When it comes to preaching or teaching on God’s Word, it is definitely a daunting task.

We too often sugar-coat, or water down, what is being given us. So many passages come up often in the lectionary, or in a workshop, or prayer meeting, that they become almost mundane. We glaze over, we gloss over, that which is extraordinary and make it, well, ordinary. Our compressed attention spans, our compressed time, contribute to this in a negative way. We don’t take the time to mull over and meditate on the feast of love offered in the Bible’s pages.

As a pastor, I don’t want to get sucked into saying the same things about the same texts. It needs to be, in the ears of the hearer, something fresher, more applicable. Scripture is instructive, corrective (law) and also hopeful, promising (Gospel). The Bible is given to us so that we might find in God’s divine mystery, the paradoxical sense to the world’s senselessness. We feel treasured, kept (Isaiah 43). For us – meaning everyone – who proclaim this Word of love, it is the blending of stories; God’s, Israel’s, yours mine; as an ongoing dialogue.

In musical terms, it is the like the fundamental tone, from which we detect the overtones, or harmonics rising upward and outward. Continuing in thinking musically, a familiar hymn stanza seems to get it:

“I love to tell the story, for some have never heard, The message of salvation in God’s own holy Word.”  Heard, yet not really heard in a personal way. May the telling of this story to each other open up the heart of our loving God in extraordinary ways. Remember – God loves you unconditionally.

(with acknowledgment to the genius of N. T. Wright)

Pastor Art