Them before Scripture:

Once again to the preaching issue. Sermons have been homilies for some time now. Trouble with homilies, they teeter everlastingly on the brink of being lectures with a smiley face — about who wrote what no matter what you heard before this (DON’T WANNA HEAR IT!), local politics of 3,000 years ago (GOT ENOUGH OF THAT WHERE I LIVE!), and how people baked bread on open fires or grew corn or washed themselves with spikenard (TRAVELOGS IN ANCIENT EGYPT OR AMONG THE GALATIANS ARE NOT MY CHOICE ON SUNDAY MORNING!).

. . . more more more here