Sermon Sickness
A scary glimpse into my wrestling through Matthew 2:13-23 in the lectionary?
Here’s my sermon topic dead ends:
Slaughter of innocents: Confusing allusions to Exodus, who’s the bad guy? Herod kills firstborns and so does God in Exodus. Is Jesus Israel but then whose Pharaoh? Ugh.
Killing babies: This topic bleeds into the story but how do we navigate the abortion and life issue in a text without hijacking it and making it say what we want it to say? When is the last time you heard a emergent or evangelical talk about life, the womb and abortion in a redemptive yet truthful way? I know, not in a long time because it’s easier to avoid it knowing we probably got women, families and people struggling with the possible choice or the aftermath. Ugh.
References to 3 Prophets: Hosea, Jeremiah and Isaiah are all verse lifted, a practice we poo poo on in teaching people proper biblical exegesis. Jesus as fulfillment of Isarel’s Egypt and Exile stories seems applicable but tying that together is like knitting a shirt out of spider webs, it sticks here and there but tears apart here and there too.
Holy Family fleeing to Egypt: Seems like a good place to connect Jesus to the plight of the poor, particularly refugees in our case but…Egypt was a Roman province with Jewish population, work and hey Joe was carrying a lot of gold from those newage backpackers that showed up at his house following astrological charts.
Sermon forging is tough work for my little brain.
Update: I awoke with the phrase: "Look at this as an artist." So, I took the three times the chapter says: "what The Lord has said through the prophet(s)" and approached the images, the threads and looked at them as colors, or notes in a piece of art. Parts of a whole, formed together like elements in a painting, song or story. Individually, apart from the whole, they look odd and out of place. But when a master artist takes that one element and connects, places it or weave it into the grand picture, then it finds it's perfect place. It tells a story that's bigger than the story of itself. This is at the center of understanding the old story in light of the new story. Christ is embodying, outliving, retelling, reframing, renewing, redeeming and ultimately has and is fulfilling God's story.