Sunday Service - 9/18/11 - Will Willimon

A service of worship in Duke University Chapel. The Reverend Dr. William H. Willimon delivers a sermon entitled "Only a Savior Like Jesus Could Love People Like You."
Opening excerpt from the sermon:(32:58)
"I admit it: many of you know much more about business than I. Unlike many of you, I've never actually held a real job in the real world where you had to show up and get your hands dirty and do heavy lifting. (My only work experience is as a Methodist preacher and a Duke professor, making me a business virgin.) I am also aware that there are students present, young, impressionable, minds. Like many Americans, I take a dim view of business, informed by the movie, Wall Street. 1 and 2. Stealing is wrong! Students write that down, so you'll remember it. Stealing is wrong whether practiced by a shoplifting teenager or a commodity leveraging stock broker. Wrong! And so I begin this sermon by reiterating that I in no way condone or tolerate stealing.Despite what Jesus says. I stand before you forced -- by Dean Wells' gracious invitation -- to preach the most perplexing of Jesus' parables. Jesus told many strange stories; this, the strangest. Even the Jesus Seminar, that doesn't believe much about Jesus, believes Jesus told this shocking story."
Closing excerpt from the sermon:(46:07)
"Why did Jesus tell this story? I don't know. Forty years thinking about this story and I don't know! But then, I've had four decades of working for the "children of light" and something about church can mislead one into thinking that when Jesus says, "I've come to seek and save sinners!" Jesus isn't actually talking about me. But if by chance, there's somebody here, who is a card-carrying member of "the children of this age," somebody better at being shrewd than being good, then maybe you hear this story differently from the rest of us good ones. Maybe you thrill, when the master calls in somebody who's a lot worse than you and says, with a smile, "Well done, shrewd servant. Sometimes I tire of these goody children of light with their moral pretensions. I can use a shrewd wheeler dealer like you." How dare Jesus delight in forcing a preacher like me to make somebody like you
his beloved hero of the story? Jesus."
Sermon begins at 32:58. Luke 16:1-13
Bulletin: bit.ly/o4YoFs