Questioning the Sermon

As pastors, if you won't let God use you to make a new world, through faithful words, then all you can do is service the old one. And that's no fun. {Walter Brueggemann}


Taking my cue from the Good Bishop Annie, I think it would be a shame indeed to offer trivial sermons about trivial things. The Bible tells a most outrageous story. If it's true, as I happen to believe it is, then our reality has been redefined; we need new eyes to see our life (and the entire cosmos) in new ways; and - perhaps best of all - hope has truly come, in Jesus.

This means that whenever I go to my work of wading into Scripture's deep waters, my task is to immerse myself in the Story, to let it up close so that the text's questions become my questions, so that the characters' fears and worries and awe find their way into my bones. My aim for the Sunday sermon is not to dumb the text down to a few bullet-points and a poem but rather to open a door where our community can encounter the possibility of a world-made-new.

As I begin to get words on paper for Sunday's homily, then, I need to wrestle with whether or not my words have any life to them, whether they are faithful to the Story, whether the words have any chance of helping people grapple with God-alive. Here are a few of the sorts of questions I ask to help me discern if I'm meandering in something like the right direction:

Are these words soaked in the Biblical narrative?

Will these words kindle holy imagination?

Will these words give space for sacred discontent, all the while pointing toward redemption and joy?

Do these words tend to our true questions, the deep questions?

Do these words yield to the gospel's tensions and mysteries?

Will these words ask us to obey, rather than to merely listen?

Do these words live in the here and now, in the world as it actually is?

Do these words find their life and breath from the Living Word, Jesus - and from the Spirit?

Will these words announce - with grace and with boldness - Jesus as Lord over all?


There are more questions - and better ones, I'm sure - but these are a start.

On Preaching

Write as if you were dying. At the same time assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients...What would you be writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality? {annie dillard}

Words matter to me, very much. Ideas matter. Images matter. This trio of convictions probably explains a bit of why my vocation dances around two acts that have much to do with words, ideas and images: writing and preaching. I usually chat about writing here. Lately, I've been thinking about preaching.

I don't think of myself as "a preacher," at least not in the Huck Finn South sort of way. But I do gladly embrace the old and honorable pastoral practice of immersing myself in the Biblical text in hopes of glimpsing God - and then offering what I see (or what I think I see) to my community of faith. I believe - bet all my marbles on it, in fact - that God's story is the narrative that is trustworthy and that gives meaning and dignity to my story, yours too.

For me, then, preaching is not about giving a lecture or merely passing along religious information. Nor is it an attempt to whip people up into some devoted fervor. A sermon is far more personal, more engaged, more treacherous and alive and messy than that.

A sermon, a good one anyways, tends first to God - and to us second. We get a whiff of what God has in mind, what kindness or justice or grace God intends - and then we ask ourselves if we have the courage (the faith, you might say) to believe, to obey, to spurn fear or control and dive into the mercy. I continually return to Karl Barth's reflection on what happened whenever he stood behind the pulpit: "When I look out at the congregation, I realize they are here with one question: Is it true? Can it be true that there is a God who is loving and wise and powerful? Answer that question."

Here's a way to discern if we've told God's story well: does it simply sound too good to be true? does it touch a hope so deep that it causes us to tremble at the possibility? do we wonder if it could possibly be true - and is there a certain sense of fear - of doubt - that it might not be? If we encounter that kind of fear and trembling, chances are we've gotten somewhere close to the God of the Bible.

Soon, I'll post a list of other questions I bring to the text, in hopes that my sermons will not "enrage by [their] triviality."

Seth

Seth turns 6 today, this joy of mine moves another year toward manhood. I have to tell you, I love this boy. I'm happy today, happiness mixed with a twinge of sorrow too.

I'm happy because I am overwhelmed with gratitude. For all his years, this one no less, Seth has offered me the gifts of laughter (like with his break-dancing) and mercy (his "I forgive you") and honesty ("Dad, you hurt me") and cuddles (still) - not to mention being my most faithful coffee pal. Seth (his innocence, his tenderness, his recklessness, his wide-hearted abandonment, his questions) remind me of what is good and wholesome in this world, that the whole botched thing actually isn't irrevocably shot to pieces.

Seth helps me believe in God.

But I also feel sadness. Not for a year passed by or because of sentimental nostalgia. I am a bit melancholy because I realize that I have not been all I want to be for him this past year. I have not been as present, as generous, as playful, as courageous toward him as I long to be.

The thing about longing, though, is that it flings open the door to tomorrow. Regret pulls us back into the gloomy what-might-have-been, but longing invites us out into the sunshine of what-we-hope-yet-to-become. I'm choosing the longing.

And, Seth, I long to be your dad. Not just your authority figure or the old man who pays the bills. I don't just want to be your chummy sidekick either. Far more than all that, I want to be your dad, the dad who loves you with all his heart and who believes in you, even more than you believe in yourself.

Happy Birthday, Son!

your dad - always.