Bishop Benfield's Sermon from the Opening Service at the 139th Convention of the Diocese of Arkansas, Friday, March 11, 2011

When the committee assembled to decide which scripture lessons we would read in church at public worship, the person bringing the Bible into the room must have had a loose-leaf version in a three-ring binder and dropped it, and subsequently lost all the Old Testament except Isaiah. The evidence for this accident is that week after week in the lectionary the Old Testament reading is Isaiah, Isaiah, Isaiah, one book chosen out of 39 possible choices. If you are a preacher who likes to preach on the Old Testament, you can’t get the voice of Isaiah out of your head. There are so many vivid stories from Genesis and Exodus, so many “could-be-best-selling-adult-movie” vignettes from the lives of the kings of Judah and Israel and countless other ne’er do wells, and what we get is Isaiah talking to us again and again . . . .  Download and read the complete sermon here.