From Words of Woe to Unbelievable News:: Alternative Voices for the Lenten Journey

By Robert D. Cornwall

You've been a lectionary preacher throughout your ministry. You like the discipline of dealing with the scripture of the week rather than just grabbing something that is easy for you to handle.

You're willing to preach on the hard stuff. But what about the rest of scripture, those passages that never appear in the weekly readings from the Revised Common Lectionary? Are you and your congregation missing something that could be of great benefit? Dr. David Ackerman, who writes the introduction to From Words of Woe to Unbelievable News, felt the need to cover more of scripture and proposed a fourth year lectionary that covered passages that are not included in the Revised Common Lectinoary.

In turn, Dr. Bob Cornwall, a pastor highly qualified for the task, chose to use these texts in a series of sermons for Lent and Holy Week. He preached those sermons in 2014. We now offer these sermons in this Topical Line Drives volume. One of the stumbling blocks with new ideas is the question of how one gets started. It's sometimes hard to find just the approach to take to a new set of texts and a new set of ideas. Bob Cornwall leads the way, finding timely and powerful applications of these difficult texts. Besides being a resource for pastors, these sermons provide meditations that can be used as the basis for a Lenten study or for small groups.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Energion Publications
• Release date: Feb 6, 2015
• ISBN: 9781631991424

Robert D. Cornwall

Robert D. Cornwall is a Minister-at-Large for the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), theologian, ecumenical and interfaith leader, police chaplain, and author. He has written numerous books and articles, including Called to Bless: Finding Hope by Reclaiming Our Spiritual Roots. He serves as the editor of Sharing the Practice (the journal of the Academy of Parish Clergy).

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From Words of Woe to Unbelievable News

Alternative Voices for the Lenten Journey

Robert D. Cornwall

Topical Line Drives, Volume 19

Introduction by David Ackerman

Energion Publications

Gonzalez, FL

2015

Copyright © 2015, Robert D. Cornwall

Unless otherwise indicated, scripture quotations are taken are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, Copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U. S. A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scriptures marked CEB are taken from the Common English Bible®, CEB® Copyright © 2010, 2011 by Common English Bible.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. The CEB and Common English Bible trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Common English Bible. Use of either trademark requires the permission of Common English Bible.

Electronic ISBNs

ISBN10: 1-63199-142-6

ISBN13: 978-1-63199-142-4

Print Edition

ISBN10: 1-63199-141-8

ISBN13: 978-1-63199-141-7

Energion Publications

P. O. Box 841

Gonzalez, FL 32560

energionpubs.com

[e-mail]

850-525-3916

Table of Contents

Preface 1

Introduction 3

Words of Woe 7

No Signs for You 11

A Time to Weep 15

Difficult Paths 20

Be Alert 25

Time’s Up 29

Unbelievable News 33

Preface

I am a preacher and on most Sundays during the year you will find me in the pulpit sharing a message that I hope and pray will bring a word from God to the congregation. On a majority of Sundays I turn to the Revised Common Lectionary for a text to share. I do this for a number of reasons, including its connection to the liturgical year. There’s another reason, however, why I like to use the lectionary. Because I seek to be a biblical preacher, the lectionary gives me the opportunity to sit with a text and ask of it what word God might have for me and the congregation. The lectionary takes us to a wide variety of texts in both Testaments, but if we stick too closely to the RCL we will leave a great swath of scripture unexplored.

When Bruce Epperly introduced me to David Ackerman, a pastor from the United Church of Christ who had created his own fourth year lectionary, I was intrigued. Here was a set of texts that could take me to new places. For the past year I’ve been posting David’s worship materials and sermon starters on my blog. I made use of these texts for the first time as the foundation for sermons during Advent and Christmas season of 2013. This first venture took me to places like the Book of Daniel and stories that are well known, but rarely preached. When I was looking at what to preach during Lent, I decided to take a look at David’s lectionary. As I did so, I decided to use his readings from the Gospels for the Sundays of Lent through Easter Sunday. Some of these texts are rather dark and challenging. If you read these texts you might get a sense why they weren’t included in the RCL. For instance, some of them exhibit anti-Jewish tendencies. Still, they’re part of the canon. Even passages like the longer ending of Mark, which most scholars have deemed a late addition and not originally part of Mark, have been considered Scripture by the Church. So is there a message in a text like that?

I’m pleased to share these sermons, preached during Lent through Easter Sunday 2014, for your consideration. I’m also pleased that David agreed to write an introduction to these sermons, sharing his rationale for developing this lectionary and how my sermons illustrate what he was hoping to see happen as preachers step out of the comfort zone provided by the RCL and take up texts rarely explored, at