December 09, 2013
Holiday Message
I’ve noticed that the weakest sermon
presentations occur in and around national holidays. Preachers will even joke
from the pulpit, ‘I pulled my New Year’s Eve sermon out of the file and just dusted
it off for today’s message.’ I understand the dilemma, because I fall into the
same trap when I force a blog post to conform to a holiday. The Christmas
message has already been said, there is nothing new under the sun, and it’s
hard to come up with a new thought provoking idea for the season. Sadly pastors
and speakers think their audience won’t recognize that they have fallen back on
tried and true holiday rhetoric. Maybe the faith community would hear fresher material
if we’d take a page from the retailer’s playbook and have Christmas in July.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Gail;
-----Honestly, dear, I don’t think the holiday needs monkeyed with. I think we need it. Let’s start with that old Solomon thing. If you want to stick to generalities, he was right. In general, in the similarities of all situations, circumstances, and experiences, nothing new is under the sun. Or the moon.
-----But in particular, there is continual newness under the sun. I don’t know if Solomon was playing the devil’s advocate for us, or if he honestly believed such falderal as, “Everything before them is vanity, since one fate comes to all, to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As is the good man, so is the sinner; and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that one fate comes to all; also the hearts of men are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.” (Eccl 9:1b-3) In general, he’s right. One fate comes to us all: physical death. But the particular’s about deaths are much different.
-----Under the sun is always something new. God moved on from dealing with man collectively when Christ rose from the grave. Before then, you had to hope through the Laws given to Israel, behaving alike in the bigger group of those who so did. For the Law at that time was written on stone. It was a general thing. But the law written upon the heart is a particular thing. It isn’t that God changes from person to person. Every one of us are subjected to the psychological fog on the mirror of I Cor 13:12. That is a general thing. I truly believe the mystery revealed through the church into which all of the principalities and powers of the heavenly places desired to look was the establishment and opening the spigot of God’s mercy (Eph 3:10.) Through that mercy God deals with each heart as it is best able to perceive. That is a particular thing.
-----The newness of that mercy and grace is not that it was never in the earth before the morning Christ arose, and so was new that day. Otherwise it would now be old again. The newness under the sun is in the life which God grants each disciple of Christ by it. Each and every soul has it’s own unique set of problems, of weaknesses, of potentials, of skills, and of strengths. Every soul has insights in different ways about different things. Every soul having come to the Lord has God’s law written rather uniquely upon its heart. Otherwise Paul could not write, “Let everyone be fully convinced in his own mind,” (Rom 14:5b) and Peter would not have instructed elders to… “Tend the flock of God that is your charge…not as domineering…but being examples…” (I Pet 5:2-3). Our Father wants to reach through truth and love into the ever more intricate details of who you particularly are and write there beauties for your obedience to bring out as food to His flock all around. And each piece of such candied-fruit is uniquely new under the sun. So is each moment you enjoy eating each other’s fruit with another who knows Him.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
Post a Comment