Malcolm Cox

Is the goal of relevancy necessary, helpful, or a curse? Today I offer some thoughts on sermons and relevancy prompted by the book, “The Givenness of Things”, by Marilynne Robinson. We speak of the sacred “My tradition places great importance on the sermon, and I go in hopes of hearing something that acknowledges this deep old human intuition, this sense of the sacred. Often I don’t hear any such thing, but sometimes, more remarkably, I do. A good sermon is a pure, rare, strangely unworldly gift.” 141 The Western environment in which I live over-elevates the solving of mystery which leads to an impoverishment of our spirits. I am glad the mystery of what causes pneumonia has been solved. But in our preaching God is someone more to be described than explained.  We speak of life and death “My church is across the street from a university, where good souls teach with all sincerity – the factually true, insofar as this can really be known; the history of nations, insofar as this can be faithfully reported