Sermon Notes for July 8, 2007
“A Message of Urgency”
Luke 10:12-15: I tell you, on that day it will be more tolerable for Sodom than for that town. “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the deeds of power done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But at the judgment it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted to heaven? No, you will be brought down to Hades.
Background: Sodom, Tyre, and Sidon were Gentile (enemy) towns. Chorazim, Bethsaida, and Capernaum were Jewish towns in Galilee. Hades was the Greek underworld or “hell.”
Luke 19:41-44: As Jesus came near and saw Jerusalem, he wept over it, saying, “If you, even you, had only recognized on this day the things that make for peace! But now they are hidden from your eyes. Indeed, the days will come upon you, when your enemies will set up ramparts around you and surround you, and hem you in on every side. They will crush you to the ground, you and your children within you, and they will not leave within you one stone upon another; because you did not recognize the time of your visitation from God.”
It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence…. I believe today that there is a need for all people of good will to come with a massive act of conscience and say in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “We ain’t goin’ study war no more.” — Martin Luther King, Jr., from a sermon delivered at the National Cathedral in Washington on the last Sunday (March 31, 1968), Palm Sunday, before being assassinated, April 4, 1968.
Luke 4:18 — Jesus’ Inaugural Sermon:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
