Sermon Tone Analysis

Grab your bibles…go to cachurch.info..

We have stepped into a new series last week called Dismantling the Myths of the Modern Mind.

And what I would like to do over these next few weeks is talk about some of the stuff that is in the water.

PIC#1

In Batman Beginnings, the evil plot of Ra’s Al Ghul was to poison the main water main sending water into gotham, and causing holucinations on a mass scale.

So that their realities were horribly altered to the detriment of Gotham.

We live in an age where there are so many things in the water we drink; the air we breathe, that we often are not even aware of it, and rarely take the time to examine it.

Our continued influx of media and sound, and technology does a slow work on our whole person.

Add to these little stories, the reality of political, and international striff, loss of friends to tragedy, where do we find a better and in fact the best story?

A young man returning to his childhood home, to declare his return and that he is about to make a move, fortold centuries ago,

his return and

PRAYER

A young man returning to his childhood home, to declare his return and that he is about to make a move, fortold centuries ago,

What you never get from Jesus is the idea that he is a new answer to an old problem.

That he is writing a new story.

What you never get from Jesus is the idea that he is a new answer to an old problem.

That he is writing a new story.

There’s something about stories, especially really good ones.

All kids love stories.

But it’s not just kids—adults love stories, too!  Stories entertain, teach, inspire and provoke.

Stories are containers for truth.[1]

Neurology and the social sciences are now confirming what our best philosophers, storytellers and artists have always known to be true—as human beings, our brains are hardwired for story.

Stories are the way we make sense of the world and understand our place in it.

Stories define us and shape the way we live.

We are story-formed creatures!

There’s something about stories, especially really good ones.

All kids love stories.

But it’s not just kids—adults love stories, too!  Stories entertain, teach, inspire and provoke.

Stories are containers for truth.

our brains are hardwired for story.

Stories are the way we make sense of the world and understand our place in it.

Stories define us and shape the way we live.

We are story-formed creatures!

And I believe that ne of the main reasons for this is that we are always on the lookout for a story we can call ours.

One that we identify with and can emulate.

I. WE ARE ALL IN SEARCH OF A GREAT STORY

We can only answer the question, “Who am I and what am I to do?”, if we first answer the prior question, “Of what story or stories am I a part of?”

And the question is....where are we getting our stories.

The sermon, if I’m nice, takes up 35 minutes of your week.

Then there is your personal study, maybe community groups.

that is maybe 3 hours a week? is that being gernerous?

Where is the rest of our story being drawn from?

Theologian Kevin Vanhoozer.

“Each week the local Cineplex offers numerous movies for us to live by.

The stories now in popular release in our electronic society may not take the form of three-point sermons, but they still preach, on screens large and small. . . .

Their goal is to capture our imaginations and thereby to form us.”

“Each week the local Cineplex offers numerous movies for us to live by.

The stories now in popular release in our electronic society may not take the form of three-point sermons, but they still preach, on screens large and small. . . .

Their goal is to capture our imaginations and thereby to form us.”

How do these stories affect us?

What vision of life do we adopt because of the movies we watch and the books we read?

How can we be faithful to Christ in an age of endless entertainment?

Do we just create categories of good and bad?

Do we just create categories of good and bad?

Netflix bad, Pureflix good?

Some content is obvious not good for us....

morally objectionable?

song have explicit lyrics?

book describe an inappropriate scene?

But are stories just about what is said and done in them or is there more to it?

Forming our thoughts, shaping norms, changing our desires.

Stories are powerful, forming our thoughts, shaping norm, changing our desires.

Stories have a unique way of getting to the heart, where a simple statement of belief or tenets of the faith cannot.

We are drawn into story.

C.S. Lewis calls this “stealing past watchful dragons”

There was something in story that penetrated past our defences.

Speaking of his own animocist towards faith he said....

“Why did one find it so hard to feel as one was told one ought to feel about God or about the sufferings of Christ?

I thought the chief reason was that one was told one ought to.

An obligation to feel can freeze feelings. . . .

But supposing that by casting all these things into an imaginary world, stripping them of their stained-glass and Sunday school associations, one could make them for the first time appear in their real potency.

Could one not thus steal past those watchful dragons?”

And it was out of this desire that he wrote the Narnia series, which gave the concept of the gospel through childrens stories.

Stories have a unique way of getting to our hearts

And for those who saw Christianity as boring or small mionded, Lewis was hoping to expland our hearts to grasp how exciting and supernatural the qworld of Christianity is!

Julians Barnes in his book, Nothing to Be Frightened Of speaking of death and the unknown....

speaks of how although he rejects it, he wishes the story of the Gospel was true!!

He goes on in his book to talk bout its staying power...

“The Christian religion didn’t last so long merely because everyone else believed it, because it was imposed by ruler and priesthood, because it was a means of social control, because it was the only story in town, […] It lasted also because it was a beautiful lie, because the characters, the plot . . . the overarching struggle between Good and Evil, made up a great novel.

The story of Jesus—high-minded mission, facing-down of the oppressor, persecution, betrayal, execution, resurrection—is the perfect example of that formula Hollywood famously and furiously seeks: a tragedy with a happy ending.”

It is not a surprize in a book where he is in love with the beautiful story of Christianity but cannot come to beliueve it he begins the entire book by saying...

“I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”

If it is true that we have been made in the image of God, that as St. Augustine said....

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

The Hidleberg Catechism

Wax, Trevin K. .

This Is Our Time .

B&H Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

If all that is true then all of creation will be stuck in a lesser story, saying ..... “I don’t believe in God, but I miss Him”

And And what we will find in the music, the Netflix series, and the movies we watch and therefore the lives we pursue are echoes and yearnings for this story to be true.

Treven Wax says it this way....

But we mustn’t be blind to the longings we find in entertainment.

We have allies, not just enemies, in the beloved stories of our world.

The aspects that make Christianity such a great story, the elements that tap into the Christian conviction that good will ultimately defeat evil—they show up all the time in popular books, movies, and music.

Why?

Because they borrow from the greatest Story ever, which happens to be true.

But without Christ they are at best only half truths and disipating triumphs.

They take place in a galaxy far far away, a long time ago.

Frodo and Samwise, Aragorn- it is make-believe---so why do we get caught up in it!!