Resisting the Word
Resisting the Word
by Roger Talbott

What possessed me to sign up to blog this week? I almost never preach during the first week in August. My birthday lands in this week and I prefer spending it camping with my wife in Pennsylvania’s Allegheny National Forest. In the northern tier of states, even preachers find it hard to waste an hour of warm sunshine in church on a Sunday morning, much less focus on anything heavier than a beach book or the Beach Boys.

That’s not the only reason I bug out in mid-summer. The texts, especially during Year B, are just awful.

There’s no avoiding David’s adultery with Bathsheba this week. How do I preach an X-rated story to a G-rated congregation?

Psalm 51 – don’t we say that on Ash Wednesday? It just doesn’t work as well on a warm summer’s day as it does on a dark night in midwinter.

The handful of congregants who will show up at my church on this August morning will park their cars on a picturesque public square and trudge southwest to First United Methodist Church as other people park next to them and head: West to First Congregational, East to the United Presbyterian Church, South to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church and Southeast to St. Mary’s Roman Catholic Church. And then in each of those churches they will listen politely as their respective pastors read Ephesians 4: “There is one body and one Spirit . . . one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of us all . . .” Yeah, right.

And then there is John 6 . . . and John 6, again . . . and John 6, again . . .

The best sermons come from the texts we most resist. Just as Jacob was lamed when he wrestled with God, the texts we most resist may “lame” our homiletical legs – the ones that run so easily through Psalm 23 or the Parable of the Good Samaritan. Tough, laming texts make us hobble along on the power of the Holy Spirit.

There is some question whether Paul wrote Ephesians, but let’s play with those first words of chapter 4: “I, therefore, a prisoner of the Lord . . .”

Can you identify? If the weather is as nice where and when you are reading this as it is where I am writing it, you should be outdoors playing, smelling the flowers, running in the surf, or making love in the forest. But you aren’t. You are stuck in front of a computer screen because in a very real sense, you are a prisoner of the Lord. Yeah, I know it’s your job, but unless you belong to a denomination that I haven’t heard of, they aren’t paying you enough to spend a day like this parsing Greek verbs.

Does it help to realize that Jesus has gone to a lot of trouble to get away from this crowd that clings to him like Haitian children cling to an American tourist? He, too, is a prisoner of the Lord.

All I can find to work with is Prisoner P___’s exhortation to “lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called . . .”

That’s why you are reading this instead of working in your garden or playing golf, isn’t it? You are trying to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.

And so are the folks who will come to church this Sunday. There is not one of them who couldn’t think of something more enjoyable to do on this summer Sunday morning – and certainly a lot of their fellow members decided to just go ahead and do it.

But the ones who come are, in one way or another, prisoners of the Lord seeking to lead a life worthy of the calling to which they have been called. They have learned that whatever it is that we dole out in church on Sunday is not bread that lasts always, but is more like the manna that rotted if people tried to save it for a manna-less day.

They have learned that somehow this life that is worthy of the calling to which we have been called involves gathering/congregating, “bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace”.

And so, whether you choose to tackle David and Bathsheba or not, a good many of them will recognize what it means to tear apart that unity of the Spirit with betrayal and the misuse of power. They will also recognize that a well-told sermon illustration can hold up the mirror of Truth that can destroy our deceptions and cause us to repent and restore that unity with the Spirit and with each other.

The old Modernist explanation for the feeding of the 5,000 – that the example of the little boy putting his five loaves and two fish into the hands of Jesus inspired everyone to share secret stashes of food, may not be quite as reductionist as it sounds if you read Ephesians 1-3 with its affirmation that Jesus has torn down walls and made us One; that all things and all people are coming together in Him. The crowd has come again to Jesus to relieve their food insecurity. They want magic breadboxes that are never empty.

But Jesus offers them the bread that satisfies the prisoners of the Lord, which includes “bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of Peace” – and sharing lunch.

Dinner on the grounds with Jesus can happen every day, eternally, to those who stick with Him and with each other, but it is not bread that will last forever. It is bread that God gives us this day.

(from www.goodpreacher.com/blog/)