As a disclaimer, or perhaps a warning, this is my first sermon since graduating from seminary, so I’m going to download 4.5 years’ worth of education to you in the next 25 minutes.

No, seriously, I did learn a ton in my studies the last five years and I’d like to share some of it with you, and the study I did diving deep into this parable kind of brought together so much of what I gained from seminary, and why I wanted to go to seminary in the first place. I grew up in the church, I feel very fortunate to have had wonderful parents who raised me in the faith, who are great examples to me and my brother about how to live Christianly and to have an intelligent faith that takes scripture seriously and puts feet to that faith with compassion toward others.

But I also realized that I have a pretty narrow worldview. Sure, I spent a year studying abroad in London, and I’ve had the opportunity to do some international travel, and I’ve gone on a half dozen short-term mission trips to extremely poor areas in Mexico. But relatively speaking I still have a narrow, limited worldview and therefore a narrow and limited view of God. My hope, when I enrolled at Fuller Theological Seminary was to broaden my understanding of God by gaining a more global and historical perspective of God. I wanted to learn to see God from different perspectives and to interpret scripture from different perspectives. And I feel like I did grow in this way tremendously.

I learned that there’s not ONE RIGHT WAY to interpret scripture – especially when you’re dealing with a parable. Continue reading →