This Sunday the NFL schedule includes the 1 and 8 Cleveland Browns playing the 1 and 8 Detroit Lions. Must see TV.
But wait! There’s more!
The NFL in it’s great wisdom scheduled the Lions and the Raiders for Thanksgiving Day games. That’ll get us up from the table!
Jeep’s new ad slogan: “I live. I ride. I am. Jeep.”
Dodge’s new truck slogan: “My name is Ram and my tank is full.”
What am I missing? I do not understand.
I went up the hill to Paradise Bakery to work this morning. Spent most of that time planning my preaching calendar well into next year. On the way out I was greeted very warmly by a well dressed man who looked to be in his late 60’s.
“Good morning! How’s your day going?”
I tried to respond with the same cheer. I told him my day was going well (it was) and asked if he was having a good day. Yep, him too.
Then I noticed he was getting into a very sharp looking convertible with Alaska plates. I asked him about it and we spent the next few minutes talking cars.
He was driving a brand new VW Eos, a white one just like this.
He said he’d always wanted a convertible, saw this one during a flight layover passing through Seattle, and bought it on the spot. This is a hardtop convertible (press the “see with top up” button on that web page) that includes a sun roof.
Very nice!
I asked if he wanted to trade for a slightly older VW but he declined.
I rode the bike when I got back from Paradise and went to the pool late this afternoon. Both went well. Actually, the pool was a pretty sloppy swim, but that’s OK. It teaches me that my form can break down (mouth full of water) and I can recover and continue.
Oprah is going to announce tomorrow that she will shut down her TV show in 2011. Oh no! Whatever shall we do?
Congress is holding hearings on the Fort Hood shooting. That’s because we count on them to find out what happened. The Army investigators could never do it by themselves. Senators getting their mugs on the evening news has nothing to do with it.
I don’t think I’m the only preacher who finds this a challenging season.
Retailers begin pushing Christmas (“the holidays”) sometime in late October, and because they are such a powerful presence in our culture the tone is set. Christians, who understand that the birth of Christ is the centerpiece of the holiday, are just as affected by this early emphasis as anyone else. So the church decorates the auditorium, incorporates Christmas carols into Sunday services and practices children’s programs as soon as the turkey leftovers are in the fridge. December is about Christmas.
The Gospels of Mark and John have no content on the birth of Christ. Their narratives both begin with his public ministry at the age of 30. Matthew’s Gospel has nothing about Christ’s birth but does have a brief description of the arrival of the magi about two years later.
Only Luke records the birth of Christ. That narrative is contained in the first 20 verses of chapter 2. The conclusion seems obvious: the incarnation is essential truth (cf. the volume of material on that subject in both the OT and NT), and ranks as more important than the circumstances of his birth. Yet people expect Christmas (December) sermons on his birth in Bethlehem, not doctrinal sermons on the truths associated with his incarnation.
The preacher’s secret is that he dreads Christmas...December. Coming up with new and different nativity sermons year after year is beyond daunting. One solution is to make stuff up, fleshing out those 20 verses with a “sanctified imagination” that draws on details not in the text - like the animals at the manger or the words of the innkeeper. That can actually work pretty well since most Christians have formed their understanding of what the Bible says from the drawings on the front of Christmas cards. (You think Mary rode the donkey and Joseph walked along side, don’t you.)
Or he can preach incarnation sermons that explore what the Bible says about how and why Christ entered humanity. There is a wealth of valuable biblical material there that has real relevance to who and what we are as believers.
But incarnation sermons are a tough sell compared to the drama of birth pains next to a wooden manger (another unbiblical image).
A third option is to preach one or two sermons from Luke 2 in the one or two Sundays before December 25th. Many people expect more than that, but if he’s smooth he might get away with it. And that only works the early years of his ministry - maybe into year three. But by year four the preach is digging pretty deep to find something he hasn’t already pulled out of the first half of that one chapter.
So what am I going to do at Pathway this year?
You’ll have to come to find out!
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