Sermon Audio Reports: Wangerin, McLaren, Buechner, Capon, Foster, Groome

I have been listening to more sermon audio. See a list of lectures and sermons available at my earlier posting here.

Probably the biggest delight was a sermon by Walter Wangerin on The Manger is Empty. It is interspersed with music by Ken Medema. I will give away the final line since you will probably not listen to it. Like the babydoll Jesus in the manger in a Christmas play represents the exalted Christ, so the body in the coffin at a funeral represents a deeper reality. Great story – worth listening to – even though it isn’t Christmas-time. (Wangerin has written my favorite book on marriage As For Me and My House).

It was interesting to hear more about how Brian McLaren started Cedar Ridge Community Church. He reminisces about this and other things in his "Road Ahead" swan song series from January 2006. He is stepping down as Senior Pastor at the end of the month. They have a new pastor, Matthew Dyer, coming from the UK (I believe). McLaren talks about how he attended an Episcopal church in the early 1980’s and had a booming small group (60 people) studying the Bible – some Christians and some not. He had hoped to start a church in cooperation with the church he was attending but because it was across the river, it was in a different diocese. For this and other reasons, it didn’t work out to do with them so he branched off independently.

He remembers most fondly meeting with the one other elder in the church in the early days for breakfast at Denny’s and then going and praying in one of their cars afteward. McLaren uses Paul’s farewell speech to the Ephesian elders as the basis for his comments. What I like about McLaren is his pastoral ability to say things in everyday language with the right sensitivity. (He does not do this in his fiction because he is trying to be thought-provoking.) His ten commandments on how to treat the next pastor are brilliant.

I also found a site with lots more sermon audio. There I listened to two short reflections by esteemed author Frederick Buechner. In "A Moment of Grace" Buechner reflects on an experience he had with Maya Angelou. Angelou commented that despite the obvious fact that she is an African-American woman and he is a Caucasian male, her story and Buechner’s "are the same story." Angelou then relates an incident of racism where a man calls some white soldiers "our boys." Buechner asks if the reconciliation that later occurs might be paradigmatic for churches today. Why not admit our sin and then be reconciled to one another? In the second reflection, Buechner tells a story about his alchololic father (who later committed suicide) and then reflects how someone told him: "you were a good steward of your pain." Buechner talks about other ways of dealing with pain such as ignoring it but explains that our pain can be the source of our greatest passion and gifts to the world. I thought Buechner’s voice and style sounded a bit like Larry Crabb – who I like to listen to.

I read a short article from a Oct 8, 1990 Christianity Today about Buechner which I thought was an excellent introduction to his thought and life. Earlier today, I was reaffirming to myself the need to tell stories when we communicate. I loved this section from the CT article on Buechner’s understanding of preaching and will remember especially his words in red below.

Buechner’s concern to communicate theological truth with careful nuance and "eye-catching" style represents more than an artisan’s pride in his work. He bemoans much contemporary Christian preaching and writing as anemic in style, lacking passion and color. Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale (1977), the published version of his Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale on preaching, stresses again and again, "The news of the Gospel is that extraordinary things happen."
"If you’re a theologian writing a sytematic theology," Buechner says, "perhaps you don’t need to worry so much about being creative and imaginative with the words; you’re mainly interested in clarity. But if you are preaching or doing apologetics, it’s crucial to do it as vividly and passionately as you can manage. If you want what you’re writing about to come alive, you’ve got to know what it looks like and smells like and feels like. The magic of words is that they have power to do more than convey meaning; not only do they have the power to make things clear, they make things happen."

I so appreciate Buechner’s perspective here. I think so much preaching is indeed "anemic in style, lacking passion and color" and in general I like Buechner’s solution. The only thing I would add is the need to be deeply rooted in the Scriptures.

I was glad to see that he had a positive experience at Wheaton College. I have a friend, John Noble, doing his Ph.D. in Old Testament at Harvard University so I was considering applying to Harvard Divinity School for my Th.D. Plus, I have so enjoyed publications from Harvard Business School. But I decided against it for various reasons. It is interesting to see that even the non-evangelical Buechner was caught off guard by the atheist(s) in his classes when he taught there.

Today I also heard Maya Angelou giving her reflections on the death of Coretta Scott King on the One Hour Special on NPR. She wanted to clarify that Martin was never intent on divorcing Coretta as at least one biography has insinuated. She reminisced about late night chats with her friend Coretta. This article says that she attends three churches: one in San Francisco, one in DC and one in her hometown. Her poem "Christian" is excellent – explaining that saying she is a Christian is not because she is perfect but because she is needy.

I also listened to a quick sermon on the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 by Robert Farrar Capon. Andy Crouch, (Christianity Today writer who my students and I just met with in January) and Loren Wilkinson (one of my professors at Regent College) have highly recommended Capon. Andy and Loren’s lives reflect the importance of meals, simplicity, rejection of extraneous technology and fellowship. The unique insight from Capon’s exegesis is that he suggests that the older brother already owned the farm and the fatted calf. I think that could be the case but I’m not convinced. It seems in the story that the father is still quite in charge even if he has given away 1/2 of his inheritance to the younger brother. I doubt he has given the other 1/2 to the older brother yet. That though is a cultural issue that perhaps a good New Testament scholar could uncover for us. I would need to look it up in the Luke commentaries (Bock, Bovon, Evans, Fitzmyer, Green, Marshall) for a start or Craig Keener’s IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament.

I also listened to a short sermon by Richard Foster of Celebration of Discipline fame. He suggested from 1 John 3:20 that there may be things that we condemn ourselves for that God does not condemn us for. We may feel bad because we are fat or made a bad business decision but God does not condemn us.

1 John 3:20 TNIV
20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

I think Foster is right in that surely God does not condemn us for those things he mentioned but I’m not sure if that is what this text is about. Foster acknowledges that the more obvious explanation is that John is here reassuring his readers that "there is nothing you have done that God isn’t big enough to forgive" (my paraphrase). I think this is most likely interpretation but again I would be interested in seeing what the commentaries (Brown, Marshall, Smalley, Akin, Burge, Kruse, Meye Thompson, Stott) say.

I also listened to a retelling of the story of Jairus by Thomas Groome. I use Groome’s Christian Religious Education and Sharing Faith as textbooks in my teaching and curriculum classes. Groome, a Catholic professor at Boston College, retells the story in first person which is actually quite engaging. Groome is known for his very dense prose.

I also listened to a sermon by Will Willimon (the pastor to pastors, former Duke chaplain, and now a bishop) but my baby was crying so I didn’t get as much out of it. I plan on listening again to a meaty lecture by Yale theologian and acclaimed author Miroslav Volf on "Kingdom and Calling."