How is disequilibrium or conflict at the heart of the homiletical process you e teaching?
Building on the idea that I want to preach a remedy, all I want to do in the first fifteen to twenty minutes is help the people feel the disease. I don’t want to tip off what I’m going to say. The more unknowns I have going for me the better it is. So for fifteen or twenty minutes I do nothing but try to get people to say, “Yeah, I feel that way. Why?” A good sermon is like feeding people peanuts one at a time. And then when I get to my idea, it should be like a cold glass of water. You point out there’s a difference between the disequilibrium in the textual story and the disequilibrium you’re creating on the homiletical side. Talk a little bit about the distinction between the two. 2 Samuel 8 is kind of a Reader’s Digest of David’s military campaigns. David, perhaps while running from Saul, learned how to trust God. Perhaps when he saw what happened to Saul, it convinced him to say, When I become king I’m going to obey God. Regardless, the text affirms that this is what David did even
