Yesterday we dealt with some pretty hard texts in our worship service. Continuing with Jesus' Sermon on the Mount we considered Jesus teachings on anger, lust, divorce and oaths. We also looked at Jesus instructions to "pluck out your eye" or "cut off your hand" if they cause you to sin. As a preacher, these are difficult texts to wrestle with and even more difficult to preach. If it were up to me, I would probably leave these (and some other hard ones) out of my preaching repertoire!

But it is up to me, isnt' it? So why don't I? To some degree it is up to me, but I've also made a commitment to primarily preach the Lectionary. The Lectionary is an established set of readings that include a Gospel, Epistle, Psalm and Old Testament reading for each week of the Christian Year. The Lectionary readings are based on a three-year cycle, so they provide a pretty broad selection of Biblical Texts. Click here to read more about the Lectionary. It is my belief that the Lectionary stretches preachers and congregations to consider texts they might otherwise avoid.

Because Easter is late this year, we have a long Epiphany. The later weeks of Epiphany in Year A (the current year) include Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount. We're not done with it yet. Stay tuned for more hard texts next week! Praise God that we can be challenged, stretched and grow together!