Sermon Notes
Monday, June 8th, 2009
I wish I’d kept the notes from Brother Jerry’s sermons. I filled pages upon pages of sarcastic comments and doodles while I tried to stay awake. They would fill tons of blog posts about everything that is wrong with Southern Baptist doctrine and humorous anecdotes as I wrote notes to Bob about the crazy things people had said to me. I tried to make everything I wrote amusing, because if I didn’t, then I would just get mad . We sat on the front row in both churches we served in, so both pastors could tell if I didn’t like the sermon and I had to be careful about getting annoyed, bored, or sleepy. Once, Brother Marvin preached a sermon taking everything in the book of Revelation quite literally. Afterward, he asked me what was wrong. I told him the truth: I did not like Revelation. My parents did. They always told me it was wonderful, and my mother even said it was her favorite. It just scared the shit out of me, though! Because of that, though, I felt like I wasn’t a very strong Christian when I admitted to Brother Marvin that I didn’t like to hear about it. It gave me more nightmares than the R rated movies we weren’t allowed to watch. (Looking back, I am floored that people actually think Revelation is exciting, especially ones that I know have read and studied it!) Brother Marvin was pretty understanding, though. He always was.
Brother Jerry, on the other hand, was never quite as understanding. Nor was he ever quite as confrontational, lovingly or otherwise. Brother Jerry cherry picked verses more than any other preacher I ever heard. He was also incredibly lazy, constantly recycling sermons from years ago, showing a lack of personal or spiritual growth and a lack caring about applying his sermons to current times. Every pastor recycles a sermon occasionally, but that is all Brother Jerry ever did. He used a very old (and uneducated) preaching style: if it’s in the Bible, it’s fair game whether it is exegetical or not. Instead of focusing on one or two main passages and explaining them, Brother Jerry would read a passage at the beginning of the sermon and never refer to it again. Instead, he would choose random verses throughout the Bible that he thought backed up what he was trying to say. He would shoot verses at us faster than a machine gun, so nobody ever turned to them. One day, he read the reference to a verse that I thought I recognized, but when he read the verse, it was different than I expected. So I looked it up. Sure enough, the verse was the one I had thought it was. Anyone could make a mistake, though, so I didn’t think much of it. His sermons were, however, incredibly boring, so I began to entertain myself by fact checking. Turns out, that wasn’t the only verse like that. They were all like that! If the reference matched the verse at all, it was taken so grossly out of context that any person with no Biblical education would have known not to use it. I couldn’t believe he had made up the references! Talk about lazy! Eventually, he saw me looking up what he was saying and he stopped using references entirely (which shows it definitely wasn’t an accident!). Most pastors aren’t like that (or at least, not that bad–I’ve heard many bad sermons, but Brother Jerry’s were the worst), but it gives you insight into the character of the man who was our boss for over two years.
Yep, I wish I’d kept those notes. I did find one from Brother Marvin stuck in the pages of my Bible. It, too, was full of doodles, but no interesting comments about the sermon. I never did like listening to sermons much.
Loading ...
June 8th, 2009 at 6:53 am
Yeah, I always zoned out during sermons. The last church I attended was a pentacostal church that had a woman pastor (Gasp!) who would scream her sermons. She never had a subject and if she ever did, I doubt she could stay on subject. My wife would ask me what the sermon was about when I got home. All I could say was something like, “Melinda don’t like queers and The Lord of the Rings is of the Devil”. Fortunatly, I didn’t go there for the sermons. I went there because they let me play the guitar with them. And Man, could Melinda play! I didn’t really care that I didn’t believe a word of what they were saying. I just loved the music.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:20 pm
You know, Lauradee, I don’t want to seem unkind toward the Christians who do interpret Revelation in a more literal, rather than in a metaphorical way. But, it’s hard to understand. Do they think that Jesus is literally going to be riding through outer space on a white horse with a physical sword coming out of His mouth?
I once had a friend who hesitated getting a social security card because he thought this could be some kind of precursor to the mark of the beast. I felt at a lose for words.
June 8th, 2009 at 8:32 pm
Yes, indeed! My parents taught my Sunday school class when I was in the 7th grade, and we did a HUGE, in depth study on Revelation. We were at it for months. They liked covering large sections of the Bible as in depth as they possibly could. Once, we had a lesson I now call “How Much Can You Read into Exodus Chapter One” when we covered the first one or two chapters of Exodus. It took us several months. I guess that is how come I thought I knew so much theology when I went to college. How much more can you get out of Exodus? They only covered what was written and what some conservative Bible studies said, though, so we never discussed authorship problems or anything from an outside perspective. I don’t even know HOW they managed to get so much out of what they did. By reading a HECK of a lot into it, I suppose. I remember my mom once sharing something from the book of Isaiah with me. I don’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember thinking, wow, that’s reading a lot into it. It was as if she was trying to find a hidden message from God in every verse. Every time she talks about it, she gets a faraway, dreamy look in her eyes that drives me a little crazy because it means I can’t ever really have a very serious conversation with her about it. It’s like trying to have a reasonable conversation with a teenager in love about why the person they are seeing isn’t such a great catch. (And mom, if you are reading this, sorry for my bluntness!)
As far as Revelation, that it could have been hyperbole, an allegory, or commentary on the current times never even seemed to cross my parents’ minds (unless, of course, it was convenient, such as the part where only 144k will get into heaven). I told my mother I thought it was scary, but she said, “Oh, it’s not scary! It’s wonderful!” She loves Revelation and says its her favorite book because she can’t wait for Jesus to come back. I always thought about all of the death and destruction. She loved the Left Behind series, Hal Lindsey, etc. That it may not be appropriate subject matter for a bunch of teenagers didn’t seem to occur to her.
Yup, my parents love the Bible, or at least their interpretation of it, anyways. I love them dearly, and I respect most of what they have to say, but they do get a little ridiculous with church stuff.
November 8th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
[...] there? You may look nicer and have cooler graphics, but your sermons are no better than Brother Jerry’s when it comes to [...]