Would the Episcopal Church welcome more sermons which engage and unpack the text of the Bible?  I hope so.

Not entertaining sermons, not story telling sermons, not sermons about contemporary applications of Christian truths before we learn what those truths are, not even topical sermons.  I am all for appropriate humor from the pulpit, and all truth goes home on the back of a good story.  Certainly all true preaching needs to apply the Bible to life, not just the life of the individual but of society and the world at large.  And, yes, topical sermons have their place, but the trouble is the preacher chooses the topics and so certain (unpleasant? difficult?) topics invariably are ignored.

Yet I am pleading for sermons where a woman leaves worship saying: I never noticed that truth embedded in 1 Corinthians 15 before, did you?  Where a man departs in silence and spends the day praying over a passage because the preacher in her words got him so excited about that section of Scripture he just had to dig deeper into it himself.

One 20th century statement of faith, whose primary author was an Anglican, declared: “We … affirm the power of God's word to accomplish his purpose of salvation.  The message of the Bible is addressed to all men and women...  Through it the Holy Spirit still speaks today.  He illumines the minds of God's people in every culture to perceive its truth freshly through their own eyes…”

In a similar vein, Isaiah 55:10-11 says: “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and return not thither but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

I say hooray for preachers such as the Rev. Alison Barfoot and the Rev. Fleming Rutledge who see expounding the text of the Bible as the preacher’s central task.

If Jacob had his life changed from wrestling with God at the Jabbok (Genesis 34), what would happen to us if we wrestled just as hard with the text of Scripture?

The Rev. Canon Dr. Kendall S. Harmon

Contact Dr Harmon by e-mail at ksharmon@mindspring.com