RoboPreacher

i was once afraid of heights A sermon on the Beginning of the Bible ( Himself ): Referencing Seinfeld  never goes well. But I can’t help myself! The show is a masterpiece ! The care and craft that went into it are lovingly conspicuous. The intricacy with which the jokes are set up and the aplomb with which the punchlines are delivered all betray the very premise upon which the show itself was based! If you didn’t already know, and I hope you do, Seinfeld is famously about Nothing . A car lost in a parking lot, gum-chewing, a wink, soft-talkers, traffic, waiting for a table, and “yada, yada, yada.” These are all fair game. And rather than flopping , all these nonstarters turn out to be raw material for some of the best television ever created! That’s a bold claim. But it holds up. The genius of Seinfeld was the realization that those parts of life we consider insignificant are really prime material for   great comedy . And upon reviewing their opus, you’ve got to han...

any other, any other way Sermon on the Creation Story in Genesis 1 This is so nerdy, but it’s a true story… During my senior year of college I did an independent study on justification and the way other theologians deal with this surprising thing God has done in Jesus Christ. I was trying to get my mind around Reinhold Niebuhr. But to keep justification front and center, I was also reading Gerhard Forde’s book, “Justification by Faith; a Matter of Death and Life.”   The semester was getting on, and I was in the library late, reading Forde’s section dealing with the battle of the wills between human freedom and God’s election.   And he made the point; if we’re so darn free, how come no matter what our knee jerk reaction is that we’re the free ones.   And he went on, adding; for our so called freedom, we always windup doing what we can to maintain our own control rather than the real freedom God has given us in Jesus Christ.   And reading t...