Title: Imagine
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17
Every now and then I deliberately choose NOT to preach on the well-known, popular piece of scripture (John 3:16 in today's case), and I am led by the spirit, called, directed, forced, compelled, and otherwise pushed by God to write and preach about something else. And today, we have a smorgasbord of possibilities. An old homiletics professor wisely advised her students to "preach only one sermon at a time." And that is just what we'll try to do, leaving the rest of all those goodies for some other day.
So today we are going to talk about a very common idea that is very hard to put into words, and a very common word that is hard to define - Glory. We hear that word a lot in news reporting from the Ukranian conflict. It is the rallying motto for the people of that country, "slavaUkraini" (Glory to Ukraine). First, some late-breaking news from first century Rome.
The late, Julius Ceasar was declared god by the Roman senate. He was deified. His adopted son, Octavian became the emperor, Augustus meaning, "the Glorious One." Octavian later became known as the son of god. Some writers at the time referred to him as "the savior of the world, king of kings and lord of lords." Gosh that sounds so familiar. Someone ought to write a song about it.
As you will learn in confirmation class, religious competition and branding is a real thing. It has been going on for thousands of years. Madison Avenue marketing wizards today are only doing with products what religious zealots did back then. "My religion is better than yours." Paul and later Christians simply took the exciting language about Caesar and applied it to Jesus of Nazareth. It was first century, religious branding. From that point on, the original meaning of glory was obscured by the super-sized claims of imperial Roman theology applied to the new guy on the scene, Jesus.
To ferret out the meanings of glor ...
Author: Bob Wickizer
Text: Isaiah 6:1-8; Psalm 29; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17
Every now and then I deliberately choose NOT to preach on the well-known, popular piece of scripture (John 3:16 in today's case), and I am led by the spirit, called, directed, forced, compelled, and otherwise pushed by God to write and preach about something else. And today, we have a smorgasbord of possibilities. An old homiletics professor wisely advised her students to "preach only one sermon at a time." And that is just what we'll try to do, leaving the rest of all those goodies for some other day.
So today we are going to talk about a very common idea that is very hard to put into words, and a very common word that is hard to define - Glory. We hear that word a lot in news reporting from the Ukranian conflict. It is the rallying motto for the people of that country, "slavaUkraini" (Glory to Ukraine). First, some late-breaking news from first century Rome.
The late, Julius Ceasar was declared god by the Roman senate. He was deified. His adopted son, Octavian became the emperor, Augustus meaning, "the Glorious One." Octavian later became known as the son of god. Some writers at the time referred to him as "the savior of the world, king of kings and lord of lords." Gosh that sounds so familiar. Someone ought to write a song about it.
As you will learn in confirmation class, religious competition and branding is a real thing. It has been going on for thousands of years. Madison Avenue marketing wizards today are only doing with products what religious zealots did back then. "My religion is better than yours." Paul and later Christians simply took the exciting language about Caesar and applied it to Jesus of Nazareth. It was first century, religious branding. From that point on, the original meaning of glory was obscured by the super-sized claims of imperial Roman theology applied to the new guy on the scene, Jesus.
To ferret out the meanings of glor ...
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