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Preaching is one of the great joys of my ministry, and one of the biggest mysteries. As much as I want to be the next Barbara Brown Taylor (minus the rural living), I have to admit that sermons a more an event than a text for me. I've been repeatedly chastised by those who want a copy of my work - I'm happy to hand over my text, but frequently the "best" or most memorable parts of the sermon are missing. When I was writing, I just didn't think of them.
It's odd, then, that I'm a full-text preacher. (Here, if you have ten minutes, is a video of me explaining just how I figured that out for myself.) I need to figure out all my moves, from introduction to conclusion, and I need to delete, delete, and delete to get myself down to a reasonable Episcopal length (for me, this is 11,000-15,000 words, to yield 12-16 minutes of audio). I work on a sermon off and on for a whole week - from text study, commentary review, the odd conversation with a parishioner, to whatever I'm watching on Netflix. A full draft takes me about 45 minutes to write, but it's the result of hours of thought - and it'll need another few edits to be ready for primetime. And then. Still. The sermon inevitably changes on its way from the page to my mouth. Maybe there's someone in church that day who I know just enough about to know I have to get something out of the way before they can hear the sermon. Maybe I thought of a better joke. Maybe the processional hymn's words opened up a new way for me to consider the text's central metaphor. And maybe there was a mass shooting - or two - overnight. This past Sunday I had a neat sermon on discernment. I mean "neat" not in a slangy way, but tidy. It was tight, to the point, and the metaphor really worked. (Also, I only had one metaphor - which means I was following my own advice for once.) As I always do these days, I opened up Facebook before service, explicitly to make sure I hadn't missed anything huge. There, at the top of my feed, was a discussion among young clergy women about how much attention to pay to the latest carnage. Including a comment from one woman which I find devastating - "If I were to preach about every mass shooting these days, I'd never preach about anything else." There were litanies, prayers, and other resources linked in the comments, too. I very honestly didn't know what to do, and didn't have enough time to figure it out before the service started. At the top of the sermon I took a very deep breath, and took a little longer to pray than I usually do. And then I delivered a weird mash-up - about 50% of my original text, and about 50% of entirely new material. Instead of a dopey example about discernment, I talked about my decision to not be armed in the pulpit. I told them that I was more comfortable laying down my own life than I was laying down my morals to harm another human being, perhaps fatally. And I told a congregation that I very much loved that while I would do anything in my power to protect them, they could not ask me to forfeit my beliefs for their feelings of safety. (Preaching off the cuff meant I didn't have the statistics in front of me, but the likelihood of being shot accidentally is another huge reason I won't arm myself in the pulpit or allow guns in my home.) People cried. I almost cried. And then it was over and I couldn't transcribe a quarter of it if you asked me. (But, I do have a very rough audio file.) So I don't have very many sermons uploaded on to this page. The ones I do are mostly ones which I've had to publish, which means someone else has forced me to edit them. They're sermons I've preached, and then sat down with again to wordsmith. They're sermons I like well enough, too - but they never quite seem like "the real thing." Words on a page just don't replicate the preaching experience for me. (Though I do love reading others' homilies!) Like many of us in the Church today, I'm not terribly well-versed in opening myself up to the intervention of the Spirit, let alone talking about it. I'm a little embarrassed about my more weird mystical experiences. But every Sunday (or weekday) when I preach, I do feel something enter me that I'm pretty sure is the Holy Spirit herself. And without that, I don't think I'd ever be up to the task. Thank God my "best" bits aren't on paper - thank God they're barely even "mine." And thank God for my tiny little audio recorder, lest I never be able to recapture any of my best work! Psalm 101, Hebrews 7:1-17, Luke 10:17-24
The seventy returned with joy, saying, ‘Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!’ [Jesus] said to them, ‘I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.’ (Luke 10:17-20) Some years ago, a certain bishop told me a story that I really hope is true. This was before the bishop was a bishop – and in fact, happened right after he lost the first episcopal election he was ever on the ballot for. So the not-bishop lost his election, and he returned to his parish a little dejected, naturally. And he was sulking and moping, as he knew he was entitled to do. Then one of his parishioners took him aside after a Sunday service and said, “Pastor, do you believe that Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior, and died and rose for your sins?” And the not-bishop said, “Of course I do. I’m in church every Sunday, just like you. I believe that.” And the parishioner said to him, “Well, then, you might as well act like it!” And walked away. Smart guy, no? The parishioner, not the not-bishop, I mean. Somewhere back in seminary, I’m sure that someone explained to you that ministry is the work of small things. A minster, as opposed to a magister, is someone who takes care of the small, not the large, things. And all of you in the parish know this intensely. Your calendars are full of small stuff. Most of us, like our good friend Melchizedek, live and die by stuff we know is small, like making sure that the patriarchs and matriarchs tithe just one more year, so we can pay the light bill and keep the sexton in folding chairs. And, not for nothing, so we can continue to make our holy tithe and a half to the CPG so we can be a priest forever - or at least our HAC can achieve immortality. Small things are really important, they keep the church going and that is good and hard work. But. Hear Jesus’s word to the disciples this morning: There’s a much bigger picture out there. The seventy go out and they come back with great joy because they have SEEN some STUFF! And Jesus is like, “Yes, yes, I know, I know, Satan fell out of heaven, there were snakes, blah blah blah - BUT! Don’t worry about that junk, but rejoice that your name is written in heaven.” I think that we, like the disciples, get easily focused on the great cataclysms of our age, or the great problems of the church. There are many catastrophes and headlines screaming for our attention. And yes, I know and believe that there is a place for holy and prophetic preaching about these “big” issues, even in the pastoral context. But really hear what Jesus says to his disciples when they return from their continuing education seminar: “Yeah I get it, stuff’s wild out there – But don’t get distracted with that - Look at the bigger thing, which is at the center of your own seemingly small life. And rejoice! For your names are written in heaven. Rejoice!” In other words, don’t get caught up in so small things as a fate of this world which is passing away, lest you lose sight of the bigger picture – What difference has the Gospel made in your own life? What joy has come from that? I sure hope you have some kind of story of the change the Gospel has made in your own life, some memory of when your name made it up there in the realms of glory. I hope you have had that kind of experience, or many of them, otherwise I have some questions for your Commission on Ministry. Moreover - I hope you have not forgotten how big that story is. And I hope you understand and know that intimately. That that story, that joy – the change the Gospel has made in your own little life. That. Is. Huge. What a gift it is to your people if you can preach from that story, what a gift to the chruch if you can live with that kind of rejoicing. As that parishioner told the not-yet-bishop lo those many years ago - you believe that Jesus is your Lord and Savior? You better act like it! You better preach like it! Prophets and kings have desired to see and hear that word … and not just to repeat it in the words of the same creed every Sunday (though there is hope in that) but to hear it preached and watch it lived. More and more I think I am realizing that the real crisis we as a Church, the capital-C Church, face is a crisis of credibility. The big C Church is riven by scandal theological differences, (just like it always has been) and what do we say to that? What CAN you say to that? Perfectly constructed little jewelboxes of theological arguments can’t answer those kinds of questions. It’s like patching up the holes in a colander – it an endless task, and it just doesn’t make that colander a bowl. It’s not so much a problem of scale but of method. Because when we focus on the small stuff, what end up doing is submitting the hugeness of the Gospel to the tiny measure of human problems. And don’t get me wrong: there is a place in the scriptures and in our church bodies for those perfectly constructed carefully constructed little jewels of theological argumentation like this chapter of Hebrews, but we would be well served to remember how small they really are. And how no one reads this chapter of Hebrews at a funeral or a wedding, or ever. You have to be really dedicated to the daily office lectionary, like we are at PEP-II, to ever get to this one. The doubts of the world seem like such big, insurmountable things, and they are things that need to be confronted and dealt with but they should not, they must not take us away from the much greater truths of the faith. Hear Jesus again: “Nevertheless. Rejoice. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Nevertheless, rejoice, that the action of God has made all the difference in your life. Because we really have nothing to preach on, nothing to stand on, nothing to share, nothing to say, if we do not proclamation of own experience of who Christ is to us, what God has done for us, and what difference the Gospel has made in our own lives. Again I am not, by any means, saying that we need to give up on political preaching or prophetic preaching, or that we should or even can give up the practice of lament as a part of preaching. For this age, lament will be one of our primary tasks as a church, for lament is calling to attention what is wrong and how we have all failed to realize God’s dreams for us as a species and as a world. But what I am saying is that we must first proclaim the dream, and proclaim our own faith. What I am saying is that you have before you a few really lovely days of time away, what I am saying is that maybe in these are days when you can hear the word preached and taught, and rejoice once again like you did some time ago … Lo tho it feels like Abraham was alive and tithing when last you had that joy. Here you have a few days to spend in the glory of nature with Jesus and his donkeys at Trinity Retreat Center, and maybe just maybe, you can recover your joy in that joy beyond all joys - maybe by leaving aside the ministry for the moment, you can shift your focus away from the small things, the puny inconsequential authority granted to you by the church by making you a priest forever. Instead, maybe you can focus on what was revealed to you when the Gospel changed everything. When first you had the chance realize what God had done for you, the moment when you heard the voice of Jesus say, rejoice. Don’t you believe in all that? I know you do. You’re in church every Sunday, just like the rest of us. All I am saying is … as a wise parishioner once said … you should act – and preach – like it. Amen. |
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