Holy week services – Wednesday


Chalk and cheese!

Compared to last night’s sermon tonight was so much better. Actually, that’s not being fair – tonight’s sermon was very good regardless of comparison. Excellent exegesis and excellent application of John 13:1-17.

I was speaking with some others who were at the service last night and they too were complaining that it was poor. One of them went home quite upset and angry about it and later concluded that God was much bigger than that anyway and could work through even the inadequacies.

I doubt I’ll comment on tomorrow’s sermon as that’s from my own minister and that wouldn’t be appropriate.


5 responses to “Holy week services – Wednesday”

  1. I’m left wondering what the ‘upset’ was caused by. Something said ? Not said ? It may be that the person didn’t like what was said (if it was that) because it confrionted something in them that need that.
    It’s a pity to here of such judgemental statements, given the pious justification.
    Easter takes us to places that we’d rather not go to, but we have to make the journey to begin to realise the enormity of what was achieved for us.

  2. I think I presented the Tuesday sermon in a more rosy light than it deserved. It had cheesy illustrations which did nothing to explain the passage and, in fact, distorted the meaning of the passage. It picked and chose scripture to back up a point – not always relevantly. It ’emphasised’ a point by citing ‘three different examples’ which were actually all the same example, just recorded in each of the synoptic gospels. It had little or no application and it didn’t actually address the posed question, “Why the cross?” other than to state “because Jesus had to!”.
    The person who was upset about the message is a CofS reader (not this presbytery) and was upset and annoyed at the misrepresentation of the Gospel in the sermon.

  3. Thanks for the clarification. I’m still a bit concerned about the pious justification… God was much bigger than that etc.
    I have heard critiques of sermons in that regard before and found myself worried about the criticiser as well as the preacher.
    I’m not defending what was said (I can’t, not being there at the time)but there may have been reasons why what was said was delivered in the manner it was.
    All we can do is hope that the preacher did not intend the ‘distortion’/’misrepresentation’ that took place.
    Wasn’t expecting to get contentious in Holy Week !

  4. I don’t think the misrepresentation was deliberate. I think it was done simply through ignorance of the implications of what was said. Mind you, I don’t think that excuses the cheesy illustrations.

  5. I can accept that !! Illustrations have to be appropriate to the context and not necessarily and end in themselves. You can sometimes get away with what you are calling cheesy ones if the context is appropriate. Clearly they were not earlier in the week.
    I await further thoughts (especially from your home church)

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