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SERMON: Sunday, November 4, 2007

“From Rapacious to Gracious”

Luke 19:1-10
Dr. Will Jones

You cannot read very far into any of the gospels without one aspect leaping out very quickly: how dramatically much people’s lives are changed through their encounter with Jesus. There are so many stories about individuals whose lives are changed for the better after meeting and talking with Jesus. The woman at the well that we meet in John 4 is completely changed after Jesus talks to her. She was so scorned and shunned, and she had little hope that her future would be any better than her past. The Garasene demoniac, that man who had no home and who lived among the tombs and who tore his clothes in bouts of madness and who shouted at Jesus … he was healed and restored to his right mind and to sanity and given back his life. After both of these people met Jesus, they went away telling everyone how much God had done for them … because they were so utterly and amazingly changed. But is there anyone in the whole New Testament whose life is more radically altered by his encounter with Jesus … than Zacchaeus? For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Departure”

2 Timothy 4:6-18
Dr. Will Jones

I did a double-take the first time I heard my grandmother talk about it. I was not used to hearing someone talk about their own death, especially someone I knew and loved, and I was surprised and taken back. I was driving her on some errands when I was about 17, and she was in her early eighties, and she was talking about the funeral for one of her life-long best friends. And then she said, “If I died tonight, it would be just fine with me.” And I remember thinking, how can you say that? Don’t talk like that. How can you say that dying tonight would be just fine with you? The topic of death, to a 17 year old (sometimes ever for a 37 year old) is a scary concept. For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Itching Ears”

2 Timothy 3:14-4:5
Dr. Will Jones

One of the things that use to always amaze me about Mrs. Margaret Short was her knowledge of the Bible. Many of you knew her well and remember her fondly. More than a few people in here were taught by her in regular school and in Sunday School. She lived in the red house just up the street by the church. By the time I got to know her before she died she was pretty deaf and pretty frail. I wish had known her before she declined, but nevertheless her mind was sharp. Whenever I went to see her, she always had two things beside her: a spiral notepad and her little red Bible. The notepad was there because it was basically the only way you could communicate with her. She would ask you questions, and you had to write your answer if it was anything more than yes or no. You could read through the notepad and see who had been to see her, and you could surmise what the conversation was about based on what was written. It was one-sided because you didn’t hear her questions, but you could tell what the gist of the conversation was. It was really fun on the very first visit I had to her to pick up the notebook and see that the previous conversation had been with a member of the Presbyterian church about their new preacher. For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“A Wasted Life”

2 Timothy 2:1-15
Dr. Will Jones

How could it possibly be that a man like Phillip Johnson would ever think that he had wasted his life? No one who knew him would have believed that. No one who saw his great success would have said that. But he did. He felt deep down that he had wasted so much time and talent. He made this startling observation to his wife one day – that he had been wasting his life. Born in 1946, Johnson grew up as the wonder-kid brain child in his home town of Aurora, IL. He was the kind of student that teachers drool over ... until they realized that he was smarter than they were. They would have to keep a dictionary on their desk when they graded his paper to look up the words he used that they didn’t know. By his own admission, while he was moving up through school, he was arrogant and obnoxious and too smart for his own good … For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“The Family of Faith”

2 Timothy 1:1-14
Dr. Will Jones

It’s been a pretty long while since we had a Jones family reunion. There was one a long time ago, maybe 20 years ago, and since then a whole generation has come and gone. Most family gatherings now usually happen around weddings and funerals. It’s always good to see the family, especially if we’re adding one member through a wedding and not subtracting one at a funeral. The first family reunion I ever attended on my in-laws’ side was kind of awkward. Susan’s grandmother was one of five children, and they all had multiple children, and many of those had children. There were lots of cousins, and aunts and uncles coming up to greet me. In hindsight, I realize that this event was, for me, not so much a family reunion as it was….an audition. For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Radical Trust”

Psalm 91:1-16
Dr. Will Jones

I talk a lot about our “defining moments” as Christians, and sometimes those moments when we are absolutely convinced of God’s love for us come – as near misses. They come when something happens and we know that without God’s protection, we never would have made it out of that moment. I think that Psalm 91 was written after someone had a near miss. Psalm 91 is a powerful affirmation that God can be trusted at all times, even in the midst of the toughest imaginable circumstances. The psalm praises God for being a protector, for being, in the psalmist’s words, a “shelter, refuge, and fortress.”  There is some vivid imagery here... For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Impassible? Impossible!”

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Dr. Will Jones

If you are a sports fan and you’ve watched ESPN over the years, then you would be familiar with the sports anchorman Chris Berman. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Berman hosted the nightly sports news recap on Sports Center, where they show highlights of all the games and sports of that day. Berman’s trademark was his penchant for giving nicknames to sports starts. Whenever he was narrating highlights from various games, he takes a player’s name and make a pun out of it to give him a nick name. The baseball player Tony Gwynne became “Tony Gwynne and Bear It”; the former quarterback for the Georgia Bulldogs, Eric Ziere became “Eric Light My Ziere.” The Falcons wide receiver Andre Rison was “Andre Bad Moon Rison,” and there are hundreds more. The nickname had nothing to do with their personalities, it was just a clever play on words with their names. There are other people down through history who have earned their nicknames based on something that they said or did or how they looked. Martha Jane Canary was born in 1852 in Missouri, but she became famous out west for her gun-wielding exploits on and off the battlefield, and she was nicknamed, Calamity Jane. One of Abe Lincoln’s unflattering nicknames was given in response to how someone thought he looked: the Baboon of Illinois. Teddy Roosevelt was called the Bull Moose because he told a reporter one day that he felt as strong as a Bull Moose. Michael Jordan earned the nickname “Air” because he could jump so far and so long on his way toward the basketball goal. If there was ever a person in the Bible who earned the nickname he has received, then it is the prophet Jeremiah. For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Welcome!”

Luke 15:1-10; Romans 12:1-2
Dr. Will Jones

One thing I always like to receive is the bulletin from another church. Quite frequently people will bring me the bulletin from a church they visited out of town, and it’s always good to see how other churches do things. I always look at the order of their worship service to see how they might do things differently. I like looking at the sermon title to see if I can guess how the minister got that title from the Scripture lesson that he just read. I look at the hymns and the creeds and the printed prayers. At the end of looking at that bulletin, I often try to come to the conclusion of what type of church that church is based on looking at their bulletin. If I just walked it the door, would I feel welcome? What would it be like to sit in that congregation’s worship service? Would I be comfortable in that kind of church? I was with a minister friend this past week who is serving a church in Memphis, but he has just announced that he is leaving to take a church in Spokane, Washington. He is from that area originally, but he has lived in Memphis for eleven years. He was saying that the biggest challenge for him is going to be working with the culture of the Pacific Northwest, where a very small percentage of the population goes to church and where faith is like a foreign language: it is something you have to learn. It is not something that you’re born into or grow up around, like you do in this region of the country ... For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Gone to Pot”

Jeremiah 18:1-12
Dr. Will Jones

I think the McVicker brothers were geniuses. They invented this stuff (Play-Doh) in 1956 If you haven’t recently had the pleasure of playing with this amazing material, I highly recommend that you go out and get some this afternoon. Even the smell of Play-Doh is something special and happy because it takes you back to your childhood days when you worked play-dough through your fingers and you feel that soft, malleable material. You can roll it out and make a snake. Or you can bunch it up in a ball. If you try hard enough, you can make a perfect sphere, and then smoosh it into a perfectly round pancake. The amazing thing about Play-Doh now days is that you can also buy special tools and molds and presses that help shape it into just about anything. And there are kits that help you build just about anything you can dream of out of play-dough. You can make little people of all shapes and sizes. There’s the Play-Doh Cut ‘N Shave Barber Shop. And, a play-dough fire station? Sure. A play-dough hospital? Sure. A play-dough church? For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“God _____ Me”

Jeremiah 1:4-9; Psalm 139:1-14
Dr. Will Jones

This drought is really something, isn't it? I was talking to a farmer friend of mine the other morning, and he confirmed with some actual numbers what I assumed: that this is the worst year on record for drought. I commiserated with him on how rough it's been for him and his crops each day feeling nothing but heat. I've been praying for this farmer and all of our farmers who are facing such a difficult year this year. We will continue to pray for rain, and even if it won't do a great deal for this year's crops, we still need rain and lots of it in this whole area. Everything is so dry. I pulled up one tomato plant and three bean plants in my garden yesterday because they are just scorched. I've seen lots of leaves down, and lots of actual tree limbs have come down; just breaking off because of how brittle they are.... For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Weakness Turned to Strength”

Hebrews 11:29-12:2
Dr. Will Jones

I want us to think today about the whole concept of encouragement, and in particular Christian encouragement. What does it mean to be an encourager of someone's faith, to push them along at the right time with the right word? And, even more importantly, what does it mean to need encouragement as a Christians, and then to receive it and welcome it, and let it help you grow as a Christian....For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“Fool! (cont.)”

Luke 12:13-21
Dr. Will Jones

Last week the preacher was a little bit long-winded, and so we ran into a time-crunch, and we never really got into the meat of the meal, into the meat of this parable. We nibbled on a few side dishes, and then we had to put this parable in the refrigerator, hoping to come back and finish it off this week. So I hope that we don't have just cold leftovers this morning when it comes to this sermon, and perhaps as a way of re-heating things up again, let me just remind you of a couple of things we noted last week before we try to sink our teeth into this meaty parable...For a full copy of this sermon, click here. 

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“A Mary Heart in a Martha World”

Luke 10: 38-42
Dr. Will Jones

The room configuration in the Jones house when I was growing up definitely worked out to my parents’ advantage.  Their room was downstairs on the far end of the house, and all the kids’ rooms were upstairs.  (I now see that my parents weren’t nearly as dumb as I thought they were).  My two brothers were on one end of the hallway, and my room was on the other end of the hallway along with my two sisters’ rooms.  So, my brothers did not get to witness, as much as I did, the incredible, dynamic relationship that sisters share.  On more than one occasion, I was caught in moments of feminine ferocity.  During intense storms of anger, the thunder created by a slamming door would shake our entire end of the house..... For a full copy of this sermon, click here.

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“The End Determines the Means”

Colossians 1:1-14
Dr. Will Jones

Life would be a lot easier if we could live it…in hindsight.  We can’t, of course, live life backwards, but if we could, how many things would we do differently?!?  If we lived our lives in hindsight, how many mistakes would we avoid?  How many relationships would be different, or perhaps, wouldn’t happen at all?  How many things would stay exactly the same…because we actually got them right to start with?  How many things would we do differently?

There is a country song out right now by a musician named Jake Owen where he looks back on his life in hindsight, and he lists some of the crucial mistakes that now cause him so much regret.  He took a swing at his dad one Christmas, not knowing it would be his last.  He started smoking when he was a kid, and now he can’t quit.  He hates his brother because he wouldn’t bail him out of jail.  He lost his dream job because he was irresponsible.  He let the love of his life slip through his hands, and he didn’t show up to be with the rest of the family the night his grandmother died.  You know: just your typical country song. The chorus of the song says:

If only I’d’ve known
That later on down the road
I’d look back and not like what I see
I’d’ve changed a lot of things
Startin’ with me…

For a full copy of this sermon, click here. 

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“The Legion in Me”

Psalm 42:1-11; Luke 8:26-39
Dr. Will Jones

One of my favorite classes in seminary also happened to be one of the hardest. It was called, simply, “Hospital”. I’m sure it had a more technical name than that, but “Hospital” was the term for this year-long class in pastoral care that everybody had to take. Hospital was the class where we did exactly what it sounds like: we visited people in the hospital. Under the supervision of someone else, we learned what it was like to walk into that room where someone was hurting and deal with it in the name of God. In some way or another, we were God’s representatives, and we had to learn how to be with and how to pray with people who were in the hospital.

One of my supervisors told me that I would learn more about medicine than I ever thought I could without going to medical school. And he was right. And he also told me that I’d have to be ready for anything once you go into that room. You may meet people who have just been given great news….or terrible news. You may have to clean something up. You may deal more with family members than you do with the actual patient. And…you’ll have people who want to show you the results of their procedures. Part of the education in “Hospital” class was learning how to keep a poker face when a 75-year-old hip-replacement patient says, “Want to see my scar?!?” Your immediate reaction is “No! I don’t anything of the sort. That’s the last thing I want to see.” But you can’t say that, so you learn to appreciate one’s enthusiasm for stitches…..For a full copy of this sermon, please click here.

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“The Cult of the Next Best Thing”

Dr. Will Jones

I reaaalllly like Charles Sullivan’s new, shiny, two-seater convertible sports car. The first time I saw it, I said, “Ooohhh, that must be fun to drive.” I’ve never had a convertible, and the few times I’ve driven one, I reaaallllyy like it. And when I saw Charles’ new ride, I thought: “Yes, I could see myself behind the wheel of that car.” It’s new, it’s nice, and I bet I could get it to go a few miles per hour over the speed limit on a deserted country road…..If you would like a DVD copy of this sermon, please e-mail your request by clicking here.”

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