Sermon

Next we hear the sermon. The sermon is simply an aid. We have listened to the word, and now we listen to its interpretation, or rather an interpretation from people we (hopefully) trust. The preacher doesn’t tell us what to think, as much as she or he encourages us to think: 

to connect what we have heard to our lives and our world; 

to consider what this means for our faith; 

to provide further context, information or interpretations to help us understand what particularly impenetrable or disparate parts of Scripture might be saying. 

But the chief preacher is, of course, Christ. 

Christ is the perfect revelation of God and God’s will, Christ is the Word of God. And if we ever need to understand what God is saying to us in Scripture, we look to Christ, to whom, hopefully, every preacher points.