“Partnering with God”
September 10, 2007
So I preached yesterday - and I think it went pretty well for not having preached in a long time. I went back and forth between a more formal manuscript style of preaching, and a very informal conversational style. I want to be able to do the conversational style of preaching well - so I’m still working on that. Preaching class at Princeton certainly did not help me in that regard.
It was a small gathering yesterday - I think I counted 13 people, including Sarah and I. The best part were the comments I received after the sermon. I spoke a lot about technology, Wikipedia and open source things in the sermon. So, instead of having theological conversations after the sermon, I served as temporary tech-support. One very kind older gentleman approached and said, “That was a great sermon. But I just have two questions. First, how do I get to Wikipedia? And second, I just got a new email address for my wife, but I can’t figure out how to log on to AOL to retrieve her email. What do I do?” We had some good conversations at the coffee hour, but I did enjoy the fact that it was the “tech” stuff that stuck in the people’s minds the most.
If you would like to just read the sermon, you can find it here. Or if you’re interested in participating in a collaborative preaching experiment, go here for the instructions.
Tags: Preaching, Sermon, Wikipedia
Posted in Technology, Theology
Adam Walker Cleaveland: I am a 28 yr old 
September 10th, 2007 at 1:06 pm
“but I did enjoy the fact that it was the “tech” stuff that stuck in the people’s minds the most.”
Seriously? So that was what you wanted to the point and for people to remember even though you preaching?
That’s just weird to me. Not saying that every conversation after a sermon must involve themes like the gospel or the word, but really, I am thinking that if the main thing taken away from what I said was tech stuff, things weren’t what they should have been.
And maybe not all the comments went that way and some did contain the “main thing”, but if that is so, why push out the idea that you enjoy the fact the tech stuff was stuck most in people’s minds?
September 10th, 2007 at 1:10 pm
Rich - no. Sorry - guess the sarcasm didn’t carry through. When I said, “But I did enjoy the fact…” - I meant that it was humorous to me that it was those things that seemed to stick in their minds.
The tech stuff wasn’t the point of the sermon. Go read/skim the sermon, and you’ll see what I mean. It helped lead into my point - it wasn’t my goal that they would remember that stuff the most, it’s just slightly humorous to me that it turned out that way.
September 10th, 2007 at 1:16 pm
Gotcha. I’m dense. Not so weird now. Sarcasm is a tough one in print sometimes. :)
September 10th, 2007 at 1:40 pm
Good sermon!
But let it be known that even though Luther had his issues with James, he still adhered to a qualified idea of the “necessity” of faith bearing its fruits in action.
He gets sort of subtle about it - I can’t speak for the entire body of his works, but he definitely talks about the faith-works connection in his Galatians lectures. Basically, the point is first of all that works do not merit salvation (classic Luther here). Second, that faith is not something we accomplish ourselves, but that faith itself is a gift of God. As for works, whether before or after faith, they do not merit salvation, because only the righteousness of Christ, given to us by grace, merits us worthy of salvation, and nothing that we ourselves could do. However, the faith-works connection is yet a close one and has more to do with characterizing “true” faith. For Luther, at least in these Galatians lectures, faith necessarily bears fruit, and therefore a fruitless faith is not faith at all. That is to say, God-given faith necessarily manifests itself in good works (that are possible only because of God’s grace).
But Luther tries to ride a very fine line here, admittedly. Because he doesn’t (he can’t!) go so far as to make good works a post-faith requirement that good works again become law. That is to say, you can’t say that because you have faith, you MUST CHOOSE to do good works, because then the gospel has become law and you run the risk of viewing your human (read: broken, sinful) deeds as meritorious. Instead, he would say that because you have faith, you WILL do good works - that faith indeed bears fruit, and that faith without fruit is not really faith. It’s a really subtle difference, but important to Luther (and to Luther scholars).
In fact, there is a more recent strain of Luther interpretation that has come out of Finland that has incorporated the Eastern Orthodox idea of divinization into their reading of Luther. They would say that at the moment of faith, Christ actually comes to dwell in the believer such that all good works are not me or your or any human working, but are Christ literally acting through the believer. Luther himself, in the Galatians lectures, makes statements along the lines of “whenever I bear the fruits of faith, it’s not me acting, but Christ.”
So…not that you were really looking for a defense of Luther concerning good works…but hey, the fact that I could spit that all out means that I really must have gotten something out of Hendrix’s Luther class a year and a half ago! :)
September 10th, 2007 at 3:23 pm
Bro, at least they went away with something (albeit not what you primarily intended). I remember coming out of service more than once realizing that quite a few people had not heard a thing I said. Such is the nature of the whole endeavor. I like the blog re-design, by the way.