Beware the short sermon!
Matthew 4:17
What congregation would not love--just love--Jesus' preaching model--a single sentence gets it done! My preaching professor, Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier, never once told us to preach this way. We were to use illustrations--to bring in real life experience. We were to cross reference to other scriptures so there could be full understanding. A good sermon had to go twenty to thirty minutes because otherwise some theme would get short-changed. I wonder what grade Jesus would have gotten for his single sentence?
But what a sentence!
Take that first word--repent.
We do not like to think about that word because our stereotype is that it is employed to beat us over the head with guilt feelings. It brings to mind the "prophet" on the street corner accosting all the passersby with visions of judgment, fire, and apocalypse. We get uncomfortable when the word creeps into Sunday morning because it kills the vibe. Oh, no...here comes the "everybody's awful" sermon...
Repent means to turn around. It means making a u-turn.
To find God, turn around.
Our age is marked by a strong mythology that is stubborn. It declares that, in and of ourselves, we have all need to be completely self-sufficient, that we can make our own way, no matter what comes, that we are dependent on no one, that dependence, in fact, is the greatest character flaw any person can have. The mythology runs that this stance is the heart of all that is good about us. We are made by completely singular human beings who seized the day, took the reigns, and went for it.
There is a problem, though.
It does not take much to shatter the illusion of the myth. Sit in the doctor's office as she intones the diagnosis we feared more than all else. Sit with the phone in your hand as your son pours out his heartbreak that you cannot simply wish away. Shoot--try and make breakfast without using the oatmeal someone else grew, packaged, put in the store, and shelved for you.
No, the truth is we are all interdependent. God made us this way--remember that the only time God said something was not good in all of creation was when the first human being stood alone in the new world God made. God made us to work together, be together, and to complete one another. God made us in love to embody love, and love requires give and take, losing self in the presence of another, and sharing, cooperation, and compassion.
No wonder we seem lost in the world.
Well, Jesus says, "Turn around."
We need not be like some drivers we know who know exactly where they are going all the time even when they don't and we get to see neighborhoods, countryside, and alien terrains that no human being should ever see.
Now we are ready for the second part of Jesus' sermon--for the Kingdom of God draws near.
When God seems farthest away, God is closest to us.
The Prodigal Son ran away from home in a fit of rebellion, but wound up grubbing with the pigs. He thought he was lost forever from his father's embrace. The truth was his father loved him as deeply as ever and wanted nothing more than to embrace him.
As we struggle against the emptiness of trying to live by a mythology that really doesn't work very well, we get more and more befuddled. We can't seem to figure out how to make the economy work for everybody. We can't seem to figure out how to disarm so more children are splashed across the front page of the newspaper because that day they didn't come home from school. We can't seem to figure out why our neighborhoods are companies of strangers when we live only to ourselves.
God is there.
God is there with compassion, grace, and kindness--three incredibly basic responses that carry deep and profound consequences. Compassion says that we take one another seriously, seeing the child of God in each face. Grace says that when the mistakes, errors, and blunders come, we will not damn one another, but work to help one another--no last chances, only NEXT chances. And kindness--the most basic of all--says we will meet one another as we wish to be met. Next time ask the grocery clerk how they are and wait for an answer, next time let the front parking place go to someone for whom the walk will be a journey, next time listen before saying or doing anything. See? Basic.
And in all of this is love, love that can see us into tomorrow.
Not bad for a one sentence sermon.
What congregation would not love--just love--Jesus' preaching model--a single sentence gets it done! My preaching professor, Dr. Elizabeth Achtemeier, never once told us to preach this way. We were to use illustrations--to bring in real life experience. We were to cross reference to other scriptures so there could be full understanding. A good sermon had to go twenty to thirty minutes because otherwise some theme would get short-changed. I wonder what grade Jesus would have gotten for his single sentence?
But what a sentence!
Take that first word--repent.
We do not like to think about that word because our stereotype is that it is employed to beat us over the head with guilt feelings. It brings to mind the "prophet" on the street corner accosting all the passersby with visions of judgment, fire, and apocalypse. We get uncomfortable when the word creeps into Sunday morning because it kills the vibe. Oh, no...here comes the "everybody's awful" sermon...
Repent means to turn around. It means making a u-turn.
To find God, turn around.
Our age is marked by a strong mythology that is stubborn. It declares that, in and of ourselves, we have all need to be completely self-sufficient, that we can make our own way, no matter what comes, that we are dependent on no one, that dependence, in fact, is the greatest character flaw any person can have. The mythology runs that this stance is the heart of all that is good about us. We are made by completely singular human beings who seized the day, took the reigns, and went for it.
There is a problem, though.
It does not take much to shatter the illusion of the myth. Sit in the doctor's office as she intones the diagnosis we feared more than all else. Sit with the phone in your hand as your son pours out his heartbreak that you cannot simply wish away. Shoot--try and make breakfast without using the oatmeal someone else grew, packaged, put in the store, and shelved for you.
No, the truth is we are all interdependent. God made us this way--remember that the only time God said something was not good in all of creation was when the first human being stood alone in the new world God made. God made us to work together, be together, and to complete one another. God made us in love to embody love, and love requires give and take, losing self in the presence of another, and sharing, cooperation, and compassion.
No wonder we seem lost in the world.
Well, Jesus says, "Turn around."
We need not be like some drivers we know who know exactly where they are going all the time even when they don't and we get to see neighborhoods, countryside, and alien terrains that no human being should ever see.
Now we are ready for the second part of Jesus' sermon--for the Kingdom of God draws near.
When God seems farthest away, God is closest to us.
The Prodigal Son ran away from home in a fit of rebellion, but wound up grubbing with the pigs. He thought he was lost forever from his father's embrace. The truth was his father loved him as deeply as ever and wanted nothing more than to embrace him.
As we struggle against the emptiness of trying to live by a mythology that really doesn't work very well, we get more and more befuddled. We can't seem to figure out how to make the economy work for everybody. We can't seem to figure out how to disarm so more children are splashed across the front page of the newspaper because that day they didn't come home from school. We can't seem to figure out why our neighborhoods are companies of strangers when we live only to ourselves.
God is there.
God is there with compassion, grace, and kindness--three incredibly basic responses that carry deep and profound consequences. Compassion says that we take one another seriously, seeing the child of God in each face. Grace says that when the mistakes, errors, and blunders come, we will not damn one another, but work to help one another--no last chances, only NEXT chances. And kindness--the most basic of all--says we will meet one another as we wish to be met. Next time ask the grocery clerk how they are and wait for an answer, next time let the front parking place go to someone for whom the walk will be a journey, next time listen before saying or doing anything. See? Basic.
And in all of this is love, love that can see us into tomorrow.
Not bad for a one sentence sermon.
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