The Only Way is Ordinary
Written by Samuel D. James |
Friday, March 4, 2022
What we want are extraordinary fixes to ordinary problems. In this desire we miss the reality that there’s always something else to fix, there’s always something else to do, and there’s always something we’ll miss. Looking for extraordinary means is a roadmap to variously intense levels of personal frustration.
I’m suspicious that one reason older generations of Christians tended to be skeptical toward ambition—even calling it a sin on occasion—is that they were able to see something more clearly than we moderns can. Life in the 21st century West is by definition fast, mobile, and wandering. If you want to do something else, you can. If you want to be something else, you can. For most people alive right now there’s never been another reality except this one. Like the fish in David Foster Wallace’s famous illustration, we don’t really see this, we simply live within it.
Older saints, on the other hand, were more likely to see freedom and upward mobility as a singular thing, something that stood out when someone you knew claimed it surrounded by family and friends and community that were more or less resigned to their lot in life. For moderns ambition is ambient, but for them it was a condition with a definable list of attributes and consequences.
My point is this: When you’re removed from something in this way, removed enough to recognize it as something other and not just swim in it, you probably have a better angle of vision on it than others. And I think one thing that these older Christians saw within ambition was a rule of diminishing return with spiritual side effects. It’s what I’m learning right now in my own life and thinking:
There’s always something else.
The problem with most species of ambition is not that they seek good change or more success or greater mastery. The problem is that most species of ambition are self-referential. Ambitious people don’t generally say they want to make a million dollars or start 3 companies or earn 2 doctorates. They don’t put numbers to their ambition. They simply say, “I’m ambitious,” by which they mean, “I’m always moving.” The constancy and restlessness shift from the means to the end. Spiritually speaking, continual dissatisfaction—a resilient inability to say, “Ok, I’m good now”—has almost always been flagged as dangerous.
But it’s not just material ambition. What about spiritual ambition? Recently in my reading I came across this sentence from a theologian and it stopped me in my tracks: “There are no extraordinary means of grace in the Christian life.” I lingered over that line for a while as it delivered a broadside to most of my Christian walk. How many years have I spent as a believer earnestly, diligently, even tirelessly, seeking an extraordinary means by which I would finally feel the intimacy with Christ I desire and the temptations that beset me just fall off like sawdust? The matter-of-factness of that sentence pummeled me. That one book, that one sermon, that one conference or that one conversation I’m looking for to put all the jagged parts of my spiritual life into an incandescent whole…it does not exist. There’s always something else to do, but there are no extraordinary means of grace.
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Antichrist Blesses Same Sex Couples
The claim is that when same-sex couples ask for a blessing they are actually asking–in the mind of Francis–for help. He said, ““when one asks for a blessing, one is expressing a petition for God’s assistance, a plea to live better, and confidence in a Father who can help us live better.” This is not what is being asked and surely it is not how the document will be interpreted.
God is not the author of confusion (I Corinthians 14:33), but of peace, and godliness, and of order. Today the Roman pontiff, speaking on behalf of Jesus Christ and his church declared the pompous words (Daniel 7:8) that same sex couples in union could be blessed. This is an about-face as he said in 2021 that he would not allow for gay unions to be blessed because “God cannot bless sin.” Surely now he can, according to the one who shows himself to be in the place of God (2 Thes 2:4; Daniel 11:36).
This deceptive heresy (I John 2:22-23; 2 John 7) is confusing at best and outright wicked at worst. It is confusing because so many Catholics–under the postmodern banner of the rainbow flag–will see this as approval. The pope, however, has not approved of gay or same sex marriage or even civil unions, saying merely that they can be “blessed” by a priest.
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How to Preach Parables
Whatever mistakes we make in reading and preaching the parables, let us not make the mistake of not making much of Jesus. He is the sower of the good seed of the gospel, the heaven-sent Son, the bridegroom of his church, the king upon his glorious throne, the final judge of all people everywhere, and so much more!
Suggestions for Preaching Parables
Every parable has a connection to the gospel. So, when you preach, don’t moralize (e.g., the point of the parable of the talents is that God rewards hard work; so, work hard!).1 Moreover, because the parables describe various parts of the gospel of the kingdom—the rule of Christ inaugurated in the incarnation and consummated in the second coming—set your sermons within the context of the whole gospel story (death and resurrection of Christ) and response (repentance, faith, and obedience). The parables feature what the whole of the New Testament covers: gospel need, gospel proclamation, gospel response, and gospel ethics. In your preaching, follow Jesus’s pattern.
Below are eight suggestions to help your homiletics soar. Or, at least get off the ground.
First, share what is truly important. If you are clearly given the main point of a parable in the text, or you have painstakingly discerned it in your study, share it with God’s people from the start and throughout. For example, Luke tells us in Luke 18:1 that Jesus taught the parable of the persistent widow “to the effect that they [his disciples] ought always to pray and not lose heart.” You need to unpack the symbolic relationship between the unrighteous judge and God and the widow and God’s elect, but not at the expense of sharing the point of those two characters’ actions. The sermon should be dominated by what is truly important, not by all the possible interpretations or twenty minutes of unraveling the symbolic details.
Second, take time to explain. You need to get to the point (see above), but not at the expense of making sure that all the important details in the parable are explicated. In most settings, we are up against two obstacles: (1) people who don’t use or hear parables on a regular basis, or at all, and (2) most biblical parables are “notoriously puzzling” and their “meaning is rarely transparent.”2 Be patient. Explain slowly and clearly. Illustrate.
Third, contemporize. One way to explain and illustrate is to retell a parable, or part of a parable, as a paraphrase and/or with a relevant and accessible story from today. As Blomberg advocates, “it will be both easy and helpful to include some modern equivalent to the biblical story in an introduction, in one or more illustrations interspersed within the body, or in a conclusion to the message. These contemporizations should work to recreate the original dynamic, force, or effect of Jesus’ original story. It is not true that narratives cannot (or should not) be paraphrased propositionally; it is true that good exposition should not do just that.”3
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There’s Absolutely No Substitute for Face-to-Face Ministry—Not Even for an Apostle
Should we throw out all impersonal mediums? Of course not. But mediums are ultimately meant to uphold face-to-face ministry, which beckons us to love God by faith until, face to face, we all behold his glory.
Is there something indispensable about in-person ministry, something that simply can’t be replicated through long-distance communication?
Even if you believe the answer to this question is a self-evident yes, in our age of live-streamed services and TikTok preachers, the people in your pews—or the people you hope to be in your pews—may assume otherwise.
Does the Bible help us to shepherd skeptical sheep back to the flock? Thankfully, it does. We can examine a few Pauline passages that address the importance of proximity. For a man who maintained a prolific remote ministry through his letters, Paul repeatedly sounds discontent with the remote, impersonal medium.
Eager to Preach to You (Romans 1:9–13, 15)
When Paul sat down to write his robust gospel presentation to the Romans, he still wanted to strengthen the church in person.
Without ceasing I mention you always in my prayers, asking that somehow by God’s will I may now at last succeed in coming to you. For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—that is, that we maybe mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine. I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that I have often intended to come to you (but thus far have been prevented), in order that I may reap some harvest among you…I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome (Romans 1:9–13, 15).
Haddon Robinson reflects in his book Biblical Preaching, “Paul realized that some ministries simply cannot take place apart from face-to-face contact. Even the reading of an inspired letter will not substitute…A power comes through the preached word that even the written word cannot replace.”
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