Tag Archives: Preaching

LitBit Commentary – Robert Jenson on Forgiveness

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LitBits: Whether it be the preaching of the gospel or “Hello”, a successful event of the word is an occasion on and in which a transforming vision of the future opens up, as the realistically entertainable future of the ones who are already there to be addressed, defined by all that has happened to them and to their world. Therefore for Christians “the word” is the word of forgiveness, which opens a future that is ours no matter what the past may have been.

Robert Jenson , Essays in theology of culture, p.42

 

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 8

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LitBit: The preacher needs to articulate the awful truth of human need, a need that many of the hearers may already know but for which they may have no words. The words of the sermon need to include the hearers together with all the outsiders and the sinners, using the terms of the texts as names for our sin and death and sorrow. There will be no insiders here; all of us need a word to say the truth about our common lot and all of us need a word in order to begin to believe again.

 

Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p51.

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 7

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LitBit: The preacher ought never to introduce a new text as “my text”, as if the preaching event were something other than what the assembly is doing as a whole. Even Jesus was handed the scroll of Isaiah. In the Christian community, all the members of the assembly need to know the texts, own the texts, be able to prepare the texts.

 

Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p49.

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 6

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Litbit: In the assembly, the preacher arises to bring to present articulation what the assembly is doing by gathering, reading Scripture, praying, and holding the meal on Sunday or on some other festival. Indeed, the juxtaposition of this sermon to the celebration of the Lord’s Supper makes it most clear that this a word that is to be eaten and drunk in faith, just as that is a meal that “preaches”, that makes proclamation into present need.”

 

Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p47.

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 5

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LitBit: When you open the book containing the gospels and read or hear how Christ comes here or there, of how someone is brought to him, you should therein perceive the sermon or the gospel through which he is coming to you, or you are being brought to him. For the preaching of the gospel is nothing else than Christ coming to us, or we being brought to him.

 

Martin Luther, in Gordon Lathrop’s The pastor, p49.

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 4

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LitBit: …this is what preaching is for: to show forth God and God’s grace, in the terms of the materials of the gathering – the texts, the sacraments, the assembly itself – so that the assembly and each of its participants may come again to faith. The ordo of the liturgy will then move on to urgent prayer to God for all the needy world, to that actual meal of faith, and to the sending of food to the hungry and witness to the world.

 

Gordon Lathrop, The pastor, p51.

 

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LitBit Commentary – Gordon Lathrop on Preaching 2

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Preaching is a trinitarian event: enlivened by the Spirit, the words of the preacher draw the hearer into the truth of our need, into the encounter with the Crucified-Risen One and so into faith and hope in God, into the communal life that flows from the presence of the life-giving Trinity. The preacher articulates, in the terms of the texts, what God has done and is doing in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, in Baptism and Eucharist, and in the faith that these things sustain.

Gordon Lathrop, The Pastor, p. 50

 

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BasisBits – Paragraph 10: Reformation Witnesses

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The Uniting Church continues to learn of the teaching of the Holy Scriptures in the obedience and freedom of faith, and in the power of the promised gift of the Holy Spirit, from the witness of the Reformers as expressed in various ways in the Scots Confession of Faith (1560), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), and the Savoy Declaration (1658). In like manner the Uniting Church will listen to the preaching of John Wesley in his Forty-Four Sermons (1793). It will commit its ministers and instructors to study these statements, so that the congregation of Christ’s people may again and again be reminded of the grace which justifies them through faith, of the centrality of the person and work of Christ the justifier, and of the need for a constant appeal to Holy Scripture.

From Paragraph 10 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

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BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

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BasisBits – Paragraph 9: Creeds

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The Uniting Church enters into unity with the Church throughout the ages by its use of the confessions known as the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed. The Uniting Church receives these as authoritative statements of the Catholic Faith, framed in the language of their day and used by Christians in many days, to declare and to guard the right understanding of that faith. The Uniting Church commits its ministers and instructors to careful study of these creeds and to the discipline of interpreting their teaching in a later age. It commends to ministers and congregations their use for instruction in the faith, and their use in worship as acts of allegiance to the Holy Trinity.

From Paragraph 9 of the Basis of Union (1992)

 

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BasisBits are intended particularly for congregations of the Uniting Church in Australia but could be easily adapted for general use by congregations of other denominations. The suggested use of BasisBits is as items in the “news” section of your Sunday pew sheets or regular congregational publications; some would lend themselves to incorporation into your liturgy order itself.

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