Sermon Illustrations
DEATH - UNBORN TWINS STORY
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.. . . Two unborn twins are snug and secure in their mother's womb.. But they face an uncertain future# and uncertain passage to a new life. Weeks passed into months# and with the advent of each new month, the twins noticed a change In each other, and each twin began to see change in himself. WE ARE CHANGING said one twin, WHAT CAN IT MEAN?
IT MEANS, replied the other, THAT WE ARE DRAWING NEARTO BIRTH.
Said the first twin, WERE IT UP TO ME, I WOULD LIVE HERE FOREVER!
WE MUST BE BORN, said the other, IT HAS HAPPENED TO ALL THE OTHERS WHO WERE HERE BEFORE. For Indeed there was evidence of 1ife-there-before as the mother had born other children.
BUT IS THERE LIFE AFTER BIRTH? HOW CAN THERE BE LIFE AFTER BIRTH? cried the first twin. DO WE NOT SHED OUR LIFE CORD? AND HAVE YOU EVER TALKED TO ONE THAT HAS BEEN BORN? HAS ANYONE EVER RE-ENTERED THE WOMB AFTER BIRTH? NO! he fell into despair, and in his despair he moaned, IF THE PURPOSE OF CONCEPTION AND ALL OUR GROWTH IS THAT IT BE ENDED IN BIRTH, THEN TRULY OUR LIFE IS ABSURD. Resigned to despair, he stabbed the darkness with his unseeing eyes and as he clutched his precious life cord to his chest, said, IF THIS IS SO, AND LIFE IS ABSURD, THEN THERE REALLY CAN BE NO MOTHER.
BUT THERE IS A MOTHER, protested the other. WHO ELSE GAVE US NOURISHMENT AND OUR WORLD?
WE GET OUR OWN NOURISHMENT AND OUR WORLD HAS ALWAYS
BEEN HERE, replied the first twin. AND IF THERE IS A MOTHER, WHERE IS SHE? HAVE YOU EVER SEEN HER? DOES SHE EVER TALK TO YOU? NO, WE INVENTED THE MOTHER BECAUSE IT SATISFIED A NEED IN US. IT MADE US FEEL SECURE AND HAPPY.
Thus, while one raved and despaired, the other resigned himself to birth, and placed his trust in the hands of his Mother. Hours stretched into days, and days fell into weeks, and it came time. Both knew their birth was at hand, and both feared what they did not know. They cried as they were born into the light. And coughed and gasped the dry air. And when they were sure they had been born, they opened their eyes, seeing for the first time; and they found themselves cradled in the warm love of their Mother’s arms. They lay open-mouthed, awe-struck before the beauty and truth they could not have hoped to have known.
(Rev. Wm. Lawson of Boston, MA)
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DEATH STATISTICS
Most Elderly Go Gently
Study of Deaths Finds Reports Exaggerated
By William Booth
Washington Post Staff Writer
The American way of death that is most often presented in the mass media, new research has found, is not the way most people die.
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Most Americans do not die hooked up to beeping, wheezing life-support machines after weeks or months in an intensive care
unit. Nor are their deaths arranged after a battle between hospital administrators, attorneys, family members and ethicists, who
argue over when to pull the plug.
A handful of ground-breaking studies on how elderly Americans die reveals quite the opposite. Even the researchers themselves were surprised to find that most people spend their last days in their own homes, in the company of family and friends, fully aware of their surroundings, often in control of their bodily functions and without pain. About one-third die at home and almost half transfer into a hospital shortly before dying.
Indeed, a recent study in Philadelphia found that as the elderly approach death, most maintain an active interest in the world. They are not depressed. And many experience an emotion that scientists find hard to measure, but which people report
nonetheless: a feeling of hope.
“Having hope didn't mean they believed they were going to live,” said M. Powell Lawton, director of research at the Philadelphia Geriatric Center. “It meant they had something to live a little while longer for.”
“What we found surprised us, not so much because the results were so shocking, but because we really didn't know very much,” said Dwight Brock, a demographer at the National Institute on Aging who studied the circumstances surrounding the death of people in Fairfield County in Connecticut.
Fairfield County is not exactly Anytown, U.S.A. Weekend home to Donald Trump and William F. Buckley Jr., the county harbors some of the wealthiest suburbs in America. Yet it is a mixed environment. Adjacent to the well-manicured posh of Greenwich, there is the extensive poverty of Bridgeport.
Fairfield County is outstanding in another way. The clerk keeps excellent and accessible death certificates. And so it was to
Fairfield County that researchers came to ask how elderly Americans die. “I guess one of the things that motivated
the study was our desire to try to demystify death,” Brock said. “We wanted to help people understand what was happening to them as they approached death.”
Investigating the Circumstances
The federal health bureaucracy has long kept detailed records on the causes of death. What researchers have not known is
the circumstances, the surroundings of death. According to its authors, “The study seeks to describe who dies while peacefully
asleep, who dies in great pain, who dies in the presence of family and friends with full knowledge that death is about to occur, or who dies suddenly and unexpectedly.”
The study dealt with nearly 4,000 deaths of people over the age of 65, which is when two-thirds of Americans expire. The re-
searchers tracked down next of kin through funeral directors, physicians, cemeteries, newspaper death notices and repeated
phone calls. They did face-to-face interviews with the surviving kin in the months following the deaths in 1985. Most people
agreed to participate in the study and although the responses of family members about the state of decedents can only be
approximate, the researchers said it was the best they could do.
They found that the residents of Fairfield County died of the same ailments, and in similar proportions, as the average elderly
American: Heart disease, cancer, stroke and pneumonia lead the list of causes. Thirty percent of the people died in their
homes, 45 percent in the hospital and 25 percent in a nursing home. More than half died peacefully in their sleep. Health did not deteriorate until fairly near the end in most cases. More than half of the people were in good or excellent health a year before they died. About one-quarter were in good shape as late as a month before death. About 10 percent were in good health the day before. About one-third knew that death was approaching.
The day before they died, 51 percent of the deceased had no difficulty with orien-ation or recognizing their families; 30 percent had no trouble with bowel or bladder control the day before they died; 61 percent had no pain; 90 percent had no diarrhea; 87
percent no nausea. Just over half, 52 percent, could breathe freely; and 69 percent needed no pain medication.
Finally, nine of 10 decedents saw their family and friends within the last three days of life. “That to me was the most encouraging thing about this study,” Brock said. “They didn’t die in isolation and most of them were functional. They recognized their family. They knew what was happening to them.”
Staying ‘on the Positive Side'
The Fairfield data, which are still being analyzed, were recently updated by M. Powell Lawton of the Philadelphia Geriatric
Center, who interviewed the survivors of 200 newly deceased persons and published his results in Milbank Quarterly.
Lawton queried the relatives on nine areas: how much pain the deceased experienced; how alert they were; could they care for themselves; did they have social contacts; satisfaction with the way they spent their time; boredom; depression; interest in the world around them; and feelings of hope.
Lawton then aggregated each family's response to determine a positive or negative status. Even in the last month of life,
Lawton judged that 65 percent had a pos- itive quality of life. “Without exception, the quality of life of people who were just about to die was poorer; But differences were less extreme than we had thought,” Lawton said. “This is an area where a total lack of knowledge allowed people to imagine the worst.”
As they approached death, the Philadelphia decedents' interest in the world around them diminished only moderately. “As for
depression, 62 percent were still on the positive side ... in the last month of life,” Lawton said. There was also almost no deterioration in the contact with family and friends. Pain, however, increased as death came closer. Lawton said of all the categories he measured, the one least affected was hope.
DECENT GODLESS
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"Decent, Godless People"
That’s what T.S. Eliot called people like some new friends I have made: decent, godless people.
They are not against God, Jesus, the Bible, the church “and all that.” They are tolerant and politely interested in what
Christians have to say. But they are not convinced. They choose to live without any religious commitment. They are godless
secular humanists.
But they are decent godless secular humanists (even more decent than those Eliot wrote about). Their personal lives
exhibit all the Calvinist virtues; self-denial, hard work, simplicity, lack of ostentation, moral rectitude.
They are faithful spouses and loving, attentive parents. Their children are disciplined, courteous, sensitive to the feelings
and needs of others and are good students in school.
These people are courageously involved in the peace movement, passionately committed to the cause of compassion and justice for the poor and oppressed.
They have their worries and disapointments, their weaknesses and blind spots, but they are just as happy, moral and con-
cerned about others as most Christians — and more so than some.
What is my Christian responsibility toward these friends? Well, I know what I won’t do. I won’t pretend that since they are such good people “deep down” they must be Christians after all. They don’t want to be Christians.
Nor will I (to paraphrase Bonhoeffer) sniff around to smell the manure under the roses, trying to convince myself that since
they are not Christians they couldn’t be as good and caring as they seem.
I wouldn’t dare confront them with the sure-to-lose argument that they would be happier, wiser, better people if they were
Christians as I am. And I certainly won’t wait around for the chance to say “I told you so” if their non-Christian marriages
fail, their non-Christian children go wrong or their non-Christian based business goes out-of-business.
I will show them the love of Christ, not to try and make them so that they may become as good, kind, loving and just as we Christians, but so that they may come to know the goodness, kindness, love and justice of God. Not so much that they may be saved as that they may have the privilege of freely and gladly observing the God who saves.
Meanwhile, I am grateful for decent, godless people. Because of what they are and what they do. And because they confirm and strengthen my faith in a living God, a risen Lord and a free-blowing Spirit who are at work in and for the world even
where they are not recognized, honored, thanked and freely and gladly served.
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SHIRLEY C. GUTHRIE, Editor-at-large, 46 Eltisley Ave. Newnham Cambridge CB3 9JQ United Kingdom
in The Presbyterian Outlook, 4/4/1988
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DECISIONS - CHURCH ATTENDANCE
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Rhoda Ayers, Senior High Fellowship Advisor at Westminster Presbyterian Church, West Chester, PA, on a Youth Group Winter Retreat said, "It used to be that every Sunday morning I would wake up and have to decide whether to go to church or not. It depended on the weather, the activities of the night before, how I felt right then - and it was exhausting to do that every week. Finally I decided I would go to church - I made the decision once, and didn't have to each Sunday morning, and it was very freeing."
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DENOMINATIONS
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All Christians are Baptists of the heart.
Methodists are just Baptists who're afraid of the water.
Presbyterians are just Methodists who went to college.
And Episcopalians are just Presbyterians whose business dealings all worked out.
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Tom Gillespie, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, April 1988 at a PTS Alumni Luncheon
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DENOUNCING
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There is nothing as easy as denouncing. It don't take much to see that
something is wrong, but it does take some eyesight to see what will put it
right again.
Will Rogers, Reader's Digest, March 1986
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DIFFICULT TIMES
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THE HOUSE OF MY SOUL
By Robert A. Raines
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I dreamed I kept going in the back door of a modest house. Going back again and again through the same back door into the same house. Going around in circles. Perhaps God is pestering me to go back through my journals, the house of my soul, to re-new my mind, re-member my body and re-store my soul.
0 God, yank me off the treadmill of self-pity,
push me to discern between the vital and the futile,
serenity and laziness, that I not settle for ease
when I might yet see visions;
spin me out of my flat circling that I may spiral up
to the front door of my house.
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0 Generous Waterfall, thank You for the delight of swimming in my friends' lake--stroking and rolling, turning and floating in the cool silk; You bear me up now in the still water, even as once when my frail raft broke against the rocks and I was going under,
You pulled me out and took me round the bend. 0 Jesus Savior, pilot me, give me water-wings for my baby trust; hurtle me into white water, but go with me, so that I may climb onto Your back like those 13 ducklings scuttling onto the back of their marvelous Merganser mother; I was born in water, I am a waterman; let me ever be water-borne.
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0 Lover of justice and the brave, thank You for Nelson Mandella, for the dignity of his 23 years in South African prisons, for his looking straight into the eyes of apartheid and not blinking. I hear staccato snaps in the valley, bullets slapping into targets, the
N.R.A. in our front yard, guns everywhere. Yet, if I were a black South African there might be a gun in my hand for the sake of my children’s freedom; there is still a gunner in my heart. 0 Jesus, who used a whip but told Peter to put away his weapon, contradictory passions roil in me; heal my heart and hound me to pursue a just peace.
0 Lover of truth and the compassionate, thank You for all those who provide shelters, soup kitchens, famine relief, help for people imprisoned in poverty. Let the Pentagon get up off its $600 toilet seats and practice free enterprise; let our bloated, corrupt war industry get lean and honest, and its corporate crooks, prison sentences; turn our priorities and resources upside down, so that poor boys and girls may have healthy bodies and minds and reason to hope.
O Jesus, who stood with those condemned and excluded by the "good" people of your day, keep me standing with my gay brothers and lesbian sisters in their struggle for civil and religious rights. You are lord of the sabbath, and of all religious doctrines and social conventions; let me hold fast to Your love when such doctrines and conventions demean Your daughters and sons and exclude them from the family table.
0 Gentle Breeze, thank You for the quaking aspens, still now, in the quiet of the early morning.
There they go, restless and rustling, clapping their green leaves against the blue sky;
maybe they know it's my birthday! Could it become my birthing day?
May my soul be tremulous to Your touch; may I suffer a holy trembling.
0 Jesus, Midwife of my soul, grow in me a deep trust and let my yearning arise; deliver me,
shudder me forth in and out of the doors of my house.
Robert A. Raines, from Kirkridge Camp's Newsletter The Ridgeleaf, Bangor, Pennsylvania 18013, September 1985
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DOUBT
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Every night I say a prayer in the hopes that there’s a heaven,
And every day I’m more confused, as the saints turn into sinners
The legends and idols I knew as a child have all turned into clay
There’s an empty place inside I feel, I’m afraid I’ve lost my faith,
Please show me the way.
(Later in the song)
If I see a light should I believe, but how will I know?
-The band Styx in "Show me the Way"
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DOUBT AND OUT
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By PAUL A. CORCORAN
My rule about weeding has always been, “When in doubt, pull it out.” I’ve exterminated some of my wife’s prize wildflowers over the years, but she’s a forgiving sort and we’ve managed to stay together. I forgive her fondness for limburger cheese and sardines, and our garden has been pretty much weed-free.
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There was a dentist we once went to who had the same “if in doubt, yank it out” philosophy. He was cheap, but if you
stayed with him too long, you ended up with false teeth. Doctors back in the ’30s were the same way about tonsils and
adenoids; take your child in with a broken arm or poison ivy, and he was likely to lose his tonsils and adenoids in the bargain. Doctors used to name their new cabin cruisers T and A.
My friend over at the Church of the Free Spirit says they have a similar rule about questionable members: “When in doubt, cast them out.” They call it the “Jonah in the whale” rule. Most ministers have longed at least once for such a rule in their own denominations, but so far the only one in operation has been about ministers, not for ministers. (“For the sake of all con-
cerned,” intones the judicatory, “we believe Pastor So-and-So should seek a call to a new field of service.”)
In other words, “Pack, Mac.” Very few may really know why, but that’s just the point: There is doubt, so ship him out! It doesn’t matter whether the verb is pull, yank, cast, throw, ship, toss, drum or whatever, the message is in the two words: “doubt” and “out.” Wherever you have doubt, somebody’s going to be out.
Something about church life cannot bear doubt. Something in human nature loves cleaning things out. I’ve saved many a
lost day by at least cleaning out a few files. It makes you feel as if you’ve accomplished something.
I don’t subscribe to the slogan, “A clean desk means a clean mind.” You could also say, “An empty desk means an empty mind.” One of the smartest men I ever knew had such a jungle of an office that the sign on the door said, “Come in — I’m here somewhere.”
Nevertheless, there is undeniable satisfaction in seeing a weed-free garden, a clutter-free desk or even a problem-free congregation. A cleaned-out heaven is another matter, though. Our Calvinist theology is that God has had his doubts about us ever since Adam and Eve bit the apple.
God could easily play the “doubt-out” game, and most of us would be the outees. Heaven would be clean and serene, but it wouldn’t mean much down where we would be.
The good news is that God has always been willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. “Forgive their sin and let them in” is his rule. That won’t change my ways with weeds in the garden or the clutter in my files, but I expect it ought to make me look more tolerantly upon other people. As Matthew 7:2 says, “The outmnent with which you out will be the outment with which you are outed.” And I surely don’t want that!
THE PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK
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