Proper 16 – Series B
Our text only includes the admonition to married couples. I would commend to you that you might expand the reading this week to include the exhortation to children and to master/slaves. This will be in a sense a vocational sermon. The point is that the theological redefinition of life as a walk in Christ is now applied to the various vocations of life as spouse, parent, citizen, and neighbor. Paul did not have an abstraction in mind when he spoke of walking in the light, he meant very concrete things which take shape in marriages, in families, in the workplace, etc. The development below will work with the marriage sphere, but it could easily be adapted to the other spheres of life and expanded to even more parts of life. The preacher will want to ask what is most appropriate for his parish. Do they need to hear the topic of marriage addressed directly? Or would a broader treatment be more in their interest?
This sermon will take the prior three weeks’ messages and apply it directly to life. The preacher will want to have the phrases which Paul has used in the prior weeks at his fingertips: loving the good, right, and true; we are kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving as Christ forgave us; etc. He will want to remind the hearer that we have a new inheritance, we walk a new and enlightened way. It is not the way of the world.
