This sermon uses reversal, surprise, the unexpected as it takes a well-worn term "scandal," launders it, hands it back to us in a way we never anticipated. Scandal, a respectable, redoubtable term for the Christian? Well, says this sermon, "It had better be!"

Perhaps the pugency of the Christic enterprise could be recovered if scandal, as this sermon sees it (not to mention the Good Book’s point of view), were more genuinely at the center of things.

The halls of the United States Senate were cheerless this past week. A Senator, a man convicted of taking a bribe in the Abscam case, was cajoling his fellow Senators to let him keep his seat in that once-august body. Those embarrassed senators endured his pleas hour after hour. Their greatest hope - that he would quietly resign and they coul…