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Congratulations to the winners of the Super Bowl: the Chicago Bears. OK, I'm guessing you watched the game (even some of those $2.6 million commercials) or at least heard the score, and you know that Indianapolis actually prevailed. But to the residents of some African village soon, the Bears were and always will be victors of Super Bowl XLI. That's because as soon as the game was over, Reebok representatives rushed onto the field with 288 championship caps and t-shirts, making sure Peyton Manning and team were seen in those garments that would be on sale at your local retailer on Monday morning. But that means there were an equal number of items on hand proclaiming the Bears as winners. What happened to those shirts and caps? According to a story in the Feb. 4 New York Times, as soon as the game was concluded, the unused apparel was kept under lock and key, to avoid any renegade caps showing up on eBay. Then on Monday it was all shipped to a World Vision warehouse, from which it will soon be sent to an African village for distribution to people with no TVs and no football, and for whom the Bears will forever after be the winners. So while we have some bones to pick with the NFL over refusing to let churches show large-screen displays of the game while allowing sports bars to do so, at least they got something right. Instead of just destroying 288 perfectly good -- if inaccurate -- shirts and caps, they get them into the hands of people for whom they will have real value. And the Bears can know that somewhere in the world, they are winners after all. Michael
Duduit, Editor To be sure each issue of PreachingNow makes it direct to your inbox (without a detour to the spam folder), be sure to add preachingnow@preaching.com to your address book and/or safe list.
How biblical texts act through preaching In his updated and revised The Witness of Preaching (Westminster John Knox), Thomas Long asks, "How do biblical texts shape Christian identity? That depends on the text in question. Some texts form Christian identity through the transmission of doctrine, others render biblical characters powerfully 'present' through narration, some evoke wonder or provoke memory, and still others issue ethical demands. The list could go on, of course, since texts are multifaceted, and every text possesses its own unique and complex set of intentionalities. "Texts do all these things through words, of course, which means that they do things by saying things in certain ways. And it is here -- in the interplay between saying and doing -- that we find the key to building the bridge between text and sermon. The bridge must be able to bear the traffic of both word and event. The preacher should bring to the sermon both what the text says and what the text does; or, to put it another way, what the text does by its saying. "The main-idea crowd was half right about this -- texts say something, and therefore express ideas -- but they were only half-right because they overlooked the fact that texts say what they say in order to cause something to happen. Content and intention are bound together, and no expression of textual impact is complete without them both. "The aesthetic crowd was half right as well -- texts do generate experiences -- but they were also only half right because they downplayed the conceptual content by which texts create those experiences. . . . What a text says clearly governs what it does. This notion of biblical texts as eventful and intentional communication allows us to build a far more satisfactory bridge between text and sermon." (Click here to learn more about The Witness of Preaching)
Don't focus on what's undone In her new book Spending God's Money (Father's Press), Mary Kinney Branson uses this illustration to share an important truth: Imagine that a stranger approached you one day when you were vacationing at the seashore. He hired you to move sand. He gave you a teaspoon and instructed you to move the sand -- one teaspoon at a time -- from the beach. You were not to use a bucket or a wheelbarrow. You had to carry each teaspoon of sand across the beach, across the boardwalk, through a big parking lot, and to a dump truck parked in the far corner of the lot. You then had to climb up the side of the dump truck and toss the sand into the bed of the truck. All the while you were carrying teaspoons of sand, giant waves replenished what you'd carried away. Many times during the day, you wanted to toss the teaspoon into the ocean and give up. But suppose, at the end of the day, the person who hired you walked right past the tons of sand left on the beach. He climbed into the bed of the truck and carefully swept every grain of sand you carried and scooped it into a small pile. He looked at the sand and smiled approvingly, saying, "We'll weigh the sand you carried, and I'll give you an equal weight in diamonds." Suddenly your focus would switch from the sand left on the beach to the sand in the truck. And the sand you gathered would look glorious. That's a healthy way to think about following God's instructions. We should look at what we're able to do instead of what doesn't get done. (Click here to learn more about the book Spending God's Money)
Lotteries and the Church An AgapePress story by Mark Creech details a new challenge for churches: members who win lotteries and then want to donate a portion of their winnings, despite the church's outspoken opposition to gambling. Creech relates: "Pastor Scott Thomas understands this principle well. According to Family News In Focus, he faced a very difficult situation several years ago when a deacon in his church offered a portion of lottery winnings for a building fund. Thomas refused the gift and stood on the principle of Christian separation. 'I've just always believed that God doesn't need to use chance to build his Church,' said Thomas. Furthermore, he added that impoverished people largely play lotteries and the church shouldn't profit on the backs of the poor. "Despite Thomas' opposition, however, the church wanted the money and fired him. They accepted the gift and built the building. As a result, attendance has dropped from 165 to fewer than 50 people a week. Thomas says: 'Several of the members have called me and said, 'The albatross around our necks is that we are now known as the lottery church.'" Pastor John Piper wrote, "Don't play the lottery for me. We are followers of Jesus. He had no place to lay His head and did not accept the demonic temptation to jump off the temple for the jackpot of instant recognition. The Calvary road is not paved with Powerball tickets, but with blood. Don't play the lottery for Bethlehem Baptist Church. We will not, I pray, salve your conscience by taking one dime of your plunder, or supporting even the thought of your spiritual suicide. Let the widow give her penny and the laborer his wage. And keep your life free from the love of money." (Click here to read the full story.) http://headlines.agapepress.org/archive/2/122003mc.asp
ILLUSTRATION: Courage, Virtue In
his Jan. 11 Breakpoint commentary, Chuck Colson said, "On the
day after New Year's . . . Wesley Autrey, a construction worker
and a Navy veteran, was waiting for the train with his two daughters
at the 137th Street Station in New York. Then, a man collapsed on
the platform and began convulsing. After Autrey helped him get up,
the man collapsed again and fell onto the tracks. With the lights
of the Broadway Local visible down the tunnel, Autrey had to make
what he later called a 'split-second decision' -- a decision that
inspired a nation and taught us a powerful lesson about what it
means to be human. "While Autrey didn't think that his actions were spectacular, other people did. At a time when most of the news is disheartening, Autrey's actions inspired millions of people. Americans have become jaundiced and skeptical. We need heroes every now and then, a role model -- and that's what Autrey has become. "Not only did he inspire us, but he also helps remind us of some important truths about being human. One of these is that materialism can never provide a satisfactory, much less complete, account of human nature. While neo-Darwinism offers a superficial explanation for human evil, it can't begin to account for human goodness, such as Autrey's actions. What we Christians call "altruism," Neo-Darwinists call "enlightened" selfishness. Thus, a Neo-Darwinist would say that parents care for their children and siblings as a way of ensuring that their "selfish genes" get passed on to the next generation. "Even if this were true, it says nothing about why a man jumps in front of an oncoming train for a total stranger, as Autrey did. For that, you need the capacity for self-sacrifice, an utterly un-Darwinian trait. Autrey's actions also reminded of what true virtue looks like. As Scott Carson, a philosophy professor at Miami of Ohio, pointed out, people like Autrey nearly always deny that what they did was 'spectacular.' This is more than modesty; it's what C. S. Lewis meant when he wrote that virtue is 'precognitive.' A soldier in a foxhole who jumps on a grenade doesn't ponder the issues; he acts on instinct: that instinct being the product of believing the right things and living that way -- what philosophers call 'habituation,' or character. As Autrey himself acknowledged after the fact, his actions seemed a bit foolish. But, happily for the stricken man, virtue doesn't always work in rational ways. "Autrey's story reminded me of the great Christian leader of the Czech revolution in 1989, Father Václav Maly. When I met him in 1990 in Prague and told him what a hero he was to me, he stopped and said, 'Oh, no, Chuck. I was just doing my duty.'"
ILLUSTRATION: Commitment Queen Victoria received the stunning Kohinoor Diamond as a gift from a maharajah when he was a boy. Later as a grown man this maharajah visited Queen Victoria again and asked for the stone. Taking the diamond and kneeling, the maharajah gave it to the Queen again, saying, "Your Majesty, I gave you this jewel when I was a child, too young to know what I was doing. I want to give it to you again in the fullness of my strength, with all my heart and affection and gratitude, now and forever, fully realizing all that I do." David Jeremiah observes, "Many Christians gave their hearts to Jesus as a child, but how wonderful to come with greater knowledge and maturity and to say, 'I know I'm Yours, but I want to be Yours with all my heart and affection, fully realizing all that I do.' "Sometimes we need to renew our vows to Him, just as Peter did following the Resurrection. Sacrificing for God is worth it, and a renewed commitment is like a fresh start with a tried and true Friend." (Turning Point Daily Devotional, 1/12/07)
ILLUSTRATION: Weddings, Marriage Years ago, when Johnny Carson was the host of The Tonight Show, he interviewed an eight-year-old boy. The young man was asked to appear because he had rescued two friends in a coalmine outside his hometown in West Virginia. As Johnny questioned the boy, it became apparent to him and the audience that the young man was a Christian. So Johnny asked him if he attended Sunday school. When the boy said he did Johnny inquired, "What are you learning in Sunday school?" "Last week," came his reply, "our lesson was about when Jesus went to a wedding and turned water into wine." The audience roared, but Johnny tried to keep a straight face. Then he said, "And what did you learn from that story?" The boy squirmed in his chair. It was apparent he hadn't thought about this. But then he lifted up his face and said, "If you're going to have a wedding, make sure you invite Jesus!" (from eSermons.com newsletter)
ILLUSTRATION: Aging Jeanne Calment, at 120 years, was the oldest living human whose birth date could be authenticated. When asked to describe her vision for the future, she replied, "Very brief." From Win Arn comes another quip about an aging woman. When the reporter asked the birthday girl what she liked best about being 102 years old, she answered, "No peer pressure." Finally, John Fetterman, rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, Wisconsin told of an elderly woman who died last April. Having never married, she requested no male pallbearers. In her handwritten instructions for her memorial service, she wrote, "They wouldn't take me out while I was alive, I don't want them to take me out when I'm dead." (Humorama newsletter)
"Nothing is as easy to make as a promise this winter to do something next summer; this is how commencement speakers are caught." (Sydney Harris)
What you'll see in Cambridge #2 in a list of sites you'll enjoy when you attend the International Congress on Preaching, April 17-19 in Cambridge, England: The Church of the Holy Sepulchre -- known in Cambridge as The Round Church -- is one of only four surviving round churches in England. It was originally built in the 12th century. Inside
the church you'll see a fascinating video on the religious history
of Cambridge, along with some interesting panels telling the history
of the city. Plan to be part of the third International Congress on Preaching in Cambridge, England. You'll hear an amazing lineup of speakers and enjoy stimulating addresses on the Congress theme, "For Such a Time as This: Preaching Truth in an Age of Idolatry." You'll hear challenging sermons, and you'll participate in practical workshops on a variety of preaching-related topics. There's still time to register, so make your plans now to be with us. To learn more (and register online), go to www.preaching.com/icop or you can call 800-527-5226 (toll free inside U.S.) or 615-386-3011 (outside the U.S.)
From the sponsor of this week's edition: Preaching With Power Preaching with Power (Baker), is a book featuring 20 interviews from the pages of Preaching magazine. Preaching with Power includes interviews with preachers like John MacArthur, Haddon Robinson, Lloyd John Ogilvie, Rick Warren, Adrian Rogers, David Jeremiah, Ed Young Jr., T.D. Jakes, Andy Stanley, and eleven more. Click here to learn more or to order your copy today.
ILLUSTRATION: Growth, Statistics The family's first three babies, all girls, each weighed about seven pounds at birth. When the fourth arrived, he was much larger. After delivery, the medical team began testing and measuring their new son. The last reading came from a nurse, who seemed impressed as she read, "Weight, nine pounds, eight ounces." The husband, a CPA who'd been quiet up to this point, could contain himself no longer. "How about that!" he exclaimed happily. "It's 36.5% more baby!" (from Cybersalt Digest)
"Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." (T. S. Eliot)
Updated songs for boomers As the Baby Boom generation gets older, some of the songs from their youth are being updated: Herman's Hermits -- Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker. Ringo Starr -- I Get By With a Little Help From Depends. The Bee Gees -- How Can You Mend a Broken Hip. Bobby Darin -- Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' a Flash. Roberta Flack -- The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face. Johnny Nash -- I Can't See Clearly Now. Paul Simon -- Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver The Commodores -- Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom Leo Sayer -- You Make Me Feel Like Napping. The Temptations -- Papa's Got a Kidney Stone. Abba -- Denture Queen. Tony Orlando -- Knock 3 Times On The Ceiling If You Hear Me Fall. Helen Reddy -- I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore Leslie Gore -- It's My Procedure, and I'll Cry If I Want To.
And finally . . . This baby doesn't need a stroller; he needs a pickup. According to a Feb. 1 AP story, a baby recently born in the Mexican resort city of Cancun weighed in at 14.5 pounds at birth. Antonio -- called "Super Tonio" around the hospital -- measures 22 inches in length. He's also got quite an appetite for a newborn, drinking 5 ounces of milk every three hours. Antonio is not the largest baby every born; a baby born in Brazil in 2005 weighed 16 pounds, 11 ounces at birth, and even that wasn't the record. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the heaviest baby born to a healthy mother was a boy weighing 22 pounds, 8 ounces, born in Aversa, Italy, in September 1955.
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