I delivered my second sermon today, with the first occuring a little over a year ago. I may not be up in our elder rotation for another year, but I hope to write another message in the next few months. The process is not something that bothers me so much from a calling standpoint, but vocationally speaking it is difficult when you are not working in ministry full time.

Considering that pastors who do this week in and week out probably develop a system that enables them to be more efficient (i.e., certain commentaries they always use, how they outline, when they study, when they start writing, how much they practice delivery, etc.); I wonder what the average time spent each week is on their sermons?

Below is the text. Due to my last minute preparation, what you read is not exactly what was preached. I do not have the audio (my apologies again).

(more…)

This has been a light blogging week. In part it is due to holiday travel; in part it is because I am preaching on New Year’s Eve. On months when there is a fifth Sunday one of our church’s ruling elders takes to the pulpit. The text I am focusing on is 1 Corinthians 2:1-5. I feel completely inadequate and ill prepared, so this week’s Friday Vespers is a prayer for illumination.

I

LLUMINE our hearts, O Master who lovest mankind, with the pure light of thy divine knowledge, and open the eyes of our mind to the understanding of thy Gospel teachings; implant in us also the fear of thy blessed commandments, that trampling down all carnal desires, we may enter upon a spiritual manner of living both thinking and doing such things as are well pleasing unto thee: for thou art the illumination of our souls and bodies, O Christ our God, and unto thee we ascribe glory, together with thy Father who is from everlasting, and thine all-holy, good, and life-giving Spirit: now and ever, and unto ages of ages — Amen.

— John Chrysostom (349-407), Divine Liturgy of John Chrysostom (#)

One of my Christmas gifts from my wife was a book titled, Bono: In Conversation with Michka Assayas, which chronicles two years of interviews between the lead singer of U2 and the music journalist. Whenever Bono and Christianity are brought up in the same sentence you can expect the conversation to range from praise to skepticism. As a longtime fan of U2′s music I have read enough lyrics and been exposed to enough news to know that Bono knows what is going on. What I have wondered about is where he falls in the theological spectrum. The reason is that I am interested in how what Bono does in his life relates to what he believes to be true about reality.

This evening I had a chance to scan the book and turned immediately to the chapter called “Add Eternity to That.” This Q&A caught my attention.

What about the God of the Old Testament? He wasn’t so “peace and love?”

There’s nothing hippie about my picture of Christ. The Gospels paint a picture of a very demanding, sometimes divisive love, but love it is. I accept the Old Testament as more of an action movie: blood, car chases, evacuations, a lot of special effects, seas dividing, mass murder, adultery. The children of God are running amok, wayward. Maybe that’s why they’re so relatable. But the way we would see it, those of us who are trying to figure out our Christian conundrum, is that the God of the Old Testament is like the journey from stern father to friend. When you’re a child, you need clear directions and some strict rules. But with Christ, we have access in a one-to-one relationship, for, as in the Old Testament, it was more one of worship and awe, a vertical relationship. The New Testament, on the other hand, we look across at a Jesus who looks familiar, horizontal. The combination is what makes the Cross. (p. 200)

One thing that seems clearer is that Bono is more than a rocker with a guilty conscience. As the conversation progresses the topics go from the Atonement (what did Jesus do?), to works vs. grace (how do we get to Heaven?), to the Incarnation (was Jesus really God?), to human depravity (are we all cretins?) and finally to the process of sanctification (what does true faith look like?). I have to be careful to remind myself that it is only an interview, so as to not read into what is being said (or not said). Needless to say, the book ought to raise a few eyebrows and questions (hence, today’s meditation topic).

One of the first thoughts I had after reading the quote was the book of Isaiah, chapter 6, where the prophet has a vision of being before the throne—a situation in which he is utterly undone by God’s glory. Isaiah is then cleansed by fire and declared guiltless. Here you see a vertical relationship (God to man). Then God commissions Isaiah to go and tell the people of his justice and mercy. There you see a horizontal relationship (man to man). My next thought went to the New Testament and how God humbled himself, became a man and dwelt among us. Jesus was still fully God, the “Word incarnate,” but was also fully man, the same one who ate bread and drank wine with his disciples. In other words, to refine (or correct) what Bono was saying, God has always been transcendent, holy and demanding of justice; yet he is always personal, loving and desires to be in a relationship with his us (most fully exemplified in Jesus Christ). The perfect God of the universe is also our “Abba! Father!”, or more literally our “daddy.” Is that not amazing?

I think that recognizing the vertical, or “liturgy of the Word” as it is often called, and how it relates ot the horizontal, or “liturgy of the upper room,” are important for understanding that the God of the Old Testament is the same as the God of the New Testament. What sorts of thoughts and responses do you have when people say that there is a contradiction in terms between the two?

Luke 2, 19:10; John 3:16, 17; 2 Corinthians 8:9.

Luke 2:8-14; Hebrews 1:1-14; Psalm 91:11.