Grace Mondays

I've noticed, both in my own preaching and when I teach preaching, that it is very easy to describe the problem, and all too easy to neglect a robust exposition of the Good News. In Lutheran terms, we spend four days of the week working on the Law, and then tack on some Gospel on Saturday night. When we work on human need, sin, or "the problem," we can be specific, tactile, story-filled and relevant. When we get to Grace, we lapse into cliche, jargon and past tense.

So my new discipline is to work out the end of my sermon first. Where am I headed? What is the Good News, for now, today, in terms people can understand and hear? I'm not sure I got as specific as I'd like in yesterday's sermon, but here's where it ended:

In this place, as we’ve had conversations about what it means to follow, there will be unanswered questions. Some of them may be answered along the way. Some of them, to be honest, won’t be answered until we live into the answers. Some maybe aren’t the right questions in the first place.

But what we do know is that Jesus is calling us, from this place, from where we are, exactly as we are, with all our anxieties and worries, all our pride and certainty that we have it right, all our distractions and concerns about everything But God.

That’s OK. Jesus doesn’t need us to know what we want.

He wants to change what we want. He wants us to seek God’s kingdom, to follow, and everything else, everything, will follow from that.