Festival of Homiletics: The Un-Homiletical Homecoming OR T-Minus 2 Months and Counting...

This is my final post from the Festival of Homiletics. I'm happy to say that the Big Lutheran Wrap-Up went very well - score one for the home team. Mary Hinkle Shore preached on today's passage from 1st Corinthians and had the entire assembly eating out of the palm of her hand within the first 45 seconds. Best of all, the body of the sermon was worthy of the great introduction. It was a sermon aimed at preachers, so while it probably wouldn't have flown in the congregation, I for one felt very, very edified by her proclamation.

David Lose gave a great lecture following worship. I'm pretty sure it was a short synopsis of his book Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a Post-Modern World, but it was still good to hear from him. What I noted was an emphasis in his title that I hadn't understood previously: I had thought his book title was emphasizing Jesus Christ, but in actuality, his particular point of emphasis is on Confessing. His argument, which I endorse whole-heartedly, is that our preaching (and indeed, the whole life of the church) must now center itself on confession of our belief in Jesus. In the post-modern world, empirical rationalism has become quite limited, but the church, for some reason, continued to insist that her claims could be empirically proven through bigger and better arguments, making 'the case for Christ' (if I might borrow from a well-known apologetics book). Lose believes, as do I, that the church's witness is most effective when we cease our efforts at argumentative coercion and manipulation - the safe road - and simply state our faith in the boldest, most vulnerable means possible - in the same way that God once boldly, vulnerably came among us in the life of Christ. Well, at least, that's the story in a nutshell.

Between that lecture and the final worship service, I ran into an old friend from campus ministry at the University of Nebraska. Turns out he's in a call 35 miles from my hometown these days. We didn't have a chance to talk a whole lot, but it was nice to see him again, and I realized that even if the conference had been a complete bomb, meeting all these new friends and catching up with old friends would have made the time pretty special on its own.

Finally, Fred Gaiser preached a poetic interpretation of the crossing of the Red Sea for our closing worship. "Something There Is That Doesn't Love A Wall" was his title, and joining Robert Frost to the Exodus narrative Gaiser made a moving case for the end of walls between God's people. Powerful stuff, exactly what I expected from the good Dr. Gaiser. Throw in some beautiful music from Beth Nielsen Chapman and a celtic worship group from Westminster Presbyterian, and you had a lovely morning of worship. All in all, a great end to a great week.

After driving home Friday, I was all keyed up to do some stuff yesterday that involved anything but sitting. So, I took the kiddo shopping for tools, and then I

• changed the oil on the car
• sharpened the blade on the lawnmower
• changed the oil on the lawnmower
• mowed the lawn
• sprayed the weeds in our walkway
• cleaned some weeds out of some of our flowerbeds
• cleaned up the garage
• and started replacing the head on our string trimmer

So, that's how I spent yesterday's un-homiletical homecoming. Today we went to church, where I sang in the choir and did special music as well. We came home, had lunch, then the girls went down for their naps while I read the Sunday papers and watched Phil Mickelson tear up Colonial (he wound up winning on a birdie putt on the last hole. YOU DA MAN, PHIL!). After everyone got well rested, we went grocery shopping, I made pizza for supper and finally Kristin and I watched a movie after putting Ainsley down to bed.

During worship this morning, Kristin looked at her watch and noted that the due date for She-Who-Is-Yet-To-Be is two months from today. Yikes. Just thinking about it makes me excited and a bit worried all at once. I can handle one - indeed, most of the time I love taking care of our one kiddo. But two seems exponentially larger, like the complexity jumps by a factor of three or four or eight instead of one. I suppose there's nothing for it now but to just jump in and learn to sink or swim, huh? Should be a fun ride, at the least. Well, that's the word from Ames tonight. Tomorrow, it's long run and a long, hopefully sunny Memorial Day with the family. I foresee parks and grilled turkey brats in our future. Mmmmm - love me that grill.

Peace,

Scott