Link:Dancing, Stretchers, and Sheep, Easter 4 2013

Summary of what I was saying and why:
This was the second sermon I wrote. The first was was good. And then I was reading one of my favorite poets before bed one night (something I do, but not that often) and suddenly I was thinking about a different poet, a different poem, and how it was a great way of slipping into this Gospel. So I wrote the first draft at about 11:30pm, on my iPhone, sitting in bed.

Theology:Salvation
Jesus Count:Medium
Good News:Jesus saves us, always

What did I change on my feet?
I tweaked the end a bit, but not more than I often stray from what is written.
What didn’t work/what did I miss?
I think the introduction as I wrote it was a little better.
I only made oblique reference to the horrors of the week. That is always a pastoral judgement call. Those tragedies were addressed during the Prayers of the People.
What did work?
I still really love the interweaving of this poem and this Gospel. The Good Shepherd passage is a text we’ve heard so much. Reading it through the poem helped me hear it again.

Other sermons I liked:

Priest Funston preaches on even Jesus’s challenge in praying from the middle of one of those weeks.

Priest Jones on the stories we listen to and the crowds we are a part of (which is not quite what you may be thinking, so go listen).

Priest Sinclair on the images we’ve seen and the images of Jesus.

Priest Fox on the answer to the question the crowd meant.

(Don’t see your sermon or a sermon you liked? Maybe I don’t know about it. Leave me a comment with a link and I’ll take a look.)