Yesterday I got to preach at one of my churches.  (I belong to two, in the other I sing in the choir, but at this one the Pastor allows or asks me to deliver the sermon occasionally.)

As always when I know I’ll be preaching on a given Sunday, my first step was to consult the Lectionary readings for then.  And the Epistle reading leapt out at me.  It’s Ephesians 5:8-14, where St. Paul wrote about former darkness and present light.  Well, you Brothers who have been thru Initiation know the ritual significance of such a topic!

I chose that Epistle reading for my text and topic.  The title was “De Tinieblas a la Luz/From Darkness to the Light.”  The church is bilingual, and indeed was the first church of my denomination, the Disciples of Christ, to be founded to minister to Spanish-speaking Americans!

Now, yesterday wasn’t the first time I’ve preached a sermon with a theme of Light.  And whenever I craft such a sermon, I am deeply indebted to the teachings of our Brotherhood for special enlightenment on that theme.  (I’m also indebted to the teachings of Freemasonry to a lesser extent.)  The challenge for me in this work for the Lord is to utilize the teachings without divulging the arcane elements of the LCA Ritual.  Since yesterday’s theme was living in the Light as opposed to the former darkness of unbelief and sin, the temptation was strong to use as illustration a certain matter of our Ritual!  But thankfully, Christ’s Spirit gave me alternatives.

And then there’s the matter of our very name and what the Greek letters stand for.  Oh, how I’d have loved to reveal it in my sermon!  But 1) it could have led to pridefulness, and 2) I always, ALWAYS, desire to honor my obligation to keep our deepest teachings within the Brotherhood.  After all, these things mean a lot to us who have experienced our Ritual, but it’s meaning that would be lost on the uninitiated.

Hm-m-m, I wonder if any other Christian pastors or preachers who are initiated Lambda Chis have this dilemma in their sermon preparation?  I suppose that it’s a good dilemma to have:   as long as one lets the Holy Spirit be the major source and a control, then our teachings simply become further light on the subject at hand (no pun intended) and enrich our homiletic understanding of Scripture.

And as always, I bless the memory of Brother Jack Mason, for crafting our peerless Ritual!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 12:48 pm and is filed under Obligations, Public Relations, Ritualism . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.