Monday, April 26, 2010

Falling short but feeling excited all the same

On the train to Bristol for a Prism planning session using my dongle. The experience so far is that the connection is slow and occasionally haphazard. Of course, 'slow' is a relative term, since connection speeds are vastly quicker than anything we experienced just a few years ago. But today we expect instant and lightening fast.

Last night I rounded off our series on living the resurrection by looking at Philippians 3:10 and reflecting on our dreams and God's role in them. Philippians 3 is one of my favourite passages; I've preached on it often and yet I still feel that its heart eludes me. Someone said that yesterday's sermon was really helpful and cast new light on one of their favourite passages.

But I felt that yet again I had not done the passage justice, that what I wanted to say about it lay just beyond my finger tips - much as Paul's complete knowledge of Jesus is just another step beyond his grasp. And maybe that's the way it has to be with this text. Our knowledge of Jesus will always be partial, our view through the distorting mirrors of our own perception, and so our thoughts about and reflections on this amazing text will always leave us feeling excited but dissatisfied.

Maybe this should be true of all our preaching. Like my internet connection, it's good but not as good as we'd like it to be.

3 comments:

Catriona said...

There's a nice link that you are off to a Prism planning meeting as you glimspse the beyondness and 'in a glass darkly' aspects of the mystery of faith and understanding.

Hope the plans go well; have some 'ticks' by Prism in my Assembly programme so will be there are some point.

simon said...

excellent planning session. I think Prism promises to be really good this year - provocative, disorienting and profoundly uplifting (but I'm biased!)

Ben Fairhall said...

I like this post... I understand that sense of the 'untouchable'. (So far as any of us possibly can.) Worship, of any sort, always inspires similar thoughts in me...

As Roy Walker (of TV's Catchphrase) used to say: "It's good, but it's not right."

We see but through a glass darkly, and all that...