Jan. 4, 2009
Hartmut Fege, D.Min.
MC – Dennis Township NJ
Second Sun. after Christmas – Sirach 24.1-1, Eph. 1.3-14,
Jn. 1.1-18
Have you ever thought what goes into a sermon?
How are these 10 – 15 min. homilies born?
Like someone said not a bad job if you only work one hour a
week.
As for sermons isn’t there a sermon book? Look it up, copy
it, preach it?
And if you move around a lot you can use the same sermon
over and over. It is called recycling.
So what goes into a sermon? In the Lutheran church we follow
a three year cycle called a lectionary.. so every 3 years we repeat the same
lessons.
We can pick from the OT, the Ps. The Epistle or the Gospel
lesson.
I read all the lessons for a given Sunday. I pray that the
HS will give me something to say that will connect with you and at the same time
relate to the text …
I want to make what I say as interesting for you as it is
for me.
Knowing that minds tend to wander..
we are after all a TV culture – we have short attention
spans.
I want to find something in the text that you will take
with you. . something to chew on. But most of all I want you to encounter God
the way I am encountered as I work on this sermon week after week.
So what is God’s word for us today, the 3rd day
of a new year?
It really humbles and frightens me that that is what I am
about… god’s word.
How audacious of me… believe me that I do not come to this
moment each week without some sense of awe and inadequacy…
I am also keenly aware that others who have stood in this
moment have not been as fortunate. There are those who do not want you to hear
what God has to say…
The Apostle calls them “principalities and powers”.
Today is the last time that we will hear the Christmas
Gospel until next December . . .
The OT reading comes from a non canonical book called
Sirach which takes its title from the name of the author Jesus son of Eleazar
son of Sirach.
It is one of the so called wisdom books of the OT…
The wisdom of God is personified in the Bible – in Prov.
8.30 for example “the Lord created me as the beginning, the first of his
creative acts. I was beside him a master worker and I was his delight –
rejoicing before him always”.
In the “Shack” on best seller list of the NY Timesfor the last month, the author Wm. Paul Young, uses wisdom from the Greek
“Sophia” by giving her the name Sarayu and identifying her as the Holy Spirit a
wind-like apparition that is both extraordinarily beautiful and mysterious.
If you have not read the book I highly recommend it. It is
fiction but the best example off a modern day parable I have found in a long
time…
How to explain God? Now there is an oxymoron for you.
Trying to explain God is like trying to explain a Koan ..
or Haiku…
The difference between a Koan and Paradox is a
contradiction that is nevertheless true… Like Jesus both God and human. A Koan
it is that how we think doesn’t make sense. . What is the sound of one hand clapping? What is the
color of wind?
There are 66 books in our Bible, not counting the Wisdom
books of the OT. Snapshot of God… we call it God’s Word.
But words don’t explain God even words in the Bible…at best
they are metaphors – words that serve as carriers of Mystery. .
So for the rest of this sermon we are going to tell you the
story of Barrington Bunny. It doesn’t explain anything but it does serve
as a way to get our head and heart in synch.. when it comes to what the Bible
teaches about the Spirit that is both Logos, flesh and Pneuma.
Read “Barrington Bunny” from The Way of the Wolf by
Martin Bell, The Seabury Press, NY,1968.
