"What does it mean to pre-board? Do you get on before you get on?" - George Carlin

I can't remember being so angry after a sermon. That was four hours ago. When we got home I dug a 2' deep x 3' long trench and hauled a bunch of yard trimmings over to the burn pile in hopes that would work off some of the steam, but it didn't work. Maybe if I waited another few hours I'd calm down and write about something innocuous and pleasant, but what fun would that be?
Besides, I need the catharsis.

Before we got to the sermon...
I'm running out of patience with the narcissistic sentimentality of too much of contemporary "worship." I don't remember who said, "When we worship God is the audience" but his affirmation was never so needed. We sang (as we always do) four songs consecutively, the first three of which were dominated by the first person pronoun.
What God does for me.
I do remember who said, "It's not about you." (It's the first line in Rick Warren's book The Purpose Driven Life.)
By definition, worship is vertical and moves upward; the focus should be God. If, when I'm done singing, my sense is that we've just talked primarily about me and my life - even if it's to say how much God has blessed me - it may be a good song with a place in the totality of Christian music, but it lies on the outer edge of biblical worship.
We come together into his presence for one hour a week. Can we not sing a little more about God and less about me?

OK, the sermon.
First, I need to make clear that the pastor was out of town, so we had a substitute, a guy who's not a pastor/preacher. He's heads up the local chapter of a para-church ministry.

I've heard plenty of bad sermons (hey, I taught intro to homiletics for 10 years), including some that pushed bogus theology. But this went past that. It was bad theology, supported (?) by bad hermeneutics, and - sorry to say - dishonest methodology.

I won't bother going into the biblical passage or his proposition (I'm not sure he had one), just some of the low points.

• He used three versions of the Bible, ranging from "The Message" (oh my), to the NIV, to the NASB, depending on which one best supported what we wanted to say at the time. 
• He described the standard view of the passage, an interpretation with about 1,000 years of scholarship behind it, and then dismissed it as totally erroneous. Worse, he said it stems from a covert antisemitism that has characterized the historical evangelical church up until very recently. In its place he proposed an interpretation of the parable that just simply doesn't hold up to a plain reading of Scripture.
• He said this new view is now held by the best of contemporary scholarship, the vast majority of  current theologians. He quoted N.T. Wright as an example.
• Yeah, N.T. Wright. He's a now-retired Anglican theologian who has written some major works - as in bring a wheel barrow to carry them home. He's the author du jour for all those who want to do avant garde theology, someone who boldly dismisses a millennium of scholarship to tell us what the Bible really means. It was, frankly, inaccurate at best to say the majority of the most respected scholars now hold this new view. More accurate: Wright and his minions. But for probably everyone else in the room? They guy up in front might just as well be Wikipedia; of course that's accurate. 

So, I'm misinterpreting a basic biblical theme and doing so because I'm antisemitic. I'm also in denial, ignoring almost all current biblical scholarship. 

To top it all off he ended with a bogus interpretation of a Greek word at the end of the passage. But hey, it helped make his case. 

OK, writing all of that didn't help. 

My only consolation is that 99% of people who listen to a sermon can't tell you anything about it 15 minutes later. 

It's getting too dark to dig more trench, and we did a pretty thorough cleaning yesterday. 

Maybe I should fix me up a plate of BACON.