Sermon Review Thread

[Paidiske]

Merry Christmas!

I would imagine Christmas carols involving sleighs and snow require an imaginative reinterpretation for Antipodean use.

Yeah, that just doesn't work when the reality is you can smell the smoke from the bushfires carried on the wind.

 

[Dave-W]

This also goes for @Dave-W ; I am a scholar of Jewish liturgy because of what I believe to be the ornate relationship between it and Christianity, and I would love to see what the services in your Siddur look like, as I have never seen a Messianic siddur, only English translations of a plain vanilla Ashkenazi Orthodox Siddur, a Karaite Siddur, and the Samaritan equivalent, the Defter

My favorite traditional Orthodox siddur is the ArtScroll. I have both their Ashkenazic and Sephardic volumes. I also have the Koren orthodox siddur, as well as Conservative, Reform and Chassidic siddurim.

But there are 3 Messianic Siddurim that have somewhat wide usage. My favorite is the one by Dr John Fischer. The other 2 are by Jeremiah Greenberg and the late Rabbi Barry Budoff.

But the majority of messianic congregations set up their own liturgy based on either one of those siddurs or a traditional Jewish siddur.

https://www.menorahministries.com/product-page/siddur-for-messianic-jews-english-hebrew-edition

Messianic Shabbat Siddur by Jeremiah Greenberg

https://messianicjewish.net/budoff-siddur-4th-edition.html

 

[bekkilyn]

I'm burning the midnight oil a bit to complete preparations for my Christmas Eve services tomorrow (though in reality it's only a bit after 10pm) so no lengthy responses tonight, but TL, you might be interested to know that for my message, we're going to do a little devotion by opening up the hymnal to Charles Wesley's "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and I'm pulling a couple or three phrases out of the lyrics to talk about what the gift of Jesus' birth means to us as Christians and as Methodists. And then of course, we will sing the entire hymn!

All music tomorrow will be entirely a cappella!

 

[Dave-W]

OK, here is my drash from earlier this month. It is prefaced by readings from the Torah (pentetuch), Haftara (Hebrew prophets) and a fitting New Testament passage. Our Torah team organizer Fred puts this document out to all involved. It has the readings for that day (selected by the giver of the drash) from those passages in the reading cycle. The Torah verses are chanted in Hebrew, and then the 3 passages are read in english off of Fred's handout:

=================================
Readings from the Weekly Portion ending on December 14th

Parashah Title: V'YISHLAH (and he sent)
Torah Portion: Genesis 32:4- 36:43
Prophets (Hafarah): Obadiah

Torah Reading: Genesis 28:15 (Dennis Karp)
Prophets Reading: Hosea 14:4-6 (Leslie Haig)
New Covenant Reading: John 14:2-3 (Leslie Haig)

Midrash presentation: David Waggoner

Each week verses are chosen from the Torah, the Prophets and the New Covenant verses that complete each other. This week the common threads that were seen: "Divine Reversal": We think it is going one way, but God steps in and changes it.

*** Jacob Prepares for the Worst, But the Reverse of What He Expected - Happens ***

Genesis 33:1

א וַיִּשָּׂ֨א יַֽעֲקֹ֜ב עֵינָ֗יו וַיַּרְא֙ וְהִנֵּ֣ה עֵשָׂ֣ו בָּ֔א וְעִמּ֕וֹ אַרְבַּ֥ע מֵא֖וֹת אִ֑ישׁ וַיַּ֣חַץ אֶת־הַיְלָדִ֗ים עַל־לֵאָה֙ וְעַל־רָחֵ֔ל וְעַ֖ל שְׁתֵּ֥י הַשְּׁפָחֽוֹת׃ ב וַיָּ֧שֶׂם אֶת־הַשְּׁפָח֛וֹת וְאֶת־יַלְדֵיהֶ֖ן רִֽאשֹׁנָ֑ה וְאֶת־לֵאָ֤ה וִֽילָדֶ֨יהָ֙ אַֽחֲרֹנִ֔ים וְאֶת־רָחֵ֥ל וְאֶת־יוֹסֵ֖ף אַֽחֲרֹנִֽים׃ ג וְה֖וּא עָבַ֣ר לִפְנֵיהֶ֑ם וַיִּשְׁתַּ֤חוּ אַ֨רְצָה֙ שֶׁ֣בַע פְּעָמִ֔ים עַד־גִּשְׁתּ֖וֹ עַד־אָחִֽיו׃ ד וַיָּ֨רָץ עֵשָׂ֤ו לִקְרָאתוֹ֙ וַֽיְחַבְּקֵ֔הוּ וַיִּפֹּ֥ל עַל־צַוָּארָ֖ו וַׄיִּׄשָּׁׄקֵ֑ׄהׄוּׄ וַיִּבְכּֽוּ׃

1 “Then Jacob lifted his eyes and looked, and behold, Esau was coming, and four hundred men with him. So he divided the children among Leah and Rachel and the two maids. 2 He put the maids and their children in front, and Leah and her children next, and Rachel and Joseph last. 3 But he himself passed on ahead of them and bowed down to the ground seven times, until he came near to his brother. 4 Then Esau ran to meet him and embraced him, and fell on his neck and kissed him, and they wept.”

*** Edom Revels in Gaining the Land of Israel, but God Reverses Edom's Outcome ***

Obadiah 15-18

15 “For the day of the Lord draws near on all the nations. As you have done, it will be done to you.
Your dealings will return on your own head.
16 “Because just as you drank on My holy mountain, All the nations will drink continually.
They will drink and swallow And become as if they had never existed.
17 “But on Mount Zion there will be those who escape, And it will be holy.
And the house of Jacob will possess their possessions.
18 “Then the house of Jacob will be a fire And the house of Joseph a flame;
But the house of Esau will be as stubble. And they will set them on fire and consume them,
So that there will be no survivor of the house of Esau, For the Lord has spoken.”

*** God Reverses Isaac's Fate of Death into Life. God Reverses the Firstborn From Esau to Jacob ***

Hebrews 11:17-20

17 “By faith Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son; 18 it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called.” 19 He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. 20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau, even regarding things to come.”

=================================

12/14/2019 Drash: V’Yishlach "and he sent …"

This weeks parasha covers a lot of ground. It starts with Jacob on his way back to the land of his father and grandfather – Caanan. He has just patched things up with his father in law Laban and now he hears that his brother Esau is coming with an army to kill him, or at least that is what he thinks. He sends out some pretty extravagant gifts to try and placate him, but it seems to have his doubts as to whether it would work or not. And he wrestles all night with an angel that he thinks is an ordinary man, but as dawn breaks finds out who it really is.

He has been away for 20 years after tricking Isaac into giving him the blessing of the first born. Esau was NOT happy. So he ran and now he is coming back. So as Jacob limps away from that encounter with the angel, he sees his brother coming. He divides his troop into 2 different groups hoping that at least one of them would have a chance of surviving.

He is prepared for the worst. But Esau embraces him and the 2 are restored to each other.

In our haftara portion – the whole book of Obadiah - in the first 14 verses it outlines how the decedents of Esau and other nations had plundered Israel and had judgment coming. In the rest of the book it talks about God restoring Israel and it ends with this promise:

20 And the exiles of this host of the sons of Israel,
Who are among the Canaanites as far as Zarephath,
And the exiles of Jerusalem who are in Sepharad
Will possess the cities of the Negev.
21 The deliverers will ascend Mount Zion
To judge the mountain of Esau,
And the kingdom will be the Lord’s.

In our reading from the Apostolic writings, the author of Hebrews lists many people from Israel’s history who walked in faith. All faced opposition and all either did or will in the future kingdom, have their faith vindicated and their situations reversed. Sarah and Abraham conceiving a son when they were in their 90s. The whole chapter of Heb 11 has been called the “hall of faith.”

SO all across history, all across the Torah, prophets, writings and Apostolic scriptures, God can and DOES reverse how we think things would go. Whether it is a restored relationship with an estranged brother, a country that thinks it has you down, people being raised from the dead or giving birth way past the normal time to do that; God has the final say in how things go - and eventually it always goes HIS way.

As HE says thru the prophet Isaiah:

Isaiah 55:9
“For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways And My thoughts than your thoughts.

Shabbat Shalom.

 

[Paidiske]

Will come back to read and respond and comment later (after I've had some sleep!), but for now:

Christmas midnight.

Christmas morning.

 

[The Liturgist]

I'm burning the midnight oil a bit to complete preparations for my Christmas Eve services tomorrow (though in reality it's only a bit after 10pm) so no lengthy responses tonight, but TL, you might be interested to know that for my message, we're going to do a little devotion by opening up the hymnal to Charles Wesley's "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" and I'm pulling a couple or three phrases out of the lyrics to talk about what the gift of Jesus' birth means to us as Christians and as Methodists. And then of course, we will sing the entire hymn!

All music tomorrow will be entirely a cappella!

Now that’s the way to do it in a Methodist parish.

Now the Eastern Orthodox hymns, one of which we will be using tonight, are spectacularly doctrinally ... thorough.


Idiomelon. Mode 2.
From the morning watch until night; from the morning watch until night, let Israel hope in the Lord.

Since the Lord Jesus was born of the holy Virgin, the universe has been illumined. Shepherds were keeping watch, and Magi were adoring Him, and Angels were singing praises, and Herod was troubled; for God appeared in the flesh, yes, the Savior of our s.

Idiomelon. Mode 2.
Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles; praise Him, all you peoples.
Your kingdom, O Christ God, is a kingdom of all the ages, and Your dominion is from generation to generation. You who were incarnate by the Holy Spirit and became man by the ever-virgin Mary, have shone on us as light, by Your advent, O Christ God. Light of light, the brightness of the Father,
You have brightened all creation. Everything that breathes praises You, the express image of the Father's glory. O God, the One who is and who pre-existed, and who shone forth from the Virgin, have mercy on us.

Idiomelon. Mode 2.
For His mercy rules over us; and the truth of the Lord endures forever.
What shall we offer you, O Christ, because you have appeared on earth as a man for our sakes? For each of the creatures made by you offers you its thanks: the Angels, their hymn; the heavens, the Star; the Shepherds, their wonder; the Magi, their gifts; the earth, the Cave; the desert, the Manger; and we, a Virgin Mother. God before the ages, have mercy on us.

Glory be to the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, Both now and ever and unto the ages of ages amen.

Mode 2.
When Augustus reigned alone on the earth, the many kingdoms of mankind came to an end; and when You became man from the pure Virgin, the many gods of idolatry were destroyed. The cities of the world passed under one single rule, and the nations came to believe in one God. The peoples were enrolled by decree of Caesar; we the faithful were enrolled in the name of the Godhead, when You became man, O our God. Great is your mercy. Lord, glory to you.


So much of the doctrine is explicitly stated therein, that when we combine this with the fact that because this Vesperal liturgy is Vesperal and therefore includes all relevant OT prophecies in irs lessons, I could literally just dispense with my Sermon and chant those three idiomelons (hymns with an irregular melody, but which are still set to a particular mode). But then people unused to the lux orientalis I have staked at least some of my career on integrating into the West would be confused. But we can still make use of hymns like the above in the overall liturgy; they can and have been set by Russians, Ukrainians, Ruthenians, mostly Ukrainians, and some Greeks, to melodies more common in the west than ancient Byzantine, Georgian or Znamenny Chant. But it still doesn’t sound altogether normal to Western ears; the English translations are metrically correct but do not rhyme.

The Coptic Rite also has splendid material of a similiar variety, as do the Syriac Orthodox, Maronites, Armenians, Assyrians and Ethiopians, most of whom are doing a service tonight. But in the case of the Assyrian material, it is obscure; the Syriac Orthodox material incomplete, and if there are translations of the Armenian and Ethiopian propers, and I am sure there are, I do not have them.

But the Coptic hymns in the so-called “Kiakh Psalmody” are really very exquisite, about the best way to spend your Saturday nights until January 6 is in a Coptic church. Because, forget night-life; we’re clergy, and what’s more, there is that ancient canon law which makes me uneasy using hotels or restaurants, that prohibits anyone in Holy Orders from entering into a tavern if any other accommodation is available. But I am not complaining; I had a secular life before this and am keenly aware that no amount of fine food, drink, and other worldly indulgences is of any real and lasting benefit.

 

[The Liturgist]

Will come back to read and respond and comment later (after I've had some sleep!), but for now:

Christmas midnight.

Christmas morning.

Your Christmas morning homily is splendid, to the point that while speed reading it and your midnight sermon in my last hour and five minutes of seclusion, I lost track of where I was in the midnight sermon, and became firmly caught on this paragraph you wrote:

And when it comes to Christmas, what shows us that love most deeply is that Jesus is not merely from God. Not just a messenger or an especially obedient servant. Jesus is God. The very one who created everything that exists; who holds the existence of you and me and everything there is. In Mary’s womb, that creator God enrobed Godself in human flesh, taking on the fullness of humanity without losing divinity.

Jesus left his home – and all that it means to exist only as God, which none of us can really imagine – to empty himself, take on human existence, to come to this dumpy world and live and die and rise again for us. For our sake. To mend that broken relationship that we couldn’t fix by ourselves.

In the beginning God created everything, and what he made was good. But we messed that up. And the God who created us in the first place, put that creative power back to work in Mary’s womb, so that we could be re-created into the goodness we were meant to experience.

There we have correct Christology that one would expect to read from Pope St. Cyril the Great of Alexandria (who is not the villanious, Hypatia-murdering, cackling evil-doer that it has become fashionable to depict him of; that honor goes to his main nemesis, Nestorius, who unlike Cyril did actually routinely have people killed for “heterodoxy,” which could include adhering to the traditional faith in Rome, Alexandria, Constantinople and Caesarea, and even to a large degree in Antioch, which Nestorius was driven to suppress). We have correct soteriology and eschatology. And the soteriology is even inclined towards Theosis, rather than Anselm of Canterbury’s approach.

In most churches today in the US, you will not hear that good a homily. For example, in the Episcopal Church or the UCC, many clergy who are of orthodox inclination, but fearful of their jobs, inject intentional ambiguity when making doctrinal declarations. Others simply redefine the evening by focusing on a narrow subset of the occasion, which is exasperating, in my opinion. Some carefully avoid Christological precision. So when I do read a homily like yours, it sets a high watermark in my opinion. Merry Christmas, unless you are a Coptic, Russian, Ukrainian or Old Calendarist member on the Julian calendar, in which case I wish you a blessed feast of St. Sypridon.

 

[bekkilyn]

My services both went well and nobody set anything on fire with the candlelight part at the end while we sang Silent Night! A couple families from the nearby Hispanic Pentecostal church came to the service too, so we had some great fellowship!

These were the notes I used for my message today using "Hark the Herald Angels Sing":

Theme: What the gift of Jesus’s birth means to us as Christians.

• God and sinners reconciled

2 Corinthians 5:17-19
17 So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!
18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation;
19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.​

• Everlasting Lord

Isaiah 40:28 - Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.​

• Incarnate Deity

Colossians 2:9 - For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily​

• Born to raise us from the earth

1 Thessalonians 4:16 - For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise first.​

• Born to give us second birth

John 3:3-8
3 Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”
5 Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’
8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear the sound of it, but cannot tell where it comes from and where it goes. So is everyone who is born of the Spirit.”​

 

[bekkilyn]

Will come back to read and respond and comment later (after I've had some sleep!), but for now:

Christmas midnight.

Christmas morning.

Love the Narnia reference.

 

[Paidiske]

By the way, I am going to include the entire liturgy we will be using, so people can see the context, and @Paidiske, if you were able without too much hastle to copy and paste your sermons into the appropriate parts of the Australian or BCP Holy Communion service, I would be, in the immortal words of Peter Ustinov playing Hercules Poirot, “Most Hghonored” (with an audible H”).

I think the best I can do for you easily is give a link to the week's pew sheet; that will give you the hymns, (or at least a reference to where they may be found in our hymn book, Together in Song), readings, and collect. It would not be easy for me to give you the whole liturgy in any user-friendly format.

My only other opinion, which I can’t fully express because of a lack of context, which is why I realize we need liturgical references, is that your sermon is hard to hear. And that is good, and gutsy, and appropriate for Advent and the other fasts. But, I would probably have talked a bit more about the rewards of grace once we are disabused of our delusions. But you might well have done that, and also the fact this was a Holy Communion service, I assume, would ensure this happened, because there is nothing more gracious than partaking of the Eucharist. If you had done this at Morning Prayer or Ante Communion in the old 1662 BCP, it would be the kind of sermon that stings, but since you did it in a Eucharistic service, that has the effect of neutralizing the message.

That's an interesting comment, thanks. I must give my congregation credit; they take sermons seriously and generally respond thoughtfully and prayerfully. I can give them hard sermons with reasonable confidence that they will, at least, be listening and open to hearing something edifying.

But yes, you're correct that this was a communion service, and that that does indeed colour the way a sermon is received. When the sermon is part of the preparation for the table that's very different than a simple service of the word.

In most churches today in the US, you will not hear that good a homily. For example, in the Episcopal Church or the UCC, many clergy who are of orthodox inclination, but fearful of their jobs, inject intentional ambiguity when making doctrinal declarations. Others simply redefine the evening by focusing on a narrow subset of the occasion, which is exasperating, in my opinion. Some carefully avoid Christological precision. So when I do read a homily like yours, it sets a high watermark in my opinion.

I must admit I find this a very puzzling - and rather troubling - comment. I do not think of myself as an especially excellent homilist, or as being remarkably more theologically robust than most of my colleagues (I mean, yes, there are outliers amongst the clergy with strange ideas, but in general). The idea that the bulk of my colleagues - of the same denomination - in another country are simply either doing badly, or unorthodox, is something I find slightly implausible; or, if it is the case, definitely very strange and concerning. (Although it would make sense of some of the comments on CF which seem to dismiss my denomination as "liberal" in general, when I think of a liberal as someone who doesn't take either Scripture or the Creeds seriously, and that is simply not how I have experienced Anglicanism).

So while I appreciate that my work is appreciated, the idea that it's a high water mark is... I'd like to hope it's not so!

For a bit of a change of emphasis, this morning's sermon: Shadow curved in on itself

And pew sheet, with liturgical details: http://stfaiths.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dec-29-2019-pew-sheet.pdf

As a liturgical side note, one thing which gave me pause this week was the question of a picture. For our main service, we use a projector, and usually while I'm preaching there's a picture on the screen of something relevant to the reading I'm preaching on. So this week was the massacre of the innocents, and most of the pictures of that around and free to use are... confronting. Like, graphic and violent enough that if I posted them here someone would be within their rights to report them to the mods. I had real trouble finding a picture that I felt it was reasonable to expect people to look at as part of their worship.

And that got me to thinking, why is it okay to read about this horrible violent act, recorded in Scripture, but somehow too confronting to look at a depiction of it? Do we think about violence in Scripture differently just because it is Scripture? Should we be okay with looking at it, even at times force ourselves to confront how disturbing human sin is, in visual form?

It wasn't what I preached on, but it would be interesting to think about together!

 

[bekkilyn]

The hymns I chose for today were "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Go, Tell It on the Mountain," and "Angels from the Realms of Glory" and I used Hebrews 2:10-18 for the sermon. And nope, didn't gloss over mention of either sin or the devil as per verse 14.

 

[The Liturgist]

I must admit I find this a very puzzling - and rather troubling - comment. I do not think of myself as an especially excellent homilist, or as being remarkably more theologically robust than most of my colleagues (I mean, yes, there are outliers amongst the clergy with strange ideas, but in general). The idea that the bulk of my colleagues - of the same denomination - in another country are simply either doing badly, or unorthodox, is something I find slightly implausible; or, if it is the case, definitely very strange and concerning.

You know, on the whole, I would say Anglican clergy in the US do a better job than many when it comes to a doctrinal focus, particularly compared to my own denominational background. However, even one of my more traditional Episcopalian friends had a tendency to be remarkably ... homiletically unfocused.

So this in turn intersects a troublesome cultural issue which I think is more likely an almost US-specific problem, and that is an excessive focus on the sermon as the “main event” in most churches. Except in liturgical circles, lots of people will refer to the minister, regardless of ordained status, as “the preacher.” Which is fine. I don’t mind this. But I do find it vexatious that even some of my favorite homilists, in the US, will frequently preach a purely moralizing sermon which is disconnected from or only loosely connected to the relevant doctrinal points implied in the lectionary, because frankly, people want to hear this, in the US. When I was in the Methodist church, a minister I liked once inexplicably decided to preach an invigorating sermon on the virtues of excellence on Epiphany Sunday, which only related in the most abstract way to that date.

A much less egregious example would be when a friend of mind in the Episcopal Church, since retired, sadly, once preached a homily which consisted of a fascinating explanation of how salt actually can, through a catalytic process, lose its saltiness, and how in antiquity this was a thing, due to dung-fired ovens (yuck), and how such salt was then used in the way we use gravel, as a kind of pavement, since, having been chemically deprived of its salty quality, was fit only to be trod upon. Now this was actually expositionally interesting and relevant to the lectionary, which contained the Gospel wherein our Lord discusses salt losing its saltiness.

The only problem in this case was, aside from making an interesting technical point, which I for one did enjoy, he did not substantially go past that in, for instance, explaining the theological implications of that statement. So this was actually, by American standards, and maybe I am being too cynical here, because I cannot claim to hear what gets preached everywhere in the US, a reasonably topical homily. But the problems should be fairly evident. Also, it seems to me almost inevitable that his church is going to lose out to churches who have more ... emotionally charged ... preachers when a homily winds up basically being an archaeological lecture relating to the uses of salt, and less agreeably, dung, in antiquity.

So the problem involves clergy in the US who I like as well as dislike, and also, even to a more severe degree, the expectations of American congregations. Its not a problem limited to Protestant churches either.

 

[The Liturgist]

The hymns I chose for today were "Angels We Have Heard on High," "Go, Tell It on the Mountain," and "Angels from the Realms of Glory" and I used Hebrews 2:10-18 for the sermon. And nope, didn't gloss over mention of either sin or the devil as per verse 14.

Oh brilliant! You picked two of my favorite hymns (Angels from the Realms of Glory especially is one of those exquisite memories from my childhood, and I greatly love Angels We Have Heard on High), another one which is topically relevant to a maximal degree, and you preached the straight text. Not glossing over sin or the devil is very important, because in mainline churches like the UCC for example, these subjects have become unpopular.

 

[The Liturgist]

I think the best I can do for you easily is give a link to the week's pew sheet; that will give you the hymns, (or at least a reference to where they may be found in our hymn book, Together in Song), readings, and collect. It would not be easy for me to give you the whole liturgy in any user-friendly format.

Indeed, I should have clarified my statement. Basically the contextual information @bekkilyn is supplying is what I am after. I mean, if, as I hope, we get a number of clergy in this thread, and we have an Eastern Orthodox priest join us, I would not expect him to post the entire text of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

That's an interesting comment, thanks. I must give my congregation credit; they take sermons seriously and generally respond thoughtfully and prayerfully. I can give them hard sermons with reasonable confidence that they will, at least, be listening and open to hearing something edifying.

But yes, you're correct that this was a communion service, and that that does indeed colour the way a sermon is received. When the sermon is part of the preparation for the table that's very different than a simple service of the word.

Very good. And hard sermons are important, I think, and I admire you for doing that. My own denomination gave us Jonathan Edwards, who I think was in hindsight probably too severe with his famous “Sinners in the hands of an angry God” sermon, although it was effective, but the good thing about your homily is you managed to deliver something sufficiently sharp, without even coming close to, if I might use an Americanism, “chewing out” your congregation in the grand tradition of Jonathan Edwards and other fire-and-brimstone preachers.

Which is not to say that fire and brimstone is never warranted, provided the preacher does not exclude himself from criticism and thus come across as a holier-than-thou self-righteous hypocrite. And sadly, there are clergy who actually do that.

(Although it would make sense of some of the comments on CF which seem to dismiss my denomination as "liberal" in general, when I think of a liberal as someone who doesn't take either Scripture or the Creeds seriously, and that is simply not how I have experienced Anglicanism).

Just to add to my previous post, its not a problem in my experience limited to Anglicanism.

So while I appreciate that my work is appreciated, the idea that it's a high water mark is... I'd like to hope it's not so!

Well it was very good, regardless.

For a bit of a change of emphasis, this morning's sermon: Shadow curved in on itself

And pew sheet, with liturgical details: http://stfaiths.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dec-29-2019-pew-sheet.p

I will take a look at this.

As a liturgical side note, one thing which gave me pause this week was the question of a picture. For our main service, we use a projector, and usually while I'm preaching there's a picture on the screen of something relevant to the reading I'm preaching on. So this week was the massacre of the innocents, and most of the pictures of that around and free to use are... confronting. Like, graphic and violent enough that if I posted them here someone would be within their rights to report them to the mods. I had real trouble finding a picture that I felt it was reasonable to expect people to look at as part of their worship.

And that got me to thinking, why is it okay to read about this horrible violent act, recorded in Scripture, but somehow too confronting to look at a depiction of it? Do we think about violence in Scripture differently just because it is Scripture? Should we be okay with looking at it, even at times force ourselves to confront how disturbing human sin is, in visual form?

It wasn't what I preached on, but it would be interesting to think about together!

There are icons from the Eastern churches, and Roman Catholic frescoes, which do address this and other very grim topics. For example, consider the Orthodox icons “The Ladder of Divine Ascent” or “Extreme Humility” or the esteemed Michaelangelo fresco “The Last Judgement” behind the altar in the Sistine Chapel. There is an actual problem if people can’t deal with this. I a, not an iconoclast, and I think its important that people be able to handle visual depictions of the more potentially unsettling aspects of Christianity, and that coming to grips with it can be profoundly cathartic.

i don’t know if I could use a projector for it, however. I somewhat like the Russian Orthodox approach where icons relevant to the liturgical occasion are placed in the center of the nave.

I also have to confess I try to avoid using projectors, because they cause annoyances in terms of setting them up and in terms of lighting. Not intractable problems, they are usable, but I personally am just too lazy. Unless the service is at night, you pretty much have to be in the auditorium-type environment of the non-denominational megachurch for the projector to work extremely well, in my opinion, and that is an environment I dislike. But, visual cues are not a bad idea; once tablets get cheap enough so we can put them in the pews and have some sort of synchronized app, I could see that not only replacing the hymn books, but also being used to efficiently deliver a visual presentation during the homily regardless of lighting conditions.

On the other hand, I probably am an incorrigible Luddite given that I dislike having to use a mic, unless I have a sore throat. So my personal preference of avoiding the use of such instrumentality should not be considered as a recommendation but more of as a mea culpa, in that I am really not the best person to talk to when it comes to Power Point.

Except that back when I worked in the corporate world part of my job was to design PowerPoint slides for our brand strategy team, which was enjoyable graphics design work, difficult, because at the time PowerPoint had ugly typography, but it was interesting anyway.

 

[Paidiske]

So this in turn intersects a troublesome cultural issue which I think is more likely an almost US-specific problem, and that is an excessive focus on the sermon as the “main event” in most churches.

That happens here, but not in the more catholic strand of Anglicanism which I've found myself (not entirely of my choosing!) working in.

I like projectors because:

a) It makes it easy for everyone to follow what's going on. No need for visitors to know where to turn in the hymn book, the prayer book, the day's pew sheet, etc. Provided the person "driving" doesn't do anything silly, no one can get lost.

b) It tends to be easier for people with poor vision to read than the small print often found in books etc.

c) It gets everyone looking up when they're singing, rather than mumbling into their hymn books. It also fosters more of a sense of the liturgy as a shared experience, rather than an individualistic experience where each person immerses him- or herself in a book, focussed on the page, with a diminished corporate aspect of worship.

I know it doesn't suit every building or every occasion (the Easter vigil, for example, would be ruined by it), but for the "normal" Sunday morning it is by far my preference. Sadly, I find congregations hard to convince on this point; despite having everything on the screen (actually a convenient section of blank wall in our building) I have some who stubbornly persist in singing into their hymn books...

 

[The Liturgist]

That happens here, but not in the more catholic strand of Anglicanism which I've found myself (not entirely of my choosing!) working in.

I like projectors because:

a) It makes it easy for everyone to follow what's going on. No need for visitors to know where to turn in the hymn book, the prayer book, the day's pew sheet, etc. Provided the person "driving" doesn't do anything silly, no one can get lost.

b) It tends to be easier for people with poor vision to read than the small print often found in books etc.

c) It gets everyone looking up when they're singing, rather than mumbling into their hymn books. It also fosters more of a sense of the liturgy as a shared experience, rather than an individualistic experience where each person immerses him- or herself in a book, focussed on the page, with a diminished corporate aspect of worship.

I know it doesn't suit every building or every occasion (the Easter vigil, for example, would be ruined by it), but for the "normal" Sunday morning it is by far my preference. Sadly, I find congregations hard to convince on this point; despite having everything on the screen (actually a convenient section of blank wall in our building) I have some who stubbornly persist in singing into their hymn books...

You know I agree entirely with the technological concept. The main problem with projectors, as I see it, is simply that, they cause headaches, even literal ones if you manage to get it out of focus or the image manages to get backlit, which is an irritation. I’ve seen some Oriental Orthodox churches make innovative use of LCD screens in their parishes which lack these shortcomings; there is a Coptic church, a very modern building, in Los Angeles, which adopted LCDs to replace projectors, because the windows in the dome of one of their two chapels consistently backlight and wash out the screens. This I think is important, because many Coptic Christians will be in church for up to four hours, or more on some occasions; their services can be spectacularly long (but never boring!) and at the end visibility is greatly reduced by the thick cloud of incense, so the added intensity of an LCD is of even greater benefit.

On the other hand, if one benefitted from a dark 19th century neo-Gothic church building projectors would potentially work better. But I remain convinced the ideal solution will come in the form of inexpensive networked tablet devices. In fact for years now there have been tablets that cost as much as a new hymnal, its simply that thus far they have been rubbish. There is also an e-waste aspect; I find myself saddened by the vast number of disused iPad 2s, which were always superb machines, collecting dust because they are no longer supported and cannot efficiently be used for modern Internet purposes. But we will likely have, as a result of the current condition where one can already get an obsolete tablet of high quality at no cost, a situation where a commoditized tablet which would be more than suitable for all ecclesiastical and liturgical functions seems ... inevitable. And that I think will give us something usable to replace the projector in its current, unpleasant incarnation.

The downside of course with tablets is that if the display output is synchronized, and they do replace printed hymnals and service books, we will deny our congregations the ability to distract themselves when our preaching becomes tedious.

 

[bekkilyn]

Oh brilliant! You picked two of my favorite hymns (Angels from the Realms of Glory especially is one of those exquisite memories from my childhood, and I greatly love Angels We Have Heard on High), another one which is topically relevant to a maximal degree, and you preached the straight text. Not glossing over sin or the devil is very important, because in mainline churches like the UCC for example, these subjects have become unpopular.

I do tend to preach in a more expository style, so the scripture text is what drives my sermons to a very large degree. (Despite some of the ridiculous and crazy arguments I end up getting into here on CF that makes it sound like I've tossed out scripture entirely, I'm quite the opposite in practice!) I'm planning to use the revised common lectionary text of John 1:1-18 this Sunday and am still narrowing down what I want to emphasize since that passage is packed full of all sorts of wonderful things and being communion Sunday this week as well, I need to be more time-aware than on other weeks.

I'm also in charge of the weekly children's message, and the website sermons4kids has an example of using a map to find direction, and how the wise men used the north star to help them vs. having a map, and how we have the bible for our spiritual direction. I'm probably going to pull that concept into the "adult" sermon in some way as well in talking about how scripture guides us, make some distinction between the written word and the Word being the person of Jesus Christ and how we can hear his voice through scripture, prayer, creation, etc. Perhaps add in some law vs. grace and tie in a couple points from last week for reinforcement. It's all very rough still.

Hymns: We Three Kings, Amazing Grace, Victory in Jesus

 

[bekkilyn]

Concerning projectors....I serve two small town/rural country churches in the U.S. south and neither have projectors for regular use, though someone can usually scrounge something up for special occasions. When I came to serve these churches (and the churches in my previous charge), I felt like I was stepping back in time 100 years.

It can be a challenge not having a projector when I really want to show them a visual. In one of my previous churches, I fell flat on my face once tripping over something while trying to show them an illustration of Solomon's Temple in a book (I can be a bit of a klutz haha).

At the same time, too much dependence on technology can also be a negative. I've seen to far, far too many presentations in both business and academia where the presenter basically just read off of the slides vs. engaging the audience.

 

[Paidiske]

Sermon for the feast of the Baptism of our Lord.

 

[The Liturgist]

I forgot to tell you how much I liked that sermon @Paidiske

My homily on Trinity Sunday tried to avoid a confrontational approach with regards to the tragic murder of George Floyd (although as everyone can tell from my signature, I am, as someone who is a close friend of an African American police officer, really upset about anti-police rhetoric), so I stressed the importance of love, and the idea expressed by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware of the Greek Orthodox Church in his book The Orthodox Way that the Trinity is a union of perfect love and we are called, in our relationships with others, in society, in our families, in the church, and in general to make ourselves an icon of that Trinity.

Historically such a sermon would not have been heard in Congregational churches due to iconoclasm, but one of the few good things to happen to the United Church of Christ in recent decades was an end to iconoclasm and an interest in icons, and carrying on as a sort of rebel traditional UCC parish with my small church (although we as of today are finally in talks to unite with a traditional congregational group), it was something I could get away with.

My main concern is whether or not I hit the right tone. I am very morally conflicted on this issue because of my friendship with several police (I have in recent months been considering becoming a police chaplain), and at the same time it is undeniable that a horrible murder did occur, but I feel morally compelled to not take my congregation into the political wake that is following in that incident, and I also feel like police as a profession are now experiencing a massive amount of hate, which can never be justified.