Brothers and sisters,
I’m excited about our upcoming sermon series. I love this time of the year. College football is back. The State Fair is coming up. Our church’s Fall Festival is quickly approaching. And, of course, we end the month with Halloween, one of my favorite holidays of the year. In the spirit of Halloween and all the interesting ideas it raises, I thought we could do a sermon series on a few passages within the scriptures that are not your typical passages.
You all know that I value and appreciate the lectionary—the three-year cycle of scripture passages that most preachers preach from and/or draw Calls to Worship from—but the lectionary definitely has some blind spots. In particular, the lectionary does not typically pick up on passages that are a little, shall we say, spookier. It tends to avoid passages where ghosts or demons or witches are mentioned. While I understand why it does this—these are not always the easiest pas-sages to preach on—I think that we miss out on some really interesting lessons when we avoid those stories.
I want to take the month of October to talk about four passages where something supernatural happens. I want to take a look at the ways in which the people respond to the crazy things they’re seeing. And I want to look at how God is found in each of those moments. So, we’ll start with a classic—Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones. We’ll move on to the story that gives us the phrase “the writing’s on the wall.” We’ll also spend a Sunday talking about some wannabe exorcists in the book of Acts. And the Sunday before Halloween, we’ll take a look at Saul and the witch of Endor.
I’m excited for this series because these passages have the ability to push us in ways we may not necessarily be used to. They will ask us hard questions about what our faith should look like and how we should express it. They will ask us how deeply we truly believe. But this series will end on November 3rd with a familiar passage from the Gospel that reminds us that in everything, spooky or not, God is with us. Happy Spooky Season, y’all!
Grace and peace,
Pastor Ben
P.S. When I told the church council about this series months ago, I prefaced the discussion by saying, “I think y’all know this already, but I love Halloween.” I’d barely gotten the sentence out of my mouth before someone on the council chuckled and said, “We know.” When I paused to look at them, they said, “I mean, you went to Salem the weekend before Halloween. Who does that unless they love Halloween!” And, you know, they weren’t wrong!