Dog In A Raincoat
Why so stingy with the challenging, confronting and requiring some period of self-reflection? Isn’t this what should go on every week? How can anyone preach a sermon based on the Bible that is not challenging and confronting and requiring self-reflection? If ones beliefs are re-enforced I don’t think the preacher could be reading the Bible very carefully. That kind of Pastoral sermon can only come from running ones eyes over the selected text while inserting some vacuous long held interpretation first encountered in Sunday School (which by the way no one should have pleasant memories of—it should be a scary and exciting, amazingly alive and developmentally inappropriate—but not pleasant).
I sermon should always contain in it elements of destabilization. Any truth claim made should contain the seeds of that which will deconstruct its self. After all this is God we are talking about—any understanding we may come to will eventually be undone.
I do not think I am alone in wanting to be destabilized, undone and overturned by the One who comes, who loves and with the assurance that I am liked by that One even as I am fully known.
Why would someone want to have his or her beliefs reinforced? That is only pretending to want to know God. It ceases to be anything like God that one continues to preach about or believe in.
Why does a dog need a raincoat? A dog has this amazing fur that has adapted over eons that actually protect it and keeps it just fine in the rain. Someone who puts a rain coat on a dog obviously invests a lot emotionally in that dog, but doesn’t seem to know that much about dogs—our understanding of God must be destabilized by the text, by the sermon or else we are just leading god around by a leash looking silly with an outfit that matches ours. Maybe it is best for that dog to bite the fool.
