so long, and then you have to come back again and preach on it again. Every time you do, you find something new, something fresh, something you’d never caught before.

Once upon a time my father-in-law received an invitation to attend the inauguration of the President of the United States. How about that! Don’t ask me to tell you what he did to warrant the invitation, because I don’t know.

“I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

Here’s something interesting.... I’d never thought of it before until somebody pointed it out to me---SO MANY OF THE SIGNIFICANT EVENTS OF THE BIBLE, AND STORIES OF THE BIBLE ARE ASSOCIATED IN SOME WAY WITH EATING. Our reputation as an eating denomination is solidly grounded.

The Thursday coming up, the 9th of May, will be the 40th day after Easter, and in the Christian calendar, that’s Ascension Day, the day in between Easter and Pentecost when the resurrected Christ, in the words of the Creed, “ascended into heaven”, to sit at the right hand of the Father.  

It’s always a great day in the life of a Church when it has the privilege of administering the Sacrament of Baptism.

Here’s something embarrassing to me, at least modestly so, and the Lectionary reading for this Sunday forces me finally to come to grips with it. I realize with a sense of chagrin that I have never before preached a sermon on John the Baptist.

There is something very special to me about this day each year.... something moving and emotionally gripping. Somehow this year it seems especially so. All Saints’ Day, or All Hallow’s Day, as it used to be called in the Church calendar, is a kind of memorial Sunday. It’s when we pause to remember and pay tribute to those of our fellowship who have gone before us, back home as it were to a new and more intimate relationship with the Heavenly Father.

When we left Pauline last week in the Perils of Pauline, the heroine had been tied to the railroad track by the wicked and sinister Black Bart and the train was inexorably approaching.

This is the sermon that didn’t get preached two Sundays ago. Maybe you remember. I told you then that it wasn’t ready, wasn’t finished. Well, if you’ve been holding your breath ever since...hold on a little longer, because it still isn’t finished. Maybe it never will be.... BECAUSE WHAT HAS HAPPENED DURING THE INTERIM IS NOT THAT IT’S GONE AWAY---

It may just be that the hardest thing in the world to do is WAIT....To HAVE to do so, doesn’t set well with us, does it? We’re not made that way, we Americans. We’re not inclined that way... we’re activists, doers, producers, movers and shakers...This is how we’re constituted. We’re people who solve problems by rolling up our sleeves, by tackling issues, by getting in there and stirring things up....

Within the past 10 days 3 members of our congregation have passed away...Buck, Dick, and now, suddenly, just Friday, Lloyd. It simply doesn’t seem possible, and we’re still stunned by it.

What in the world is going on here? It’s the greatest story in the world, and he tells it almost as if it were a travelogue.... It’s the biggest event that ever happened, the highest point on the human horizon, and he describes it almost as if he were reporting on a Sunday afternoon outing. THIS IS BIG STUFF WE’RE TALKING ABOUT HERE, cataclysmic stuff, revolutionary, earthshaking stuff...it was big enough to break history in half...

It’s a long passage, I know, much longer Scripture reading than usual. The incident in its entirety takes up almost the whole chapter. John must have considered it important part of his story, or else he wouldn’t have given it such prominence, wouldn’t have spent so much time on it. The conversation between Jesus and the woman at the well is the longest recorded conversation between Jesus and anybody in the entire New Testament.

It’s such a simple story, in a way, this healing story from Mark...blind Bartimaeus. Nothing special about it, nothing all that unusual or distinctive. Stories just like it are scattered throughout the Gospels.

The word for today is ambiguity---there’s a tug, a pull in more than one direction....You hardly know what to do with Palm Sunday. You hardly know how to handle it. It’s a tough day, frankly, for a preacher.... Is it a happy day, or a sad day?

Two down and 2 to go in this series. Today is the 4th Sunday of Advent, and next Sunday is Christmas Day. We’re looking this year at the Incarnation as seen through the eyes and pens of those who first wrote about it.

During the Advent season this year, we’re taking a look, I hope you’ll remember, at the birth of Jesus through the eyes of the people who first wrote about it.

I realized that in all my ministry, I’ve never preached a sermon on this parable, this parable of the rich man with the beggar at his back door. For some reason it’s been gnawing away at me recently...this whole week, in fact. I know I haven’t plumbed it completely, I probably never could, but here’s where I am so far.