Sermon Tone Analysis

Remembrance Produces Gratitude, Gratitude Produces Action

This weekend Americans will commemorate Memorial Day, a holiday of collective national remembrance.

Many will gather in cemeteries and civic parks for grateful and sometimes tearful ceremonies.

This will be a good and appropriate kind of remembering.

It is important that we remember the immense price hundreds of thousands of soldiers have paid with the currency of their life-blood so that we can enjoy our political and religious freedoms.

If you have served in the Armed Forces in defense of this country and our freedom to gather here today, please stand up.

It is important to remember sacrifice.

But this kind of remembering will not demand much of us beyond renewing our grateful resolve to not take for granted our freedoms.

There will be a brief recollection, hopefully a prayer, and then, if we are not careful, we’ll move on with our leisurely plans.

Remembrance Needs To Produce Something In Us

The American Soldier does not just sacrifice for our lives today.

He sacrifices for our lives tomorrow.

He doesn’t just secure today’s life with his sacrifice.

He secures all of today’s dreams and tomorrow’s aspirations.

Our Savior Jesus Christ secured so much more than that.

He secured our eternity.

Far beyond just today and tomorrow.

Both sacrifices need to produce something in us.

We owe it to our soldiers to

Teach our kids what it means to be free and how much it cost.

If we don’t do that, we cheapen their sacrifice.

When it comes to Christ and His sacrifice, we must not do nothing.

Christ so loved us.

Under the general theme of allowing brotherly love to reign within the church, the author addressed five specific activities in which Christians should engage: (1) show hospitality toward strangers, (2) visit those in prison, (3) minister to the mistreated, (4) honor marriage, and (5) free themselves from the love of money.

A Demanding Remembering

But a Memorial Day kind of remembering will not suffice for our suffering Christian brothers and sisters.

The remembering that God requires of us demands sustained action:

Show Hospitality To Strangers

Remember those who are in prison, as though in prison with them, and those who are mistreated, since you also are in the body.

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Remember Those In Prison

When the author of Hebrews tells us to “remember,” he isn’t talking about a fond, grateful private reflection.

Honor Marriage

What he means is, “go help them,” and the original Greek conveys the sense, “keep helping them.”

When we remember our war dead, we don’t remember them as though we were dead with them.

But we are to remember the imprisoned Christians “as though in prison with them.”

That is a demanding remembering.

We are to remember mistreated Christians as though we were sharing mistreatment.

We are to react to our brothers’ and sisters’ affliction just like our entire body reacts to the pain when one member of our body is afflicted.

That is a demanding remembering.

Where the Body Is Hurting

Is it here?

Is it locally?

Or is it in China, Iran, India, and many other places in the world where it is not so safe to be a christian.

We Must Act

“Remembering” in is an imperative.

Involvement at some level is not optional.

Remembering our suffering brothers and sisters in Christ must move us to action.

It seems clear from

, that the author was speaking into a local context of suffering when he wrote verse .

The readers likely knew the sufferers personally.

Thus, from this text and others, we know that Christians bear a unique responsibility to care for suffering Christians in their local church and region.

But the New Testament ethic for actively remembering (i.e.

helping) suffering fellow Christians reaches far beyond our local communities.

Perhaps the clearest example is when Paul collected funds from churches throughout the Roman Empire for the relief of the suffering saints in Palestine (; ).

The famine in Judea was a concern for all Christians everywhere who knew about it.

The suffering of millions of Christians in the world is a concern for Christians everywhere.

And due to the ubiquitous media reports, most of us know about it.

We Must Not Do Nothing

Let Us Remember In A Way That Produces Action.

Let’s do the same as we celebrate communion this morning.

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians

1 Corinthians 11:23

Let Our Remembrance Of Christ Provoke Action In Our Lives