Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.01.2011, Page 15

that are “one size fits all,” so you can preach them anywhere. And while
Charlemagne had the legal power to demand our compliance, Pastor Rick
has the postmodern equivalent: the power of numbers. Which is very hard
to resist in a recession.
And that is the very issue: resistance. I used to think “borrowing sermons”
was a matter of ethics and integrity: don’t do it without permission, or
footnote citation, or all the other copyright issues that the internet has
complicated beyond belief. But as long as you don’t try to claim it’s yours
if it isn’t, or that you wrote it if you didn’t, then sure: go for it. Preaching
someone else’s sermons was fine, as long as you did it properly.
That was before my blast from the historical past, in Appleton,
Wisconsin. Now, I wonder why it took me so long to see. Preaching
someone else’s sermons is a lapse back into the Dark Ages. It is bowing
down to the emperor, not the Lord Jesus Christ. It is one more step toward
Charlemagne’s homiliary, where we all preach the same texts in the same
way for the same purpose, which is to create well-behaved citizens of the
empire.
But here’s what else it does. Preaching someone else’s sermons is giving in
to the Tempter, that insidious little voice that is always trying to convince
you that you don’t have what it takes to do this. You aren’t good enough,
you aren’t smart enough, and gosh darn it, people really don’t like you. If
you were a real preacher, you’d have the numbers to prove it. If you were a
real preacher, you’d have the answers to anything. If you were a real preacher,
your congregation wouldn’t fight and your programs wouldn’t fizzle and
your roof wouldn’t leak and you wouldn’t be sitting at your computer every
Saturday night, alone with your virtual sermon that has yet to bless you
with its appearance. Real preachers do not have these problems. They have
multiple campuses and are growing to a community near you. They have
thousands of pastors from all over the globe downloading their sermons.
What do you have, huh? Just one virtual sermon after another.
Preaching someone else’s sermons is an act of surrender - to the emperor,
to the Tempter, and to all that is counter to gospel. I don’t care if it’s the
most brilliant sermon in the world. If we give up our sacred right to inter-
pret the scriptures, if we throw away God’s gift of engaging this Word and
living in it ourselves, we lose the very thing that gives us life, and keeps the
church alive. There may be no greater act of resistance these days than a
fresh act of interpretation. A sermon that you prepared yourself. Not because
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