Sermons by High School Students
Damascus United Methodist Church
Jeremiah 23:1-6; Luke 1:68-79; Colossians 1:11-20; Luke 23:33-43
Christ the King - Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost – November 25, 2007
Ben Constantinides
Hi. My name is Ben Constantinides. I have a twin, and people are always getting us mixed up. For instance, just look down in your program. They wrote down Jon’s name! And sometimes we don’t make it easy for you to tell us apart either. We’ll switch up, and confuse people and have our laughs. Once I was at a dinner and I thought I saw Jon and I said hi, and then I looked up and realized I was staring in a mirror at myself! All the parents there thought I was crazy talking to myself. But there is one person who will never mix us up. Not my parents, (apparently not me either!) I know that God knows me inside and out, no matter what. I can trust that when God is with me, I can do the right thing. No one knows me quite like God. Sometimes, I ask myself how God and Jesus are the same person. In a way, Jon and I are exactly the same, but in the same breath we are completely different. Just like God and Jesus. They are the same person, yet God seems like some invisible mighty supernatural being while Jesus is the savior in human flesh. Not that I’m comparing myself to God or anything. I know that God is my savior and leads me through all troubles I may go through. Especially being a high school student. There are so many temptations that we go through every day in high school and some people make it seem as if it is not a bad thing. When I go through this every day, I can always picture Jesus standing right next to me and helping me through it all. I feel more confident that I won’t fall into temptation and always know that God is with me, through the hard and difficult times. In today’s reading of Luke, chapter 1, verses 68 through 79, God is looked upon as the mighty savior for all mankind. One of my favorite lines is “By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into ways of peace.” This shows that God is a merciful Lord, and will forgive all mankind because he will always be there for us. When I went to Greece a couple of years ago, I went into a Greek Orthodox Church and saw how spiritual everyone seemed. They were all praying very deeply and some people were even crying tears of joy (MY DAD!) I saw how everyone looked for forgiveness in the church and how deeply they wished to come closer to God. This made me think really hard how many things in church we take for granted. Some people just come to church and sit through the service without really listening to God’s word at all. There have been times when I noticed that I really didn’t listen much to the service too. We need to strive to come closer to God for he truly is a forgiving savior. I can’t expect God to forgive me over and over again without making an effort to get out of bed and go to church to actually praise God. I am not perfect, and neither is anyone else, but we have a forgiving savior who is always there for us no matter what the situation. And no, God will never mix me up with Jon or anyone else. He knows me better that I know myself. He truly is a mighty savior.
Blake Motter
To me, Christ the King Sunday is all about how God is our king and our example. In my life, God has given me many examples about how this works. I’ve seen this so many times through people from this church, through my friends and most recently through a weekend I experienced called Chrysalis. Chrysalis is a spiritual youth retreat.
God is a Shepherd to us through Jesus. We are his lambs. God looks over us, watches us, helps us and also cleans up the dirty things we do just like a Shepherd, even if we don’t ask him to. The most loving promise God has ever made to us is in John 3:16. God sent down his only son to be crucified for the forgiveness of our sins. This shows Jesus died for us because he loved us. God sent Jesus to be our example.
I have seen Jesus through so many people at this church: through our pastors, our teachers, our helpers, the youth and every single little kid I see running around with the gleam of God in his/her eyes. So this shows that in everyone’s life, friends can be a huge factor in helping you stay on the path of God and God’s examples. Unfortunately, all of us know that we don’t always stay on the path of God, but if we have fellow Christian friends by our side in addition to our faith in God, we will always come back around.
This makes me think of the story of Thomas in the Gospel of John who doubted that Jesus had come back from the dead, and he had to see proof. Thomas, who was one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, couldn’t just believe on faith. But with the support of his friends and the help of Jesus, Thomas was finally able to believe in Jesus’ resurrection. He stopped doubting and showed faith when he said, “My Lord and my God”.
Times of doubt happen for all of us. We don’t always have faith, but hey, we are human and that’s why God is always there to help us with it. No matter how far away we walk from God, if we turn around (repent) God will be right there with arms wide open wanting us back. We just have to take hold of God and have faith.
This reminds me of this last summer when I went to Chrysalis and had a very life-changing experience. The pastor there held up a 100 dollar bill and said, “Whoever wants this, come get it.” No one went to get the 100 dollar bill. So he put it down and said, “When God presents something to you, you have to grab on to God, when you want to, not when God wants you to, because God will always want you back. You just have to let God in.” So, I was hoping he was going to bring that 100 dollar bill out again, and I would definitely grab it now, but he didn’t.
Now I know without a doubt from my own life: through God all things are possible and through God’s examples, we can all experience faith and peace on this earth. Amen.
Jen Rawlings
Good morning. I’m Jennifer, and I would like to share with you the insight that Jeremiah chapter 23, verses 1 through 6 provided me with. You see, in the scriptures the focus is not strictly on the consequence of not following God, but rather the importance of recognizing true priorities and leaders. Jeremiah is speaking of selfish, unholy kings who are leading the people towards a sinful life. The people are being (so-called) herded away from the intent of the Lord. It saddens Jeremiah and God to see such potential diminish. When reading this text, I couldn’t help but see the striking similarities and universal meaning it had to my life, as well I am sure many of yours. As a teenager, I cannot help but hear many lectures on the consequences of peer pressure, and the reality of making very important life decisions. Sometimes these lectures are tedious and exaggerated or overused, but the fact is we are all herded or pressured each day. The herding can be in the form of fear or rebellion, or simply ignoring what is right. As life goes on the pressures of being steered wrongly seem to increase. They may start as a child as you see your friends mocking a schoolmate for stuttering and join in; scared that they may target you next. As years go by, the pressures lay with peers and the cliché “coming of age issues” such as drugs and sex. But, here’s where things get serious as the future of your life depends on the decision whether or not to hear God. We become clouded in our judgment and it is too hard to see God leading you in the right direction, so we follow the easier path of conformity. The road to adulthood is not straight - it has many different roads and multiple influences guiding you different ways. And you may find yourself someday the shepherd for the wrong cause. Even as an adult, have you ever caught yourself tempting others to do something against their morals? Maybe sign a contract that you knew would only not help a client but rather simply gain you a profit. You see, it is human nature to want what is best for yourself and take the easiest method possible. As my history teacher states almost every class, “The first priority of world leaders is to do what is in their best interests, and if this weren’t the case then there would be no history of wars to study.” I believe that is why God chose select few prophets and true shepherds to lead us to him because mere humans are likely to sin at some point. It takes our Lord to love us and lead us by our morals, not a selfish person. In my own life even the closest of friends have become strangers to me as they continue to make decisions to ignore God and follow false shepherds. I am not perfect either, and have prayed many hours about my poor decisions; I have neglected deserving family and friends of my time as I choose to do what I wanted instead. Unfortunately, I have also betrayed the trust of some friends at different points in my life. And in states of confusion have found myself literally alone and in need of a purpose. These things sadden me to a point where I realize that the only thing that will get me through is the Lord. So, I ask that today we pray for mankind to see the way of the Lord and follow him rather than our neighbor. Also, as hard as it is to admit we are all not perfect and we need to appreciate the guidance of our Father. Whether or not we take advantage of it there is always a road leading to God, and his love alone is the true shepherd. For as it states in Jeremiah, “The Lord is our righteousness.”
Stephen Ricketts
I sat down Friday morning to write a sermon when it occurred to me that it was very difficult for me to write a sermon without looking at the text I was supposed to preach on. So I dug up the page Alan sent me about writing a sermon and part of the advice to read all the lessons and pick the one that spoke to me and go from there. After reading the first three, I stopped. There was the crucifixion story. Why was it there, today of all days, Christ the King Sunday, a day for celebrating our Lord? Today should be the day for triumphs, victories, and majesty, not a humble man dieing on a cross like a criminal.
In that second gospel lesson today, Jesus Christ, our king was crucified by the very people he came to save. In this passage, verse 38 stands out to me from the rest of the lesson. His executioners had placed an inscription over him; “this is the King of the Jews.” This is the only time in Luke’s gospel where Jesus is explicitly named the King of the Jews. Not when he is born, not when he is healing people, and not even when he enters Jerusalem to cheers of the crowd. Only here is it said he is the King of the Jews. And that is when he is dieing on the cross, abandoned by his followers and mocked by the crowd. He’s not very kingly right now, is he? And yet, this is that one time that he is called the King. We would expect a king to resist the humility of Jesus’ fate. We would expect a king to fight battles. We would expect a king to at least be arrogant upon the cross. Yet Jesus does none of this. He calmly accepts his fate; he even stopped his followers from fighting back as he was taken from them. Jesus is not acting very kingly at all. He doesn’t seem very kingly right now because maybe his definition of a king does not match our definition of a king.
This would mean that our earthly ideas about kings and God’s ideas about kings are at odds. So either our ideas are wrong or God’s ideas are wrong. In these sorts of situations I would go with God. God expects a King to be a shepherd of God’s flock. In Jeremiah, The old kings are criticized for failing to do as God expected, and be a good shepherd of the flock. But Jesus is different from those kings. So what kind of king is Jesus then? He is loving, humble, merciful and trusts fully in God’s plans. He is a shepherd, the righteous branch of David promised by Jeremiah.
As the people who bow down before Christ our King, we are called to strive to be as near to him as we can. And what does it mean to do that? Be as humble as Jesus in all things, Love everyone the way he did, show the same mercy that Jesus showed to the thief beside him on the cross, trust in God always. Be humble the way Jesus was humble, Love your neighbors, as he taught, be merciful to all you meet, forgive other people, and always listen to God for guidance.
The crucifixion story is here today, on Christ the King Sunday because it is a great accomplishment, a victory and a triumph. It is here today so that we can remember the single greatest thing Jesus ever did for humankind. It is here to remind us of what it means to be the kind of king God calls us to be, the kind of king Jesus was.
Amen.
Abby James
Good morning! I’m Abby James, and I am in eleventh grade at Damascus High! The passage from this morning’s readings that struck me most was from the first chapter of Colossians. As fits today’s theme, it describes God as our King. This passage, written from Paul to the Colossians, mainly praises God and describes the amazing things He did for His people.
Many Colossians during this period were involved in cult types of worship. Paul wrote to them to try to make them understand the wonderful gifts they were given. He told them that they needed to accept and thank God by leaving their false religions. In retrospect, we can see the wrongness in the Colossians’ beliefs and actions. But at the time, most thought that they were worshipping God sufficiently. Similarly, we want to do the right thing in the abstract. But how can we tell if we are worshipping God sufficiently? How can we tell if what we are doing glorifies God?
I sometimes find myself putting school first instead of God first. This year, my classes are really hard. I’m taking lots of honors and my very first AP courses! I feel a lot of pressure with school work. As a result, it seems harder for me to stay connected to God. I have devotionals every night that help me. However, I sometimes have so much homework. When I am done, all I want is to go to sleep. Our recent youth retreat reminded us to put God first. We talked in small groups about what is holding us back, and how we can fix it. The retreat inspired me to try to put God before homework.
Another area of life that can seem to interfere with putting God first is my social life. For most teens, our friends are really important to us. I want to spend time with my friends, and it’s easy to let my social life dominate the rest of my life. But I can’t let that take away from my relationship with God. That’s one of the reasons why this church is so great. There are so many youth activities where I can see my friends in a healthy Christian environment. One of the best ways this year is that I joined a CORE group. These are small groups led by an adult with other students the same age. Mine is a high school girls group led by Wendy Hembrough. We have a great time together, and it helps to know that we are all committed to God and to each other.
Another area of my life can distract teens is worrying about college. I’ve got less than a year before I start frantically applying to schools. I still don’t know where I want to go or what I want to study or even what careers I am interested in! I only know that for years I’ve been told to do lots and lots of activities if I want to get accepted to any colleges. I know I have to be a “joiner” but finding the right activities was a struggle for me. In ninth grade I was very nervous about joining anything without my friends. That narrowed things down considerably. I did join indoor track, but I quickly proved to myself and the coach that I was in NO way a natural. In tenth grade, I joined every activity that sounded vaguely interesting, which left me with a less than satisfying, but extremely busy life.
This year, I think I have a better balance. I do the activities that are really interesting to me AND the ones that I think God would want me to be a part of. My favorite club at Damascus is one that I truly think God would approve of. It’s called Best Buddies. Best Buddies is a club that forges one-to-one friendships between students with and without developmental disabilities. My experience, this year and last year, has really enlightened me to a whole population at my own school that I never took the time to know before. Best Buddies gives everyone a chance at friendship, and I think that that is something that really glorifies God. The Best Buddies motto is “I see you.” This motto encompasses the idea that everyone deserves to be seen and valued as a person, no matter what their disabilities. This also serves to remind me that everyone deserves to be seen as a person made in the image of God, equal to all others. Because God made us all in his image, taking the time to be friends with many different kinds of people is a way of to show our love for Him. This year alone, our Best Buddies club has had parties, painted pumpkins, and even gone bowling. My Best Buddy and I went to the movies and out for pizza just this weekend. We had a great time! She even told me, “It’s good not to be stuck at home.”
Participating in activities that I believe God has led me to—such as the retreat, my core group, and Best Buddies—is a way to worship Him. Will they make the struggles with my homework, social life, and college search any easier? Will they make me a better listener to what Paul had to say? I don’t know for sure, but I really am grateful for the chance to keep trying.
Stephanie Goldberg
In the Epistle lesson today, Paul speaks of how God works through Jesus Christ to give us strength and to rescue us from the power of darkness. God gives us strength in many different ways.
I am Stephanie Goldberg and for the past few years, I have been struggling with depression. I have been to the point of complete hopelessness and despair. It took everything I had just to get out of bed in the morning; the emotional pain was too much. At times, I wished it would all just end, the pain, the misery, even my life. During these dark times, I would pray to God for strength, but I needn’t have prayed.
God has been giving me strength for the past 16 years in the form of my very own guardian angel. She’s loving, caring and faithful to God. She’s my best friend, my hero, my support, my inspiration, but most people only know her as my older sister, Sammi. For my entire life, my sister has been there, guiding and protecting me, never leaving my side. From the simplest problems, like a complicated math question to more serious issues, like battling depression, Sammi lends me her strength. Whenever I needed a shoulder to cry on, hers was always at the ready. Whenever I was scared, I would curl up next to her and I would feel safe.
Even when she is miles away a college, she finds a way to give me strength. Every now and then, she will send me a card telling me how proud she is of me, to live my own life, and that I can do anything if I set my mind to it. She tells me to find strength in God and that she is always just a phone call away. I know, too, that I give her strength. When she is upset or feeling down she’ll wall me, and together, we talk through our problems. God gives us strength through each other.
God has also given me strength through the church. When I walk into this building, I am filled with a sense of warmth and love. I see people who have just met talking and caring for one another as if they’ve known each other for years. I have seen people filled with so much despair light up with instantaneous joy in the loving embrace of this congregation. I am one of those people. I find so much strength an love inthis church that many times it is overwhelming.
Even more overpowering, is the strength and joy that I experience when I sing. When I sing I am filled with a sense of purpose. I find a reserve of strength that I didn’t know I had. Singing has brought to life the hope and faith that I had lost before. When I sing, all my troubles and worries evaporate. There is nothing else, just me and the music. This strength keeps me going from day to day.
Many times, I find strength in small every day things; a stranger’s smile, a text from a friend, a phone call from a relative, a hand written note from mom shoved in my lunch. The simplest things bring light to my typically dark day.
I am just one person. So many others are in need of strength. Let God work through you as he did through Jesus and as he continues to do through my sister. At the end of this service, talk to the person next to you. Go home and call a friend or relative. Give a card to someone you love, telling them what they mean to you. Give strength to someone even by doing these small things.
And, as this is Thanksgiving weekend, think about all the people who have given you strength. Whether in your heart or out loud, thank them for all they’ve done. Thank God for working through them to give you strength.
Let us pray:
Dear God,
Thank you for giving me strength. Thank you for giving me my sister and this church and surrounding me with love. Work through me to give strength to others as you have worked through Jesus. Let me give light to someone trapped in the dark. Please continue to give strength to me and this congregation. Give us strength to help others. In the name of Christ the King, we pray. Amen.
Evan Nehring
The scripture of Colossians 1: 11-20 talks about how everyone can find strength in God, even in the toughest of times. It also talks about how God is able to do amazing things and that we should praise him with all our hearts.
My mother shared a story with me about a broken metal bar. You can fit the two ends of a broken bar together, and then weld the bar together by subjecting the joint to intense heat. If you were to use a sledgehammer to hit the welded bar with force, it might break but most likely not at the point where it had been welded together. The welded metal bar becomes strongest at it’s weakest point. This welded metal bar is a great analogy of how God strengthens us at our weakest moments. When we feel the most vulnerable is when God’s presence can make us the strongest. Like the metal bar, God can help us weld the weak spots to strengthen us more than we could ever imagine.
I have had some personal experiences of when at my weakest point, God sent me strength. One such experience was in the seventh grade when my brother Thomas, my dad, and I were in a car accident on our way to school. A car traveling the opposite direction served into our lane of traffic and ran us off the road. Our car hit a guard rail. The airbags deployed, which probably saved our lives, but the force from the bags and the fire retardant in the bags caused severe burns to my face and trauma to my eyes. The doctors were concerned that I had lost my eyesight completely. For the first 48 hours I had to sit at a 45 degree angle (day and night) and have a series of eye drops put in my eyes every hour. My parents took turns getting up every hour to give me my medication. As soon as I fell asleep, I was woken up again. I could tell just by listening to them that they felt sympathy for my struggles over those two days. I don’t remember if I got any sleep at all but I know it was not nearly enough. It goes without saying that it was the hardest time of my life.
During the week after my accident I could not do the simple actions that many of us take for granted. For example, eating became a major struggle from me. In addition to the car accident causing me to lose my appetite, I had to be spoon fed almost all of my food. Overall during the week I lost about 5 to 6 pounds and became very weak due to the inability of eating my food. Another hard fact I had to deal with was sitting in a chair the whole week. Sure it was a great opportunity to catch up on the football games going on but it is kind of hard to get excited about the game if you can’t see it. I was not allowed to get out of my chair unless I had to go to the bathroom, which wasn’t much fun either. I spent the long hours of the day mostly listening to music or audio-books and sometimes listening to the T.V.
The fourth day after my accident was definitely the most mentally depressing part of the week. I couldn’t take care of my personal needs, eat, or sleep. I felt weak and lost my strength. Then God sent me pieces of strength at my weakest moment. At one low point, my brothers came into the family room which was my sick room, and turned on the T.V. It was a show I had seen a hundred times before. As I listened I remembered what the characters looked like and what they were doing. Over the week, people from the neighborhood, school, and church, some that I did not even know, came to give my family and me gifts and let us know that they cared. They brought my favorite chocolate brownies, my friend’s mom’s best vegetable soup, silly puddy, a mad libs book, and more. It was extremely comforting knowing that all those people supported me and were concerned with my well-being. They gave me strength. They made me appreciate every little thing in life a lot more, and caused me to act more compassionately to everyone.
Fortunately my eye sight progressively became better. Frequent visits to the ophthalmologist showed promising signs of my vision coming back. Finally, two weeks later I regained full 20/20 vision and was able to see all my friends at church and school again.
My experience with the car crash is proof that God makes us the strongest in the times when we feel the weakest. It is amazing that God was able to help me though my ordeal and make me a stronger person from it. Like the metal, God was able to make my weakest times, the strongest part of my faith.
Joe Dobrzanski
When I started reading this passage, I noticed something that kind of stood out, for me, at least. It portrays Christ as being an image of the invisible God. There is a rock song from a band named “Thrice” called “Image of the Invisible.” Now, as much as I want to put a correlation between the song and the bible, I think the title just stems from the lyrics. However, the end of the chorus goes “We’ll never, we’ll never walk alone.” I think this symbolizes that no matter how much we think we are alone and no matter how much we think Jesus and God have forgotten about us, God’s presence is still within all of us, re-assuring us that we are not alone. This re-assurance comes from the strength of God. When I am in times of desperation, which actually normally occur on Sunday nights when I remember I have a huge test on Monday, I look to God for some refuge. I do this by saying to myself “It could always be worse.” At this point , this is God talking, because I know I have it good, and a unit test is just a blip on the radar in the scheme of things. And this church has really taught me how to shape and understand this ideology. In the passage, Paul refers to these “Saints of light.” I, as deep as I am, thought of it as just more Bible language. But reviewed it. OK, I actually just glanced at the notes. And I found that I have a few saints of light of my own. They include Walt, Alan, my parents, and my very closest friends. In biblical times, God had to forgive thousands of people for being foolish and worshipping icons or Emperors. I, on the other hand, get to forgive people on a much smaller scale. My friends and I have this uncanny ability to talk behind each other’s backs. We also seem to do it in the most obvious way possible, so we always eventually catch each other. I have really no trouble forgiving these actions because I know that these people are my friends and these things almost mean nothing. Now that I have learned that this whole process is long and annoying and pointless, I try to catch myself before I say something I shouldn’t. Back to the image of the invisible. I do not view God as just a spirit. I cannot really put a face on him, but I think he has long and perfectly straight brown hair and really tan skin. This is just a personal opinion, and I am sorry if I described a beach bum, but that is what I think he looks like. This passage talks a lot about Jesus being our leader and creator. A majority of my friends are good Christians and go to church every week, and share this belief. The same goes for my friends that do not attend church regularly. I do not really have to lead them toward Jesus, but every once in a while I need to get them away from the devil. In the materialistic world that we live in today, our connection to God and Jesus is marred by our simple possessions and other interests in life. Television, videogames, and toys and anything you can think of can block our connection to God. I am just as much a suspect of these things as anybody else. In order to combat these things, all we have to do is either pray to God or open the good book. Of course, these “God-blockers” can also get in the way of simple praying or Bible-reading, so what we must do to connect ourselves is to simply try harder. That is really all we can do. We can always try harder. I personally like to combine something that rules my life with Jesus. Skateboarding, as some of you may have guessed, is something that I have a love for and spend a lot of time on. Sometimes, when I cannot land a trick, I feel like I love skateboarding but skateboarding does not love me. I say to myself, “This is all in God’s plan.” Christ is also, obviously, the head of our church. His teachings and philosophies are what our church bases its actions on. By going to church, we set our weekly Jesus meter back to full and prepare for the week ahead.
