I’ve been reading a lot (the better to write inspiring sermons, my dear). I always read as much I can to prolong the exegesis phase and avoid working on the sermon. I always read Calvin and Matthew Henry, plus whatever dead-tree commentaries I have for the passage I’m working on.

Beside that, I read Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, about the (mis-)transmission of the Bible (mainly the NT) from Elder Days to the present. I really enjoyed the first half of it, which explains how Scripture came to be corrupted and how scholars try to reconstruct the original. The second half wasn’t as much fun. I often agreed with the author’s evaluation of the “correct” reading, while disliking how he arrived there. It’s difficult enough to attribute motives to someone we know first hand (sometimes, even ourself!). Doing it for some anonymous monk 1500 years ago is ridiculous.

I’ve also been reading Warren’s The Purpose Driven Church and realized that mine doesn’t have one. Or, if it does, they haven’t told me yet.

And lately I’ve been reading Ortberg’s God is Closer Than You Think. It’s pretty good. I’ve never been a Brother Lawrence type, so I can use all the help I can get in this department.

Also I discovered how much more fun Flickr is when you have a program to do your uploads for you. Here’s a picture of my neighborhood:

It’s been busy, what with the usual administrative work at church, plus two funerals and Holy Week. (Four services, three sermons in 8 days.) So I haven’t been blogging, it’s true. But I’m about tired of WordPress upgrades. They are pushing out changes about as often as I add a blog entry. And it’s such a pain in the butt to do the upgrade. It’s never just a file or two. It’s always 6932 lines of changes in 83 files. Sigh.

I just had my first vacation since becoming a pastor: a week off, starting last Monday and concluding today. We went to the beach and chilled. I met some people from seminary at the church I attended there, and I got to see the sun set over Santa Cataline island:

(Click on the photo for a larger version.) The amazing thing about these is that they are straight out of the camera and resized for the web. Period. No punching up the colors, nothing. Whoa.

My first class in seminary taught me the importance of Route 66. (The 6’s remind me of the 6 principal parts of the Greek verb, you see.) So the last time I traveled across country I made it a point to stop at one of the Route 66 museums along America’s “Mother Road.”

Continue reading →

Today when I was doing some research about clerical vestments, I ran across this picture:

(Original found here.)

Something about that photo…
Continue reading →

I made some updates to old posts instead of writing new ones. (If you understand this pattern of behavior, you’ll understand why I want to install a wiki instead of a blog.) Anyway, I don’t have anything to write. (Now. Later I’ll update this. See above.)

We’ve got family here for Thanksgiving. Right now, they’re off climbing rocks or something. Good weather for it: high overcast but the temperature’s in the 70s.

Me, I’ve been at work, writing a sermon about how Christ is a king. I get to talk about history, viz., Pontius Pilate — did Mel Gibson give him a pass with that Noble Roman portrait in The Passion? — and theology, viz., the 3-fold office of Christ and dialectic eschatology.

The text is from John. Which I have no good commentaries for. But I do have some Bible dictionaries and theology textbooks, hence, Pilate and dialectic eschatology. It’s not that I’m writing a bad sermon. It’s just that it isn’t as anchored in the text as I might like. Or to put it another way, the texts I’m exegeting aren’t the Bible. Anyway, before I left work I ordered some commentaries from Amazon. I had previously gotten Luke squared away, since Year C starts in just 10 days, but I hadn’t planned ahead for all these random Johannine texts they scatter around throughout the liturgical year.

Here’s a self portrait of me at work. Enjoy.

I’m trying to begin a pastor-led Bible study next Monday, where we (me and whoever else attends) study the passage on which I will preach the following Sunday. Then, on Tuesday, I can write my sermon, incorporating any good ideas that came up on Monday. I get to expand the number of people from which I steal ideas, and the congregation gets to hear better ideas than I would have hatched on my own. It’s a win-win thing.

A fine idea, so far as it goes, but it requires me to do double exegesis this week: first, for the sermon I’m writing this week to preach on Sunday, and then second, for that class the day after Sunday (“Monday”). This means that when I’m reading yet-another-commentary, I have to carefully keep track of which text it is that I’m procrastinating with.