Sermon Competition Round 2

Originally posted by Rajk999
So Mr 3rd Place, whats the criteria for a parable ?

Get bent you smug git. May Jesus grant you a flesh eating virus of the anus.

The Crackhead and the Pimp

A children's sermon by Dr. S, submitted for consideration in the second round of the Second Annual BWA-Ivory Tower Sermon Competition, based on the story of Lazarus and the rich man in the purple suit, told in Luke 16:19-31


Good morning, children. Today I would like to tell you the story of the Crackhead and the Pimp.

Who can tell me what a pimp is?...
That's right, a guy in a purple suit with lots of cash spilling out of all the pockets.

And do you know what a crackhead is?...
Yes, a crackhead looks like a zombie that just crawled out of a grave and goes around the city begging people for money.

Once upon a time there was a pimp named Cribs who had more money than he knew what to do with. Everyday for lunch he would sit outside on his porch eating Popeye's chicken and biscuits.

Cribs had a crackhead in his neighborhood named Darvis.

On the first day, Darvis walked by while Cribs was eating lunch and asked him, "Yo Cribs, let me get something to eat, maybe just a drumstick or something."

Cribs raised his pimpstick and shooed Darvis away, without giving him anything to eat.

On the second day, Darvis walked by while Cribs was eating lunch and asked him, "Yo Cribs, let me get something to eat, maybe just like a wing or something."

And again, Cribs raised his pimpstick and shooed Darvis away, without giving him anything to eat.

On the third day, Darvis walked by while Cribs was eating lunch and asked him, "Yo Cribs, let me get something to eat, maybe just like half a biscuit or something."

Cribs raised his pimpstick to shoo Darvis away, but he would not go.
"Oh, come on man, just give me a packet of honey mustard. Just let me lick your spork!"

This caused Cribs to lose his temper, and with his pimpstick he beat Darvis the crackhead to within an inch of his life. He was so badly bruised and beaten that when later that day the cops came to arrest him for crack possession, he could not even run away. Darvis was taken away to jail.

In jail, Darvis was served his first decent meal in six months -- a whole peanut butter sandwich, a cup of applesauce, and some grape Kool-Aid. He didn't really like applesauce, so he just tossed it in the corner, but gobbled the rest of the meal down.

Meanwhile, a dirty ho had snitched on Cribs and turned him in to the cops for the beating. Cribs was cuffed and taken to jail, placed in a cell across the hall from Darvis.

The next day, lunchtime came. Darvis received his lunch with great glee, but again discarded his applesauce.

Cribs, who had received the same meal, was devastated. This was nothing like his usual king's feast from Popeye's, usually two or three pieces of extra crispy, a couple sides of mashed potatoes and gravy, a biscuit, and a large sweet tea. He finished his sandwich, his applesauce and his Kool-Aid and was still hungry.

He called over to Darvis, "Hey G, you gonna eat yo' applesauce?"
"No"
"Yo, pass it over here. I'm starvin'"

Darvis stood proud, and in a loud and clear voice, as if he were preaching a sermon to the entire jail, spoke thus:

"You have hunger, while I have excess. What is the right thing for me to do?

"I could remind you that once when I hungered and you fared sumptuously every day, I came begging for a few crumbs and you shooed me away. And in so holding a grudge, I could point out these bars keeping me from bringing my applesauce to you, keeping you from coming to get it.

"Or I could forgive you, exhibit and act upon compassion despite your failure to do the same, and do my best to alleviate your hunger, despite these bars between us. Perhaps I could shout to you, 'Enjoy, Brother!' as I throw my applesauce across the vast chasm separating us.

"I ask you...What would Jesus do?"



And so children, I ask the same of you...What would Jesus do?

A small, good-natured child raises his hand and answers, "Throw him the applesauce?"


Well, according to Luke 16...

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
[b]The Crackhead and the Pimp

A children's sermon by Dr. S, submitted for consideration in the second round of the Second Annual BWA-Ivory Tower Sermon Competition, based on the story of Lazarus and the rich man in the purple suit, told in Luke 16:19-31


Good morning, children. Today I would like to tell you the story of the Crack ...[text shortened]... hrow him the applesauce?"[/i]


Well, according to Luke 16...[/b]

Somehow this seems related. Pimps come in all forms.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OSTEENS_WIFE_LAWSUIT?SITE=KYLOU&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Let me start my sermon of the week by prayer. For I have been weak. Yes, I have been weak because I have lost my temper. Let us pray:

“Dear Lord God Our one and only true Saviour,
Forgive me my trespasses as I forgive those who trespass upon You,
Let me show them the light,
Let me have nothing in return,
Thank you Lord God.”

I was walking down the streets of my town the other day, when I came across a poor woman sitting in a corner by a garbage can. She smelled of sweat and urine and her clothes were as shabby as a leper’s in Darjeeling. And I saw two children hitting this poor woman with a stick.
“What are you doing?” I asked of these children.
“She stinks.” Replied the older one.
“Then that is good reason to give her your clothes.” I explained.

As the child laughed, I took his stick from him and gave him a beating.
“But why do you beat him so?” asked the other child, whilst tears flowed down his face.
“Because he’s a sinner.” I replied.
I called judgement which is not mine to give.
I trespassed. I was weak.

And when I was over in Birmingham last month I spoke to the folks there. I asked the congregation:
“Are you socialists?”
And they said: “No.”
And I asked them if they wanted expensive taxes to support those who are too lazy too work.
And they shouted: “No.”
And I asked them: “Are you communists?”
And they screamed: “No!”
And I asked them: “Should we be forced to take care of those that can’t be bothered to take care of themselves?”
And they concluded: “No….”

And I told them: “You are going to Hell! You are going to burn like gnorrohea on the tip of a penis dipped in acid!”
And they squealed: “Why?”
And they whined: “But how?”
And they argued: “What have we done?”

My friends, these are but two examples of how we wish to see things only in a light which benefits us; ourselves.
But we are not here to benefit ourselves. We are here to do what God wants us to do.
Many people come up to me on the streets and ask: “Why don’t you get a job?”
I ignore most of these people.
And many good folks come up to me in a restaurant and ask: “Are you lazy? Why aren’t you working?”
I ignore most of these people too.

But friends, I can and will not ignore you. Let me explain.
God does not want you to work.
God does not want you becoming rich.
And why not?
Because God does not want you being brought into tempatation.

Work leads to money. Money leads to wealth. Wealth leads to greed and greed leads to sin.
And God does not want you sinning. And God does not want you brought into temptation by sin!
It is better to be poor and begging than to be rich and powerful. The rich and the powerful sin through temptation, the poor and down-trodden are rewarded in Heaven.

The meak shall inherit the Earth. If not the physical earth as we stand upon it here, then certainly the Earth as it is Heaven.

Lazerus and the rich man! Who of the two sits beside Abraham? Which of the two is roasting in Hell for his Sins. His Greed. His Wealth. His Money.

I sacrafice any and all wealth to live in the purity of God. And it is my mission to share this with you. It is my quest to save you from work and hell damnation! But I can’t do it alone.
I need your help. Many of you cannot join me as I tour this beautiful Nation, but all of you agree that the Word of God must be spread.

WE MUST SAVE AS MANY SOULS AS POSSIBLE!

For a small donation you can support my work, our work, as we spread the gospel and save the sinners from greed.

Let me quote from Luke 16:19-31

… and the rich man answered, “Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my father's house, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.”
Abraham replied, “They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.”
“No, father Abraham,” he said, “but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.”
He said to him, “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead."

Donate now and save your soul today!

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
[b]The Crackhead and the Pimp

A children's sermon by Dr. S, submitted for consideration in the second round of the Second Annual BWA-Ivory Tower Sermon Competition, based on the story of Lazarus and the rich man in the purple suit, told in Luke 16:19-31


Good morning, children. Today I would like to tell you the story of the Crack ...[text shortened]... hrow him the applesauce?"[/i]


Well, according to Luke 16...[/b]

You really should consider becoming a teacher. You have a natural gift for touching our youth.

3hr. to go!(Central time)

Is it only going to be these three?

Originally posted by DoctorScribbles
Who can tell me what a pimp is?...

'A Pimp Named Slickback'

Originally posted by pritybetta
3hr. to go!(Central time)

Is it only going to be these three?

Many are called. Few are chosen.

My evaluation on the 2nd round of the Sermon Competition.

DoctorScribbles

Score: 90/99

Integrity with the passage 28/33
Creativity 32/33
Convincing manner 30/33

I like the creativity you put into this sermon. And for the most part it is with the passage, however, I don't think I would have used a crackhead. Other than that it is very convincing. I also liked the way you made it into a children's sermon. It shows how we are to come to the Lord, as little children.
_______________________

Hand of Hecate

Score: 95/99

Integrity with the passage 32/33
Creativity 30/33
Convincing manner 33/33

Once again, I have discarded the introduction and the closing because it has nothing to do with the actual sermon. You do stay with the message and didn't make it seem as if you were singling out anyone, which is great for sermons. This sermon is very truthful and that is what makes it so convincing. Other than the introduction and closing, this is a great sermon.
_______________________

shavixmir

Score: 68/99

Integrity with the passage 15/33
Creativity 28/33
Convincing manner 25/33

You have a lot of creativity in you sermon, however, asking for a donation is not part of a sermon. It is a very weak sermon if you were really trying to convince a congregation. Also, the only part that had anything to do with the passage was the last part and where you quoted it. It seemed as if you were only using that passage to get donations. I think I would stray away from the donation part in you next sermon entry.

Sermon Competition Round 2

Hand of Hecate’s best phrase in his sermon was the “poverty of abundance.” He paints a picture of his congregation being complacient about the wealth they have achieved. I think what would have helped this sermon is less globalizing themes and more personal accounts of someone who was in need and overlooked. A good sermon usaullly has a personal take that draws people in. After all, that is what the passage speaks to. Sometimes I felt you got a little sanctimonious, but you got the drift of the passage.

Good job: 82


Shavixmir’s sermon was brilliant at points and full of bullcrap at points. Sometimes I can’t decide if you are a saint or a con artist. Also, never say the word “penis” in a sermon. No one will hear a damn thing after that. If your sermon is that good, you won’t have to ask for money. Get a job. God thinks work is good as it provides dignity. Not all wealth is bad. It’s the poverty of attitude that I think you were after. Physician, heal thyself. As always , entertaining.

Well done: 82


DoctorScribbles’ sermon was a standout in this round. It reminded me of Clarence Jordon’s famous version of the Gospels called The Cotton Patch Gospels. I thought the telling of this parable was creative and risk-taking. Of course, you know you would be fired at the end of the service. You had a nice way of delivering it. I imagined Mr. Rogers in a sweater befriending the children. Some people may get a little upset about the common food references , but I can tell you one of the best children’s sermons I ever heard used cheeseburger and coke as an illustration for the Last Supper. Anyway, I digress. The visual images and story-telling excelled in your sermon. Appropiately you did not ask the children what a ho was.

I assess this to be a 99.

*I would like to thank the moderators for exercising restraint and respecting freedom of religious expression.

Originally posted by kirksey957
...never say the word “penis” in a sermon.

This is very sound advice.

Otherwise, I'll work a personal account into the next one... lets hope its about farm animal fornication.

Originally posted by pritybetta
My evaluation on the 2nd round of the Sermon Competition.

DoctorScribbles

Score: 90/99

Integrity with the passage 28/33
Creativity 32/33
Convincing manner 30/33

I like the creativity you put into this sermon. And for the most part it is with the passage, however, I don't think I would have used a crackhead. Other than that it is very con ...[text shortened]... to get donations. I think I would stray away from the donation part in you next sermon entry.

Thank you. I would ask that my intro's not be totally disregarded as sermons are meant to be delivered to a crowd and a could speaker will know his crowd and set an appropriate mood. The stage itself encompasses everyone in the audience as well as the speaker. The physical demeanor of the speaker is, in itself part of the sermon.

By the way, the very idea of Scribbles having anything to do with children scares the Hell out of me. In fact, there should be a sermon specifically warning all of Christendom about the perils of letting your children, especially female children coming of age, anywhere within a one State radius of Captain Pimphands.

Unlike the others, I couldn’t come up with anything for this round—I was going to try something relating it eastern notions of karma (one of my kurve-balls, as Kirk termed a couple of my sermons on the last contest). But I didn’t like anything I tried to write. Congrats to the others for their good work.

__________________________________

Prittybetta asked about the sources for my “garments of light” translation in the last sermon (I really should have been less lazy and found the source when I wrote it). And lo!, as I was looking for something else, my eyes did spy a book lying on the floor, and it triggered my memory. The book is The First Christian Theologians: An Introduction to Theology in the Early Church, edited by G.R. Evans. There is a chapter by a David G. K. Taylor, University Lecturer in Aramaic and Syriac at the Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, called “The Syriac Tradition”.

I really know little of the Syriac tradition, except that Syriac is a Semitic language like Aramaic and Arabic. There apparently is a belief among some (very much a minority) that the Syriac NT preserves an Aramaic text that was older than the earliest Greek texts we have. In any event, I found this quote that I had highlighted in the chapter—

“This whole scheme of salvation [based on the metaphor of spiritual garments or robes], which is highly influential [i.e., in the Syriac Christian tradition], depends heavily upon a reading of genesis 3:21, in which the Lord God is understood to have made for Adam and Eve not garments skin, but garments of light (in Hebrew ’or rather than ‘or, a reading also attested in some Jewish sources.” [p. 205]

The ’ and the ‘ represent the gutturals ayin and aleph that I mentioned in my sermon. I have not yet searched out the mentioned “Jewish sources”.

It is interesting in this context, that Syriac theology was at least at one time done in a highly poetic form, and this translation is likely based on a poetic rendering of the verse in question. A couple more quotes on this approach to theology, from the chapter cited—

“Throughout the history of Western Christianity almost all the major theological writers have sought to articulate their arguments and beliefs through the medium of prose. For many early Syrian theologians, however, as most clearly articulated by Ephrem [circa 307-373], a prose-based, philosophical approach to theology, which sought to pin down religious truth, by nature dynamic and multilayered, and to circumscribe divinity by the philosophical formulae and definitions so beloved of the Greek-speaking theologians, not only represented arrogance beyond belief, but was ultimately futile. ...

“For Ephrem...this divine self-revelation takes the form of the symbols and types that are omnipresent in Scripture and in the natural world, and the most fruitful medium for engaging in this analogical theology is poetry, because only poetry, with its multivalent images and its ability to communicate differently to each reader on each reading, was capable of hinting at the divine realities without imposing the rigidity and contrived artificiality of so much of philosophical theology... Not surprising then, for some six centuries many of the Syrian theologians chose to write theology by means of poetry.” [pp. 206-7; my bold]

I might substitute the word “propositional” for “philosophical” in the above quotes.

Now, even the early Greek-speaking theologians relied heavily on allegory, symbol, analogy, etc., in their scriptural exegesis and resulting theology. But I find this notion of theology-as-poetry, aimed at preserving the “dynamic and multilayered” nature of “religious truth”, to be quite fascinating when contrasted with more Western notions of religious truth being propositional in nature. It certainly seems to demand a different understanding of what “truth” might mean (as well as “religion”?). What does it mean to suggest that the metaphorical speech of a poem is “true”? Might it mean something like the “trueness” of the grain of wood, wherein a trained forester can tell from the grain-patterns what kind of tree a piece of wood comes from, even though no two trees have exactly the same grain-pattern? Might this be related to the Greek word logos (conventionally and superficially translated as “word” ), among whose meanings are “pattern” and perhaps “coherence”—that is, a world governed by logos is by nature a coherent cosmos, and not an incoherent chaos? Chinese Bibles translate logos as “Tao”—as in: “In the beginning was the Tao, and the Tao was with God, and the Tao was God”.

I have often said that I think religion (any religious expression) ought to be seen as more like Beethoven than like biology—and perhaps more like lyrical poetry than like propositional logic. What would it mean for someone to say that they “believe” in Beethoven’s Ninth symphony?

There is one stream of Sufism in which music—pure music, sans words—is the ultimate expression of religious “truth”. Maybe the early Syrian theologians were on the same track with their poetic approach.

____________________________________


To crassly wrench Walt Whitman around:

When I heard the learnéd preacher preach
about a Being who created
all the heavens and the earth,
I walked outside and gazed in wonder
—in simple wonder and without thought—
at all the wandering, whirling stars.
In that wonder is all religion
that I care to know or sing;
and all I might risk to say,
underneath my clumsy words,
says really nothing more than that.

Originally posted by vistesd
Unlike the others, I couldn’t come up with anything for this round—I was going to try something relating it eastern notions of karma (one of my kurve-balls, as Kirk termed a couple of my sermons on the last contest). But I didn’t like anything I tried to write. Congrats to the others for their good work.

__________________________________

[b]Prittybe ...[text shortened]...
and all I might risk to say,
underneath my clumsy words,
says really nothing more than that.

Walt Whitman is my favorite poet, and its nice to know I'm not the only one here who appreciates his unique take on the natural world.

HOH: I saw situation, conflict, and resolution modeled, which makes it easier for the listeners, The integrety of the scripture was fully intact; a good piece of contextualizing. The sermon had a nice flow to it, and as others pointed out the term poverty of abundanc e is not often thought about. Good work! 92/99

Shav: I saw where you were going, and I got a chuckle over you beating the kid with a stick (which I assumed was tongue firmly in cheak). The use of dripping burning penis as a metaphor would not play even in the most liberal congregation. You lost points there on taste. I'm not sure an athiest mutual support society would have let you get away with it either. Asking for donations during the sermon detracts from the message, regardless of the message. That is better left for the offeratory prayer. Over all it was good, and you had a take on the passage that was your own flavor, not wrong, just yours. 85/99

Doc: Monster comeback. great use of narrative story telling. You basicly rewrote the parable to fit modern themes. Imagary was good, and tying Christ back into the story by asking what he would have done gave you a unique edge this week 96/99

Visted: I enjoyed your commentary, it was insightful, and whereas you did not make a submission, I award you 25 points for posting a Walt Whitman poem🙂