We heard a wonderful sermon this morning. I'd been looking forward to it for several months because Marsha and I heard this same minister -- Carl Scovel -- at his home congregation (King's Chapel) in Boston several years ago. I didn't know anything about him at the time -- we were visiting mostly just to see this old historic church building, which we'd seen many times but never actually entered during the years we lived in Boston. But his sermon struck me then as one of the best things I've ever heard from a pulpit. He basically explained the worth of Christian belief in just a few minutes and in a very ordinary, unassuming, but touching way. It was an unusual thing to hear in a Unitarian church, and it didn't just surprise me because of the setting. I was surprised by the clarity and intelligence of his message.
Today he talked about the essence of Jesus's teachings on the question of where to put your trust: very smart, very rational, very humane. At one point he quoted someone in the Bible who said something like "And when my parents fail me, I will put my trust in God." If my memory still serves, Scovel pointed out the lack of an "if" in that sentence, and said that he is now old enough to know that he has failed his children, and that all of us who live long enough and pay enough attention come to realize the same thing. It's simply part of the human condition, he said, that we eventually fall down and fail our children in some way.
http://www.brecheen.org/cbrecheen/Entry2001-02-04.htm; © 2001 Cole Brecheen; All Rights Reserved.