I Don’t Miss Topical Sermons

We’ve been in California this past week visiting a lot of long-time friends, and I’ll have some upcoming posts on that. But we came home a day or two earlier than we might have done otherwise, due to my wife’s Sunday School teaching responsibilities.

On the way home from church today, I came to the realization that we hadn’t heard a topical sermon since we began attending First Lutheran some 16 months ago.

I don’t seem to miss them at all.

In my previous Christian life, our weekly worship experience almost always included a topical sermon. I guess I should make the distinction clear.

Topical sermons are based on current societal events (such as “a statistical increase in premarital sex” or “global warming”) and usually are flaunted with a catchy “with it” title. I could come up with a dozen typical topics, but I’ll spare you.

Well, I just can’t pass up one. Ever seen a topic like this? “Is Global Warming God’s Warning?” You get the picture.

Topical sermons then attempt to snatch scriptures (many times out of context) and create a spiritual hypothesis about the subject. Some of these efforts may actually contain truth but to my way of thinking rarely teach us much about how we ought to meaningfully understand and practice our faith.

Conversely, in our church, sermons always are an exposition of scripture itself. Moreover, they usually follow the lectionary relating to the church calendar, which results, over a period of time, in a broad but relatively complete picture of the Bible’s teachings.

Today, the second Sunday of Advent, our pastor preached on the New Testament lesson taken from the first chapter of Philippians. Paul’s salutation to the Philippians is also a summary of his counsel to that body and also to us. I won’t try to “re-preach” the sermon here but I’ll just mention the highlights.

Pastor Jukam indicated that if we follow Paul’s advice, we should be more intentional about four things: First, to let Christ show through in our living (e.g., how long does it take someone to realize we are followers of Christ?).

Secondly, we should pray regularly and earnestly. Thirdly, we should be joyful in sharing our faith, and fourthly we should let our love overflow so that it affects others.

Sort of simple, yes, but very practical and effective advice from the apostle Paul that we can all benefit from and endeavor to put into practice in our faith walk.

How our climate might relate to a scripture verse here and there is of less relative consequence.