Merv, thanks. I actually don’t care about the tone of people’s comments (I’m no saint in that respect, I’m afraid). I’d just hope that you would see the main point that I was making, and that your sermon speaker also made. The whole bible, NT and OT, is written by humans and is, at the very least, not closely edited by a god. This has important implications which many people here are not making. We both disagree with the OT fundamentalists, but many people here are also overly fundamentalist about the NT. The sayings of Jesus and the events described are passed down to us through many very human filters, and not edited by a god, and I think most Christians do not take the consequences of this seriously enough.
But I am glad you seem to agree that the interpretation of the bible should be fluid. More than that, the arguments of your speaker (and my own arguments) show that every part of the bible (including the NT) needs to be evaluated on its own merits, without a false sense of authority. The whole thing really was written by humans, even if god exists.