... that my sermon this morning went well. Thank you Lord! Well, that's at least according to my point of view. I suppose it would be better to let the hearers judge.
But I preached with a blessed sense of peace, the kind of peace that comes beyond understanding (Phil 4). More importantly, I believe I remained faithful to the text. So even if my delivery was horrible (which I don't think it was), I did not mislead people.
I think what keeps me from saying an unequivocal "yes" to preaching the Word week-in week-out is just this: faithfulness. Having heard what's being said "in the name of God" in churches, I don't want to add greater confusion to what many already perceive to be a confusing message coming out of the church.
The church is so fragmented nowadays, that our message is not coming through clearly. Everyone preaches according to their own "tradition". Rather than having one Pope as the Roman Catholics do, we in the Protestant tradition have made everyone into a pope. Pick and choose your "options", based on the "tradition" that seems most in line with your personality. Whoever had the idea of linking the life of the church with personality is off, way off. The point of church is to get us beyond personality, right into the presence of God.
Having said that, the idea of a Pope is not exactly Christian, either. I like the way the early church termed the bishop of Rome as "the first among equals". Regrettably, sin found it's way in, or rather, sin found its way out of the human heart, and thus the schism between East and West. It seems to me that the Orthodox Church has got it right, in naming a number of geographical bishops to oversee the direction of the church, and to boot, they work out of consensus, in line with the book of Acts where the early church moved forward on something only when it "seemed right to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15).
The Anglican Church has a similar setup, except, we lack the testicular fortitude to call a spade a spade, to call sin sin. We have drunk too much of the fountain of Enlightenment, and consequently, we believe that we (the human race) are getting smarter and smarter, and it's only a matter of time until sin is eradicated. And so for us Anglicans we bless everything in sight, because after all, "it's all good." Of course, this is exactly opposite to the message of the gospel. The incarnation was part of the plan of the Father's precisely because it's not all good.
Where was I going with this rant? Oh right, I remember: all this, to say that the more I read and learn about the Orthodox Church, the more I'm compelled to say that it's the "one true church." At least structurally, they are organized in a way that doesn't make anyone into the Pope (thus, they can truly say "and the Holy Spirit led us"), and they are able to deal with sin in the church in a way that other ecclesial structures are either unable or unwilling to deal with.
Anyways, this whole post was supposed to be about me and my sermon. Maybe my excursion into matters of ecclesiology shows that I'm not as much of a narcissist as I thought I was. Ha!
Thank you Lord for your presence in the church. Thank you for leading and guiding us. May you, Lord Jesus, feed our souls, our bodies, our whole beings.
But I preached with a blessed sense of peace, the kind of peace that comes beyond understanding (Phil 4). More importantly, I believe I remained faithful to the text. So even if my delivery was horrible (which I don't think it was), I did not mislead people.
I think what keeps me from saying an unequivocal "yes" to preaching the Word week-in week-out is just this: faithfulness. Having heard what's being said "in the name of God" in churches, I don't want to add greater confusion to what many already perceive to be a confusing message coming out of the church.
The church is so fragmented nowadays, that our message is not coming through clearly. Everyone preaches according to their own "tradition". Rather than having one Pope as the Roman Catholics do, we in the Protestant tradition have made everyone into a pope. Pick and choose your "options", based on the "tradition" that seems most in line with your personality. Whoever had the idea of linking the life of the church with personality is off, way off. The point of church is to get us beyond personality, right into the presence of God.
Having said that, the idea of a Pope is not exactly Christian, either. I like the way the early church termed the bishop of Rome as "the first among equals". Regrettably, sin found it's way in, or rather, sin found its way out of the human heart, and thus the schism between East and West. It seems to me that the Orthodox Church has got it right, in naming a number of geographical bishops to oversee the direction of the church, and to boot, they work out of consensus, in line with the book of Acts where the early church moved forward on something only when it "seemed right to the Holy Spirit and to us" (Acts 15).
The Anglican Church has a similar setup, except, we lack the testicular fortitude to call a spade a spade, to call sin sin. We have drunk too much of the fountain of Enlightenment, and consequently, we believe that we (the human race) are getting smarter and smarter, and it's only a matter of time until sin is eradicated. And so for us Anglicans we bless everything in sight, because after all, "it's all good." Of course, this is exactly opposite to the message of the gospel. The incarnation was part of the plan of the Father's precisely because it's not all good.
Where was I going with this rant? Oh right, I remember: all this, to say that the more I read and learn about the Orthodox Church, the more I'm compelled to say that it's the "one true church." At least structurally, they are organized in a way that doesn't make anyone into the Pope (thus, they can truly say "and the Holy Spirit led us"), and they are able to deal with sin in the church in a way that other ecclesial structures are either unable or unwilling to deal with.
Anyways, this whole post was supposed to be about me and my sermon. Maybe my excursion into matters of ecclesiology shows that I'm not as much of a narcissist as I thought I was. Ha!
Thank you Lord for your presence in the church. Thank you for leading and guiding us. May you, Lord Jesus, feed our souls, our bodies, our whole beings.
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