If for no other reason, I'm grateful to be in seminary to get to the root of why the things about "the church" whizz me off. Here's one that's gotten under my skin for years. Why is it that in so many denominations, you need to be ordained to administer the sacraments (or get a special "hall pass" from an ordained person or church authority)? In lecture this week, we were discussing (okay, the professor mostly talks and we mostly listen, so discussing is probably not an apt verb) the role of scripture and sacraments for Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism and various flavors of Zwingli/Calvinism.
The crude way of looking at it is if we were to be playing a variation of rock, paper, scissors with the Roman Catholics, sacrament beats scripture/word. In the reformed traditions, it's supposed to be the reverse. If we Protestants place such importance on the word/sacrament (in which the readings and sermon are the main players of worship, as opposed to communion at a mass), then why is it any ol' fool can get up and "do the sermon" at many churches, yet there are a zillion hoops to jump through to administer the sacraments (of which there are two: baptism and communion).
I have to say, having my professor spell out what I hadn't gotten around to articulating was helpful. It also places the sermon I'm preaching tomorrow on a new level. I'm administering something more important than the sacrament, according to my denomination. At least that puts the drinking game I proposed in a lower level of egregiousness, since it's more closely aligned with a sacrament than having anything to do with the word ... except the words my listeners may choose for their little game. On the plus side, it would encourage a closer listening of the sermon, so in the immortal words of Fat Albert, "If you're not careful, you just might learn something before it's done!"
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