December 9 - Confessions of an Old Testament Abuser
Here is a piece that I wrote for class reflecting on my use of the Old Testament in my preaching. I reviewed my sermon files and was shocked that my use of the Old Testament did not jive with what I often said about it and taught about it. I pray that I can correct this dissonance in my future preaching. I hope to re-tool my "Ten Blessings of God" sermon series on the Ten Commandments, in corperating Jesus' teaching on the matter in the Sermon on the Mount. Enjoy this piece. Keep me in your prayers, that I may continue to live and preach, like Jacob, with a God-given limp.
Grace and peace,
Trav Wilson
==============
First Appointment. I was commissioned in June 2002 as a probationary elder in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. The bishop appointed me to a rural two-point charge. Before the end of the month I had preached my first sermon on an Old Testament text. Proverbs 14:34 (KJV) says, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” To be honest, I was desperate for a nice, innocuous text that could be used for a Fourth of July sermon. I did no reading on genre nor special books on interpreting the proverbs. I was busy with a funeral, the demands of traditional pastoral care in a rural church, and trying to plan a revival in two weeks that my predecessor had dumped in my lap.
Then the first anniversary of September 11 rolled around. In search for another text that could address a national emergency or holiday, I chose Genesis 25:21-22 (NRSV), which reads, “Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord.” I handled this text more intelligently, reading widely and preparing the message in advance. I wanted the congregation not to focus on its national grief, but on what national tragedy says about God. In short, I wanted them to struggle with theodicy. My image was that we are like pregnant Rebekah, with two children struggling within us: the presence of evil in the world and the presence of a loving God. Unfortunately, like my sermon on Proverbs 14:34, most of my Old Testament preaching was responsive, reactionary, and my choice of texts depended on my needs at the moment.
Second Appointment. I was then appointed to a large church in the affluent Huntsville area. I was reintroduced to the lectionary at this time. While I did depart from it from time to time, I did first compare and contrast it to any needs that the congregation had during that week. If the lectionary did not speak to the congregation I did not use it. If it did I used it. Also, as the associate I was not preaching every Sunday, though the senior minister was generous with the pulpit. I preached about 6-7 times per year.
For nearly two years, I did not preach on the Old Testament. However, late in the second year, feeling a tug of the Spirit to preach on the priesthood of all believers, I preached on the Old Testament lectionary: Genesis 18:1-10, when Sarah laughed at the angel. My direction with the text is fairly predictable: “God can do the impossible with the improbable. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? If God called the smart, the sexy, the wise, the mechanically inclined, the computer literate to do his work, then those folks could take credit for it, and say they did it themselves. … Everyone has some call from God, some ministry for their life.”
At the beginning of my third year, I preached a series on the Ten Commandments. I called the series “The Ten Blessings of God” that showed how the Decalogue, and therefore much of the Old Testament is not a list of context-less rules, but the product of culture and a loving God trying to shower us with blessing. The Ten Commandments are meant as blessings and not curses. This sermon series launched me into a reborn love of the Old Testament.
Rationale for Old Testament Preaching. In much of my preaching, I have done something far worse than ignore the Old Testament; in many ways I have abused it, and cherry picked it for my own purposes. It is only recently that I have found a great love for it. Until the last year, I have paraphrased Barth and claimed that reading the Old Testament is merely reading other people’s mail unless we take it seriously. However, my preaching never reflected this. If we Christians really believe that we are grafted into Israel (Romans 11-17-24 NRSV), then we need to wrestle with it as we would with any other text. While it may be a bromide, the Gospel of Jesus Christ resides in them, if we look deeply enough. Sometimes it is none too well hidden. Thus always is the love of God. We preach from the Hebrew Scripture because it is ours indeed.
Grace and peace,
Trav Wilson
==============
First Appointment. I was commissioned in June 2002 as a probationary elder in the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. The bishop appointed me to a rural two-point charge. Before the end of the month I had preached my first sermon on an Old Testament text. Proverbs 14:34 (KJV) says, “Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” To be honest, I was desperate for a nice, innocuous text that could be used for a Fourth of July sermon. I did no reading on genre nor special books on interpreting the proverbs. I was busy with a funeral, the demands of traditional pastoral care in a rural church, and trying to plan a revival in two weeks that my predecessor had dumped in my lap.
Then the first anniversary of September 11 rolled around. In search for another text that could address a national emergency or holiday, I chose Genesis 25:21-22 (NRSV), which reads, “Isaac prayed to the Lord for his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord granted his prayer, and his wife Rebekah conceived. The children struggled together within her; and she said, ‘If it is to be this way, why do I live?’ So she went to inquire of the Lord.” I handled this text more intelligently, reading widely and preparing the message in advance. I wanted the congregation not to focus on its national grief, but on what national tragedy says about God. In short, I wanted them to struggle with theodicy. My image was that we are like pregnant Rebekah, with two children struggling within us: the presence of evil in the world and the presence of a loving God. Unfortunately, like my sermon on Proverbs 14:34, most of my Old Testament preaching was responsive, reactionary, and my choice of texts depended on my needs at the moment.
Second Appointment. I was then appointed to a large church in the affluent Huntsville area. I was reintroduced to the lectionary at this time. While I did depart from it from time to time, I did first compare and contrast it to any needs that the congregation had during that week. If the lectionary did not speak to the congregation I did not use it. If it did I used it. Also, as the associate I was not preaching every Sunday, though the senior minister was generous with the pulpit. I preached about 6-7 times per year.
For nearly two years, I did not preach on the Old Testament. However, late in the second year, feeling a tug of the Spirit to preach on the priesthood of all believers, I preached on the Old Testament lectionary: Genesis 18:1-10, when Sarah laughed at the angel. My direction with the text is fairly predictable: “God can do the impossible with the improbable. Is anything too wonderful for the Lord? If God called the smart, the sexy, the wise, the mechanically inclined, the computer literate to do his work, then those folks could take credit for it, and say they did it themselves. … Everyone has some call from God, some ministry for their life.”
At the beginning of my third year, I preached a series on the Ten Commandments. I called the series “The Ten Blessings of God” that showed how the Decalogue, and therefore much of the Old Testament is not a list of context-less rules, but the product of culture and a loving God trying to shower us with blessing. The Ten Commandments are meant as blessings and not curses. This sermon series launched me into a reborn love of the Old Testament.
Rationale for Old Testament Preaching. In much of my preaching, I have done something far worse than ignore the Old Testament; in many ways I have abused it, and cherry picked it for my own purposes. It is only recently that I have found a great love for it. Until the last year, I have paraphrased Barth and claimed that reading the Old Testament is merely reading other people’s mail unless we take it seriously. However, my preaching never reflected this. If we Christians really believe that we are grafted into Israel (Romans 11-17-24 NRSV), then we need to wrestle with it as we would with any other text. While it may be a bromide, the Gospel of Jesus Christ resides in them, if we look deeply enough. Sometimes it is none too well hidden. Thus always is the love of God. We preach from the Hebrew Scripture because it is ours indeed.
posted by Trav Wilson at 10:13 AM
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