"For the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power."
In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul sees himself as up against people who talk a good game, especially when it comes to the kingdom of God and their part in it. The position they seem to hold would probably nowadays be called 'over-realised eschatology' - they think they have all the blessings of the kingdom now, they think that they are reigning now, and (to pick up some hints from chapter 15 of the letter) they may even think that they have been resurrected now.
Paul's response to this and similar positions held in Corinth is the theology of the cross. God displayed his power in the weakness of Christ crucified; God displayed his wisdom in the folly of Christ crucified. Paul has modelled his ministry on Christ - perhaps not deliberately, perhaps just inevitably as he has sought faithfully to proclaim the gospel. He hasn't been impressive, humanly speaking. He hasn't come with strength or with glorious rhetoric. He preached the weak and foolish cross, in a weak and foolish way, and God worked.
But within that context, Paul asserts that the kingdom of God does not consist in talk but in power.
If there isn't a contradiction here, it must be a funny sort of power Paul is talking about here - a cruciform power, the power of God revealed in weakness. But still, it's power. It is all very well for these folk in Corinth to talk about their kingly enjoyment of the kingdom of God - which they seem to see displayed in exalted and lofty ideas, a refined spirituality, a liberation from the moral strictures of human society, a deliverance from the suffering that is the common lot of humanity. But Paul has power, a power that will puncture all this talk. The power of the gospel of Christ crucified, presented in a cruciform way, by the apostle whose ministry is shaped by the cross.
Here's what I wrestle with. In the church as I know it, there's a lot of talk. But there's not a lot of power. And the temptation is to try to substitute more talk for what's missing. The more we feel the gap between the NT description of the Christian life and our own experience of it, the more we're tempted to talk up the Christian life. Papering over the weakness of our experience of the Spirit with words. But that's not the kingdom of God.
Praying this morning for genuine power, not to bypass the cross or the weakness or the suffering, but to take the cross and the weakness and the suffering and make them the place where God's power is displayed.
Tuesday, February 27, 2018
Friday, February 23, 2018
Iceland, circumcision, individualism, religion
You may have seen in the news this week that moves are afoot in Iceland to put an end to the circumcision of baby boys for religious reasons. It's a move which has much popular backing, and would probably enjoy similar popularity in this country.
There are lots of dimensions to the arguments around this action. There is the medical/psychological angle; there is the issue of religious freedom; there is the cultural question. What really strikes me, though, is the radical, atomised individualism that stands behind many of the arguments I've seen advanced by those in favour of a ban. The argument runs: how dare you religious people impose your religion on a child who hasn't chosen it, to the extent of not respecting the bodily integrity of the child?
The first key assumption behind this argument is that we are born completely neutral and entirely autonomous. Our identity is defined from within ourselves, and has nothing to do with the family into which we are born. This position is absolutely essential to modern Western secularism. We resist any attempt to define us extrinsically, by our relationships or our circumstances. But this is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense. Every child is born into a family, and so much of their identity derives from those relationships which are (so to speak) thrust upon them. You could say the same about being born into a nation, or, indeed, a religion. To deny this is actually to be anti-culture. Culture is all about that network of relationships, stories, and institutions which define us just by being there around us. Atomised individualism means there can't be culture, which means there can't be human society.
The second key assumption is that religion is about my choices and beliefs. I might decide to get circumcised later in life (personally I won't!), but that will be down to my own independently derived religious beliefs. Actually, I pick up from some of the comment around Iceland that even this isn't quite right. We're not very happy with the idea of circumcision because religion is meant to be a spiritual, private thing - something in which you can indulge if you want to, but which should leave no trace in the 'real world'. But what if religion has much less to do with me and my choices and the way in which I choose to view the world, and is much more like being confronted by something real which one cannot deny and which has a transformative effect not only on the mind but on politics, ethics, and yes even the body?
A question for Christians like me surely is: given we're not going to be engaging in infant circumcision for religious reasons, are there nevertheless ways in which we ought to be resisting these assumptions of secularism and demonstrating the way in which identity is extrinsic (most fundamentally in Christ!) and religion is public?
There are lots of dimensions to the arguments around this action. There is the medical/psychological angle; there is the issue of religious freedom; there is the cultural question. What really strikes me, though, is the radical, atomised individualism that stands behind many of the arguments I've seen advanced by those in favour of a ban. The argument runs: how dare you religious people impose your religion on a child who hasn't chosen it, to the extent of not respecting the bodily integrity of the child?
The first key assumption behind this argument is that we are born completely neutral and entirely autonomous. Our identity is defined from within ourselves, and has nothing to do with the family into which we are born. This position is absolutely essential to modern Western secularism. We resist any attempt to define us extrinsically, by our relationships or our circumstances. But this is nonsense, and dangerous nonsense. Every child is born into a family, and so much of their identity derives from those relationships which are (so to speak) thrust upon them. You could say the same about being born into a nation, or, indeed, a religion. To deny this is actually to be anti-culture. Culture is all about that network of relationships, stories, and institutions which define us just by being there around us. Atomised individualism means there can't be culture, which means there can't be human society.
The second key assumption is that religion is about my choices and beliefs. I might decide to get circumcised later in life (personally I won't!), but that will be down to my own independently derived religious beliefs. Actually, I pick up from some of the comment around Iceland that even this isn't quite right. We're not very happy with the idea of circumcision because religion is meant to be a spiritual, private thing - something in which you can indulge if you want to, but which should leave no trace in the 'real world'. But what if religion has much less to do with me and my choices and the way in which I choose to view the world, and is much more like being confronted by something real which one cannot deny and which has a transformative effect not only on the mind but on politics, ethics, and yes even the body?
A question for Christians like me surely is: given we're not going to be engaging in infant circumcision for religious reasons, are there nevertheless ways in which we ought to be resisting these assumptions of secularism and demonstrating the way in which identity is extrinsic (most fundamentally in Christ!) and religion is public?
Wednesday, February 14, 2018
We've got a bigger problem
One of the useful aspects of contemporary liberal-left discourse is its emphasis on systemic wrong. That is to say, ethics is not just a matter of considering my individual choices, or indeed the choices of other individuals; it must also involve recognising where the system is skewed in favour of particular classes of person or against those of another. Inevitably that means asking questions about how, historically, we wound up with these particular systems: for whose benefit were they constructed, consciously or unconsciously?
This is helpful because it pushes the analysis of what is wrong in our world to a deeper level. It's not just that certain free individuals choose immorally. Rather, for many of us, it is that we are cheerfully complicit in wider immoralities. The evil doesn't just arise from a few bad apples. There is something wrong with the barrel.
As an aside, I think it's a shame that this point often comes so wrapped up in the language of identity politics and with so much ideological baggage that it is often unheard. In Christian circles, particularly, I wonder if we could work on unpackaging this discourse, critiquing it from the perspective of the gospel, and re-expressing whatever is valid in terms of explicitly Christian theological discourse. Liberal-lefty Christian friends, if your fellow believers are distressing you with their failure to get on board with the social causes which seem obviously right to you, consider whether there might be some value in doing this personally.
Here's the thing, though: the analysis still doesn't go deep enough. Is the problem really the structures? Is the issue really our history? Isn't there a danger that this analysis leads us into a sort of hand-wringing guilt over our complicity, but actually at the deepest level leaves us remarkably comfortable - because after all, my inherited guilt isn't really mine. I can still think of myself as a pretty decent person, especially if I'm fully engaged in all the Right Causes.
So, push it a bit deeper. Yes, there are a few bad apples, in the form of obviously evil people. But there lies behind and underneath that a whole network of systemic wickedness. And under that - what?
It's just us, isn't it? At the deepest level, we are guilty - not just in the sense of complicity in unjust systems, but in the sense of being part of a guilty humanity, given to evil, corrupt from top to bottom. At the deepest level, we are Adam, and therefore we will die. The biggest problem with our world is you and me.
Hence Lent.
But wait. Did I say the deepest level? Not quite. Someone has managed to get deeper, the only human being who is really part of the solution and therefore not part of the problem. At the deepest level, we are loved, forgiven, righteous in Christ Jesus. It's really only when we know that - when we know ourselves as justly put to death in Christ and yet graciously raised to new life in him - that we can really do the Lent thing: really face up to the big problem.
This is helpful because it pushes the analysis of what is wrong in our world to a deeper level. It's not just that certain free individuals choose immorally. Rather, for many of us, it is that we are cheerfully complicit in wider immoralities. The evil doesn't just arise from a few bad apples. There is something wrong with the barrel.
As an aside, I think it's a shame that this point often comes so wrapped up in the language of identity politics and with so much ideological baggage that it is often unheard. In Christian circles, particularly, I wonder if we could work on unpackaging this discourse, critiquing it from the perspective of the gospel, and re-expressing whatever is valid in terms of explicitly Christian theological discourse. Liberal-lefty Christian friends, if your fellow believers are distressing you with their failure to get on board with the social causes which seem obviously right to you, consider whether there might be some value in doing this personally.
Here's the thing, though: the analysis still doesn't go deep enough. Is the problem really the structures? Is the issue really our history? Isn't there a danger that this analysis leads us into a sort of hand-wringing guilt over our complicity, but actually at the deepest level leaves us remarkably comfortable - because after all, my inherited guilt isn't really mine. I can still think of myself as a pretty decent person, especially if I'm fully engaged in all the Right Causes.
So, push it a bit deeper. Yes, there are a few bad apples, in the form of obviously evil people. But there lies behind and underneath that a whole network of systemic wickedness. And under that - what?
It's just us, isn't it? At the deepest level, we are guilty - not just in the sense of complicity in unjust systems, but in the sense of being part of a guilty humanity, given to evil, corrupt from top to bottom. At the deepest level, we are Adam, and therefore we will die. The biggest problem with our world is you and me.
Hence Lent.
But wait. Did I say the deepest level? Not quite. Someone has managed to get deeper, the only human being who is really part of the solution and therefore not part of the problem. At the deepest level, we are loved, forgiven, righteous in Christ Jesus. It's really only when we know that - when we know ourselves as justly put to death in Christ and yet graciously raised to new life in him - that we can really do the Lent thing: really face up to the big problem.
Monday, February 12, 2018
1 Corinthians 14:34-35
At Cowley Church Community, we've just finished a little series in 1 Corinthians 12-14. I wrapped up yesterday with 14:26-40, which is mostly about orderly worship. But there are a couple of verses there (34-35), really quite detached from the main flow of the argument, which express the fairly controversial (!) suggestion that women should remain silent in church. As if in mockery of my previous post, I found it impossible to preach these verses with precision. So, here is an attempt to write up what I should have said yesterday, with apologies to the congregation which had to put up with my verbal faffing around the point.
Firstly, it's worth saying that part of the difficulty comes from the almost unique textual problems around these verses. Many commentators have concluded that they aren't original, and there are strong arguments for their rejection: in one manuscript family they appear after our verse 40, which is hard to explain if they're original; read at face value, they flatly contradict what Paul has already said in chapter 11; and the subject matter interrupts Paul's discussion of prophecy and tongues, to which he returns in v36. I feel that on balance these arguments are not conclusive. Although the idea that these verses were added later would make sense of the way they move about in the manuscripts, it doesn't explain their universal presence (i.e., although some manuscripts have the verses after v40, no manuscripts omit the verses altogether). I find Daniel Wallace's suggestion that Paul may have added the verses in the margin of the manuscript himself to be very interesting. It would explain the manuscript evidence, and it makes sense of the topic: it's related to orderly worship, but not directly related to the aspect of orderly worship that Paul is mainly talking about here.
However - as a preacher, I dislike standing up to expound a text which I feel so unsure about. I like to be able to say 'this is the word of the Lord' when Scripture is read, and I dislike having to say 'I think this is probably the word of the Lord'. For your reassurance, I can't think of any other passage that would cause the same difficulty. For now, let's assume Paul wrote these verses and that we have to deal with them as Scripture. What do we do with them?
I suggested on Sunday that there are two approaches to these verses which in the end are just too simplistic. On the one hand, we can just write them off as hopelessly outdated, a product of an earlier sexist age which we have now transcended. Then we can just ignore them. The problem is, it's not just these verses. I know there are people, including some outstanding theologians, who disagree, but speaking for myself I cannot see any way to make the Bible's presentation of gender anything other than sexist in the eyes of our culture. We'd have to be prepared to edit Scripture from front to back to get a version of gender that was acceptable - and the way things are going, we might have to re-edit every couple of years to keep up with the changing zeitgeist. Nor would this be tinkering around the edges. Obviously in some places (e.g. Ephesians 5), but implicitly throughout, gender is tied to the creation design of God for humanity and ultimately to the gospel. We need to be careful that our reaction to the apparently unacceptable sayings of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 isn't to throw off the whole of God's revelation.
On the other hand, we could just insist that women be silent in church. That is to say, we could take the command at face value and enforce it. This is also easy, in its way. Of course it will make us unpopular in the surrounding culture, but there is a certain ease to being an odd sect: strong identity markers, confident in the knowledge that we know what is right and everyone else is on the outside. This would be, in its own way, easy, but I think it would be wrong. We need to think about what the apostle Paul is doing when he writes his letters. He isn't handing down isolated and arbitrary commands, but is thinking through the implications of the gospel for his readers. He is doing theology. So if Paul wrote this, it is reasonable to ask why, and to seek out his logic. The difficulty here is that the logic is not obvious. Nor is it obvious how we can reconcile it with chapter 11.
So what is to be done?
I think we have to take a step back and recognise a number of things.
We have to recognise that we want these verses to go away, and that there are several different reasons for that. We want them to go away because they are embarrassing in the face of our culture. We want them to go away because we fear (rightly) that they can be used in oppressive ways, and indeed we suspect they may have been written to be used in those ways! We want them to go away because they seem to contradict other passages of Scripture. We want them to go away because, in our experience, there are women who appear to be gifted to speak in church. Recognising that we have many motives, some noble and some not so much, to get rid of these verses, we should probably be cautious about actually doing so. If they cause us difficulty, we should probably wrestle with that rather than just dispose of the difficulty.
We have to recognise that whilst we may not be able to easily make sense of these verses, they are not the only verses on the subject. There is a whole Biblical exploration of the concept of gender, starting in Genesis 1 and proceeding to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I am convinced that the overall picture is of difference and complementarity between men and women, and I am convinced that the various restrictions on the roles of women in the churches in the writings of Paul are part of that picture. Recognising that doesn't make it straightforward to work out what our practice ought to be, but it does give the appropriate context for thinking these things through.
For what it's worth, I'm a sort of 'soft complementarian'. That is to say, I think Scripture does teach that men and women are different and that this should be reflected in family life and church family life - but I don't think Scripture provides hard and fast rules for how those differences should show up. I think in the Bible itself the expression of complementarity changes over time. I think it's a mistake to try to draw up lists of essentially 'male' and 'female' attributes or roles; rather, I think complementarity is a dynamic thing, expressed differently in different cultures. Having said that, I think the suppression or denial of these differences and their expression is part and parcel of a culture in flight from reality and subject to serious decline. All in all, I'm happy with the line we've adopted at CCC: elders are all male, because of their role in the church family, but under that headship we want to encourage women to be involved in all aspects of ministry.
Finally, we have to recognise that unless we go for one of the easy answers, we are going to have to do a lot of bearing with one another in love. On Sunday I used the language of 'fudge' - that was a mistake. We're not fudging anything. We're seeking to be faithful to God's word as we understand it, and we need to recognise that in this area as in many others that is not as straightforward as 'read and obey'. In our seeking to be faithful, we need to recognise that we could be wrong in some of our applications of God's truth - or indeed, that there might be multiple ways of being faithful in a given context. We should, of course, try to show each other from Scripture where we think we're going wrong - but primarily we should be loving one another. I think the recognition that it is complicated helps here! We can give one another more leeway where interpretation and application are difficult.
Where does that leave us on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35? Let's be frank: we're not going to silence women in the church, and for some that will look like disobedience. If they're right, God have mercy on us. I don't think they are right. But I hope we will receive verses like this - even if we can't see how they should be applied to us directly - as brakes to prevent us from easily accepting our own culture's view of things. Because they are hard, and at first glance offensive, they make us stop and think about the broader Biblical picture, and about our own practice. And in that way they serve us, they open us up with their sharp jagged edges to the full spectrum of Scriptural critique and teaching. In that sense, I hope we can get something from them.
Firstly, it's worth saying that part of the difficulty comes from the almost unique textual problems around these verses. Many commentators have concluded that they aren't original, and there are strong arguments for their rejection: in one manuscript family they appear after our verse 40, which is hard to explain if they're original; read at face value, they flatly contradict what Paul has already said in chapter 11; and the subject matter interrupts Paul's discussion of prophecy and tongues, to which he returns in v36. I feel that on balance these arguments are not conclusive. Although the idea that these verses were added later would make sense of the way they move about in the manuscripts, it doesn't explain their universal presence (i.e., although some manuscripts have the verses after v40, no manuscripts omit the verses altogether). I find Daniel Wallace's suggestion that Paul may have added the verses in the margin of the manuscript himself to be very interesting. It would explain the manuscript evidence, and it makes sense of the topic: it's related to orderly worship, but not directly related to the aspect of orderly worship that Paul is mainly talking about here.
However - as a preacher, I dislike standing up to expound a text which I feel so unsure about. I like to be able to say 'this is the word of the Lord' when Scripture is read, and I dislike having to say 'I think this is probably the word of the Lord'. For your reassurance, I can't think of any other passage that would cause the same difficulty. For now, let's assume Paul wrote these verses and that we have to deal with them as Scripture. What do we do with them?
I suggested on Sunday that there are two approaches to these verses which in the end are just too simplistic. On the one hand, we can just write them off as hopelessly outdated, a product of an earlier sexist age which we have now transcended. Then we can just ignore them. The problem is, it's not just these verses. I know there are people, including some outstanding theologians, who disagree, but speaking for myself I cannot see any way to make the Bible's presentation of gender anything other than sexist in the eyes of our culture. We'd have to be prepared to edit Scripture from front to back to get a version of gender that was acceptable - and the way things are going, we might have to re-edit every couple of years to keep up with the changing zeitgeist. Nor would this be tinkering around the edges. Obviously in some places (e.g. Ephesians 5), but implicitly throughout, gender is tied to the creation design of God for humanity and ultimately to the gospel. We need to be careful that our reaction to the apparently unacceptable sayings of 1 Corinthians 14:34-35 isn't to throw off the whole of God's revelation.
On the other hand, we could just insist that women be silent in church. That is to say, we could take the command at face value and enforce it. This is also easy, in its way. Of course it will make us unpopular in the surrounding culture, but there is a certain ease to being an odd sect: strong identity markers, confident in the knowledge that we know what is right and everyone else is on the outside. This would be, in its own way, easy, but I think it would be wrong. We need to think about what the apostle Paul is doing when he writes his letters. He isn't handing down isolated and arbitrary commands, but is thinking through the implications of the gospel for his readers. He is doing theology. So if Paul wrote this, it is reasonable to ask why, and to seek out his logic. The difficulty here is that the logic is not obvious. Nor is it obvious how we can reconcile it with chapter 11.
So what is to be done?
I think we have to take a step back and recognise a number of things.
We have to recognise that we want these verses to go away, and that there are several different reasons for that. We want them to go away because they are embarrassing in the face of our culture. We want them to go away because we fear (rightly) that they can be used in oppressive ways, and indeed we suspect they may have been written to be used in those ways! We want them to go away because they seem to contradict other passages of Scripture. We want them to go away because, in our experience, there are women who appear to be gifted to speak in church. Recognising that we have many motives, some noble and some not so much, to get rid of these verses, we should probably be cautious about actually doing so. If they cause us difficulty, we should probably wrestle with that rather than just dispose of the difficulty.
We have to recognise that whilst we may not be able to easily make sense of these verses, they are not the only verses on the subject. There is a whole Biblical exploration of the concept of gender, starting in Genesis 1 and proceeding to the marriage supper of the Lamb. I am convinced that the overall picture is of difference and complementarity between men and women, and I am convinced that the various restrictions on the roles of women in the churches in the writings of Paul are part of that picture. Recognising that doesn't make it straightforward to work out what our practice ought to be, but it does give the appropriate context for thinking these things through.
For what it's worth, I'm a sort of 'soft complementarian'. That is to say, I think Scripture does teach that men and women are different and that this should be reflected in family life and church family life - but I don't think Scripture provides hard and fast rules for how those differences should show up. I think in the Bible itself the expression of complementarity changes over time. I think it's a mistake to try to draw up lists of essentially 'male' and 'female' attributes or roles; rather, I think complementarity is a dynamic thing, expressed differently in different cultures. Having said that, I think the suppression or denial of these differences and their expression is part and parcel of a culture in flight from reality and subject to serious decline. All in all, I'm happy with the line we've adopted at CCC: elders are all male, because of their role in the church family, but under that headship we want to encourage women to be involved in all aspects of ministry.
Finally, we have to recognise that unless we go for one of the easy answers, we are going to have to do a lot of bearing with one another in love. On Sunday I used the language of 'fudge' - that was a mistake. We're not fudging anything. We're seeking to be faithful to God's word as we understand it, and we need to recognise that in this area as in many others that is not as straightforward as 'read and obey'. In our seeking to be faithful, we need to recognise that we could be wrong in some of our applications of God's truth - or indeed, that there might be multiple ways of being faithful in a given context. We should, of course, try to show each other from Scripture where we think we're going wrong - but primarily we should be loving one another. I think the recognition that it is complicated helps here! We can give one another more leeway where interpretation and application are difficult.
Where does that leave us on 1 Corinthians 14:34-35? Let's be frank: we're not going to silence women in the church, and for some that will look like disobedience. If they're right, God have mercy on us. I don't think they are right. But I hope we will receive verses like this - even if we can't see how they should be applied to us directly - as brakes to prevent us from easily accepting our own culture's view of things. Because they are hard, and at first glance offensive, they make us stop and think about the broader Biblical picture, and about our own practice. And in that way they serve us, they open us up with their sharp jagged edges to the full spectrum of Scriptural critique and teaching. In that sense, I hope we can get something from them.
Thursday, February 01, 2018
Preaching with precision
One for the preachers today. A thing I've noticed as I've been preaching more regularly is that it's easy to get a bit sloppy in certain areas, and one of those areas is precision. "Broad brushstrokes" preaching becomes more common, every sermon prefaced with 'we won't be going into all the details today...' Giving the gist of it rather than getting to the heart of it.
I think maybe it happens in a couple of different ways.
You're reading the text. You read it a few different times, and although you think you've got the broad outline, there are some prickly bits that don't seem to fit. You turn to a couple of commentaries; they are less helpful than you might like. You read the text again. But time is ticking, and at some point you're going to have to stand up and say something. So you take heart in the fact that you understand the main point, and you go into the pulpit to preach that main point, brushing the tricky parts of the text under the carpet.
But can you really be confident you've understood the main point if the point you've grasped doesn't make sense of the details of the text?
You're reading the text. At first reading, the point the inspired author is trying to make seems blindingly obvious. You follow the argument, understand the imagery. The text makes sense. But as you think about standing up to preach, you can't immediately see any connection between this text and the people you need to address. The problems of first century Galatia are not their problems; the sins of 7th century (BC!) Judah seem irrelevant to them. But then something strikes you: this in the test is a little bit like that in the world of today. Here is the hook. Paul's words, or the prophecy of Isaiah, can be applied to the present day through this channel.
But are they really the same thing? Are you confident that you're hitting the targets that the text was intended to hit?
You're reading the text. The more you read it, the more it reminds you of something you read in your devotions this morning. They're not about exactly the same thing, but there are definite links. In fact, that text really spoke to you this morning, in ways that this text which you have to exegete probably wouldn't have done by itself. Thankfully, with the devotional text in your mind, the preaching text seems to make much more sense. Perhaps that's the way into the sermon - to illuminate the one text by the other.
But which text are you really preaching, now? Are you sure the point of the original text hasn't been lost?
I don't think there's any easy answer to these problems, but I note that they mostly relate to the need for more time. More time in the text to be preached, listening to the distinctive witness to Christ which it brings; more time wrestling in thought and prayer over and for the congregation, trying to understand the deep roots of their situations. More time doing the stuff that isn't immediately productive - and that's the challenge.
I think maybe it happens in a couple of different ways.
You're reading the text. You read it a few different times, and although you think you've got the broad outline, there are some prickly bits that don't seem to fit. You turn to a couple of commentaries; they are less helpful than you might like. You read the text again. But time is ticking, and at some point you're going to have to stand up and say something. So you take heart in the fact that you understand the main point, and you go into the pulpit to preach that main point, brushing the tricky parts of the text under the carpet.
But can you really be confident you've understood the main point if the point you've grasped doesn't make sense of the details of the text?
You're reading the text. At first reading, the point the inspired author is trying to make seems blindingly obvious. You follow the argument, understand the imagery. The text makes sense. But as you think about standing up to preach, you can't immediately see any connection between this text and the people you need to address. The problems of first century Galatia are not their problems; the sins of 7th century (BC!) Judah seem irrelevant to them. But then something strikes you: this in the test is a little bit like that in the world of today. Here is the hook. Paul's words, or the prophecy of Isaiah, can be applied to the present day through this channel.
But are they really the same thing? Are you confident that you're hitting the targets that the text was intended to hit?
You're reading the text. The more you read it, the more it reminds you of something you read in your devotions this morning. They're not about exactly the same thing, but there are definite links. In fact, that text really spoke to you this morning, in ways that this text which you have to exegete probably wouldn't have done by itself. Thankfully, with the devotional text in your mind, the preaching text seems to make much more sense. Perhaps that's the way into the sermon - to illuminate the one text by the other.
But which text are you really preaching, now? Are you sure the point of the original text hasn't been lost?
I don't think there's any easy answer to these problems, but I note that they mostly relate to the need for more time. More time in the text to be preached, listening to the distinctive witness to Christ which it brings; more time wrestling in thought and prayer over and for the congregation, trying to understand the deep roots of their situations. More time doing the stuff that isn't immediately productive - and that's the challenge.
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