Spiritual Hiccups - Not Convinced

Sometimes when I'm reading the passages from the Daily Lectionary, I find my mind wandering and I feel a bit zoned out.  This can be especially the case when a passage is very familiar to me, such as the passage from John this morning.  With passages such as this one, I can finish the reading and feel a bit like I sometimes do when I make the coffee in the morning.  I'll be sitting at the table reading the paper and have to get up to see if I turned the coffee pot on.  I usually have, but I don't remember doing it.

I'm suspicious that reading the Bible and not remembering what I just read is rooted partly in how I read it.  Thanks to my training as a pastor, it's difficult to read Scripture without at least thinking about how to preach it.  Is there an unusual twist or some theme that speaks to the congregation I serve?  Does something jump out at me I can use to motivate, call, or inspire the congregation?

Preaching is often used in an attempt to convince, and herein lies one of its great limitations.  Not that preaching shouldn't try to teach or convince, but I'm not sure anyone was ever convinced into faith.  Most of us would find it foolish for someone to marshal a good, convincing argument about why another person should fall in love with him. Love isn't necessarily irrational, but it is surely something other than rational... perhaps transrational?

Stories that lovers remember and tell, are not usually about convincing, though they may be helpful at times in evoking feelings that seem to have gone dormant.  Such stories often seem foolish or boring to others, and they may groan "Not again!" if one of these lovers starts to tell the story once more.  But that same story may be the two lovers' most prized possession.

Scripture is many things, but I think it works much better as lovers' cherished possession than it does as evidence for an argument.  Now how to get that in a sermon.

Click to learn more about the Daily Lectionary.