9/12/19
Capon, Robert Farrar. The Foolishness of Preaching: Proclaiming the Gospel against the Wisdom of the World. Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans, 1998. Chapter 8, “Unfinished Business” pp. 71-78.
In this brief chapter, Capon wraps up a few concepts he introduced earlier but did not conclude. First, he chose to use Luke 11:1-13, the friend coming at midnight, as an example of a passage which would make a preacher work hard. He encourages his readers to work hard with the more difficult passages of Scripture (Capon 1998, 71). Other passages he has emphasized were chosen simply because they were on his mind due to recent use in the Lectionary. Capon encourages use of a lectionary, even though they are all imperfect, since they drive the preacher to dig into a variety of Scriptures (Capon 1998, 73). He does emphasize the importance of finding the overall context of each passage. The structure of the biblical narrative is sophisticated and intricate. Finding the purpose brings us to the point (Capon 1998, 74). Capon goes on to emphasize reading materials before and after the prescribed passages as well as working through portions of Scripture which are omitted from the lectionary.