An Inner Metro Green Sermon Series

Hermeneutics should be deep – “deep” as in “deeply” rooted in God’s redemptive story. The act of doing interpretation should – if anything – move us into God’s big story while God’s big story moves into us. BIBLE = Christian Context. Without the story we have no context for our faith and it (faith) ceases to exist. In fact, with no context, it never existed.

Our hermeneutic should also be shallow so as to move us away from the book and into real life and living wherein we can experience God and neighbor and become immersed in God’s great and redemptive story. Real life and living can’t be found between the covers of our Bibles. Our hermeneutic must be shallow enough to prevent us from taking up permanent residence somewhere between the front and back covers of our book.

A hermeneutic for our day must be deep/shallow.

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A hermeneutic for our day must be open and generous. 1. Open to other interpretations/voices. 2. Open to new movements of the spirit and change. 3. Open to new information collected during our journey.

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An Inner Metro Green Sermon Series

A hermeneutic for our own day must be built upon humility and conscience.

We live in a world plagued by religious conflict. There is conflict between faith traditions and within faith traditions. Said differently, people who claim a certain religious identity fight with people who claim a divergent religious identity and members of the same religious group fight with each other, internally.

Most, if not all, of this conflict find its catalyst in interpretation. One group interprets a text a certain way; another group interprets the same text differently. All hell breaks loose as the competing groups disagree over the “correct” interpretation. Conflict ensues, universally and historically.

Our hermeneutic should be informed and shaped by the spiritual needs of our time. We all need to be acutely aware of the spiritual needs of our day. We all need to start asking the big questions and we need to begin searching for honest theological solutions for today’s biggest spiritual needs. We all have to start asking the right questions and we must start the process of building a hermeneutic framework that prioritizes these questions.

This was the subject matter for week two of the sermon series. The full sermon is available below.

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We started talking about hermeneutics this morning at our community’s Sunday gathering. This is going to be a fun series. It’s an important one too. Why? Simply put, the life of faith is shaped, informed and continuously nurtured by interpretation, be it for good or for ill. Our hermeneutic affects our approach to the life, neighbors, spirituality and faith. Our hermeneutic speaks volumes about our faith and our understanding of faith.

A quick word re: faith: Faith is work. Faith is chasing divinity without knowing all the answers or even where we may be going (note: the end of our personal story is totally unknown to us). Faith is seeking, knocking, searching, and chasing. We have to do the difficult work of interpretation and that work ushers us into a lifestyle that is grounded in faith. So, needless to say, I personally think that hermeneutics – interpretation – is high on the list of our spiritual practices because in my opinion interpretation itself introduces us to a lifestyle of faith and journey. Exactly what we are introduced to depends totally upon our approach to interpretation.

Reading and interpreting takes a lot of hard work and dedication. It’s not easy and was never meant to be. The life of faith is not as automatic as we think for the following reasons: 1. The Incarnation is so real that we should be awe-struck and perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable; 2. Divinity majors on redemptive analogies (Jesus himself is a redemptive analogy); 3. The most important lesson of scripture is we have no guide or template; 4. Our personal stories are still being written and we do not know the endings.

So, some may ask why is interpretation important? I would answer because interpretation is everything! Spirituality is totally affected and shaped by our interpretations.

I decided to skip all the big names and interpretive concepts during the introduction to this series because 99% of the people listening have no idea who any of these people are, and, more than that, they would not understand anything that these people say. My goal is to take postmodern interpretation to the village because there it can be applied and used in very practical and effective ways. Had I dropped a bunch of names (Bakhtin, Bataille, Foucault, Gadamer, Ricoeur, Caputo, Derrida, etc.) or literary concepts the people listening would never catch a glimpse of the big picture. And what is the big picture? For us, the big picture has to do with our approach to the bible and how our approach affects and shapes everything else we do in life and faith (as if the two could be separated somehow).

So, I broke out the whiteboard and drew some pictures. These works of art (I jest!) are below, with narration. I would suggest listening to the presentation while you look at the whiteboard sketches. It all just might make a bit more sense that way.

I began the presentation with a very rough sketch of two people. One was in red marker; the other black marker. The red sketch was Fred Phelps of Westboro Baptist Church infamy, complete with cowboy hat; the black sketch was Rob Bell, complete with square, black framed, hipster eye glasses. Surprisingly, someone in the congregation actually identified my Bell sketch correctly as Rob Bell! No one guessed the Phelps sketch correctly. (Note: I don’t have my original sketches of these two fellows because I had to erase them to continue my morning’s sketching. So, I’ll include two photos of them that I found online).

What do Fred Phelps and Rob Bell have in Common?

So, what was my point in sketching these two characters? I simply said that these two fellows seemingly come different planets as far as theology and philosophy of ministry is concerned, but they do have one thing in common. They read the same bible! It’s all about interpretation! Everything is affected our interpretation!

I then followed that little sketch with a talk about two very, very important theological concepts: Redemptive Analogies and Incarnation. Why? Well, I happen to think that if we are going to do interpretation as honestly as we can do it then we must have a basic grasp on the concepts of Redemptive Analogies and Incarnation. And if anyone thinks that such things are not important, I would say that person neither understands God’s mission, nor does he or she understand the life of faith following. A healthy spirituality can not be realized if such basic building blocks are not in place. This is as devotional or spiritual as it gets, people. Everything is a redemptive analogy and the Incarnation – which was epitomized in Jesus (himself a redemptive analogy) – is Divinity’s constant and continued effort to establish relationship with human beings and deliver universal revelation to humanity. Incarnation has been happening since the beginning of time. Incarnation is so immediately present that it is completely awe-inspiring. Divinity is everywhere!

A Hermeneutic Illustrated

The rest of the presentation would be better explained by simply listening to it while you look at the above photo of my white board. Seriously, looking at the above sketch will help you follow my presentation, which was crafted especially for real-time delivery within our local community. I added a few graphics (text and arrows) to the white board to help people follow along with the podcast online (all graphics added later appear in white). So, hit play below to hear the presentation, and think about it. Blessings and peace.

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The talent in our community is unreal. If you are a part of Inner Metro Green you may already be familiar with more than a few of the talented individuals who have taken up the journey with us. Some you may have missed. We do have a disproportionate number of incredibly talented original musicians, artists, and writers who call IMG their faith home, so it’s not at all surprising when another one suddenly rises up. It’s a beautiful thing to have all of these creatives journeying along with us in mission, but it is even more beautiful to call them friends.

Mellow Drum Addict, for example, is an awesome brother. He and his family have been on the journey with us for a few months now. I know his kids absolutely love him. I saw the Father’s Day crafts his kids made for him on Father’s Day Sunday. No doubt, his kids adore him. They are a beautiful family. I look forward to getting to know him and his wonderful wife even better. Here’s to the journey, guys!

I also know that Mellow is an incredible hip hop artist. He handed me a copy of his newest album after church. The album is titled “Corner of Broadened Mind.” I went home and gave it a listen. I was absolutely blown away by his originality, passion and talent. His music has a message. He delivers it with style and originality, ala Arrested Development, The Coup, and The Roots. It is urban, honest, raw, and hopeful. Inspirational.

I’ll let Mellow speak for himself, with a quick blurb and a few MP3 samples.

YO! It’s finished. A year and a half of working very hard on my third full length release. This is the best material to date and leaps and bounds better than anything I’ve ever done. The album is a 6 panel digipak with some dope photographs of my fair city (Lancaster, PA). It’s 14 tracks and almost an hour of music. The beats are produced by the world famous Maker and includes a lot of dope emcees on the guest spots. Hit this link up if you’re interested and I’ll cover the shipping of the cd. Thanks to anyone who supports independent artists in 2009. We’re a dying breed …

Here are a few choice MP3 samples: Intro., One Time for Your Minds Eye, Corner of Broadened Mind

Hit Mellow’s Myspace too to hear more original tracks.

Thanks, Mellow. Thank you for sharing your gifts and talents. Keep going up, brother.

To everyone else reading this, support an awesome indie artist and brother by grabbing his album. It’s good listening too. Some of the best music out there is local, homegrown.

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So, come out Sunday morning and join us in community and help us shape the future of IMG!

This past Sunday’s service is available below, for your consumption. We finally figured out how to record directly from our sound board, thanks to Dean Martin, our tech/media fellow. So, the quality of the recordings from this point forward will be much better than those of the past. I still, however, need to learn how to hold the microphone when I’m speaking. Some parts of my sermon are really quiet because I tend to talk with my hands and move the microphone away from me without realizing it. Mea Culpa. I will learn to keep the mike still! At any rate, I decided to publish most of our service, instead of just a song and my sermon, since we can now record the entire thing. I did edit out the Eucharist part of our service, because we do a lot of joys and concerns sharing during that time. I also edited out offering, because well, you can’t hear anything during that time. Other than that, this is basically what our service is like.

I especially love the closing Lennon by Flinch. Awesome song.

Big thanks to Chris Flinchbaugh and Brandon Seawell for the morning’s music. Keith Slesser is the guy opening with prayer, announcements and a reading (he’s usually leading/participating in music, but he and his wife just had a baby this week – full story @ Keith’s blog). Thanks to Dean Martin for all his tech/media work for the morning. Your presence makes a huge difference, Dean! Oh yeah, I’m the morning’s speaker who keeps moving the microphone.

NOTE: An edited version of the sermon will be made available at the IMG website soon. This is my own hack job, thank you. Dean will have a much better one up soon. Anyway, push play below.

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