CHRIST IN WINTER:
Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter…
There is an old saying: If
you have three frogs to swallow, swallow the biggest one first.
When I was an every-Sunday
preacher, and was faced each week with four scriptures—one “lesson” each from
Old Testament, Psalms, Gospels, and New Testament] to use as a sermon
springboard, I had two principles by which I chose: 1] Preach the Gospel. We
are Christ-ians. Preach from the story about or from Jesus, the Christ, the
Word of God. 2] Preach from the one that is hardest, most difficult to
understand, the one from which I wanted least to preach.
When you have a choice, do
the hardest thing. It’s not just the most character-building, it’s the most
useful.
My friend, Phyllis Graham
Parr, did a PhD in math, because, she said, “At the end of my bachelor’s
degree, I felt I understood humanities and arts and sciences pretty well, but I
did not really know math. It was hardest. I needed more work in it.”
Each Lent at our church,
retired engineer Charlie Matson sets up Tuesday night Bible studies. We have a
lot of retired preachers in our congregation, so, in addition to our “active”
pastoral staff, he calls on those timorous theologians to lead. For the two
years I have been going to these, he has asked those hoary homileticians to
reflect on their favorite Bible passages.
I have suggested to him
that next year we should ask them to work with us on the one that is most
difficult for them. It’s partly because I have a particular one in mind. Mostly,
though, it’s just because I want to see them squirm.
JRMcF
johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com
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