Annihilated by God: Death and resurrection in the pulpit

"In the act of preaching something dies and something rises. What dies (or should die) is the preoccupation with the self that plagues so many performers. This death is ironic, since some sense of 'self' is stimulated by God's call in the first place and is necessary for public speaking. The prophets are uniformly annihilated by a conversation with God, only to reappear as powerful individual performers of the word on God's behalf. They do not lack a sense of self."

Richard Lischer, The End of Words, 35

No need to make Jesus relevant

Challenging thoughts from Dr. Richard Lischer, especially as we conclude our advent preaching.  Does your preaching primarily move backward to the historical Jesus or forward to the risen Christ? 

"Because the risen Christ is alive and moving toward us from his own future, the preacher is not constrained to make him relevant as if Jesus were only a figure in the distant past. We do not have to prove that he is real because he is already here. We do not have to dig him up from his Sitz im Leben, for the movement of preaching is not backward to the historical Jesus but forward to the risen Christ."

Richard Lischer, The End of Words, 37-38.

From around the Web this week

A man in South Africa, thought to be dead by friends and family, woke up after spending 21 hours in a morgue refrigerator. Workers went screaming from the building after hearing his screams thinking he was a ghost. Lots of applications from this one from thoughts on the resurrection to what it's like to mistake a person for being dead.

CNN's Faith Blog listed ten things they learned in their first year of existence.  Included in their findings, Atheist like to comment on religious stories; Americans, though very religious, don't actually know much about religion; and people are still interested in the Bible.

What does your church communicate about its beliefs through its Sunday morning worship service?  Skye Jethani, senior editor of Leadership Journal writes about his 9-year-old daughter's encounter with two different churches: one liturgical and one contemporary.  In one church she notices the cross, the Bible, and communion.  In the other, she notices they have a coffee shop.  Worth your read.

Finally, to brag on my wife, she has written an excellent piece about grief, the church, and learning to worship not only with, but for one another.

Why you should take more risks this Sunday

I've been reading Will Willimon's, Calling and Character, a book on clergy ethics.  Far from being a dry read as the topic might imply, Willimon's words have deeply challenged me - especially his call for preachers to be bolder.  The resurrection of Jesus demands bold preaching.  He writes, "We ought to preach in such a way that, if Jesus has not been raised from the dead, then our sermons are utterly incomprehensible."  Later he broadens that challenge to include our entire ministries, "We ought to minister in such a reckless, utterly-dependent-upon-God sort of way that, if God has not vindicated the peculiar way of Jesus by raising him from the dead, then our ministry is ridiculous."

So, looking over your sermon for this Sunday, would your words make sense to your congregation without the reality of the resurrection?  Many sermons would - those, "here's a way to be a slightly better person than you were last week" kind of sermons.  The resurrection means more than that.  Maybe it's time for rewrite.  Maybe it's time to take some bigger risks.

See What a Morning

Illustration-a-day: Like the sun rising over the dark horizon

"At one time the world cringed in terror befor death, engaging in timid dreams of continued life, of wisps and shades of remaining vitality. But the coming of Christ was like the sun rising over the dark horizon: the shadows of fear, dread and terror fled at the blazing brilliance of the One who triumphed over death."

A.J. Conyers, The Eclipse of Heaven (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1992), 42.

Illustration-a-day: What God gave us in the resurrection

“In the resurrection, so we believe, God gave us that which we could never have on our own – a beyond.” – William H. Willimon, Undone by Easter: Keeping Preaching Fresh (Abingdon: Nashville, 2009), 9.

illustration-a-day:Best evidence for Easter

Clarence Jordan, author of the Cotton Patch Gospel, once wrote, “The crowning evidence that Jesus was alive was not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried away church.”

Illustration-a-day: The two reasons people don't believe in the resurrection

Wolfhart Pannenberg, one of the leading theologians of our day, explains, “The evidence for Jesus' resurrection is so strong that nobody would question it except for two things: First, it is a very unusual event. And second, if you believe it happened, you have to change the way you live.”