Words cannot adequately describe how completely spiritually empty, famished, and longing I am right now. I just suffered through the most intellectually vapid, nonsensical, self-serving rambling disguised as a sermon delivered by a female chaplain. Now, the Pauline prohibitions of women in the ministry aside (which, incidentally is just a symptom of the greater problem to be discussed further herein), I don’t understand what people think the role of the church service is! She started by reading I John 1 and the first two verses of chapter 2 (and it happened to be the only time the Word was even mentioned). She then used that “Light” metaphor to spend fifteen minutes telling us how some nonsense about Holy Spirit light both spiritually and elementally … streaming through stain-glass … called her to the ministry at age 17, compelling her to ‘fill in’ preaching to a bunch of stiff white folks (she was white too, but I am certain she glared over at me during this time) and persuaded them to leap from their seats in applause at the end. Then, she went on to butcher the Light metaphor further, ascribing it to God helping people who are hurting, blasé, blasé, blasé… I kind of faded out at that point.
I as a twelve-year old had a better understanding of scripture than that woman. Why? Because I read the Word of God. I sat under the expository preaching of the Word of God. At age twelve I could have told her how utterly ridiculous that ‘message’ was. First off, the metaphor of Light throughout scripture. Just off the top of my head, Psalm 119:105 states that “Thy WORD is a lamp unto my feet and a LIGHT unto my path.” Then, John … yes, the same John who later wrote that passage she read … in opening his gospel, spoke of how the Word was God, was Jesus, was the LIGHT, and how the DARKness didn’t comprehend it.
Light throughout the Bible IS the WORD of God. But, then again, if they actually studied the Bible in some of these seminaries, I guess it wouldn’t be a problem. Again, if they actually read the Bible, they wouldn’t have ordained women either.
It’s gonna be a long, long year.
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