June 19: “A Christian Consensus: Jesus Is God Living a Human Life”

Here is audio of the sermon from June 19, 2016.

“It has long been my practice as a preacher to dedicate several weeks of each summer season to the ancient Christian practice of what in the old days was called “catechetical” preaching. It has its roots in the preparation of adult converts for baptism. The first example I know of is St. Hippolytus of Rome’s “Sermon on the Creed to the Catechumens,” from the second century. For us today it’s more a way for us to remind ourselves again of the great, basic themes of our faith. Last year we did this the same way St. Hippolytus did, by working our way through the Apostles’ Creed. This year we’re taking as our model C.S. Lewis’s little book, Mere Christianity. We’re not tracking with that book, so don’t go out and buy it. (Well, do go out and buy it, but not in order to follow along with this sermon series.) It’s well worth reading, but we’re not following along with it in this series of sermons. It’s our model in the sense that Lewis said he was trying to write about the themes all Christians agree about. Lewis talked about “mere” Christianity; we’re going to talk about it as the Christian consensus: what are those teachings that are really basic to what it means to be a Christian? Lewis started with the thought that God exists, and that our ideas of good and evil point to the reality of God. We begin where the first Christians did, with an encounter with Jesus.”

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