Sunday

I've developed a certain habit.  During sermon time, I now listen best by scribbling notes in my journal.  Most sermons make use of two facing pages.  The right hand side contains the actual outline, which seems to comprise the majority of sermon notes in our world.  The left hand page, on the other hand, contains my impressions.  Often, it's filled with phonological hypotheses and rudimentary syntax trees.  Just as often, it's filled with scathing remarks that well out of my less sanctified cisterns of vitriol.


Sermons are not terrible.  It just happens that most of them are, shall we say, feeble.  A person of my particular educational background is accustomed to Biblical exposition that is sometimes erudite and sometimes piercing.  Most of it is critical of the status quo, of which nearly every Sunday sermon is a bastion.  Just recently, while listening to a sermon peppered with its fair share of misogyny and condescension (anything for a laugh, eh?), I furiously scritched the following onto the left hand page.

Why the Sermon cannot be the central part of the church's life: 

Sermons are crafted (or at least assembled) to communicate to the lowest common denominator.  I am not part of that group, and neither are hundreds of others in this room.  Paul was irritated that he could not preach spiritual meat to churches that should have been ready for it. We have new people come in here all the time, and I agree that we must communicate with them in a way that is meaningful to them (i.e. spiritual milk).

However, this is not helpful for the hundreds of more mature people in the congregation.  These people must develop meaningful friendships with each other, and much of this meaning must be found in seeking deeper, more meaningful knowledge of God.  It's okay that this kind of learning does not happen from the pulpit's teaching.  However, it's not okay to avoid it because it's hard to come by.

Obviously verboten is the assumption that it's ok to be destructively critical of the immature nature of Sunday's sermon.  Also ganz verboten is the assumption that no one else can be found on one's own level of maturity.  No one? Really? I'm not that special.

It should go without saying that I wrote this as a sort of therapy to myself, to calm myself out of my elitist rage. As such, I fully expect one or two of my readers to react strongly against some of my words.  I'm actually asking for that, because the last thing I need is for my ire to spoil on my private pages, its rotten stench accomplishing nothing but the festering of the harmful elitism in my soul.


Dear reader, I need you.  Our Lord created us for community with one another.  He exists in triune relationship, and we are created to enjoy relationship.  I need you as much as you need me, because only with each other can our education and experience be used as it was intended: for the building up of the body.  That is worship.


I pray that you will join me in rejecting the temptation to believe that Sunday church is a sufficient weekly dose of fellowship.  The sermons aren't that good.  They will never be that good.  But, I can guarantee you that they get a lot better in applied discussion.


It's late for me, and I'm nodding off.  This is the worst time of day I could possibly post this, but here it goes.  If it goes badly, I'll ask for your forgiveness.  Still, I think it's about time for a post written with a bit less perfectionistic inhibition.