It was early in my ministry and I wanted to show off a little. I thought I had done a pretty decent job in my sermon to point out the difference between Heresy, Orthodoxy, and Heterodoxy. That afternoon I was at the hospital because one of my church members was dying. The dying person’s wife came up to me in the waiting room and thanked me for my sermon that morning. I thought she was thanking me for having a prayer for her husband. Then she said, “I really enjoyed your sermon this morning.” As the saying goes, “flattery will get you everywhere.” My ego was about as inflated as it could have been.
Proverbs 16:18 “ Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”
She then added, “I didn’t think just people who believed in Jesus were going to heaven”. Deflated. What did I say in my sermon that gave her that impression? In 1997 we did not have live-streaming and though the service was on the radio I never got up the nerve to request a copy.
I am sure many of you have heard the acronym K.I.S.S.(not Knights in Satan’s Service as our parents told us the Rock band KISS stood for). Keep it simple stupid. I suspect that on that Sunday in 1997 I had not followed that advice and all these years later those words of my church member continue to serve as a warning.
I don’t remember the church father who said it but the gist is that in times of controversy concerning the Bible there is no room for ambiguous language. “Keep it simple stupid” is not to be misunderstood to stand for “keep it stupid simpleton.” When I do a weekly children’s devotion in church I try hard to keep it 100% Biblically accurate and 100% simple. I think this is why adults get a lot out of children’s sermons too. I thought it was interesting this past Sunday when I was preaching for Holy Trinity Sunday in the Children’s devotion I mentioned, “Tri” = Three and “Une” like “uno” is one. So the Triune God is the Three in One God. I had more people who have been life-long Christians say to me, “I never really understood that the “une” was signifying the “oneness” of God.
I do remember it was St. Augustine who said, “I may preach heresy, but I will not be a heretic”. All of us can and will say something about the Bible incorrectly, but when it is brought to our attention that we said it wrong we will thank the person who was a good Berean (Acts 17:11) and clear up the matter as best we can.
I did not immediately tell the woman in the hospital that I had misspoken myself or she had misheard me until many months after her husband’s funeral. When I did I fell on my sword and used the St. Augustine quote and then I had the opportunity to speak the truth in love and rejoice that her husband had faith in Christ as his only Savior and would be with us forever.
I know stupid is a no-no word these days so maybe replace saint for stupid. Either way, let’s get us there and start keeping the Gospel good news simple.
