two great teaching opportunities

In our Lectionary group yesterday somebody made a distinction that I had not thought about. He had just returned from visiting family in Iowa and attending a "Lutheran Mega-Church" while away. He said that the 45 minute sermon was "mostly teaching, but there was some sermon in there too." I hadn't really thought about the distinction between teaching and preaching. Is my 13.5 minutes devoted entirely to "preaching"? And if so, am I doing a disservice by not "teaching"? Or is it even possible to break the two out from one another?

Well, if one were to teach this week, I can see two great opportunties.

1- The lesson from Isaiah is almost perfect Zion theology. Check out Jon Levenson's Sinai & Zion for the details, but I love the image of people flowing up toward the mountain of God while instruction and holiness flow down. It is a great image for the spiritual journey. As we move up the mountain things get dicier and dicier, but the fruit is so much better up at the top.

2- The Gospel lesson, with its obvious applications in bumper stickers like this one:is a wonderful opportunity to teach about the end times not from a movie starring Kirk Cameron. See my above comment about the disservice of teaching in our churches and take a chance this week to open people's eyes to varying schools of thought on the various apocalyptic writings in the Old and New Testaments. Stephen Cook has a great book appropriately entitled The Apocalyptic Literature if you are in need of some help.

45 minutes is a long time to preach. It is a long time to lecture in a class room for that matter, but I firmly believe that people want to learn something AND be called to action in church. So why not maybe go a few minutes over 13.5 minutes and give them something to hold on to?

Photo from bumperart.com