We Should All Be Wearing Crash Helmets (Epiphany 4)

We Should All Be Wearing Crash Helmets (Epiphany 4)

01/28/2018

Mark 1:21-28

Chris Breslin

“…carry on the struggle, until, in God’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.” –Winston Churchill

“for Christ plays in ten thousand places,/Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his/To the Father through the features of men’s faces.” –Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire

“Why do people in church seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a packaged tour of the Absolute? …Does anyone have the foggiest idea what sort of power we 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 to where we can never return.” –Annie Dillard

“People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…” –William Stringfellow

“To clasp hands in prayer is the beginning of an uprising against the disorder of the world.” –Karl Barth

“The strife is o’er, the battle done;/Now is the Victor’s triumph won;/Now be the song of praise begun./Alleluia!” –Anonymous 17th Cent. Hymn from the Lutheran Hymnal

 

Sermon Resources:

The War We Need (Desiring God) by Marshall Segal

Binding the Strong Man by Ched Myers

 

Scripture:

1 Peter 2:11

Ephesians 6:12

Colossians 2:15

Mark 16:17

Ephesians 2:14-15

 

Songs for Today’s Worship Gathering:

But for You Who Fear My Name by Smith

I Saw the Light by Williams

What a Friend We Have in Jesus by Scriven/Converse

Rejoice, the Lord is King by Wesley/Dorwall

King of My Heart by McMillan/McMillan

Sweet Deliverance by Gadsby/Gordon

Doxology

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