04/17/2023
The theme of this week’s sermon on Acts 10 was the Spirit’s desire to reach beyond ‘people like us’ to include outsiders—such as Samaritans, Ethiopian Eunuchs, Romans and Gentiles of all types—as full members of God’s family. As I was sifting through possible ways to highlight that theme, I came across the following illustration. I found it inspiring and important, it just didn’t quite fit the direction the sermon was taking. I thought you might enjoy thinking it over anyway.
‘Some people think that the claim that human equality comes from Jesus is just biased. But when the British historian Tom Holland set out to write his book, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World, he was not a Christian. He'd always been far more attracted by the Greek and Roman gods than by the crucified hero of Christianity. But through years of research, he concluded that he, agnostic as he was, held many specifically Christian beliefs. For example, his belief in universal human equality and the need to care for the poor and oppressed.’
Holland writes:
“That every human being possessed an equal dignity was not remotely a self-evident truth. A Roman would have laughed at it. To campaign against discrimination on the grounds of gender or sexuality, however, was to depend on large numbers of people sharing in a common assumption: that everyone possessed an inherent worth. The origins of this principle—as the philosopher Frederick Nietzsche had contemptuously pointed out—lay not in the French Revolution, nor in the Declaration of Independence, nor in the Enlightenment, but in the Bible.”
We Christians don’t appreciate how much the life and ministry of one man could and did so radically change the world he was born into. Jesus has saved in ways that are only now beginning to sink in.
Archived Posts
So many quips and quotes...
So little time to preach
I wonder what Mary and Martha’s phones might look like:
* Martha = the open browser with 27 tabs
* Mary = the single window that matters
* Psalm 46 = God saying, “Close the tabs.”
Quotable Outtakes That Didn’t Make the Sermon This Week
“When you try to control everything, you don’t just exhaust yourself—you quietly replace trust in God with trust in you.” & more
There is a challenge when it comes to preaching the Word of God.
Preachers are called to open up and interpret the word—inspired and written down thousands of years ago—and make it relevant to a very different world. On top of that there’s a degree of persuasion that goes along with the process.
What Jessica Really Meant to Say in Her Sermon…
When Jessica or Rick or a guest preacher takes the pulpit it’s hard for me to write a One More Thing Blog. I can’t share with you what didn’t make it into the sermon because I have no idea, not having written or delivered it.
Jesus Keeps On Ruining Funerals!
I didn’t have anything this last week that didn’t end up in the sermon. No catchy illustrations that didn’t make the cut. No theological insights that slowed down the main point. No one can ruin a funeral like Jesus. Told as I saw it and that was it. So I did some quick research and I thought I’d share just a reminder of what Easter is all about.
When I Don’t Get To Give My Benediction
Yesterday’s sermon talked about how we are in the thrall of self-centeredness—caught in a system that rewards those who climb to the top, even when you have to climb on the back of others. I talked about a famous sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, ....
Some Good Quotes that I Didn’t Get To Last Sunday
I have been working out of Adam Hamilton’s excellent book, Why Did Jesus Have to Die? And when I find something that says what I want to say more succinctly and expressively than I can, I like to quote it...