"No!" means ask grandma

My first name is Steven. My parents decided for a variety of reasons that I should go through life using my middle name, Craig. This occasionally presents some problems, for example when forms ask for my first name and middle initial. Almost every doctor I’ve ever seen calls me “Steve” and I long ago gave up correcting them. They’re working off a form, so I just let it go. I’ve also come to expect that a good portion of our mail will be addressed to Steve MacDonald.

Because our oldest son’s first name is Steve (his middle name is different) it sometimes happens that mail arriving at our house is really intended for him. Usually it’s pretty easy to tell but sometimes, like today, I wonder.

I got two slick advertising pieces in today’s mail. The first was for Pull-ups, the transitional half-diaper and half-underpant made by Huggies. The text on the front says, “Your Goal: Potty Success.”

The second was a 75-page mini-catalog from Frederick’s of Hollywood, an outfit that sells sexy lingerie.

There are way too many punch lines here.

Houston, we have a problem.
The new drawer fronts are painted and ready to install. So this evening I pulled out one of the old drawers and set about to take off its front.
FAIL.
The drawers themselves are made out of a cheap pressboard and put together with staples. I think the guy who did the stapling drank his lunch, because the staples go every which way. Pulling off that first drawer front did a number on the pressboard. What do I do now? Do I make 12 new drawers out of better material? Make just the front piece of the drawers so I have good material to glue my drawer fronts to? Try to hobble together the damaged piece so it will hold up?
A complicating factor: my parents arrive Thursday for a 6-day visit. Nobody here wants torn up kitchen drawers when they arrive.

Most people think of a sermon as a 35-minute event on Sunday mornings. For the preacher the sermon also includes the time he spent studying the passage and then writing the sermon. What happens on Sunday morning is just the culmination of those prior two elements. So when a preacher talks about a difficult sermon it may be because the passage involved tricky interpretive issues, or that he struggled to construct an outline with good structure and flow, or that some aspect of the delivery presented problems.

This Sunday’s sermon qualifies as one of those difficult sermons. We’ll be in 1 Tim. 2:8-15, a passage that includes teaching on the role of women in the church. For all the fuss made about this section of Scripture the interpretive issues aren’t all that complex. Following Paul’s flow pretty much writes the sermon. And delivering the truth of this passage means nothing more than standing up and saying, “Thus saith the Lord.”

So what makes it difficult?
The fact that what Paul says flies in the face of contemporary Western culture.

That doesn’t happen very often. The ethical teachings of the NT, while widely ignored, are generally accepted as virtuous. The Bible’s key theological teachings offend some outside the faith, but for those of us who describe ourselves as evangelicals those basic truths have always defined us. However, the topic of the role of women in the church has the power to offend sensitivities in almost any setting. The tremendous advances in the area of women’s rights made in our society over the last 30 or 40 years don’t accord well with the archaic and chauvinistic views of the NT...do they?

The studying is done, the sermon is written. All that remains is the delivery of God’s Word on Sunday morning. I pray earnestly that it will be presented with faithfulness to the Word and with effectiveness for his people.