Some things need to be repeated

The cultural climate of confusion requires a response of clarity and conviction

Yesterday was a trip back in time, to the days before so much of our existence revolved around this thing we call the internet. The service provider for a large portion of our community’s population suffered a massive outage across all its platforms, leaving a good deal of the town and other surrounding areas disconnected from the rest of the world for most of the day and into the night.

I try to convince myself that my dependence on WiFi is minimal but experiences like this expose that as a willful bit of self-deception. Granted, yesterday was a particularly inconvenient day for me to be without the most essential of modern conveniences. I had several transactions to make that required internet access and having to wait until service was restored in the early evening was not part of my plan. In addition, there were some documents I needed to download and print that I could not access, and I am now a day behind on a matter I intended to give a good part of my attention to yesterday.

I do have the luxury of not having to prepare a sermon this week, as I will be enjoying a rare Sunday off. Loss of internet access notwithstanding, it was this little quirk that may have played a more decisive role in knocking me off my routine. This morning, I did not find myself consulting the lectionary to see which texts I would be studying for this week’s message. Instead, I started looking ahead to the several Sundays that will come after I return from my brief respite.

The liturgical year is winding down and the New Testament and Gospel readings are a consistent stream of Hebrews and Mark. The Old Testament readings, conversely, are a smorgasbord of law, prophets, and history. I don’t like relying on “yesterday’s inspiration,” so I am thinking, maybe, I should focus on the smorgasbord, as I have given the consistent streams extensive treatment in years past. I do note, however, that next Sunday’s Old Testament reading is Genesis 2:18-24, the account of the creation of woman from the rib of the man. This one I have preached on before and I think it appropriate to preach again. When you follow a three-year cycle of biblical texts, you are bound to repeat yourself, probably more often than you should, but some things are worth repeating. In light of the current cultural climate of confusion with regard to gender, sexuality, and marriage, what God has said, from the foundation of the world, about such things needs to be repeated, and with clarity and conviction.