Several years ago, while in the midst of preaching through Ruth, a gentleman from the congregation came up to me and declared, “I know what you’re doing: you aren’t just teaching us about Ruth, but also how to read the Bible.” While I hadn’t thought about it that concisely, that is exactly what I was doing.
In fact, perhaps all sermons are both about the passage at hand and also a demonstration of hermeneutics - or, a lesson in “how to read the Bible.” Just a thought.
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June 11th, 2007 at 9:57 am
It would have to be, I think, either implicitly or explicitly. Growing up, I didn’t know that there was more than one way to read a text, and as such my reading patterns were very self-centered until I began to encounter other people who saw texts differently than me. But, every offered reading has embedded in it a strategy that produced such a reading, so it seems like it would be fair to use that opportunity to model a good reading. This makes reflection on one’s hermeneutical commitments all the more important, especially since (like me as a child…or now) we all come to the table with them.