See What a Morning

Learning to live from a dying man.

I've posted a short devotional on Jesus' prayer in John 17 over on my other blog Between Sundays. I've had that blog for a few years now. It's mainly aimed at my own church members and whoever else happens to wander along.

Easter is coming.

A well done video on the difference Easter makes from Workingpreacher.org.

Illustration-a-day: Living the resurrection

"Christian holiness consists not of trying as hard as we can to be good but of learning to live in the new world created by Easter, the new world we publicly entered in our baptism. There are many parts of the world we can't do anything about except pray. But there is one part of the world, one part of physical reality, that we can do something about, and that is the creature each of us calls 'myself.'"

N. T Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 253.

Preaching Quote of the Week

"We do not make sermons out of air: our creations, poor or brilliant as they may be, are always variations on someone else's theme.  The main melody is always a given, and even when we launch into our own bold improvisations we are limited to a scale of eight notes.  Our words are not ends in themselves; they exist to serve other words, which means that we never work alone.  Sitting all by ourselves in our rooms with bitten pencils in our hands, we compose our sermons in partnership with all those who have done so before us.  Together we explore the parameters of our common faith, testing the truth of one another's discoveries and holding each other accountable so that what we offer those who listen to us will not aim to dazzle but to nourish them."

Barbara Brown Taylor,Preaching Life (Boston: Cowley, 1993), 81.

Illustration-a-day: Like the sun rising over the dark horizon

"At one time the world cringed in terror befor death, engaging in timid dreams of continued life, of wisps and shades of remaining vitality. But the coming of Christ was like the sun rising over the dark horizon: the shadows of fear, dread and terror fled at the blazing brilliance of the One who triumphed over death."

A.J. Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), 42.

Question of the week: What are your thoughts on preaching Easter sermons?

Bigger crowds.  Unfamiliar faces.  The most basic story of our faith.  Easter has it all.  Do you find preaching Easter sermons to be . . . easier than other sermons? More difficult? Do you get more uptight than normal?  Less?  Do you prepare differently for Easter than other sermons?  If so how? 

Remember, I allow anonymous comments so feel free to tell the truth without worrying about whether or not your congregation will find out.

Keeping it Fresh - Preaching Easter Sunday as if it were the very first time.

"Everything is a Quotation" a painting
by my brother Erick Sandlin

Preaching Easter services can be daunting. The crowd's bigger than normal. It's full of unfamiliar faces. People in the congregation seem so worried about how they look and what they're doing for lunch that you can wonder if they're even listening. And then there's the text. It's the same as last year. You've tried to switch it up on occasion. You preached from 1 Cor 15 one year; you've rotated through the gospels; you even tried an Easter sermon out of 1 John, once. But no matter how you craft it, it still feels the same. How do you say it differently than before? And even more basic how do you say it? I mean say it in a way that does the story justice? What words can any of us say that will convey the power, the glory, the outrageousness of the resurrection? Superlatives fail us.

Part of our problem is that we have preached this so many times, we think we need new words to make the story of the resurrection sound fresh (as if it were our words that supplied new life to this story instead of it being the resurrection that brings new life to our words!). We've handled this story so often that we, the preacher, have become deadened to its sacred power. The fault is ours alone. Philip Brooks once wrote, "Familiarity does not breed contempt except of contemptible things or in contemptible people." The resurrection is clearly not a contemptible thing so . . . Ouch.

Willimon channels Brooks when he writes, "Don't you find it curious that High Holy Days get 'old' mostly for us preachers? Most of our people come to church on Christmas or Easter hoping to sing the same old hymns, to hear a familiar story. No lay person ever asked, 'Easter? Again?' Most laity come to church on these high days hoping it will all be 'again.' . . . Perhaps our laity, failing to receive the benefits of a first-rate theological education, are less well defended against Jesus than we clergy, therefore to them, the good news of Jesus Christ stays news."

I think Willimon is on to something. Nobody but the preacher is upset that this year's sermon sounds somewhat like last year's. The power, after all, isn't in the preacher or the preacher's words so much as it's in the Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead and now moves within the gospel's proclamation and among those who hear it. So don't worry so much about how to preach this story anew. Just trust that when we proclaim he is risen once more, it's news that's as new as ever.

With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And God’s grace was so powerfully at work in them all - Acts 4:33.

Illustration-a-day: What God gave us in the resurrection

“In the resurrection, so we believe, God gave us that which we could never have on our own – a beyond.” – William H. Willimon, Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh (Abingdon: Nashville, 2009), 9.

Illustration-a-day: Meeting a real celebrity

A few years ago, I heard the delightful story of Troy Aikman taking his daughter to a Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, concert. This was back when Miley was at her most popular and her Hanna Montana concerts were selling out in matters of minutes, not hours, not days, minutes. Troy Aikman, being a dad with connections, he was able to get his daughter front row tickets and a chance to go back stage and meet Miley. Now, back stage, some of the stage hands came up and asked for Aikman’s autograph, which is understandable to any of us old enough to know that Aikman’s main gig in life wasn’t as a commentator for FOX Sports. Aikman laughed, though, as he told of the incident saying, his daughter was befuddled as to why anyone would be paying attention to her dad when someone as great as Miley Cyrus was in their presence. His daughter would later confess to her dad, her dad the three-time Super Bowl Champion quarterback, “This is so cool, I’ve never met a real celebrity before.”

More tips on improving your sermon from Jim Martin

Over at A Place for the God Hungry, Jim Martin completes his list of ten ways to improve your preaching. The last five tips include:

1. Talk to people as if they are intelligent (they are) but resist the urge to prepare a sermon for a seminary professor.

2. Note the importance of ethos.

3. Present the opposing view as if very intelligent, good people believe this.

4. If you want people to take you seriously, then do nothing that might give them reason not to.

5. Take your preaching seriously and yourself less seriously.

Read his excellent explanations about each tip here.

A sermon from Will Willimon on the disciples' post Easter encounter with Jesus

Below is a sermon from Will Willimon preached last year on the third Sunday of Eastertide. The text is John 21:1-14. The sermon starts at 27:45 and ends at 46:44.

illustration-a-day:Best evidence for Easter

Clarence Jordan, author of the Cotton Patch Gospel, once wrote, “The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried away church.”

Illustration-a-day: The two reasons people don't believe in the resurrection

Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the leading theologians of our day, explains, “The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”

Have any easter illustrations you'd like to share?

We are now two weeks away from Easter, a sermon, a big sermon that we preach every year, often from the same few texts.  This can press the best preacher's creativity.  Got a good illustration from a past easter sermon, or maybe a good intro, or even a simple outline?  Post it in the comments and lend your preaching friends a hand.

Here's mine, an introduction from an Easter sermon preached from John 1:1-4:

There are some stories that we simply can’t help but repeat. This is especially true when it comes to families. Hang around my family long enough and you’ll hear about the time I got a suction cup stuck to my head which left a giant purple mark on my forehead for over six weeks. Or you’ll hear of the time my dad was putting up a basketball goal for my brother and me, only he didn't read the directions and cemented that ten foot pole into the ground without first removing the brackets stored inside that were supposed to hold up the backboard.  What a sight he was perched up on a ten foot ladder attempting to fish out those brackets from the bottom of that pole!  That's one of our stories.  I'm sure you have your own. Of course, not every story is funny. Some are sad like the day Grandaddy breathed his last – but those stories have their place as well. The stories that show up again and again though are those that mark major milestones in our lives. These often take the form of birth stories – that is stories of our beginnings. Just this past week, Alyson and I were having supper with some close family friends who are expecting their first child in about a month. As we shared in their excitement we couldn’t help but begin to recall the stories of our own children’s births. “Remember when?” we’d ask each other. As if we could forget. Then again, maybe you can forget, that’s why we keep telling the stories to each other. The stories of our beginnings, the stories of when life appeared and life changed forever.

John is telling us one of those stories in our text today, one of those beginnings that bears repeating and that “grows dearer every day”[i]. His is the ultimate story of the day life appeared and life changed forever. We’re not sure who he’s writing this short little letter to other than that it is a collection of believers that he’s familiar with. We’re not even sure it’s a letter – it could be a sermon. I like that idea for obvious reasons. Either way, he starts in with a theme he’s probably preached on a thousand times before and they’ve heard just as many times. He starts in with the essence of Christian proclamation – that in the person of Jesus Christ, God himself showed up on the scene and forever altered life as we know it. In fact, John, echoing language from both his gospel and from the book of Genesis writes that in Christ Jesus, life itself appeared and made eternal life possible for those who believe.

[The rest of the sermon was a basic retelling of the Easter story and of its importance for our faith - I may outline it later in the week]
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[i] One of my favorite Rich Mullin’s songs is entitled “Hello, Old Friends.” Mullins begins, “Hello, old friends. There’s really nothing new to say. But the old, old story bears repeating. And the plain old truth grows dearer everyday. When you find something worth believing, Well, that’s a joy that nothing can take away.”