Liminality

Standing ‘six cubits and a span’ theologian Ralph Klein says Goliath would be 9’9” carrying 127 pounds of armor. Goliath is big. He’s mean. And he stands on the fault lines of war calling out to Saul to send out his best warrior to fight. At that moment David, a goat herder, walks into the temple courts and demands to see the king. He stands confidently as he reels off his credentials before Saul saying, “I’ ve saved lambs from lions and I can save you from the Philistines. For it is not me that will win this fight but rather YHWH .” So Saul clothes David with his armor but to no avail. It’s too heavy. He sheds it, picks up a sling and a rock, and heads out onto the battlefield. Goliath is fit to be tied when he sees it’s a boy the Israelites have selected to fight him. So he runs after him with an armor bearer. And David takes off running too. Scripture says as Goliath charged with a sword, spear and javelin but David charges with the Lord of Hosts. What a...

The majority of my sermons are transferable. In other words, I write them generically in order to use them in different contexts and settings without changing much of the verbiage. I used to pride myself on being able to write this way, but now I’m learning that this is not always the best preaching practice. Diana Butler Bass reminds me in her book The Practicing Congregation that preachers must speak out of their own narrative, in their own time, to their own people. To do anything else is to soften or neglect the importance of the gospel for that community of grace. Tom Long’s The Witness of Preaching takes this image a step further and argues that preachers are only preachers because they are birthed out of a congregation and given the holy task of witnessing . Witnessing, Long argues, takes on two forms: seeing and speaking. A witness may go to the biblical text with eagerness and readiness to see or she/he may stumble upon something unintended. Regardless, i...

For whatever reason, now, I find myself in a liminal space reflecting as I gear up for another semester of marriage, school, ministry, recruiting, traveling, speaking, learning, preaching, and pastoring. And I’m noticing a trend – it’s difficult to live out of my “best” self. In other words, the rat race of life, scheduling, recruiting, preaching, etc. break me down, loosen my screws, and distort my perception of productivity. I think I’m managing but in reality I’m coping. I replace peace with prestige and tranquility with titles. I get absorbed in what I need to get done and overlook or dismiss the people closest to me. I get angry when something causes me to look bad and get upset with myself for getting angry. Reflecting on this anger makes me hate myself. Hating myself causes me to doubt my ability to perform which causes me to distrust God’s calling on my life which generates endless insecurities about my own belovedness. In other words, I’m constantly living ou...