Sermon Illustrations on strength

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Background

What Is Bullying?

Bullying has been around as long as children have lived in groups. Often, adults minimize or ignore it, reasoning: “we all have to go through it—I did, and I’m ok” or even “it builds character.”

Over the past few decades, however, research has come out indicating that being bullied has enduring negative mental and physical health consequences that can last through adulthood. Especially when the victim of bullying has other stressors in their lives, bullying can increase the risk of suicide. Additionally, student academic performance often suffers, limiting a child’s future opportunities. Even the bullies themselves are at risk. Bullies are often on a trajectory toward a whole host of future problems including early sex, violence, drug abuse, and adult criminality, especially including intimate partner and child abuse.

What is bullying? Examples include threats, violence, spreading rumors, verbal attacks or insults, or purposefully excluding someone from a group. Essentially, bullying is unwanted, aggressive behavior which involves one child using a real or perceived power imbalance (physical strength, embarrassing info, or popularity) to harm or control another child. We are all pretty familiar with its traditional manifestations: overt violence, threats, taunting, nasty gossip, and so forth, but we also have to be aware of its newer manifestation, cyberbullying.

Adults need to intervene to stop and prevent bullying. Surely when Jesus speaks of the most vulnerable, “the least of these,” he would include both of these groups of children.

William Rowley

Power is for Service

The way most of us serve keeps us in control. We choose whom, when, where and how we will serve. We stay in charge. Jesus is calling for something else. He is calling us to be servants. When we make this choice, we give up the right to be in charge. The amazing thing is that when we make this choice, we experience great freedom. We become available and vulnerable, and we lose our fear of being stepped on, or manipulated, or taken advantage of. Are not these our basic fears? We do not want to be in a position of weakness.

Maxie Dunnam, The Workbook on Spiritual Disciplines (Nashville: Upper Room, 1984), p. 101.

Stories

Lifting the Rock

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short time, he began digging around to see what treasures might reveal themselves to him.

As his hands plunged under the sand he discovered something rather large, and having pushed enough of the sand away, realized it was a large rock. Instantly he knew he needed to move that rock, no matter how big it was. This rock was the obstacle to his dreams of a sandbox clear of all extraneous matter.

So the boy tried as hard as he could to move the rock. He pushed and pushed and pushed, and finally he was able to get it to the edge of the sandbox. But the next step would be the hardest. How could he get it over the edge? Again the boy pushed and pushed until his energy was completely fried. The rock’s stuckness matched the boy’s feelings of the situation. Eventually he started to sob.

The boy’s father watched all this, and just when the meltdown began, the father went over to his son and began to comfort his overtaxed, dejected son.

“Why didn’t you use all the strength available to you to move the rock?” the father asked.

The boy was confused, “I did daddy, it’s just too heavy.”

“No son,” you didn’t. You didn’t ask me to help.” And at that, the father lifted the rock with a single hand and tossed it out of the sandbox.

Original Source Unknown, adapted by Stuart Strachan Jr.

Religion: Instructions without Power

One Sunday morning a number of years ago my wife piled the children into the family car to come to Sunday school and worship. When she turned the switch to start, the engine wouldn’t even grunt. The battery was completely dead.

After lunch, I went to a nearby service station and related my problem to the attendant. He went back to speak to the station manager who was under a car on the grease rack. The attendant came back with this helpful offer, “Sure we can take care of it. Bring it on in.”

Now isn’t that the trouble with a lot of religion? You get instructions, but you don’t get power. You get good advice, but you don’t get the strength to carry it out. My friends, good advice without power is bad news.

B. Clayton Bell, Sermon: How Do You Catch the Wind? Quoted in Mark Galli & Craig Brian Smith, Preaching that Connects, Zondervan.

The Showdown Between Ambrose & Theodosius

In the Christian faith, we frequently take for granted how radically Jesus evens the playing field. No matter your wealth, your position, let alone your race or gender, all of us are equal in God’s eyes. No one is given special status or access to God over another. The Roman emperor Theodosius had to learn this the hard way. Theodosius established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, but that did not automatically make him a saint. When, after massacring thousands of citizens in Thessalonica, Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan refused to offer him communion.

In fact, Ambrose personally confronted Theodosius at the door of the church saying, “you cannot enter here with hands soiled by human blood.” Theodosius cunningly responded that if he was guilty of murder, so was King David, the man supposedly “after God’s own heart.” Ambrose’s response was equally as cunning: “You have imitated David in his crime, imitate him in repentance.” Eventually, Ambrose was able to get Theodosius to promise not to execute anyone sentenced to death until forty days had passed, and he was to perform penance before being admitted to communion.

Stuart Strachan Jr., Source Material from Roland Bainton, The Church of Our Fathers, 1941.

The Snake in the Cell

John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a night in a cell with a poisonous snake. Any movement, even the smallest stirring, would cause the snake to strike with a lethal bite. The man convinced himself the best course of action was to stand in the corner of the cell, as far away from the snake as possible, as still as humanly possible. So the man stayed awake all night, huddled in the corner, praying that he would not arouse the poisonous snake and meet an early end.

As dawn began to settle on the cell, the man began to make out the shape of the snake, and he was relieved that he had stayed so still for such a long period of time. But as the light began to more fully illuminate the room, something strange became evident: the snake was no snake at all, just an old rope.

The point of the story is clear: there are many rooms in our minds where ropes, not snakes exist. These snakes keep us from fully living, entrapped as we are by the fear of being stricken. We become prisoners of our own making. The solution is not to merely protect ourselves, but to face the dangers head on, so that we can experience the fullness of life Jesus offers us in his Word.

Stuart Strachan, Source material from John O’Donahue, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World (Convergent Books, 2018).

Analogies

Lifting the Rock

One day a father decided to take his son to play at the local park. The boy quickly gravitated to the sandbox and found himself mesmerized by the colors and textures surrounding him. After a short time, he began digging around to see what treasures might reveal themselves to him.

As his hands plunged under the sand he discovered something rather large, and having pushed enough of the sand away, realized it was a large rock. Instantly he knew he needed to move that rock, no matter how big it was. This rock was the obstacle to his dreams of a sandbox clear of all extraneous matter.

So the boy tried as hard as he could to move the rock. He pushed and pushed and pushed, and finally he was able to get it to the edge of the sandbox. But the next step would be the hardest. How could he get it over the edge? Again the boy pushed and pushed until his energy was completely fried. The rock’s stuckness matched the boy’s feelings of the situation. Eventually he started to sob.

The boy’s father watched all this, and just when the meltdown began, the father went over to his son and began to comfort his overtaxed, dejected son.

“Why didn’t you use all the strength available to you to move the rock?” the father asked.

The boy was confused, “I did daddy, it’s just too heavy.”

“No son,” you didn’t. You didn’t ask me to help.” And at that, the father lifted the rock with a single hand and tossed it out of the sandbox.

Original Source Unknown, adapted by Stuart Strachan Jr.

Stronger on the Inside

I was listening to a show on the National Geographic channel. Two deep-sea diving experts were discussing the physics of a submarine. I found it fascinating that every square inch of a submarine’s hull can withstand 580 pounds of pressure. The deeper the vessel submerges, the more pressure is exerted on the structure. As I sat there wondering how a submarine isn’t completely destroyed by the extreme environment it must function in, it hit me:

What’s on the inside has to be stronger than what’s on the outside.

The same can be said about our lives. And our souls. It’s not the endless laundry to fold, bottoms to wipe, and toys to pick up. It’s not the aging parents or wrinkling skin. It’s not the sagging jeans or the muffin top. These are all external factors, and even if we learn how to prioritize better, find the best yes, or do the next right thing, we are still going to feel thousands of pounds of pressure every day. We have to strengthen what’s on the inside if we want to deal with what’s on the outside.

Alisha Illian, Chasing Perfect: Peace and Purpose in the Exhausting Pursuit of Something Better, Harvest House, 2020.

The Transfer of Energy

In physics, power is defined as the transfer of energy. In a light bulb, for example, electricity is transferred into light and heat. A 100-watt light bulb is more powerful than a 60-watt light bulb because there is more energy transferred. The same is true in leadership. It is a leader’s ability to transfer their authority to others that actually gives them their power.

Simon Sinek, What Leaders Can Learn From Mandela’s Selflessness and Sacrifice.

Playing with Chemistry Sets

On the whole, I do not find Christians, outside of the catacombs, sufficiently sensible of conditions. Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up a batch of TNT to kill a Sunday morning. It is madness to wear ladies’ straw hats and velvet hats to church we should all be wearing crash helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they should lash us to our pews. For the sleeping god may wake someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to where we can never return.

Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk, Harper Perennial.

Humor

Religion: Instructions without Power

One Sunday morning a number of years ago my wife piled the children into the family car to come to Sunday school and worship. When she turned the switch to start, the engine wouldn’t even grunt. The battery was completely dead.

After lunch, I went to a nearby service station and related my problem to the attendant. He went back to speak to the station manager who was under a car on the grease rack. The attendant came back with this helpful offer, “Sure we can take care of it. Bring it on in.”

Now isn’t that the trouble with a lot of religion? You get instructions, but you don’t get power. You get good advice, but you don’t get the strength to carry it out. My friends, good advice without power is bad news.

B. Clayton Bell, Sermon: How Do You Catch the Wind? Quoted in Mark Galli & Craig Brian Smith, Preaching that Connects, Zondervan.