I contributed the lead "scholar's response" to the initial sermon by Rodney Wallace Kennedy, recently retired as pastor of First Baptist Church in Dayton, Ohio, in Kennedy's new edited book Preaching Conversations with Scholars: The Preacher as Scholar (Eugene, Ore.: Wipf and Stock, 2016). My full response, along with the sermon to which it responds, is currently available online via the "Look Inside" feature on the book's page on the publisher's web site. Here's a teaser excerpt from my response:
As I read this sermon, preached originally in May 2015, I kept thinking about all the ways our contemporary culture, in the United States and more broadly in the Western world, has quickly become even more concerned with boundary-keeping than it was in May 2015—and it was certainly marking our culture then. It made me think of our treatment of immigrants, of refugees, of the racial 'other,' of those whose sexual identities are 'other.' It made me connect all this with the boundary-transcending God whose story is told by the story of Jesus, and it reminded me that the boundary-transcending story of Jesus should become more and more my own story. I pray that it does, and I’m grateful to Rodney for writing and preaching a sermon that made this my prayer. The Gospel is relevant, indeed. (read the full response and other sample portions of Preaching Conversations with Scholars)
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