Here's a sermon I preached recently on "The Difference between a Genius and an Apostle". It was the sending service for a dear friend of mine who was retiring from 48 years of parish ministry, or rather embarking on the next stage of a very long and fruitful ministry. (I've posted before about this particular pastor when he got cancer.) The sermon's title comes from Kierkegaard, and the text was Matthew 28.
A while back I was interviewed for a series of short videos on atonement theology. The five clips below follow the overall arc of the Gospel story, discussing (1) the incarnation, (2) the role of Mary in salvation, (3) Jesus as teacher and healer (a patristic view of salvation that I've explained earlier in this post), (4) the death of Jesus, and (5) the resurrection and deification.
Here are the last two sermons on the Apostles' Creed – #8 is on the catholicity of the church, and #9 is on the resurrection of the body. Apologies for the shocking length of the last sermon – I guess I was enjoying this series so much that I didn't want it to end!
Anyway I was really grateful for the opportunity to preach all the way through the creed (thanks, Leichhardt!). If you're a minister and you've never done this before, I recommend it as a great way of helping a congregation to explore the heart of the Christian faith.
The next video on the Apostles' Creed is up – on the last judgment. This one features a cameo from my son James, who was pretty restless that morning. When he decided that I was going on too long, he came out and (literally) started wrapping things up:
And here's the fifth sermon in the series on the Apostles' Creed. Unfortunately the recording didn't work for the first minute, so you miss out on a quote from Karl Barth: Pontius Pilate enters the creed "like a dog into a nice room."
A delightful sweet short video for children about the meaning of Easter, from Worshiphouse Kids:
Sarah Coakley recently presented the 2012 Gifford Lectures in Aberdeen, and they are now available online (h/t Kevin). Coakley's lectures are titled Sacrifice Regained: Evolution, Cooperation, and God. You can get the text and handouts for all six lectures here; and the first four are also available as video:
1. Stories of Evolution, Stories of Sacrifice
2. Cooperation, alias Altruism: Game Theory and Evolution Reconsidered
3. Ethics, Cooperation and Human Motivation: Assessing the Project of Evolutionary Ethics
4. Ethics, Cooperation and the Gender Wars: Prospects for a New Asceticism
5. Teleology Reviewed: A New Ethico-Teleological Argument for God's Existence
6. Reconceiving Natural Theology: Meaning, Sacrifice and God
As a sequel to six types of reading, here are another three types. I had also planned to mention Secret Reading, Stolen Reading, Restless Reading, Abortive Reading, Fetishistic Reading, and Travel Reading – but I got frightfully distracted by all the little pressed flowers inside the pages of Dr Johnson. So I might discuss a few more types of reading next time.
Books mentioned in this video:
My video on six types of reading has provoked a brilliant and provocative response from one of America's youngest philosophers. Here is Owen, son of R. O. Flyer and grandson of Roger Flyer, subjecting my video to a stringent critical analysis:
I'm especially impressed by the way he bursts into peals of laughter when he hears the name "Chesterton": the word tends to have the same effect on me.
In fact, I once missed out on an important job opportunity simply because the interviewer – the dean of Harvard Divinity School – happened to mention the name of G. K. Chesterton. We sat in the autumnal light of the dean's office, facing one another across a polished mahogany desk beneath the shadow of towering bookshelves and the high baroque majesty of that Ivy League ceiling. "... And that's the real problem with someone like G. K. Chesterton," he said.
I cleared my throat. I shifted in my seat. I felt my nose twitch as I stifled a little giggle. I concentrated all my mental powers on suppressing the shaking that had started somewhere deep in my diaphragm. I wiped a solitary tear from my eye. I breathed.
At last after a few moments I had calmed myself. I coughed politely into my hand, and opened my mouth to make an erudite remark about Catholic thought on distributist economics – when, to my horror, the dean leaned back in his chair, coffee cup in hand, and said the dreadful word again: "Chesterton." All my defences collapsed. It was as though a gigantic hand had seized me by the rib cage and given me a fierce shake. I covered my mouth. I heard a terrific snort. I wiped my eyes and said, "I'm terribly sorry, I do beg your pardon. We were speaking, I believe, of Ches – Ches – Chester –"
And then it happened. The Dean of the Divinity School leapt from his chair as though stung; coffee shot from his cup like a missile and splattered across his lap, across the floor, across the papers on the desk, across my lovingly shined black shoes. For, before I had quite pronounced the name of that immense theological humorist, my lungs seemed to have erupted in a single, tremendous, high-pitched, belching great guffaw, just as if a bewildered donkey had burst into the room. I covered my mouth. I was mortified. I began to apologise, leaning forwards in my seat and scrambling to remove the coffee-sodden papers from the mahogany desk.
Then I heard it again, that terrible sound, that startled guffaw. And before I knew what was happening, I had blurted out the name at last, bellowed it, all in capital letters – "CHESTERTON!" – not so much a name as an air raid siren. And it was only then that I knew it was really too late: I would never get the job, would never hold a position at Harvard Divinity School, would never fulfill my dream of becoming Administrative Assistant to the Dean. For just as Satan fell from heaven, so I had plummeted from my chair on to that luxuriant coffee-stained carpet, and was rolling about the floor in the shrieking grip of a helpless, hilarious, humiliating theological hysteria.
Last time, there were various comments about reading habits. So in this video I provide a typology of six types of reading.
Books mentioned in this video:
When G. K. Chesterton was commissioned to write a book about St. Thomas Aquinas, even his strongest supporters and greatest admirers were a little worried. But they would have been a lot more worried if they had known how he actually wrote the book.Lately I've found it hard to keep up posting about new books I'm reading – even though I'm always reading books. So this is an experimental new "Off the Shelf" segment: I've recorded a short video talking about some of the things I've been reading lately, new books and old.
I dislike talking into a camera like this – but if you find this sort of thing enjoyable, let me know and I might do some more video-posts from time to time.
Books mentioned in this video:
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