It’s not hard to find the awkward parts of Scripture. They’re the parts we often love to avoid.
Almost every book has them. Read the laws about beating slaves (Exodus 21:20-21), the difficulty of finding a single good female (Ecclesiastes 7:28), the reports of people who came alive as Jesus died (Matthew 27:52), or the statement that women will be saved through childbirth (1 Timothy 2:15). It’s easy to hop over these passages, hoping nobody will ask difficult questions.
Preach them.
I’ve found that people want to talk about the hard bits. They want to wrestle with the tension we feel when we read passages like this. Ignoring them is a disservice to people who will, we hope, end up reading them anyway.
It’s also wrong to skip them because of what Scripture claims to be. If all Scripture is God-breathed and useful (2 Timothy 3:16-17), these parts are too. We ignore them at our peril.
But those aren’t the only reason to preach the awkward passages. Trevin Wax writes about finding the edge in preaching:
How does this biblical text—its world of assumptions, attitudes, and application—cut against the grain of what passes for “common sense” in our world? Where’s the encounter or confrontation of this text with worldly ways of thinking and living? Where’s the sharp point of contradiction?
Find the edge. The world says one thing; the Bible says another. Don’t stop planning your sermon until the edge is clear. That’s what seasons the meal. That’s what sweetens the elixir. That’s what engages different muscles.
The awkward passages provide that edge. Talk about them, and it will be difficult to be boring. People will lean in because they want that tension to be resolved. They want to understand what appears, at first glance, to be beyond understanding.
But don’t just preach the awkward parts to keep people’s interest. Often, these passages have something to teach us that we wouldn’t otherwise learn. Yes, it’s difficult to read laws that talk about the beating of slaves, but it helps to know that no other statute in the ancient world provided similar protection. This law seems retrograde to us, but in its context, it spoke of the value of all human life, including that of slaves. It helps us realize that we face similar ethical dilemmas as well: we buy products made in parts of the world where people have fewer rights. How can we care for them, too, giving this disparity?
The writer’s statement about women in Ecclesiastes 7:28 is troubling, but it may say more about the author than about women. Phil Ryken comments, “Remember that these verses may well have been written by King Solomon, who knew some wise and godly men, like the prophet Nathan, but who also had a thousand wives and concubines in his royal harem — unbelieving women who worshiped foreign gods (see 1 Kings 11:3). Does it really surprise us to learn that not one of them was known for her godliness?” We need to wrestle with the nature of Ecclesiastes — Tremper Longman says that the writer sometimes speaks as a confused wise man — and to dig beneath the surface to determine what it means.
I could go on. The awkward passages have lots to teach us. Our people will encounter them anyway, so we may as well preach them. I’ve found that people enjoy it when we do, and that it’s a good way to treat Scripture as Scripture. We need the awkward parts, because sometimes they help us to discover that it’s not Scripture that’s weird; it’s us.
So welcome the awkward parts. Do your homework, and preach them. It won’t be boring, and it will probably do a lot of good.
