Sun. Dec. 11, 2011 (Karl Brown)

On the Third Sunday of Advent, Karl Brown gave the second in his series of talks on faith. For Christians, faith concerns our belief in God and in salvation from sin. This is so important that in order to join most congregations, one must both profess having faith and have been living a life in which faith has somehow been in evidence. With December being the season for aggressive marketing, Karl asked us to reflect on whether marketing has ever been applied by Christians to promoting something as important, and yet as elusive as faith (e.g., tent revival campaigns, televangelism). Marketing seeks to send a message, often by telling/showing a story or scenario which is in tune with the targeted audience's s world view. In today's gospel lectionary (John 1.6-), John the Baptist was successful at promoting/marketing his faith views because what he had to say so perfectly fit the world view of many of his Jewish listeners, and because they sensed that he was trying to live according to his professed faith. His was the kind of faith they found possibly attractive for their daily living and present political dilemma. Does our society know about our faith enough to consider whether that kind of faith might be applicable to daily living and to society's pressing concerns? [JEK]

Listen to the sermon audio MP3 recording from Sunday, December 11th, 2011 using your browser's preferred media player.