For First Congregational Church, Greeley, Colorado, June 15, 2008
Texts: 1 Corinthians 1:20-31
Genesis 18:1-15
There’s a really obvious sermon to be preached about this text. A sermon abut how Abraham and Sarah’s faith was so great that, in their old age, God rewarded them with the thing that they wanted most, a son.
The sermon would then go on to talk about how it can happen to you, too.
The person preaching the sermon would tell you if your faith is strong enough, if you pray sincerely enough, if you live rightly enough, then God will reward you with health, wealth, children, whatever it is that you most want, “Wealth and pelf and fame and name and all of that noise.”
Yes, I’m sure many a televangelist has preached that exact sermon. It’s a very comforting sermon, one that can make you feel good about yourself, about God and about your future and there are a lot of people in the world whose faith is based solidly in that sermon.
Three years ago, I did an internship as a chaplain at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta. Grady is right in the heart of downtown Atlanta, and is part of Atlanta history and culture. Grady has been in Atlanta since 1890, and you can see in the architecture of the oldest parts of the current building the history of racial segregation, that lead to it’s being known, especially now among older African-Americans as “The Gradys.”
