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| Summary: Tragedies happen every day to people of all walks of life. While the response to these is often to ask, “Why did God allow this to happen?” or simply, “Why, God?” Jesus used two tragedies from his day to direct attention to repentance and faith. |
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| Summary: Jesus tells his listeners that everybody needs to change something in his or her life. It’s not only the openly flagrant sinners who need to repent, but also each one of us needs to turn away from sin, and turn towards God. The danger of delaying our response to God is that we become so enmeshed in our sins that by the time we try to escape, it’s too late. Like the gardener in the parable of the fig tree, Jesus has requested more time for us. |
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| Summary: God speaks to us — maybe even especially so — in the midst of disaster.
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| Summary: Jesus uses the occasion of a question about a human tragedy to call his audience to a life of ongoing repentance as a means to faithful living. The end of such living is the bearing of fruit for God’s mission. This text emphasizes the seriousness of God’s call, but also testifies to God’s patience in achieving his ends. |
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| Summary: The good news is that the gardener in this parable told by Jesus who pleads to be given another year so the fig tree will produce fruit is Jesus. If we’re the fig tree that doesn’t produce fruit, then we’ve got Jesus on our side. We’ve got time on our side. And if we’re called to act like Jesus, maybe we ought to give others a little more time for reconciliation. Either way, however, the time for us to get our act together is not unlimited. We’d better get started. |
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| Summary: Christianity offers no theological solution or simplistic answer to natural disasters and great calamities. Instead, we point to the cross of Christ and insist that there is no evil so dark that God cannot bring good out of it. We cannot make sense out of the capriciousness of nature and the randomness with which natural catastrophes strike. But we can experience the power of resurrection in this life, discovering that in Christ, even when we have lost everything, we have, in fact, not lost everything. |
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| Summary: We don’t have unlimited opportunities to respond to Jesus Christ. It’s time to turn ourselves around and be faithful and fruitful. |
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| Summary: Political repression and natural disaster are not punishments laid on people presumed to be worse sinners than we. These are some of the risks we face in a world in progress. Victims merit our compassion, not our judgment.
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| Summary: The story of a healing in a synagogue calls us to try to see those who are bend double by circumstances or prejudice or the blindness of society and, insofar as possible, put ourselves in their shoes. Once we have done that, we will be in a good position to see how we can go about loving those particular neighbors. |
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| Summary: Jesus healed a woman on the Sabbath day. He was thoroughly chastised by the ruler of the synagogue, who said that one should not do such a deed on the Sabbath. It was “working” on a holy day. But Jesus believed that the Sabbath was meant to be a blessing for people, a time for showing love to God and to others. A time of rest and renewal. Therefore, he was certain that love should always win over legalisms.
We should take the same attitude. We should also see our Sabbaths as a blessing, never as a chastisement.
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| Summary: Jesus desires that we live lives of health, wholeness and freedom. |
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| Summary: Jesus met a woman afflicted for 18 years with crippling pain and disfigurement. In one instant, he healed her and set her free from both the pain and the debilitating state of her body and soul. Not everyone was pleased. Jesus broke the “rules” but changed lives forever. The good news is that Jesus still heals those who are broken and in pain. |
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| Summary: Although we celebrate Jesus’ compassion toward the disabled woman in the text and rejoice in her healing, we should take care that we do not use our freedom from rigid Sabbath observance to neglect setting aside time for God. |
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| Summary: Obedience to God’s law is about more than avoiding certain behaviors; it’s about seeking wholeness and transformation. |
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| Summary: When Jesus notices a woman who had been bent over for 18 years — an especially significant number in Hebrew — he heals her, to the distress of a synagogue leader but to the joy of the crowd. By doing this, Jesus had broken no Sabbath rules. Rather, he did what all of us should do when we can — restore life when it’s been compromised.
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| Summary: Jesus answers a question about the nature of salvation unexpectedly. His answer warns insiders against presuming their acceptance by God, and it invites outsiders to come and experience God’s salvation. |
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| Summary: “Lord, will only a few be saved?” is ultimately a presumptuous question that doesn’t merit a direct or simple answer, and Jesus refuses to give one. “Am I one of the ‘saved’?” is the only question with which the faithful need concern themselves. |
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| Summary: Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem, knowing fully what he would face there. With that in mind, he wanted to remind and teach people about the dangers facing them if they took the easy way out when faced with decisions about their salvation and eternal destiny. |
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| Summary: Whatever we seek to achieve in life, the goal we set often determines the outcome. Unfortunately those who are satisfied with the minimum often end up with nothing.
Our journey to the kingdom of God can entail the same dynamic. Those who shoot for the minimum, whose concept of being a person of God is keeping a few basic rules may well find themselves coming up short. Jesus offers so much more to those willing to come in through the narrow door. So what is the narrow door and where can it get us?
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| Summary: True religion is not defined by going to a church, singing a hymn or displaying a religious symbol. As Christian people, our religion can be true only insofar as we live the God-life as shown to us by Jesus. Though that may be entered by a narrow gate, it is one through which he will lead us. |
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| Summary: The words of Christ in today’s Gospel contains a paradox, the first shall be last and the last first. It reminds us that we should avoid the presumption that we are “saved,” and that, in effect, we are among the “first.” We can hope for that, and pray for that, but most of all we must see “being saved” as the beginning of a lifelong process in which we face the challenges to love God on a day to day basis.
As Christ said “many who say Lord, Lord will not enter the kingdom but only those who do the will of my Father.” We should remember that many others, by the attitude of their hearts and the actions of their lives, may be living closer to Christ than we ever imagined.
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| Summary: Perhaps there are some things more interesting than doors, but not many. Open doors are welcoming while closed doors are rude and foreboding. Doors represent opportunities, possibilities and challenges. Jesus says that we should “strive” to pass through the “narrow” door. Then he utters an ominous warning: Many “will try to enter and will not be able.” What does he mean?
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| Summary: Who we meet in heaven may be a surprise if the “gate” we picture is too wide. To go through the narrow gate of which Jesus spoke requires us to focus on what really matters in the kingdom of God and to not try to serve two masters. |
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| Summary: Jesus was seen by some Israelites of his time as a prophet, and by others as a threat. In our text, he is on his way to Jerusalem, where he will proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom and challenge those who may oppose it. As he realizes, he will also encounter the opposition of the religious establishment and the police power of the Roman empire. He is not naive about what lies ahead. He shows us the need for courage to speak the truth to those in power.
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| There are 24 sermons in your results. |
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