Sermon for Rally Day, August 28, 2016
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 28, 2016
St. Paul Lutheran Church, Wallis, Texas
Sermon Text: Hebrews 13:1-17
Sermon Theme: “An Unchanging Christ in a Changing World”
(Sources: Brokhoff, Series C, Preaching Workbook; The Parables of Peanuts, The Gospel According to Peanuts; original ideas; Emphasis Online Illustrations; Footnotes, Life Application Study Bible)
Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Rally Day officially launches the new School Year for the Sunday School Department. It’s a time for celebration by leaders and students, which took place yesterday at the Woolley’s, and a time for preparation by the teachers as they plan to lead, whether they teach adults or they teach children. Our sermon text says, “Remember your leaders who spoke to you the word of God . . . Obey your leaders, . . . for they are keeping watch over your souls.”
Of course, it is really God who works through these leaders.
As all of us, and especially the children, face future living, we need to have solid, basic guidelines by which to order our lives. Today, we are living in a time of confusion, startling changes, moral and ethic dilemmas, and recurrent violence. There is a breakdown in moral standards. Things we once abhorred are done today as a normal way of life. We are confused, we do not know whether to resist or go along with the new morality. We feel empty from this growing loss of spiritual values. Our text offers some hope.
This changing world was already changing when Charles M. Schulz was drawing his Peanuts comic strip (Schulz died in 2000). For example, Charlie Brown was surprised when Violet Gray, a girl who had a crush on him, said that her parents used to belong to a church, but now they belong to a coffee house. Charlie himself represents America’s values the way they used to be, while some of his friends begin to reflect the moral and ethical changes for the worse.
Violet Gray, for example, would hold the football for Charlie to kick, and then let it go, because she was afraid he might kick her hand. Lucy Van Pelt, on the other hand, would let go of the football right before the kick just for spite or meanness. Violet had no faith, and Lucy had too few Christ-like character traits in her. The guidelines of Jesus were much more prevailing in Charlie. Continue reading