QUOTES

-  Man is greater than the sum of his parts.

--Albert Camus wrote: Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow.  Don't walk behind me; I may not lead; Walk beside me and be my friend.

-  Frederick Buechner, in his treatment of "the Road to Emmaus," asserts that Emmaus was not so much a place as a state of mind." The state of mind is escape-escape from pain, loneliness, longing, sorrow, bewilderment, grief. It is the place where we spend much of our lives, the place in our lives where we are likely to say, "Let the whole thing go to hell, it makes no difference anyway." The road to Emmaus is that place where we go to escape whatever it is we need to escape-whether it is our job, our ornery friends, a demanding, ungrateful family, or that horrible gnawing grief over life and love lost.

-"The world does not lack for wonders,  only for a sense of wonder." Chesterton

SERMON     Try a sermon on Spong's quote:  "We cannot know God, we can only experience God" 

-Too often the church seems more interested in protecting truth than in discovering it.

-Add to truth and you subtract from it. Talmud

-Spirituality is for the hatching of the heart Allen Jones

-Doctrines are nothing but the skin of truth set up and stuffed." H.Ward Beecher

-Pursuit of truth can make you free even if you never catch up with it.

-Tell the truth with the bark off!! Helen Thomas

- Must see through God's eyes, not human eyes. Gibran

-The truth shall make your free." Jesus , ( Jn.8:32)

-You can study things, but unless you enter into communion with them you can only know about them, you don't know them

-We may have truth but how can we be truth? Tillich

-There are two kinds of truth, outer and inner. Outer we master (distance from sun). Inner truth masters us. (God loves me) Sheen

-Believe those who are seeking the truth; doubt those who find it. Andre Gide

-Faith perceives Truth sooner than Experience can. Gibran

-In the religious world view there is a "More" In addition to the visible world there is a "more" a nonmaterial layer or level of reality. William James

-Faith sees best in the dark Søren Kirkegaard

-The continuing presence of the Spirit in Jesus is the the true beginning of the kingdom of God Jurgen

- He will not stay put, stay the same, stay with us "Stay!" is our chorus, but his refrain is, "Follow!"  B.B. Taylor

-God is  not something we can define

-There are no solo sacraments, Sacraments are portable

-It is the "following" process that draws us close to Jesus, much more than the "believing" process. Rev. Dr. Douglass M. Bailey

-Hope allows us to see beyond what is and to imagine what might and what ought to be.  Hope is meant to guide you into the place where you have not yet been and become the person you have not yet become  Peter Gomes

-A man's search shall exceed his grasp or what is heaven for? R. Browning

-Earthly hopes must be killed, only then can one be saved by true hope.  Kierkegaard

- A child educated only in school is uneducated.

-God hath yet more light to brake forth from His Word. Pastor Robinson

-Boat going through lock, boat doesn't  realize anything is different. The whole event is an  uplifting experience.

-Scripture's the message our ancestors rolled up and put in a bottle so that we could experience Jesus

-The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.

- He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. Albert Einstein

-The word, water has never quenched anyone's thirst..nor has the word of God ever given anyone the experience of God

-We experience God in three ways: as something beyond; something among something within  Buechner

-We find God by discovering where God is not.

-Hope is born not in knowing where you are going but in knowing who is leading the way.

-Hope is rooted in reality, not in fantasy. David Augsburger

- Wisdom Is knowing which hopes have outlived their usefulness.

-Ultimate hope: that God is there; that God does care; that God can cope. June Bingham

ILLUSTRATIONS  

1.  As Douglas Sloane in his book on higher education puts it, in American universities, at least since the early 1900s, quantifiable thinking (statistics, matter, money ) has reigned supreme while qualifiable thinking (thoughts of beauty, right and wrong, good and bad) has

had a rough go of it. 

2. Augustine, as a bright young man with a superior classical education confessed to Bishop Ambrose that the Bible made no sense to him. Ambrose told him that was because when he read "bread" he thought bread and when he read "fish" he thought fish.  Ambrose explained the spiritual depth of scripture and levels of meanings beyond the surface appearance of things.  Years later he is inspired to take up the Bible and read and  from some obscure passage from Romans, his life is changed forever.  After that we call him St. Augustine.

3. The Emmaus Road story contrasts with another famous encounter with the risen Savior.  Saul of Tarsus first met Jesus on another road, going in another

 direction. On the Road to Damascus Jesus got Saul's attention by knocking him to the ground. In this story Jesus walked along with the

disciples, warming their hearts with scripture, and would have walked on if they had not asked him to come in. No one here has had a conversion exactly like  Saul/Paul.  But all the same, that confrontation, that shock, is the waysome people need to find God if they ever find him at all

4 John Wesley's warming of the heart account:   ‘In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a society in Aldersgate Street, where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans. About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change which God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed.  ‘I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death.’

5.  Have you ever noticed that some of the saddest words in our language begin with the letter D? For example, disappointment, doubt, disillusionment, defeat, discouragement, despondency, depression, despair and death. Disappointment, doubt, disillusionment, defeat, discouragement, despair and death - all of these words sum up how Cleopas and his companion were feeling as they trudged up the road toward Emmaus. They had left the downhearted and confused band of disciples who were afraid and bewildered over what had happened to Jesus on Good Friday. Vince Gerhardy

6. The word "Emmaus" was not recognized by the spell-check program on my computer. I'm sure that many of you have had similar experiences of suggested words being offered, even when we have spelled something correctly. Sometimes the words offered make us laugh-sometimes they make us pause. The word offered in place of Emmaus was the word "emboss." What might that have to do with our story today-to emboss? According to Webster's dictionary to emboss is to "raise above the surface." And the story of the road to Emmaus is, in many ways, just that. A story that is over and above the surface of daily life.  Do you know what the second suggestion was to replace " Emmaus" after "emboss?" It was "embers." Like the burning of the hearts of the disciples as Jesus opened the scriptures for them on the road  E. Conroy

HUMOR

-Two neighbors argued over if the cat had eaten the other neighbor's butter.  They sought out the village wise man who asked the accuser, "How much butter did the cat eat" "Ten pounds" was the response.  The wise man weighed the cat and it weighed ten pounds!  "Amazing,"  he proclaimed. "Here we have the butter but where is the cat?". 

-A little boy was asked by his mother if He knew the name of God's Son. "Yes," replied, "it is Andy." Curious she asked why. "Because the song says, Andy walks with me. Andy talks with me." 

--"Duh"  the word than means, you finally got it. It's heartening to find that even Jesus' closest friend and associates didn't always get it.  When the disciples on the road to Emmaus finally recognized Jesus, it would have been appropriate for Jesus to say, "Duh." (You finally got it)  How many times in our own lives when we felt His presence or began to understand what God's kingdom really was like might Jesus had said, "Duh."  (You finally got it)  

-God wants spiritual fruit not a religious nut

CHILDREN    

PRAYER PHRASE

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