WELL, IT WAS A QUIET WEEK IN… {Sun, 5-24-26]

CHRIST IN WINTER: The Irrelevant Memories of An Old Radio Listener—WELL, IT WAS A QUIET WEEK IN… {Sun, 5-24-26]

 

“Well, it was NOT a quiet week in the Bible…” That’s the way I began sermons back in the halcyon days of the Prairie Home Companion radio show [PHC].

In the 1980s, when Prairie Home Companion went national--so that folks outside the range of Minnesota Public Radio could listen--like many other people, I became fascinated with Lake Wobegon, “out there on the edge of the prairie, the little town that time forgot.” Garrison Kaillor’s “News from Lake Wobegon” became must-hear radio at our house. I insisted that everyone in the house observe “radio silence.”

That happened in a lot of other houses in our church, too. PHC was on the radio on Saturday night, so it was still in our minds come Sunday morning. That’s when I began to introduce my sermons with, “Well, it was not a quiet week in the Bible…”

Not “a quiet week,” as it always was in Lake Wobegon, because the happenings in the Bible were rarely quiet.

Keillor always started his monologue with, “Well, it was a quiet week in Lake Wobegon…” Yes, it was quiet, except the happenings there were quietly hilarious.

We knew from the goings-on there that Lake Wobegon was the same town in which we had grown up, and probably where we still lived. One of my members claimed that he knew all the people in Lake Wobegon, and he had grown up in Chicago! More than one of our members would give their addresses on the Sunday morning attendance sheet simply as “Lake Wobegon.” That was the appeal of Lake Wobegon. We all belonged there.

So I began to try to get my congregation folks to see the Bible as their Lake Wobegon, the place where we all belong.

Today is Pentecost, and today’s lectionary readings are Acts 2:1-21, John 20:19-23, and I Corinthians 12:3-13.

So, if I were preaching today, I would start by saying, “Well, it was not a quiet week in the Bible. The disciples of Jesus were just sitting around, wondering what was going to happen next, now that Jesus has gone off to heaven, when their heads got really hot, and this big wind hit them, and they all began to preach the Gospel in languages they hadn’t even gone on Duolingo for. That started a big argument in the church about whose language was best, so Rev. Paul, of the First Methodist Church of Corinth, had to remind folks that no one’s way of talking was any better than anyone else’s…”

People liked it, but my next appointment was to a church where folks didn’t listen to the radio, at least not Public radio, and they didn’t know about Lake Wobegon, so that particular attempt at biblical interpretation faded away.

I still read the lectionary scriptures each week, though, and I always think, “Well, it was an interesting week in the Bible…” If you’d like to see what an interesting week it was in the Bible, just do a search for “common lectionary.” Or go to: https://lectionary.library.vanderbilt.edu/wp-content/uploads/faq/downloads/2025-2026/Year%20A%202025-2026.pdf

John Robert McFarland