My Adventure with Scripture: So Slippery

Randy Calvo, Jr. ’81, Director of Alumni/ae and Church Relations

Until this time last year, I practiced the pastor’s weekly ritual of sermon preparation. Monday mornings, religiously, I began with the Common Lectionary’s biblical lessons. During the week I frequently consulted various commentaries, other Bible reference tools, and even well-worn seminary textbooks. I found over time, however, that I stayed pretty close to the scripture during the week.

As I wrestled with its meaning (as I wanted it to be for that particular sermon), that scripture would become slippery, elusive to my grasp. Before I knew it, It would take hold of me. And by the time I stepped up to the pulpit to preach, It had carried me on an adventure, holding me close and taking me to places of the heart and soul that I hadn’t been before.       

For this preacher, there has been both judgment and liberation in the divine proposition as [God says,] “I’ve got something to say [to my people] if you are willing to listen…” So instead of a burdensome imposition, I received an irresistibly gracious invitation. Every week I prepared a sermon, I became scripture’s companion on a homiletical adventure into God’s Word. Invited to share a satisfying intimacy, my I-It relationship with scripture became I-Thou.     

We pastors can easily gloss over words of scripture, particularly familiar verses, during sermon preparation. But when we pay attention to the scriptural lesson—its context, content, and configuration—the less and familiar becomes more and strangely wonderful. Captivated by the wonder of God’s Word, we are led by scripture to places of new creation and life. At that point, writing a sermon becomes no longer digging for something to say, but instead a joyful choosing from among treasures in an open chest. 

Then the joy becomes sharing the excitement of our week’s adventure during worship with the faith community. And nothing is better than when we can share destinations of thought and perspective—brand new discoveries about God, life, and the world—that we’ve experienced personally for the first time. Even though we are saying words fixed on the pages of a sermon manuscript, that Word proclaimed by the preacher carries a sense that it is not our grasp of It, but Its grasp of us that matters most.

I will never forget an encounter with Proverbs 8:1-3, 22-31, included along with Psalm 8, Romans 5, and John 16 in Year C of the “Common Lectionary,” Trinity Sunday.  

Does not wisdom call, does not understanding raise her voice? On the heights beside the way, in the paths she takes her stand; beside the gates in front of the town, at the entrance of the portals she cries aloud: The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of old. Ages ago I was set up, at the first, before the beginning of the Earth. When there were no depths I was brought forth, when there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped, before the hills, I was brought forth; before he had made the earth with its fields, or the first of the dust of the world. When he established the heavens, I was there, when he drew a circle on the face of the deep, when he made firm the skies above, when he established the fountains of the deep, when he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman; and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the sons of men.

That scripture grabbed me and tossed me around. Wisdom says, “I was right there when God threw all the creation into place.” Wow! I bet that was something to behold! Think about it . . . Wisdom declares “I was there . . .” Now, you say that. Read that out loud to yourself. “When he established the heavens, I was there. . .”

You may think that I have not understood clearly the meaning of this text. But I will tell you this: I am still held in Its grasp, still a willing, wondering adventurer in that place of new creation where God’s Word takes me. 

Randy Calvo joined the seminary’s staff in 2007. He had served previously as pastor of Atlanta’s Northwest Presbyterian Church.