Sermons

For John is both a preacher’s dream and nightmare. So rich with poetry, so full of so many possible meanings, so deep and wonderful and beautiful. And it happened on Wednesday. It happened in the middle of a meadow at Mohawk Trail State Forest, when I was just thinking about this sermon, with this text rumbling around in my mind. What do I need to do to get into this passage from John?

Then the complete, logical, obvious answer came to me: the 1990 blockbuster movie, “Pretty Woman.” I said, whoa, I should maybe pay attention to this and go with it! So in case you haven’t seen that movie, in it Richard Gere plays Edward Lewis. He is a man who knows exactly what he is doing at all times. Well, he buys billion dollar companies to chop them up and sell them off and make billions more. A man who has it all, until the movie clearly demonstrates he doesn’t. Edward Lewis is a man who takes private jets wherever he wants to go. He stays in penthouses. He gets around either in his lawyer’s Lotus where he just takes the keys off his hands, or chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces. He is a man on the move, until, of course, the movie makes clear how stuck he is.