{"id":623,"date":"2010-06-21T11:40:37","date_gmt":"2010-06-21T18:40:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/?p=623"},"modified":"2010-06-21T11:41:59","modified_gmt":"2010-06-21T18:41:59","slug":"pssst-youre-mortal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/21\/pssst-youre-mortal\/","title":{"rendered":"Pssst! You’re Mortal!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Supposedly, when a conquering general returned to Rome and was given a triumph<\/a> to celebrate his victory, a slave would ride with him in the chariot, holding a wreath above his head but whispering in his ear “Remember you are a mortal.” Sometimes I feel that way after a sermon.<\/p>\n

A while ago, I went through a period of several weeks where my sermons just didn’t seem to work well. The idea was fine, but I never felt satisfied with my ability to communicate it. And, judging from the faces looking back at me, I think it rubbed off on the congregation. If I communicated much, it seemed to be my vague dissatisfaction with the sermon.<\/p>\n

Eventually, my “bad streak” ended. (I say “bad streak” because of my perception of the sermon and its impact, but of course I have very little insight as to how God may have used my words to speak grace to the assembled faithful.)<\/p>\n

Finally, after several weeks, I preached a sermon that I<\/em> liked. More of the faces out there seemed to be following me. Great day.<\/p>\n

It was a great day for about 2 minutes, at least. Then this dear saint came up to me after the service to offer a critique of the sermon. She told me she didn’t appreciate it when I’d said Jesus was talking “crazy talk.”<\/p>\n

It’s true; I’d said that. I’d been talking about how the things Jesus said didn’t make any sense according to the world’s standards. And the way I said that was that Jesus said a lot of crazy talk.<\/p>\n

And I was right. The woman was clearly wrong about Jesus. People who heard him face to face thought he had a demon<\/a>. They grumbled<\/a> about his “hard sayings.” They said his disciples were turning the world upside down<\/a>. If you think everything Jesus said is self-evident and obvious, you either live in a bubble that keeps you isolated from the world — which I doubt — or — more likely — you have completely missed the point.<\/p>\n

But that’s not what bugged me about this woman. My real frustration was that I wanted to enjoy my triumph and this woman was whispering in my ear that I was mortal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Supposedly, when a conquering general returned to Rome and was given a triumph to celebrate his victory, a slave would ride with him in the chariot, holding a wreath above his head but whispering in his ear “Remember you are a mortal.” Sometimes I feel that way after a sermon. A while ago, I went […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,23],"tags":[84,82,85,86,83],"class_list":["post-623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christianity","category-life","tag-crazy","tag-only-human","tag-preaching","tag-theology","tag-triumph"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paRqpr-a3","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/accretiondisc.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}