I never thought I would say this but I was, at first, a bit critical of Duane Litfin’s Wheaton College chapel sermon of December 14, 2007. This was, fortunately, his shortest and most content-free sermon of the semester so I am not going to say much about it.
Here’s why I was critical at first. His main text from scripture was II Corinthians 8.1-15. This is not a passage that I would have expected to hear out of the mouth of Litfin since it seems to be the post-resurrection Christ speaking through Paul advocating economic equality (i.e., communism). Since the Holy Spirit usually tells us through Litfin that it was only the pre-resurrection Christ who talked about that, this is a bit confusing.
However, the fact that this was his chosen text is tempered by several facts:
- He emphasizes several times that we should only think about giving at Christmas time. In fact, he calls the passage from II Corinthians 8 a “Christmas passage” saying, “It may not seem like a Christmas passage at first but it most certainly is.”
- He doesn’t read II Corinthians 8.1-15 in its entirety. He skips parts.
- He actually spends much more time reading from three other non-biblical texts that we have all probably seen before in emails from our favorite devoutly evangelical aunt who knows how to use the “forward” button on her email client.
- This is, by far, his shortest sermon of the semester. On top of that, during the last six minutes of the sermon Litfin was off the stage because the last of the three emails from his Aunt that he gave the audience was a YouTube video and that video was followed immediately by the singing of “The Hallelujah Chorus”.
- While he does read that Jesus “though he was rich became poor,” when Litfin talks about how we model this in our own lives, he talks about giving a gift of $35 once a year to some organization you find online that promises to buy a goat for a poor family with it.
So Litfin took something that could have been scary—a face-value reading of Paul’s advice to the church in Corinth—and turned into something quite palatable: give a token to the poor once a year.
He begins the sermon by reading a long passage from one of those emails that we all love to receive from our must devout evangelical aunt. This one was a retelling of Luke’s version of the nativity but in a modern-day setting showing how we have changed Christmas into a commercial enterprise instead of focusing on Jesus. Having received this same email from my own aunt, I know that he didn’t read the whole thing but the ending was just about how you should forward the message to everyone and read it in your next sermon.
Then, as a contrast, he read parts of the Christmas passage: II Corinthians 8.1–15. Given the context of his sermon, he was even able to read the following passage without anyone making the mistake of taking it seriously or applying it to life today:
I do not mean that others should be eased and you burdened, but that as a matter of equality your abundance at the present time should supply their want, so that their abundance may supply your want, that there may be equality.
Then he read a very long email we have all received from our aunt that included a story about a family that started a new Christmas tradition of giving a gift to charity once a year.
Finally, he closed with this last email from his aunt:
I ran across something recently, it actually was sent to me. I’m going to play it for you here as a way of leading us into the singing of “The Hallelujah Chorus”. It’s an item right off of YouTube. Now, I don’t spend a lot of time on YouTube. It seems to me there’s a lot of lame stuff out there that’s a lot of waste of time every time I look at it.
I quite agree. Every time I look at it, it is a waste of time. Sometimes I think that if I look at it more then it won’t waste so much of my time but that hasn’t worked yet. So Duane Litfin and I are both very glad to have aunts who alert us to the few non-lame videos out there.
But having said that, here was an item that was sent to me so I went ahead and looked at it and I want to pass it on to you.
His aunt told him that he wasn’t a true Christian if he didn’t pass this on so I don’t blame him.
It is a really unusual way of reminding us again of what it is we are saying “Hallelujah” for: God giving us his son. It’s a telephone conversation of a 12 year old boy to a radio station in Houston. There is a sweetness about it and an innocence and a poignancy. I recommend it to you as a preparation for singing the “Hallelujah Chorus”. Let’s run it.
Then he played on the big screen the only non-lame video I’ve seen on YouTube in a long time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCdZwitrNoY
This got a standing ovation that went immediately into a moving rendition of “The Hallelujah Chorus”.
I loved hearing all of the emails Duane Litfin had received from his aunt that week. Naturally, I respect emails from anyone’s aunt as a valid source of material for sermons. However, there are certain passages of scripture that really shouldn’t be read from the pulpit. Even though he did interpret the scripture in a way that was helpful, Duane almost crossed a line here.
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