Metanoia and OTHER SERMONS

Book excerpt: The book is a collection of twenty-three sermons from the period of February through August, 2020. Each sermon is preceded – and thereby situated in the congregation – by that Sunday’s greeting and, after the church moved to online-only worship due to the outbreak of COVID-19, by the day’s “announcements.” The author considers his preaching style to be more irenic than competitive in spirit. If, though, there is homiletic competition going on in what he is doing here, it is, he says, with preachers (and with himself when he numbers among them) who are bent as preachers on being conservative or evangelical or liberal or progressive or idiosyncratic or entertaining or otherwise situated above the word that preachers as preachers must strive to submit to and serve. He intends his sermons as exercises in openness for the truth of God’s word – which word the church is ever on the verge of losing touch with and needing to learn anew to hear and heed. The sermons are neither feel-good nor finger-pointing. They are neither prosperity-promoting nor therapeutically oriented. They are not even an attempt to make the church sound relevant to the issues of the day. Rather, they simply aim at openness to the truth that sets us free for and in and through the faith and courage that Christ came bringing.