Some of us preach, literally, from pulpits. But all of us—whether from pulpits or picket lines, in parlors or bedrooms or supermarkets, from our places of work and leisure (seekers, believers and doubters; ordained or not)—all of us are always preaching with our lives.
So how to preach? With compassion—because we're all sinners (and we all know, deep down, that we are, even after we've discovered neurotic or patriarchal or other socially induced inner sources of self-condemnation). We're all sinners. And we're all folk on our way towards death, the death of this body and of this achingly familiar identity which— with all its fuzziness and its defects and tribulations—can mean so much to us. We're going to lose ourselves and what's worse we're going to lose each other.
A kind of common sense of compassion sometimes wells up in us for one another when we lose (even if just for a while) our dryness and our defensiveness and our judgmental spirit and our self-preoccupation, and we recognize our common condition and the humanity of our neighbor.
How much more grasp on us does that compassion have when the Gospel sinks home to us...
For what one of us is in any way equal to, commensurate with (as some might say) leave alone remotely worthy of the scandal of the Gospel—the word from God and by God to us—that...that "your sins are forgiven," yours and mine? Lay that burden down. Lay that burden down.
As for death—"the last enemy to be destroyed is death," but destroyed. "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Thanks be to God who gives us—gives us, you know, the special sentries among us and just ordinary burnt-out, vulnerable, wounded, defensive, doubtful, often bitter and self-serving people—people like me and, perhaps, like you (whatever post we occupy)—thanks be to God who gives to us the victory over sin and death, gives to us the victory through our crucified sovereign Jesus Christ, whose very power to change us is compassion.
Coleman Brown
So how to preach? With compassion—because we're all sinners (and we all know, deep down, that we are, even after we've discovered neurotic or patriarchal or other socially induced inner sources of self-condemnation). We're all sinners. And we're all folk on our way towards death, the death of this body and of this achingly familiar identity which— with all its fuzziness and its defects and tribulations—can mean so much to us. We're going to lose ourselves and what's worse we're going to lose each other.
A kind of common sense of compassion sometimes wells up in us for one another when we lose (even if just for a while) our dryness and our defensiveness and our judgmental spirit and our self-preoccupation, and we recognize our common condition and the humanity of our neighbor.
How much more grasp on us does that compassion have when the Gospel sinks home to us...
For what one of us is in any way equal to, commensurate with (as some might say) leave alone remotely worthy of the scandal of the Gospel—the word from God and by God to us—that...that "your sins are forgiven," yours and mine? Lay that burden down. Lay that burden down.
As for death—"the last enemy to be destroyed is death," but destroyed. "Death is swallowed up in victory."
Thanks be to God who gives us—gives us, you know, the special sentries among us and just ordinary burnt-out, vulnerable, wounded, defensive, doubtful, often bitter and self-serving people—people like me and, perhaps, like you (whatever post we occupy)—thanks be to God who gives to us the victory over sin and death, gives to us the victory through our crucified sovereign Jesus Christ, whose very power to change us is compassion.
Coleman Brown
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