Preaching the Gospel

Collected Sermons on Discipleship, Mission, Peace, Justice, and the Sacraments

Ronald J. Sider

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781725286023
• Topic: Teología y religión
• Subtopic: Ministerio cristiano

This collection of Ron Sider's sermons and speeches delivered in his lifetime of global ministry capture the essence of his theology, ethics, and mission. It moves from stirring personal occasions (his sermon at his dad's funeral) to challenging calls for racial and economic justice (his influential, prophetic speech in apartheid South Africa in 1979). These sermons reflect his passion for both evangelism and social action, both personal holiness and just politics, both faithful congregations and just, peaceful societies. These short, gripping sermons convey the essence of what he has written elsewhere in dozens of books. This collection offers a highly readable, powerful summary of Sider's central ideas.

PART ONE: Following Jesus in Faithful Discipleship

Chapter 1: “I Will Meet You on the Other Side, Dad”

[The sermon I preached at the funeral of my Dad (Rev. James P. Sider) on January 4, 2004, at Rosebank Brethren in Christ Church in Rosebank, Ontario, Canada.]

This Wednesday, immediately after listening to the voice messages that Dad had died, I dropped to my knees to thank God for this wonderful man. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude that this loving father, caring husband, successful farmer, and pastor had been my father. Muriel, Miriam, Lucille, Tennyson, and I all feel, as Tennyson said in the tribute, that we have been incredibly blessed, way beyond measure, to have this very good man and his darling wife our mother as our parents. They loved each other dearly. They loved each of us deeply, warmly, and abundantly. And above all they loved their Lord—and thus gave us the most precious gift parents can bestow—a happy, loving, encouraging home centered on Christ.

The tribute that Tennyson gave offered many examples of how special Dad was. Let me share just two more stories.

When Dad was about forty-nine, he had an operation to remove one of his kidneys. After the operation, the surgeon came to talk to Dad. He said: “There is good news and bad news. The good news is you do not have cancer. The bad news is that I accidentally damaged another organ close to your kidney. It won’t be life threatening, but may cause some problems.”

Twenty-five or so years later, Dad told this story to his current doctor. That doctor’s immediate response was: “Did you sue him?” “Did I sue him?” Dad asked, puzzled. “Of course not. He was doing his best and then he came and told me what happened. Of course I didn’t sue him.”

The second story comes from the last few years when Dad reluctantly had to accept more and more help for daily living. But he showed amazing kindness and appreciation for his nurses and aides, regularly thanking them for all their loving care. One day somebody—I don’t remember that Dad ever told me who it was—said something pretty nasty to Dad.

Almost instantly, before Dad responded to the person, a Scripture and a memory from childhood popped into Dad’s head. He remembered a time when he was a boy attending a church meeting. Two men got into a vigorous quarrel and stepped outside to settle the matter. Dad sneaked out to watch the fight. But a third man came out and quoted Psalm 119:165: “Great peace have they which love the law; and nothing shall offend them.” And the quarrel ended.

Dad told us that he had not thought of that incident or Scripture for decades. But God reminded him of it just when he needed help to respond kindly to a nasty, hurtful comment. I won’t, but I could go on telling story after story to demonstrate what a special, wonderful man Dad was.

One of the great honors and privileges of my life was to have Dad ask me a year or so ago to preach his funeral sermon.

Just five days before Dad died, as I was driving from Windsor to Cambridge to see my Dad for the last time, another set of thoughts rippled through my mind. Yes, Dad was a wonderful man and he blessed thousands of people through his ministry. But he was just one of over six billion people living on a tiny fragile planet in a small solar system in one little corner of the Milky Way, which is just one vast galaxy with billions of stars in an almost incomprehensibly huge universe with 120 billion galaxies, each of which has billions of stars like our sun. Dad’s ninety years of life was just a momentary flicker of time in this vast system that has been changing and growing for billions of years. And in that flicker of time—those ninety years of good life that appeared for an instant and then disappeared again—in that flicker of time, Dad did not significantly change politics, science, or even the church. Dad appeared for an instant or two and then was gone again.

So what meaning does his life have now? I know what Dad’s answer would be. And I agree completely with him.

Dad knew that this vast, complex universe that scientists are increasingly beginning to understand—this whole vast universe came from the loving hand of an all-wise God. This personal God gently shaped our gorgeous, almost infinitely intricate world, and then made human beings in God’s very own image and called them to be God’s stewards, to trace God’s stupendous design in every corner of the world. God even invited them to join the Almighty Creator as little creators developing fruitful farms, nurturing loving families, and shaping complex civilizations.

Tragically, God’s human stewards messed everything up. Instead of worshipping and obeying God and submitting to the moral order God built into the world, we proudly decided to pretend that we are God. We chose to make our own rules. We worshipped the creation rather than the Creator. The result is pain, brokenness, evil, tragedy everywhere—broken families, unfaithfulness, heartbreak, crime, war, savagery, and destruction wherever we look.

But Dad knew that God refused to abandon the world God loved, even when we stubbornly rejected God and ravaged our neighbors. God began to speak in a special way to an Iraqi named Abram and his children. God sent mighty leaders and faithful prophets to show Abraham’s children how to live in peace, justice, and wholeness. But after brief periods of obedience and prosperity, they always rejected God’s way and created more brokenness and agony.

Finally, Dad knew, the Creator of 120 billion spinning galaxies decided to come himself to this little planet to show us the way and offer a path out of our tragedy and brokenness. The Creator of the universe became a vulnerable embryo, a little speck of matter in the womb of a teenage Jewish virgin. In obedient faith, this trembling maiden responded to God’s utterly astounding act, welcoming the God of the universe who became human flesh and blood in her nine months of pregnancy. And when she and her husband Joseph could find no place in the inn, she gave birth to the Creator of the universe in a barn and called him Jesus, Savior, as the angel had instructed.

For most of his life, Jesus was an obedient son, learning from Joseph how to be a gifted carpenter. Visibly, this young man cutting and sanding tables and chairs was just another Galilean craftsman. But in truth he was also the Creator of the galaxies, teaching us by his physical labor the goodness and beauty of the material world, of everyday work and ordinary family life.

At about thirty, this young carpenter became a strange kind of wandering preacher and successful teacher. He healed the sick, cared especially about the poor, and welcomed dispossessed, marginalized folk like women and lepers. And he began to challenge the status quo in all kinds of ways—its attitude toward the poor, the sick, women, war and violence.

He also claimed to be the long expected Jewish Messiah. For many centuries, Jewish prophets had promised that sometime in the future, a descendant of King David would come to forgive sin in a new way, to write God’s law on people’s hearts, and to bring peace and justice to the whole world. Secretly at first, and then more and more openly, Jesus claimed to be that long-expected Messiah. Slowly, too, he made even more stunning claims—to have divine authority to forgive sins, to be Lord of the Sabbath, even to be the very Son of God. So the Jewish and Roman authorities collaborated to kill him as a dangerous social radical and a heretical blasphemer. They crucified him assuming that would squelch his threatening ideas forever.

But three days later, Jesus burst from the tomb and appeared to his astonished disciples, demonstrating by his bodily resurrection that death had been conquered for all who would believe. And he taught them that his death on the cross offered total, unconditional divine forgiveness for all who would humbly recognize their sin and ask God to wipe it away. And the risen Lord promised to return some day to complete his victory over every evil, brokenness, sin, and injustice, and complete the restoration of the entire creation to wholeness.

This true, utterly astounding, story—that the Creator of the universe actually lived on this earth once, died for our sins once for all and rose bodily from the dead to offer life forever with God to all who believe, and promised to return to earth some day to fully renew the whole creation—this story spread like wildfire. Within three short centuries, it conquered the most powerful pagan empire of human history. Century after century, more and more broken people, no matter how messed up their lives, found liberating forgiveness and new, transformed life in this wondrous story so that by the time Dad ended his ministry as a preacher of this glorious story, over two billion people in every country on earth were followers of this amazing carpenter.

Dad knew that his life had meaning—wonderful, powerful meaning—because he was a part, even though just a small part, of this glorious story. Dad knew that in every act of kindness to friend and neighbor, he was responding obediently to the way the Creator made the world and was joining the Creator’s grand design for the universe. In all Dad’s activity as a faithful farmer—growing good crops of corn, wheat, oats, and red clover, developing a great herd of registered Holstein cows—Dad was fulfilling the Creator’s mandate to care for the creation and create new things. In all Dad’s activity as a loving husband—delighting in and ever learning more about serving his darling wife of fifty-nine years—Dad gave his children and the world an attractive picture of the wondrous goodness and joy of faithful marriage. In all Dad’s activity as a wonderful father—loving each child uniquely, setting clear, firm family rules, slowly allowing each maturing child to make their own decisions even when he and Mom disagreed, continuing to love and support us even when we stumbled and fell—Dad and Mom offered a tremendous model of excellent parenting. In all Dad’s activity as a church leader—teaching biblical truth, preaching revival services, inviting people to personal faith in the Savior, counseling and encouraging struggling church members—Dad was playing his small part in nurturing that ever-growing circle of two billion-plus disciples of Christ his Lord.

In every sector of Dad’s life—his farming, his family, his ministry—Dad’s seemingly insignificant daily activities were a part of God’s glorious divine plan of creating a stupendously beautiful, comp...