Sermon for Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 26, 2015
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas
Sermon Text: Acts 4:1-12
Sermon Theme: A Cornerstone by Any Other Name . . .
(Sources: Emphasis Online Commentaries; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Sermon Suite Illustrations; original ideas; Anderson’s Cycle B Preaching Workbook)
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
There’s a story going around about a college student who stayed up all night preparing for his zoology test. He entered the classroom and saw ten stands each with a bird on it, each bird covered with a sack with only his legs showing.
The professor instructed the students to use the legs to identify each bird by name, habitat, genus, and species. The perplexed student, sitting on the first row, was consumed by despair. All legs looked alike. Enraged, he approached the desk of the professor and exclaimed, “What a stupid test! How could anyone identify birds by looking at their legs?”
He threw his unmarked test on the teacher’s desk and headed for the door. The professor was taken by surprise. He didn’t know the names of all of his students in the class, so he called after the student, “Young man, what’s your name?”
The enraged student pulled up his pant legs and said, “You guess, Professor, you guess!”
Birds are named. So are students. Salvation, also, has a name. The name is Jesus. The fact is Holy Scripture gives Jesus many names, — Bread of Life, the Living Water, Lamb of God, the Good Shepherd, the Vine, the Cornerstone, — just to mention some of them. Continue reading