2 Bob Hurd: One Thing I Learned in Guatemala
Jason asked that I share some of my observations about HSP and some of the things that I have learned about Guatemala and the Mayan people. This mission has meant so very much to me and my spiritual development.
I had studied the economic, social and political history of Guatemala in college, but had never actually stepped foot into that country – or even visited anywhere south of the border.
Everything I knew about Guatemala was just a bunch of “facts” and abstract ideas. I had strong feelings about their history, but I really didn’t know what the people and the country looked like or felt like. And now it was 20 or 30 years later.
So when this young associate pastor arrived at Aldersgate, and suggested I go with the youth on a mission trip to Guatemala, I jumped at the chance. But I really had no idea how important that trip would be and how much impact it would have on me spiritually and emotionally.
When we interviewed the youth who wanted to participate in the mission trip, I told them my wish was that they would return with more questions than answers. I hoped they would be challenged by what they saw and felt, and would come home with many questions about who we are, how we live, what we do with our gifts, the impact we have on people in the rest of the world – and what we as Christians should do about it.
Again, I had no idea how much that would apply to me personally.
The trip was simply overwhelming. I had never seen or experienced so much beauty, love and joy or been confronted at the same time with so much poverty and injustice – side by side. It was hard to fathom, hard to reconcile, and in a private moment alone one night in the middle of the week it moved me to tears – and prayer.
I returned from that trip physically and emotionally drained, and yet spiritually charged, determined and excited about the possibilities of what lie ahead.
So like the Chinese curse – “may you live in interesting times,” that is what I wish for all of you on this year’s trip, youth and adults alike. That the experience move you emotionally and charge you spiritually, and that you return as I did – humbled, with more questions and answers, but full of faith, spirit and determination to do God’s work.
So ….. where to start? What is one thing that I learned? Probably, first and foremost …..
It is wrong to think of Guatemala as a poor country.
When the Earth was first created … the land we now call Guatemala was endowed with some of the richest soil on the planet.
Look around at the mountains, the lakes, the forest, the rich lush green farmland …. The vegetation … the plentiful rainfall …. The sunlight and temperature … all perfect for growing crops ….
I have been told that the soil here in Guatemala is 10 or 100 times as productive as the best fields in Iowa.
No, this is a rich country, abundant in natural resources and life-giving earth. It’s rich in other ways, too.
0 Headed to Chiquisis
Aldersgate’s second mission team left for Guatemala this morning. A mixed-group of 30 students and adults will be constructing a school kitchen in Chiqusis, a remote village above the highest point on the Pan-American Highway. Thanks to everyone at Aldersgate and in the community who helped fund this needful project.
Aldersgate has served in Chiquisis before. In the first picture you’ll see the school above where we will be working:
0 Check Out How Our Youth Are Doing In Guatemala
A group of 32 Aldersgate youth is building wood-stoves in the community of Llanos de Pinal near Quetzaltenango, Guatemala this week. The stoves not only address the immediate problem of respiratory disease from open-pit, indoor cooking, the stoves also provide Mayan women the time away from home to be trained in vital new skills.This is the fourth year in a row Aldersgate has returned to this community to serve. The team is working with the help of a community organizer, an Aldersgate intern Margaret Corum and AMA staff to build 16 stoves for families active in the women’s circle.
0 News and Pics from Guatemala
As some of you know, Aldersgate has a mission team serving in the Mayan Highlands of Guatemala this week and another team set to leave Saturday, over 60 in all.
You may not know that Laina Schneider, church nerd and agricultural student at Virginia Tech, is interning for Aldersgate this summer in Guatemala. She’s been doing site assessments and soil studies for village women’s circles to develop their own greenhouses. She’s been blogging during her time there. I think you can see through her words and pictures not only the important work we’re doing there for others, but also the deep impact such work has had on Laina and hundreds of others at Aldersgate.
Check out her Wanderlust blog here
0 Black Keys, Merriweather Post Pavilion, Epic
0 Holy Week Hiking
0 Muslim-Christian Relations Since 9/11
Click here to see the article from Christianity Today.
0 Preaching Handbook
for Preaching Workshop Young Clergy
Hindsight is 20/20
The 17 year old staring back at me from my glossy prom picture can’t be me.
He just can’t.
He’s wearing a painfully pinstriped tux, made of material cut from somewhere between Dick Tracy and Johnny Cash’s Man in Black. Underneath, he’s wearing an off-white, collarless dress shirt with a black onyx button- sort of like an outsized cufflink or a bolo tie minus the string- where the bow tie would go on a more sensible person.
He can’t be me, I think whenever I see him. Please, let it not be me.
The hair is fuller. The face is thinner. The frame not yet filled out, the eyes affecting a very deliberate Richard Gere type squint (it was 1995). Were it not for the presence of my future wife there in the photo I might have plausible deniability but instead all I have is gratitude that she married me in spite of my crimes.
The prom photo stays hidden in a brown box along with other old photos, yearbooks and swim team ribbons. I pull it out once year or so in a bout of ill-advised nostalgia. And whenever I see it- the terrible tux, the excessively gelled hair, the long Luke Perry sideburns (it was 1995)- I think to myself: What was I thinking? It can’t be me. He looks familiar but he can’t be me, I say. I pray, my memory chastened by embarrassment.
That’s pretty much how I feel when it comes to my old sermons.
In the same guest room closet, in a different brown box, I keep all my old sermons. After having preached more or less regularly for 10 years the box is nearly full. It contains a little over 500 of my attempts at preaching. In it, there are sermons preached in small, dying churches and large, growing congregations. There’s a folder full of sermons preached in a hot, sticky prison chapel where the air was every bit as thick as the inmates’ restlessness. There’s another folder of sermons from weddings and baccalaureates. There’s a fat folder of funeral sermons, among them are many sermons where the dearly departed enjoyed their full biblical allotment of years, a few others where suicide gave the sermon a different hue and more sermons than I’d like from funerals where the casket was not more than 3 feet long.
In that brown box are 530 Sundays worth of sermons. That’s approximately 10,600 minutes logged in the pulpit and 1,060,000 words written in a black moleskin or typed on a laptop, all in an ongoing and often elusive effort to explicate the biblical text.
And if I have any wisdom gleaned, any perspective, it’s of the ‘lessons learned’ currency: embarrassment that that voice in the sermon is mine; dismay that anyone’s been willing to listen to me; wonder that through me (in spite of me) some of have heard God speak.
The homiletical equivalent of my prom picture is a sermon I preached long ago on the story of Balaam’s Ass, in which I thought it would be clever to assume the perspective of the ass. Though it was not my intention, I made an ass of myself.
Whenever I look at that prom picture I blush with embarrassment. I can hardly bear to look at it even though I know my meticulously cultivated look in 1995 was more than acceptable.
That’s how I feel about my preaching whenever I read through some of my old sermons. I’m sure my preaching was adequate in the moment, but with the passing of time even my best homiletical musterings look as awkward as a tuxedoed 17 year old. The cadence and rhythm feel familiar. The sentence structure looks like mine. The irony is all me. But did I really say that? I find myself asking. Did I really make a metaphor of the incarnation or the resurrection? Did I really dilute the Gospel so badly? What was I thinking? That can’t be me, I say.
I pray.
Kurt Vonnegutt quips about the fear that comes once you realize the world is run by the people with whom you went to high school. Eventually one realizes the Church’s pulpits also are filled by the people with whom you went to high school. And maybe for those in the pews that’s grounds for fear. But for preachers, I think, it’s a kind of grace. When it comes to preaching, none of us is perfect. We never were and we never will be.
Nor do we have to be. The words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts only need to be acceptable. God does the rest.
In what follows, therefore, I offer not as an expert but as someone who graduated a few years earlier than you, someone with a bit more distance on the foolishness I’ve committed and the honest mistakes I’ve made. If its possible for the living God to inhabit my words on any given Sunday and speak through them, then I suppose its possible for God to take my embarrassment and spin it into wisdom. Or at least perspective.
Without a Compass You Can’t Get Anywhere
Late this spring, as I was preparing to teach an adult catechesis, a parishioner came up to the front of the classroom to talk with me. Osama Bin Laden had been killed by American troops just a week earlier. The parishioner, a career military man, began reflecting on the events of the past week and the events of September 11 which lay in the foreground of everyone’s minds. He mentioned watching on television the crowds around the country celebrating Bin Laden’s death with jubilant flag-waving and not a few flip signs that spoke of revenge. He paused for a few moments and I was unsure where his reflection was headed. He looked at me and said: ‘I’m sure its good that he’s dead and no longer a danger to people, but I don’t think it’s appropriate for a Christian to celebrate an enemy’s death.’ I nodded and murmured my agreement. Then he said: ‘I don’t think you understand. I didn’t think that way a few years ago. Your sermons have changed the way I think and interpret scripture.’
I don’t take much stock in what’s said about my preaching at the sanctuary door, whether its complimentary or not. His feedback, though, I count as the most valuable response to my preaching I’ve ever received because he wasn’t commenting on style or how a particular sermon made him feel, he was acknowledging that, over time, my preaching had equipped him with a theology.
Looking back over ten years of sermons, the most notable change in my preaching from then to now isn’t one of style or facility with scripture. What’s different today is my deliberate effort to articulate from the pulpit a theological framework.
That’s not to say I didn’t have a theology when I first got started. On the contrary, like any newbie pastor, when I wrote my first sermons Augustine, Barth and others were already worn and well dog-eared. In the beginning I didn’t allow- or know how- my theology to inform or guide my preaching. They were like two neighbors who seldom spoke.
On the one hand, I suppose this freed the scriptural text to speak its claims to me on its own terms and not have a rookie preacher trying to squeeze a piece of scripture into a preconceived theological category. On the other hand, in the absence of an overarching theological compass, what emerges in my early sermons is a sort of schizophrenic God, whose disposition towards us and whose purposes for us shift from one Sunday to the next.
If there’s anything I’ve learned over these ten years, it’s that without a compass you can’t lead anyone any further than where they already are. As important as finding your voice is to how you preach, articulating your theological perspective is essential to what you preach.
In my preaching now, I approach each piece of scripture with an eye to the whole and how it fits. This isn’t to pretend there aren’t a variety of genres and authorial intents in scripture. It’s not to claim that scripture is univocal on all matters or that the differences between, say, Paul and James can always be reconciled.
Nonetheless, I believe there is a thematic, and theological, unity to scripture.
I believe the creation God declared ‘good’ is distorted by Sin.
I believe God is determined to get what God wanted in the very beginning, that God calls Israel so that through their relationship and witness God’s creation might be redeemed.
I believe this is what the Old Testament is about. Then, in the New, God becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ to be the New Adam for us, and I believe until God brings forth the New Heaven and the New Earth he calls the believing community to embody in every aspect of their lives the life that is made flesh in Jesus Christ, a life which Easter and Pentecost make possible for us.
In a nutshell, that’s my theology and I’m intentional about trying to echo it in all my sermons.
The point isn’t that you need to agree with my theology; the point is you need to be able to succinctly articulate your own theology and weave it consistently into your proclamation. If you have a theology that leans towards blood atonement and salvation by grace through faith then that’s wonderful and you should hit that note in your preaching with clarity and consistency. Preachers do not need to be homogenous in their theology, but preachers do need to provide their listeners a theological framework to apprehend scripture from week to week. The rhythm of the church and the trajectory of the lectionary, though I don’t always follow either, also attempt to flesh such a framework.
The man who commented to me about Bin Laden’s death was trying to tell me how, over the course of six years, my preaching had given him a new perspective about how Christians regard the enemy. He’d acquired that perspective because I’d returned again and again in my preaching to my theology of the incarnation; specifically, how the incarnation makes Jesus’ way of life the life God desires for us all.
Providing the sermon’s listeners with a consistent theological framework does not mean every Sunday the preacher must beat the drum of his or her theology so that every sermon ends on the same point. I try to think of sermons not as discrete, independent units but as pieces that build towards a whole.
I try to think of sermons as coming together to form something like a musical composition and, within that composition, there needs to be a movement (my theology) which gives shape and structure to the whole. With such a movement in place, variations on the theme are free to be variations and not deviations.
Writing with an eye towards my theological perspective, I’ve found, allows the sermon to be in submission to the scripture, to the whole of scripture. Certainly it’s possible to rush headlong into our theology that we constrict scripture’s voice and make it say what it does not say, but for me the opposite has been the case. My sermons now, I believe, are less episodic and less dictated by the preacher’s whim, even when the sermon seems whimsical.
I also appreciate how a consistent theology empowers the congregation to be able to hear me and interpret the text on their own. As a preacher, you want the congregation not only to hear God speak from week to week. You also want to give them, over the long-haul, a worldview. What preachers oftentimes cynically dismiss as ‘doctrine’ is, I’ve found, the sort of substance for which many listeners hunger. Listeners want a theological container into which they can put the many sermons and scriptures they hear. Sermons can be doctrinally substantive without being dogmatic or arid. In fact, I’d argue that sermons should be theological without having the overt appearance of ‘doing theology.’
Emily Dickinson said the poet should tell the truth slant so that it sneaks up on the reader unawares.
I think it’s the preacher’s task to preach.
And do theology on the slant.
Sample Sermon: The Form of God’s Shalom
Matthew 25.31-46
A few years ago, before she graduated, I went with my wife, Ali, to a law school party. I hate parties. I avoid them. I go only begrudgingly and when I’m in them I’m tempted, like George Castanza from Seinfeld, to pretend I’m anything other than a minister- a marine biologist, say, or an architect. Nothing stops party conversations in their tracks like saying you’re a minister, and nothing provokes unwanted conversations like saying you’re a minister.
So, there I was at this party full of wannabe lawyers, gnawing like a beaver on celery sticks, desperately trying to keep conversation to superficial things when this Urban-Outfitted guy asked me what I did for a living. And because my wife was nearby I told him the truth.
Sure enough, the first thing he did was discretely move his wine glass behind his back. Then he copped an elitist air and said: ‘Well, of course I’m not a Christian, but I do try to live a good life and help people when I can. Isn’t that what Christianity’s really all about?’
And I thought: ‘Wow, that’s really deep. Did you come up with that all on your own or is that the fruit of years of philosophical searching? I should write that down. I don’t want to forget it. I might be able to use that in a sermon some day. Moron.’
Today’s scripture text from Matthew 25 seems like the perfect example of such do-good moralism.
One of the most obvious features of this judgment scene is what’s missing from it. When it comes to the sheep and the goats, there’s no mention of a confession of faith. There’s no mention of justification. Nothing is said here about forgiveness of sins or grace.
There’s nothing here about what we say or believe or feel about Jesus.
Many conclude from this text then that our beliefs, our doctrine, our faith are all incidental when compared to our deeds, that this parable shows us that what really matters is what we do, that one day we will be judged not on the strength or sincerity of our faith but on the presence of our good deeds to others.
The only problem with such an interpretation is that its an interpretation that doesn’t require Jesus; in fact, you can forget Jesus is the one telling the parable.
The suggestion that ‘doing good to others is really what it’s all about’ is hardly a novel concept. It’s not specifically Christian or even particularly religious.
There has to be more going on here.
Jesus and the disciples have just left the Temple in Jerusalem where Jesus preached a series of woes against the faithless city. It was while they were there that the disciples couldn’t help but marvel over the impressive architecture of Herod’s temple mount.
And hearing their amazement, Jesus responds by predicting the complete destruction of every building they see, stone for stone.
Then Jesus leads them up to the Mt of Olives.
When they get there, the disciples ask Jesus: When will temple be destroyed and what will be the sign of the coming age?
Rather then answer them directly, Jesus responds with a series of parables about what kind of people his People should be in order to anticipate the coming age.
And the setting for all of this is the Mt of Olives, the place where Jews believed God would begin to usher in the new age (Zechariah 14.1-5).
Jesus predicts destruction, he takes them up to this mountain that’s loaded with symbolism- so why wouldn’t the disciples ask: ‘What will be the sign?’
That this is the setting for today’s scripture is key to understanding Jesus’ parable. Because the setting is the place where Jews believed God would end this age, to read this parable rightly you have to go all the way back to the very beginning of scripture.
Every year I spend the first three weeks of our confirmation program drilling into the confirmands’ heads that harmony was God’s intention from the very beginning. Harmony with creation, with one another, with Father, Son and Spirit.
Sometimes we spend so much time praising God for dying for our sins we forget that Sin was not in the first draft of God’s story. We forget that harmony was God’s original design, and we forget that harmony is God’s promise for a New Creation.
The Hebrew word for that harmony is ‘shalom,’ a word the New Testament translates as ‘peace.’ But it’s not just a sentiment or a feeling of tranquility. It’s restoration. Throughout scripture God’s judgment is against those who work against shalom.
Shalom is not just an abstract theme of scripture; it takes tangible form in the Torah where God lays out Israel’s special charge to care for the stranger, the orphan, the widow, the sick, the poor- whether they’re on the inside of community or the outside of the community because, as Leviticus says, ‘they’re just like you’ (19).
Implied in the Jewish Law is the reality that the stranger and the widow and the orphan and the poor lack an advocate in this world. They are a sign of what’s broken in creation; therefore, God intervenes for them by calling Israel to labor with him in establishing God’s shalom.
This partnership between God and God’s People- this is how God puts creation back together again. This is what the Old Testament is about.
Then, in the New, God becomes incarnate in Jesus Christ to model shalom for us. Until God brings forth the New Heaven and the New Earth he calls the believing community to embody in every aspect of their lives the shalom that is made flesh in Jesus Christ.
The works of mercy listed in Jesus’ parable- they’re not just a simple list of good deeds.
It’s a summary of what God’s shalom looks like.
This parable isn’t a superficial reminder to do good to others. It’s a description of Israel’s vocation, a vocation taken on by and made flesh in Jesus Christ.
This parable is Jesus’ final teaching moment before his passion begins. By telling this parable here the Shepherd is passing his vocation on to his sheep. It’s the equivalent of the end of John’s Gospel where Jesus commissions his disciples and says: ‘My shalom I give you.’
You see-
The point of this parable is not that we will be judged according to our good deeds per se. The point is that we will be judged by the extent to which we embody Christ’s life.
The point of this parable is not that our faith or beliefs in Jesus have nothing to do with how we will be judged. The point is we will be judged by the extent to which our faith in Christ has allowed us to conform our lives to his way of life- which is the life God desired for all of us before Sin entered the world.
Ask yourself: who is it that welcomes the stranger, loves their enemy, feeds the hungry, heals the sick, brings good news to the prisoner?
This is a description of Jesus’ life.
The sheep are saved not because of their good deeds.
The sheep are saved because they’ve dared to live the life that redeems the world.
The sign of the new age that the disciples were asking about?
The sign of that new age are a people bold enough to embody the life of Christ. That’s why Jesus tells this story.
Earlier this week a member of the congregation came to me, quite upset, and told me they couldn’t understand why we would allow for an Islamic congregation to hold their Friday Jummah prayer services here in our building.
‘How can we ask our youth to give their lives to Christ when we’re condoning the practice of another religion in our fellowship hall?’
It was an honest question. I don’t doubt the sincerity of it, and it was just one of many such questions I’ve received in the last few weeks.
Implicit in the question is the suggestion that by welcoming the Islamic congregation we are watering down our beliefs in Jesus when in fact I think it’s the opposite.
I believe Jesus Christ is God incarnate. I believe he’s the savior of the world. And because I believe that, I believe his way of life is the form of God’s shalom.
And there is no better description of Jesus’ life than as the One who welcomes the stranger, love his enemies, cares for the outcast, heals the sick, and brings good news to the captives.
Do I believe the worlds’ religions are all just different paths to the same destination? No.
Do I believe Islam rightly understands the God of Abraham? No.
Do I believe that Jesus is the only way to the Father? Yes.
But when we say that Jesus is the only way to the Father, we don’t just mean our belief in Jesus is the only way to the Father. We also mean Jesus’ way of life is the only way we manifest the Father’s love.
That we would welcome Muslim strangers into our sacred space with no strings attached is not a reduction of what we believe about Jesus (or a betrayal); it is, I think, the fullest possible expression of what we believe about Jesus.
This isn’t just a relevant question for our congregation. As globalism and secularism spread, the question for the Church in the future is: how do we as Christians engage the stranger?
We do so as Christ, who regarded the stranger as neither darkness nor danger.
Today’s scripture is Jesus‘ final teaching moment before the Great Commission at the end of Matthew’s Gospel- where Jesus sends out the apostles to make disciples of all nations.
What that means, I think, is that the necessary condition for evangelism, the necessary condition for sharing our faith, is the presence of a People who embody the life of the One whom we wish to share with others.
Fundamentally, you can’t share a message about the One who welcomed strangers and loved enemies and forgave sin and conquered the power of Death in a hostile, suspicious or fearful way. The manner in which we share our faith has to match the content of our message. Otherwise we’re practicing an ideology and not the ministry of Jesus.
Look-
There are irreconcilable differences with how Christians, Muslims, and Jews worship the God of Abraham. Secular culture tries to tell us that those differences don’t really matter. Extremists try to tell us that those differences are worth killing over.
I believe what the Church has to offer the world right now is a gift we’ve already been given by Jesus. What we have to offer the world is a ministry that welcomes the stranger. What we have to offer the world is a community where there is no danger in the Other’s difference because welcome of the stranger is an attribute of God’s own life.
Let me make it plain:
Scripture doesn’t teach that after we welcome them the stranger will cease being strange to us or that our differences are insignificant.
Scripture doesn’t teach that by loving our enemies our enemies will cease to be our enemies.
Scripture doesn’t teach that by visiting the prisoner we’ll convince the prisoner to swear off crime.
Scripture doesn’t teach that in feeding the hungry the hungry will show appreciation to us or that in caring for the needy we won’t find the needy a burden to us.
Rather, in a world of violence and injustice and poverty and loneliness Jesus has called us to be a people who welcome strangers and love enemies and bring good news to prisoners, feed and cloth the poor and care for those who have no one.
We do this because this is the form of God’s shalom. This is the labor Christ has given us.
I recognize such labor at times can be painful, uncomfortable and difficult.
But ask any mother- labor pains always come before new life. Amen.
Diagram Your Sentences
I remember one occasion from homiletics class when I was in seminary. This belligerently confident, hyper-evangelical classmate preached his sample sermon before the class. His sermon was frenetic. He clearly thought he was the superior preacher to all of us and, admittedly, his delivery was effective.
However, our professor, Dr Kay, looked restless and irritated through the entirety of the 20 minute sermon. Once the student finished Dr Kay breathed out his exasperation and declared to the preacher: ‘Do you realize not one of your sentences had God as their subject.’
The point seemed lost on the preacher.
But it hit me hard.
The preacher from my introductory homiletics class is but an extreme example of a mistake I think preachers, myself included, commit all the time.
God is seldom the subject of our verbs.
Guess who is?
That’s right. We are.
We speak of seekers instead of the sought. We speak of our purpose instead of God’s purposes. We speak of our questions about God instead of God’s questioning of us.
Too often our preaching is the sermonic equivalent of bad contemporary Christian music: I long for you. I hunger for you. I want more of you.
Will Willimon, in his book on preaching and Karl Barth, comments on Barth’s belief that all preaching is a reenactment of the primal miracle ‘And God said…’ Yet frequently our preaching is a less urgent, pale imitation: ‘This is what I have to say about God today.’ We preach as though God is not the one speaking to us through the text and gradually, without such urgency of the Living Word, we imply that God never spoke.
I believe the problem with most sermons is not one of delivery, style, rhetoric or technique (though there’s plenty of room for improvement there too).
The problem is theological.
Probably this sounds obvious but I wouldn’t say it if weren’t true and a desperately needed reminder: it’s about God.
The deficiency in many sermons, my own included, is that they’re not about God. They’re about our needs, our questions or our issues. They’re anthropological not theological. We’re the subject of the sentences. We preach the parable of the prodigal son as an allegory from which we can take lessons of family relationships. We turn the story of the woman from Samaria into a moralism about inclusivity. We take the transfiguration and preach on the need to return to the valley and serve the world’s hurting. Of course, each of those passages can have those implications but fundamentally they’re passages about God. All too often it’s the revelation we leave out.
Dr. Kay’s comments to my cocky classmate have always stuck with me, but truthfully if you go back through my old sermons and diagram the sentences you’ll find that God is the object of my sentences not the subject.
The majority of homiletics resources focus on the mechanics of the sermon process, on technique, rhetoric and sermonic forms; meanwhile, discussions about preaching primarily focus on the appropriate role of media in sermons. Others speculate if the preaching task will remain a viable exercise in the future.
What’s absent from the standard, available fare is the kerygma. There’s little awareness of preaching as fundamentally an announcement, an event of the Living Word that provokes a crisis in the listener and demands a decision.
I’m enough of a closet Calvinist to take seriously the Second Helvetic Confession’s stipulation that “the preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God.” I believe- I depend on- that when the Word is faithfully preached and faithfully received it is the Living Word. This is one reason why debates about the authority of scripture are so very boring. The question is never just did God say that because we have a God who continues to speak today.
What’s more, if the Second Helvetic Confession is correct, then preaching which merely uses scripture as an illustration of an argument arrived at by others means risks malnourishing its listeners. Preachers can literally starve their listeners on a steady diet of propositions, points and helpful hints.
I listen to a lot of sermons. Sometimes I think it’s a best practice sort of exercise. Other times I think it’s masochistic. So few of the sermons I hear are animated by the conviction in the Living Word that emerges in the Helvetic Confession. They’re a message about Jesus. They’re lessons drawn from what Jesus said. They do not pulse with a God who says.
To be honest, this is the problem I have with much of the topical series preaching that’s common today. Sermon series like ‘Antidotes for the Out of Control Life,’ ‘Difficult Decision’ or ‘Fearless: Live Your Life without Fear’ can be effective and helpful to listeners, I know, but they’re also inherently anthropological.
And don’t think I’m wedded to the revised common lectionary because I’m not.
My wariness about topical sermon series is that it’s our questions or felt needs that drive the sermon. Indeed they’re imposed upon the scripture text from the start of the planning process. The topics of the series predetermine what the Word can and cannot say. They constrict God’s speech.
Once a year I preach just such a sermon series. It’s always carefully planned and promoted to attract young unchurched families. Every year, without question, these are my very worst sermons. I mean just awful.
I used to think they’re terrible because I’m no good at the quasi-Dr. Phil ‘how-to’ propositions such sermons require. That may be true but even more I think its because these sermons aren’t really about God. God is a device, an object or a means to my preconceived end. God’s not the subject, and I’ve found that if God’s not the one speaking then I literally have nothing to say.
Don’t be mistaken. I’m not saying that faithful proclamation needs to be accompanied by a Geneva collar and a mahogany pulpit the size of a C37. Preaching can be deductive or narrative, rationalistic or impressionistic, from a pulpit or the sanctuary floor, with or without PowerPoint slides. But it needs to have God as the subject.
Henry Emmerson Fosdick famously said that folks don’t come to church to hear about the Jebusites. Karl Barth famously said that folks come to church with anticipation, wondering ‘is it true?’
They were both right.
People do not come on a Sunday morning for the arcane or the minutiae.
They do not hunger for facts.
They do hunger for a Word from the Lord.
I can’t help but wonder sometimes if the popularity of topical preaching today has less to do with the utilitarian nature of our culture (though that has to be a large part of its appeal) and more to do with our Enlightenment-bound lack of confidence in the Living Word. Perhaps the lack of confidence that afflicts preaching isn’t a lack of confidence in our skill, ability or call but a lack of confidence that the God who became incarnate in human flesh can today inhabit our words.
As a result, what often suffers is our urgency. It was said of George Whitfield that he ‘preached as a drowning man to other drowning men.’ The waters must have receded because the problem today with much anthropological preaching is just this lack of urgency. Sermon topics such as ‘Antidotes for the Out of Control Life’ ask for listeners’ consideration not their decision. Its aim is for listeners to apply ‘principles’ to their lives; its aim is not to let the Word loose to provoke a crisis or event in the listeners’ lives.
The danger behind anthropological preaching is that as long as God is the object of my preaching and not the subject then I, as the preacher, set the pace. Not God. This is very different than God calling me today, speaking to me now, through the text in a way I could not have anticipated 18 months ago when I planned my sermon series.
It’s not only the sermon’s urgency that suffers. Anthropological preaching is very often boring too, boring not because of its mode of presentation or skill in delivery but boring because God is not allowed to say anything unexpected. The Word needs to service the predetermined topic; there’s no room for the Word to speak anything contrary, unexpected or counter-intuitive. The Word needs to fit into our prearranged categories. Practically speaking, this can be deadly for a listener’s sense of anticipation. It can bore them. Speaking theologically, it’s a problem because any God who takes up residence in a peasant Jew from Nazareth is a God who refuses categorization or easy deduction.
Sample Sermon: Imitating Incarnation
Philippians 2.1-11
Just two weeks ago, USA Today featured a story about perceptions of God in America, and how one’s perceptions of God influences one’s opinions on various issues of the day. The research comes from a book by two sociologists at Baylor, the Baptist University in Texas. Their book’s entitled: America’s Four Gods: What We Say about God and What that Says about Us.
The four characteristics of God as defined by the researchers are: Authoritative, Benevolent, Critical and Distant. Based on surveys, they have come up with percentages of what American people believe about God:
Authoritative 28%:
According to the authors, people who hold this view of God divide the world along good and evil and they tend to be people who are worried, concerned and scared. They respond to a powerful, sovereign God guiding this country.
Distant 24%:
These are people who identify more with the spiritual and speak of finding the mysterious, unknowable God in creation or through contemplation or in elegant mathematical theorems.
Critical 21%:
The researchers describe people who perceive a God who keeps a critical eye on this world but only delivers justice in the next.
Benevolent 22%:
According to the researchers, their God is a “positive influence” who cares for all people, weeps at all conflicts and will comfort all.
Benevolent. Distant. Critical. Authoritative.
Along the way, their research nets some curious findings.
For instance, if your parents spanked you when you were a child, then you’re more likely to subscribe to an Authoritative God view. If you’re European, then in all likelihood you have a Distant view of God. If you’re poor then, odds are, you fall into the Critical view. United Methodists meanwhile- proving we can’t make up our minds about anything- tend to be evenly distributed among the four characteristic views.
(Their research doesn’t mention anything about adults who like to be spanked and how that impacts their view of God but I’ll leave it to you to speculate.)
The book is several years old now, but I was surprised to discover that the sociologists’ survey is still up and running online. As people take the survey, even now the percentages change.
So you might be interested to know that the Distant God is now pulling ahead in the polls, as the Authoritative God falls behind, and the Benevolent God gains a few points.
When I discovered the website last week, I decided to take the survey, all twenty questions of it. I was asked to rate whether or not the term “loving” described God very well, somewhat well, undecided, not very well, or not at all. Other qualities in the twenty ratable questions were “critical, punishing, severe, wrathful, distant, ever present.”
I was asked if I thought God was angered by human sin and angered by my sin. I was asked if God was concerned with my personal well being and then with the well being of the world.
In order to capture my understanding of and belief in God, according to my watch, the survey took all of two minutes and thirty-five seconds. After I finished, I was told what percentage of people in my demographic shared my view of God (college educated men under age 35). You may be interested to know, but probably not surprised, that the survey says that your pastor maintains a perception of a Benevolent God.
It was only after I answered all the questions, only after I saw my results, only after I saw how I measured up against other respondents….only then did it strike me how the Baylor survey never asked me about Jesus.
The survey asked me to choose if I thought God was Authoritative or Distant or Critical or Benevolent, but it never asked me, it was never given as an option, if I thought God was Incarnate- in the flesh, among us, as one of us.
I’m no sociologist. Presumably, ‘Do you believe that God, though being in the form of God did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited but emptied himself taking the form of a slave being born in human likeness and being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death even death on the cross…’ is a lousy survey question.
Even still, it struck me that I’d just taken a supposedly thorough survey about my belief in God, and Jesus was not in any of the questions and he was never a possible answer.
Now, I’ve been accused in the past of being prejudiced against both Texans and Baptists so it should surprise no one when I say that I think the Baylor survey is a bunch of crap. I even tried to go back and undo, invalidate my responses but it wouldn’t let me. I even emailed the Baylor sociologist to say I to tell him what I thought of his survey (and by the way it’s Christopher_Bader@Baylor.edu).
The problem with the survey is that, whether I like it or not, God’s not someone I get to pick with just the click of a mouse. We don’t get to define God instead God has come to us in a way that confounds and overturns all our definitions.
The problem with the survey is that I don’t believe God is Authoritative, Distant, Critical or Benevolent.
I believe Jesus is God.
Christians are peculiar. Maybe it takes a survey to point that out.
When we say God, we mean Jesus.
And when we say Jesus, we mean the God who emptied himself, the God who traded divinity for poverty, power for weakness, the God who came down among us and stooped down to serve the lowliest of us.
John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist movement, said that if God had wanted to God could’ve been Sovereign. If God had wanted to God could’ve been All-Powerful or All-Knowing. If God had wanted to God could’ve been Holy or Righteous.
But instead, said Wesley, God chose to be Jesus.
You see- it’s not that God’s power and glory and divinity are somehow concealed behind Jesus‘ human life. It’s not that in Jesus God masquerades as someone he’s not already. The incarnation isn’t a temporary time-out in which God gets to pretend he’s a different person.
Rather, when we see Jesus in the wilderness saying no to the world’s ways of power, when we see Jesus- the Great High Priest- embracing lepers and eating with sinners, when we see Jesus stoop down to wash our dirty feet, when we see Jesus freely choose death rather than retaliation, when we see Jesus pour himself out, empty himself, humble and humiliate himself we’re seeing as much of God as there is to see.
After I completed the Baylor survey, in less than three minutes, a window popped up on the screen to tell me, conclusively, that I had a perception of a Benevolent God.
For me, the survey said, God is a positive influence on people. I suppose that means God is like Joel Osteen or Dr. Phil. The survey results also explained how my particular perception of God likely impacted my worldview, in other words, how my belief in God played out in my positions on contemporary issues.
But the survey never said anything about a way of life. The survey never mentioned a community. According to the survey I’m just an individual person who has a certain perception of God and that perception influences my opinions on political issues.
I told you it was a terrible survey.
Last Thursday, the same day I discovered and completed that survey, we celebrated in this sanctuary a funeral service for a church member- a man who died much too young and much too suddenly, leaving behind his two nine year old twins.
During the sermon and all through the eulogies, if I’m honest, I only half-listened. And instead I sat up here at the altar table and I peeked around the specially-ordered flowers and I looked at the deceased’s fourth grade son, slumped in the pew and sitting in the crook of his mother’s arm.
And I watched him again after the funeral service during the reception in the fellowship hall. He looked tired and red-eyed and comprehending.
I watched him. And I thought about the questions he must have, the questions he will undoubtedly have as he gets older. I thought about the burden of grief he will carry. I thought about the anger that will come over him.
And maybe it’s because I’d just filled out that silly survey in the morning but as I watched him I thought about what sort of God it is that I want him to know.
I thought about what sort of God it is that makes it possible to mark his father’s death with worship. I thought about what sort of God it is that produces a community of people who can be the love and presence of God to a boy who’d just lost his Dad.
What sort of God is that?
Authoritative? Distant? Critical? Benevolent?
Or is it the God who trades away his divinity so that he might win us?
Is it the God who takes flesh and shares in the grief and joy and pain of our lives in order to redeem our them?
Is it the God who stoops down to serve us so that we might learn how to serve one another?
Is it the God who gets his hands dirty so that we might be made clean?
Who judges us by suffering in our place? Whose mercy is as wide as a cross and as deep as the grave?
Later that afternoon, after the funeral service, I emailed the Baylor sociologist responsible for the survey:
Dear Dr. Bader,
I’m a United Methodist pastor in Alexandria, Virginia. Having read about your book and your research in USA Today, I just completed your survey online. Since I was unable to cancel or otherwise invalidate my responses I felt I should share a few comments with you.
First, let me take issue with the four views of God that you group responses into. I don’t deny there is a diversity of religious belief in America. It’s just that, as a Christian, I was surprised to find that the God whom I worship isn’t to be found in any of your questions or categories. I believe Jesus of Nazareth is as much of God as there to see. Authoritative, Distant, Critical, or Benevolent therefore are not sufficient categories to describe the God who empties himself of divinity, takes flesh, lives the life of a servant and turns the other cheek all the way to a cross. Perhaps you think my definition of God is too specific. The trouble is in Jesus of Nazareth God couldn’t have been more specific.
Second, your survey suggests that believing in God is primarily a matter of having a particular worldview that then influences one’s opinions on issues. I can’t speak for other religions, but as a Christian I can say that Jesus doesn’t seem interested in giving us a worldview. He instead gives us a ministry.
Since we believe Jesus is the fullest expression of God we believe Jesus’ life then becomes to pattern for our own lives. So, you see, Dr. Bader, Jesus expects a lot more from us than having the right positions on issues.
Finally, I just came from a funeral service for a fourth grader’s father. And during the funeral it occurred to me. In all of your questions on your survey, you never asked if I believed that God loved me. Postulating a loving God in the abstract isn’t the same thing as believing that God loves me, no matter what. You never asked that question, and that’s the most important question. For that little boy’s sake, and for his Dad’s, I thank God that in Jesus Christ the answer is yes.
No doubt the harsh tone of my email will lead you to conclude that I score in the ‘Authoritative God’ category. Not so, even though my mother did spank me as a child. No, I rate solidly in the ‘Benevolent God’ category. So I hope you will believe it’s in a spirit of benevolence when I say, for lack of a better expression, I think your survey is crap.
Blessings…
At Play
This winter during the early morning worship service I listened as a lay reader dryly narrated Luke’s account of Jesus’ first sermon in his hometown of Nazareth. The reader had no affect in his voice at all; he just read the story as given to him by St. Luke. When he got to to the height of the text, where the outraged congregation drives Jesus from the synagogue and then to the edge of town, determined to pitch him over the edge (all because of a sermon!), something unexpected happened in the congregation that morning- they laughed.
It wasn’t until that moment, about to preach a sermon much different in tone, that it occurred to me perhaps St. Luke intended us to laugh.
A couple of years ago I was conscripted into preaching a baccalaureate for local high school students. Since my audience would be young people, I decided to choose a scripture passage that featured young people only to discover that scripture doesn’t have very many young people in its cast. I chose the story in Acts 20 where Paul’s long-winded preaching puts a young person, who’s sitting in a window sill, to sleep, plunging him to his death.
When I read the passage for the service, to my surprise, the listeners laughed. Belly-laughed. And it wasn’t until then that I wondered if maybe St. Luke intended us to laugh at such a playful (ridiculous?) story.
I learned preaching from the Presbyterians where the chapel pulpit stood in the middle of a plain white room nearly tall enough to require an escalator or those air pressure masks on airplanes For all the good lessons I learned from them, I also imbibed the prejudice that faithful preaching equals serious preaching. And serious preaching very often meant self-serious preaching.
One of the lessons I’ve learned over the past ten years, learned from weekly exposure to scripture, is that faithful preaching is preaching that is faithful to the emotional range, cognitive diversity and narrative variety of scripture.
Only a dullard could miss the playfulness, irony and sheer storytelling on display in scripture. The fact is Luke 4 is funny and, I’m convinced, intentionally so. Just as the entire Luke-Acts narrative betrays great care to tell the Christian story with artistry and intricacy. Acts 20 is a ridiculous story just as the story of Ananias and Sapphira earlier in Acts is an outrageous story meant to provoke a point other than the obvious. The story of Balaams’ ass in Numbers is overtly comic, and Matthew’s narration of the star, which obeys no natural laws but instead hangs suspended over Jerusalem and then Bethlehem, in the story of the magi has the deliberate sheen of something like a fairy tale.
Preaching that is faithful to scripture like this needs to be shot through with wonder and playfulness. Not every scripture is meant to be reducible to a rationalistic proposition or point. Sometimes preaching that appears to be ‘biblical preaching’ in its attention to word meanings, allusions and life implications is actually anything but biblical in its tone deafness to the rhetorical style of the text. Sometimes preachers need to convey the story as interestingly and playfully as scripture does. This is not to say that sermons should be silly nor does it mean that sermons should rely on childish object lessons, for even object lessons, by their very nature, depend on rational explication. Instead preachers should trust that the play at play in scripture can convey the Gospel all by itself.
Consider Jesus’ own preaching. Very seldom does Jesus’ teaching rely on clear, rational commands. Jesus tells us to pray a specific way. He tells us to ‘do this’ in remembrance of him. He commands us to love our enemies. But even in those instances where Jesus’ preaching has the appearance of the cut-and-dry his ‘point’ is often less obvious and more complex. For example, he tells us to give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar. Okay, but what really belongs to Caesar if everything actually belongs to the Lord? Is Jesus telling us its okay to pay our taxes? Or is he implying that nothing belongs to Caesar and nothing should be given to Caesar?
Most of the time Jesus’ preaching consists of jarring imagery, stories and parables that defy easy distillation. In the same way a good novel seldom has a communicable point, Jesus’ parables mean more than can captured by 3 points and a poem. Nevertheless, when I read back through my old sermons I’m indicted by the fact that my mode of preaching so seldom mirrored Jesus’ mode of preaching. Too much of my preaching could be described as rationalistic and deductive, giving listeners’ points and lessons where the scripture seemed more determined to create an impression. Too often I spent the sermon clarifying confusion where the scripture seemed intended to leave readers unsettled.
This is my primary caution when it comes to using media and PowerPoint in sermons. While such means can be effective as a rhetorical tool, they very often only perpetuate reliance on reason-based preaching. A film clip, for example, or a shot from YouTube can have the outward appearance of playfulness when in reality its just an updated version of a canned sermon illustration, a device employed to make a ‘point.’
A homiletical adage is that the form of the sermon should match the form of the text. Poetic passages should lead to poetic sermons. Parables should be proclaimed with parabolic sermons. Horatory should be met with exhortation. Likewise, playful passages should create playful sermons.
The reasons for this are not limited to rhetorical concerns alone. As we all know from multiple intelligence theory, people have a variety of ways of learning and listening. So why is it that the majority of our preaching, even preaching that employs visual media, relies on a lecture style format? If play and imagination and humor are gifts of God, indeed if they’re constitutive of the imago dei, then why do we proceed into the pulpit as though our reason were the only means of receiving the Gospel?
I believe there is truth in scripture that can only be proclaimed and heard by way of the imaginative.
Of course, to preach this way entails the risk- as it did for Jesus- that you will likely leave some of your listeners scratching their heads, wondering what the point was.
This was the case for some when I preached the first sample sermon below on the magi story. To preach playfully, I believe, requires a willingness to fail and disappoint in service to the mystery of the text. This was the case with the second sample sermon, which attempted to evoke the sense of awe in the Annunciation.
Sample Sermon: Off By Nine Miles
Matthew 2.1-12
When I first sat down on the plane, I did what any of you do.
I began thumbing through the pages of SkyMall.
A musak cover of Van Morrison’s ‘Crazy Love’ played- barely audible- over the speakers as the throng of travelers stepped on board and stowed their stuff above them.
Across the aisle, caddy-corner to me, a boy who looked to be in the third or fourth grade was wailing loud enough to make the veins in his neck pop out.
His mother had her arm around him and was saying shush but the boy was inconsolable. He stomped his feet and screamed at the top of his lungs: I don’t care how much pumpkin pie Grandma’s made I don’t want to fly.
Behind me, a woman argued with her husband: All I know is that if your mother treats me like she did last Thanksgiving this year I won’t keep my mouth shut.
On my right, on the aisle side, a teenage girl was smacking her gum and blowing bubbles. On her lap she had opened a copy of Seventeen magazine. She was reading an article about teens and plastic surgery and how to know how much is too much.
Sitting on my left, a middle-aged man in an expensive-looking suit was barking orders into his Blackberry. He had a Wall Street Journal folded underneath his arm and a leather tote overflowing with papers on his lap.
He had what sounded like some sort of Eastern accent- Boston maybe- and he smelled strongly of some kind of man-perfume.
He kept barking instructions into his phone until the stewardess came over and shot him a stern look and told him we were getting ready for takeoff.
And there I was, the happy holiday traveler, stuck in the middle of Gordon Gecko and Hannah Montana.
While we waited for take-off I thumbed through the Christmas 2010 edition of SkyMall where, among other things, I discovered that the $90.00 Star Wars-themed Chewbacca sleeping bag actually comes in adult sizes.
Is there a better way to celebrate Christmas? The glossy advertisement asked rhetorically.
I had an early morning flight. The sky was still dark enough that when we were in the air you could see the stars.
The fasten seatbelt sign chimed off and the captain came on and spoke reassuringly over the intercom about our journey ahead. Not that you could hear him over the boy who was still wailing and still stomping his feet and who’d started to hyperventilate.
Once we were in the air, the girl to my right had moved on to read an article about eyeshadow.
Seriously. Eyeshadow.
And the woman behind me- though it sounded like she was actually in my ear canal- was giving a blow-by-blow recount of the last holiday she’d spent with her husband’s mother. I didn’t turn around but I’m sure her husband was red-faced and gritting his teeth.
Where you headed? The businessman on my left asked.
And I thought to myself: Well, it says Atlanta on my ticket but it feels like I’m already half-way to Hell.
I’m headed to my in-laws’ house.
He chuckled and said: Good luck.
Now, I don’t like to talk to people on airplanes.
It’s not that I’m unfriendly or shy. It’s just that I learned early on in my ministry that there are certain situations in which revealing to a stranger that I’m a minister can provoke unwanted conversations.
I’ve discovered the hard way that sitting on an airplane in between strangers can be just like that.
Ironically though I’ve learned that one of the best ways to avoid conversation with strangers on planes is by taking a bible out of my bag and simply opening it up on the tray table in front of me.
You don’t even have to read it necessarily. You can just leave it open like a force field of personal space.
Religious people will think you’re doing your devotions and will respect your privacy and non-religious people won’t say anything for fear you’re Baptist and might evangelize them.
And if you really want to make sure no one bothers you, you can just open it up to the Book of Revelation.
This past Wednesday morning I thumbed through SkyMall and I had my bible out and opened, not to Revelation but to Matthew 2- not only to stymy potential conversation with the businessman to my left but also I thought I’d jot down some sermon notes while I had the chance.
Meanwhile the businessman sitting next to me pulled out his laptop and then he dug deeply into his leather briefcase and pulled out a stack- at least 12 inches thick- a stack of catalogs: Eddie Bauer, LL Bean, Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma etc. He pored over them like he was reading a map. Every now and then he would look up from them, marking a spot on the page with his index finger, and then he would type quickly into his laptop.
I watched him do this several times before I realized what he was doing.
He had Excel opened up on his computer and he was building a Christmas shopping spreadsheet. He was typing in the name of the item, the cost, the person who would receive the gift and then a hyperlink to the company’s website.
Every now and then he would click the ‘Sum’ button on the screen, giving him a grand total cost for his 2010 Christmas.
I watched him do this a while. Then I went back to thumbing through the Christmas issue of SkyMall where I saw that I could get a replica Harry Potter wand for only $70.00.
I was just thinking to myself who in their right mind would pay that much money for a fake Harry Potter wand when the guy sitting next to me said: Hey, can I see that a minute? My nephew would love that.
I watched while he typed all the information into his spreadsheet. His nephew’s name was Brian. He handed SkyMall back to me and with his tiny travel-sized mouse he clicked Save.
After he finished, he let out a deep, exhausted sigh. And he said: It’s the same every year. This can’t be what it’s all about. Can it?
I looked over at him. You talking to me? Meanwhile I was kicking myself for not having opened my bible to the Book of Revelation.
You talking to me? I asked.
Yeah, he said.
Are you religious, he asked, and nodded at the bible on my tray.
Yeah, I guess so.
That’s good, he said in an absent sort of voice. I’m not, never have been.
I let his voice of trail off.
A few moments passed and he asked what I was reading, in the bible.
It’s the story of the magi, I said. He just blinked at me like a deer in headlights.
The what?
The wise men, I said.
He said: Right, I know what you’re talking about. I’ve seen them in those displays in people’s yards. They have the turbans and the camels right? They’re the ones who follow the star to the manger?
Not exactly, I said. They go to Jerusalem first not the manger in Bethlehem. It’s close but they’re off by about nine miles.
Sounds like the GPS in my car, he laughed.
I thought that might be the end of it. I was about to turn to Revelation or pretend I was asleep.
But then he asked me: Why do they go to Jerusalem first?
Well, they were looking for a King. The magi were just like us: educated, rich and sophisticated. They came from a powerful nation. They went to Jerusalem first because they just assumed any ‘King’ worth their worship would be found at the center of money and might.
He smiled a wise smile at me and said: In other words, they thought they could celebrate Christmas by traveling, giving a few gifts and then getting back to their normal lives.
And I smiled and said: Something like that.
Outside the window the stars were starting to fade against the oncoming sunrise. The boy across from me was hyperventilating into a vomit bag. The woman behind me was giving her husband the silent treatment. And the girl next to me had fallen asleep reading a Nicholas Sparks’ book, with a half-blown bubble of gum spread across her bottom lip.
The man next to me sat up and turned towards me.
Can I read it? he asked.
He held out his hand for my bible. So I handed it to him. I pointed out the first part of chapter two: It’s this part I said.
He took a while with it. He must’ve read it several times, searched over the words as though they contained the universe.
When he was done, he turned a few pages further into Matthew’s Gospel and then he turned a few pages back.
Then he turned it over and gazed at the back cover and then the front cover, gazing at the cheap, beat-up bible like it was a talisman or a treasure.
Then he held the bible out to me and he put his index finger down at the page.
What’s this? he asked me.
He was pointing to the poem indented in Matthew’s Gospel text:
And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah,
are by no means least among the rulers of Judah;
for from you shall come a ruler
who is to shepherd my people.
That’s from Micah, I said, from the Old Testament.
Can you show me? he asked.
And I flipped back into the Old Testament until I found Micah, the peasant prophet, and handed it back to him.
It’s short, I warned, only a few pages long.
I watched him read it, gazing over the constellation of words.
I saw him furrow his brows intensely at times and wondered what he might be reading.
I wondered if it might be:
He will teach us his ways so that we might walk in his path.
or
He will judge between many peoples.
or
Nations will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation nor will they train for war anymore.
or
He will gather the lame and assemble the exiles and all those who grieve.
or I wondered if it might be
With what shall I come before the Lord,
Shall I come before him with burnt-offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with tens of thousands of rivers of oil?
(in other words, will the Lord be pleased with all my stuff)
What does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
When he finished reading, he just sat holding it for a while. Then he handed it back to me.
A few minutes passed before he closed his laptop and said: That’s quite a gift you know.
What is? I asked.
For the wise men to be able to reorient everything they knew about the way the world worked.
For them to be able to look at a helpless baby in a poor woman’s arms in a little village, for them to believe he’s the one, the only one, they should honor, for them to believe he’s the one to make Micah’s words come true- for them to able to do that, it’s got to be a gift from God.
I guess I never thought about it like that, I said.
I travel a lot, he said. I don’t get to see my family much. Every year I try to make up for it at Christmas. I search to find just the right gifts, but lately I feel like I’m always looking in the wrong places.
The Good News is so were the magi, I said.
We started our descent. The sun was coming in through the windows.
I’d closed my eyes.
I thought that story was supposed to have shepherds and angels in it, he said.
That’s Luke’s Gospel, I said. Matthew says everything he wants to say about Christmas with the wise men.
I guess we’re more like the wise men anyway, he said.
How so?
None of us have angels telling us what to do or making things easier for us. We’ve just got to search, and, when we find what we’re searching for, decide whether or not we’ll let it change us.
You ought to be a minister, I said.
He laughed and said: I don’t think so. Aren’t ministers all dull and creepy?
I laughed and said…pretty much.
As we were getting off the plane, the journey over, I asked him: Are you going back to DC after the holiday?
No, he said, I’ve made some commitments. I’m going home a different way.
Sample Sermon 2- The Visitation
Luke 1.39-45
Her hands kept shaking even after he departed from her.
She gasped and only then realized she’d been holding her breath, waiting to see if he’d reappear as suddenly as he’d intruded upon her life. His words had lodged in her mind just as something new was supposedly lodged inside her.
He must’ve seen how terrified she was. ‘Don’t be afraid,’ he’d said to her.
In those moments after he departed, she just stood there, looking around her bedroom. The posters on the wall, the books on the shelf, the homework on the desk, the dirty laundry on the floor in the corner- in the aftermath of an angel’s glow, it all seemed very ordinary.
It was an unlikely place for a ‘visitation.’ There wasn’t anything there in her bedroom to confuse it for a holy place. It was just ordinary.
Looking around her room, she caught a glance of her reflection in the mirror. And so was she: ordinary, not anyone that anyone else should ever remember or notice, not someone you’d pick out like a single star in all the sky.
Yet, that’s just what he’d told her.
She’d been chosen. Somehow, in the days ahead of her or already right now, God would come to exist in her belly.
The thought made her shake again.
She looked out her window, up at the multitude of stars in the night sky.
‘Do not be afraid,’ he’d told her.
Those same words, she knew, had been spoken long ago to Abraham.
Do not be afraid, Abraham had been told in the moments before God pointed to the stars in the sky and dared Abraham to count them, dared Abraham to imagine and believe that for as many stars as there were in the sky so his descendants would be.
She liked the thought, as unbelievable as it sounded, that through her and her baby the whole world would be blessed.
Still, she knew enough scripture to know that the angel’s words, ‘Do not be afraid,’ were auspicious words. She knew the child promised by God to Abraham and Sarah was the same child whose sacrifice God later required.
She knew the story- it was the sort of story you can’t forget even if you’d like to- how God one day told Abraham that the promised son would have to suffer and be sacrificed on top of a mountain. How the son obeyed and followed his father’s will all the way up the mount, carrying wood. How they built an offering place up there. How the son was spared only when it was clear how far the father would go.
She used to wonder how God could ask anyone to give up something so precious.
But now, looking out at the stars and rubbing her belly, she wondered about Sarah, Abraham’s wife, the boy’s mother, and what Sarah would have done if God had asked her to follow her boy to his death.
The wondering made her shake again. ‘Don’t be afraid’ she whispered to herself.
As the late night turned to early morning she resolved to leave home.
A part of her wanted to see for herself the truth of the angel’s words growing inside Elizabeth.
A still bigger part of her knew the angel’s news would make her a stranger now in her own home, perhaps a stranger forever.
Nazareth was a small town; in a town that size there’s no room to hide.
And she didn’t want to be at home when her body started to change, when the neighbors started whispering questions about legitimacy.
And she didn’t want to remain at home and face her fiance, not yet. The angel could say nothing is impossible but she knew, chances were, everyone would suspect the worst about her before they’d believe the truth.
With haste, she packed her belongings into a duffel.
She folded her jeans and some blouses and wondered how long she’d fit into them. She zipped her bag shut and sadly glanced at the wedding dress hanging in her closet. Seeing it, she knew it would be too small on her wedding day, should that day ever come.
‘Favored one,’ that’s what he’d called her. Favored one. But now, hurrying before anyone else in the house awoke, it seemed more burden than blessing.
‘Favored one.’
She hadn’t known what to make of such a greeting when she first heard it.
‘Favored one.’
Hannah had received that same greeting. Hannah, who hadn’t let the gray in her hair or the crow’s feet around her eyes stop her from praying ceaselessly for God to fill her barren womb with a child.
Eli, the haggard priest, had called Hannah ‘favored one’ just before he spilled the news of her answered prayer.
But packing the last of her things and clicking off the bedroom lights she recalled that even for Hannah a blessing from God wasn’t so simple. Even for Hannah the blessing was also a summons.
Hannah had prayed holes in the rug for a child but as soon as Hannah weaned her son, God called her to give her boy to Eli, the priest. Hannah’s boy was to be consecrated.
Tiptoeing through the dark hallway, she wondered how Hannah had explained that to her husband. She wondered what it had been like for Hannah, who lost out on all the memories a mother counts on: his first words, learning to walk, the first day of school, homecoming and his wedding day.
Everything Hannah had wanted when she’d wanted a child sacrificed for the purpose God had for her boy.
Hannah- she’d been called ‘favored one’ too.
Leaving her house in the cold moonlight, she thought that God’s favor was also a kind of humiliation, that God’s call was also a call to suffer.
‘Let it be with me according to your word,’ she’d told him when she could think of nothing else to say. But if she prayed now for God to let this cup pass from her, would he?
‘Let it be with me according to your word,’ she’d said.
Standing out under the streetlight and looking back at the house where she’d grown up, she realized it wasn’t that simple.
Things would never be simple again.
Elizabeth lived in the country outside Jerusalem, several days journey from Nazareth. She’d stop in villages along the way to draw water from their wells.
She knew what others must have thought: a young girl, a single woman, resting at a well all by herself raised eyebrows.
It was in those moments with men and women staring at her, making assumptions and passing judgments, she wondered if the angel knew what sort of family her baby would be grafted onto.
Names like Rahab and Ruth leapt out, a prostitute and a foreigner. Not the sort of family you’d expect to be chosen.
She wondered what that said God.
And what her boy would one day make of it.
At night she camped out in the fields along the road where the only noise came from the shepherds and their flocks.
She got sick for the first time out there in the fields.
It was then she began to wonder about the stranger she would bring into the world. Who will this be? she thought. Here is something that is most profoundly me, my flesh and my blood, the sheer stuff of me, depending on me and vulnerable to me. And yet not me, strange to me, impenetrable to me.
She’d asked him there in the room how it would happen. She hadn’t gotten much in the way of explanation.
“The power of the most high will overshadow you’ is how he’d answered.
‘Overshadow’ was the word he’d used. She was sure of it.
She still didn’t know how that worked exactly. She hadn’t felt anything. But she knew that word, ‘overshadow.’
It’s what God did with the ark of the covenant when David brought the ark to Jerusalem with dancing and jubilation and not a little bit of fear. The power of the most high overshadowed the ark.
And before that when God delivered Israel from bondage and led them to freedom through the wilderness, in the tabernacle, the presence and power of God overshadowed.
Now, the most high had overshadowed her, and, if the angel could be believed, God was about to deliver on an even bigger scale.
Sleep came hard those nights on the road.
She’d look up at the sky and rub her nauseous stomach. It made her dizzy trying to comprehend it: how she could carry within her the covenant that had once been etched in stone, as though her womb was now an ark; how the hands and feet she’d soon feel pushing and kicking inside her were actually the promises of God.
Made flesh.
As soon as she saw Elizabeth in the distance she knew it was true.
All of it.
Seeing Elizabeth, it hit her how they were immeasurably different.
Elizabeth’s child will be seen by all as a blessing from God. Elizabeth will be praised, the stigma of her barrenness finally lifted.
But for Mary, as soon as she started to show, it would be different.
A young girl, engaged, suddenly pregnant, with no ring on her finger, no father in sight and her fiance none the wiser? That invited more than just a stigma. She could be stoned to death.
She could see from the end of the road the beautiful contradiction that was Elizabeth: the gray wiry hair, the wrinkled face and stooped back, and the 6 month pregnant belly.
To be sure, Elizabeth was a miracle but it was not unheard of. Sarah, Hannah…Mary had grown up hearing stories of women like Elizabeth.
Mary knew: hers was different.
An unexpected, miraculous birth wasn’t the same thing as a virgin birth.
With Mary, it was as if the angel’s message- God’s words- alone had flicked a light in the darkness of her womb.
Life from nothing- that was the difference.
Not from Joseph or anyone else.
From nothing God created life.
Inside her.
From nothing.
The same way, she thought, God created the heavens and the earth: from nothing.
The same way God created the sun and the sea and the stars.
The same way God created Adam and Eve.
From nothing.
As though what she carried within her was creation itself.
The start of a new beginning.
To everything.
For everyone.
A Genesis and an ultimate reversal all in one.
As she walked up Elizabeth’s driveway, she considered the costs that might lie ahead, and with her hand on her stomach she whispered to herself: “The Lord has done great things for me.”
On the Contrary
A while back I received (so did my SPRC Chair) a long typed letter excoriating me for my Christmas Eve sermon.
The letter was from an out-of-town relative of a church member who recoiled from the notion of my preaching from Matthew’s genealogy for a Christmas Eve service. In the sermon, I took time to walk through Jesus’ family tree and the rather checkered, soap-opera character of many of the characters: Abraham who nearly killed his son, Jacob who slept with the wrong girl by mistake, Rahab who was a prostitute,Ruth who seduced Boaz, and David who slept with another man’s wife.
In the sermon, I juxtaposed Jesus’ family with my own, drawing the implication that God takes flesh among us, among all our imperfections. The flesh Jesus assumes is a lot like ours, I said, and that’s Good News because that means Jesus accepts us just as we are.
Admittedly, it was not the Christmas Eve sermon many expected but it was faithful to the Gospel message. The sender of the letter, however, was outraged at the mention of such unsavory characters at Christmas and wrote to me that “We don’t care what the bible says at Christmas we only want to hear about angels, sing Silent Night and leave feeling good about ourselves.” She went on for another two pages.
The lack of self-awareness in the letter was astounding and only convinced me I’d preached, if not well, truthfully.
Therein lies the crux of the matter, the difficulty of preaching in our present context: mainline congregations who exist in a post-Christian culture but who always seem to be the last in any community to hear the news that Christendom is over.
As the Christmas Eve worshipper’s letter suggests, the difficulty of preaching in such a context is that everyone knows the stories.
Yet no one knows the stories.
The Gospel flounders because it is exceedingly familiar and yet it is exceedingly unfamiliar too.
We are all preachers to a different sort of mission field, one where our listeners aren’t so much ignorant of the Gospel as they are inoculated against it. Their assumed knowledge of scripture is their chief obstacle from being confronted by it. Instead many prefer the hazy goo of nostalgia and sentimentality to a Gospel that’s meant to challenge the powers-that-be, convert sinners and send the Church into the world in service and witness.
The unavoidable truth is that for most of our listeners the status quo of the Empire has worked quite well for them.
For us.
It’s easier and preferable to keep the Gospel leashed with sentimentality and self-help principles draped in the guise of the Word.
The term ‘missional’ was just gaining currency when I was in seminary. Today the term is ubiquitous to the point where it risks losing any meaning at all.
What does the missional context of the North American Church mean for the pulpits from which we preach?
I think it demands a sort of contrarian preaching. I think it requires a fixed determination to upset conventional assumptions about particular passages of scripture. I think it necessitates a refusal on the part of the preacher to conform to listeners’ expectations. In many cases, for our listeners to meet this surprising, Living God requires preachers to make clear that congregations don’t know the stories they think they know.
Perhaps no where is this need more evident than when it comes to the holy days of the year, Christmas and Easter. These two days, especially, book end the Christian Gospel yet they come freighted with so much cultural and quasi-Christian baggage it’s nearly impossible to hear or preach them. How do we convey the Christmas news beyond simply ‘Jesus is born’ or ‘Jesus is born to die for our sin?’ How do upset the conventional Easter bromides about springtime renewal or life after death?
I think only by being stubbornly contrary and going against the grain of what their ears anticipate.
Sample Sermon: Raised to Life, Scared to Death
Mark 16
The first Easter sermon I ever preached was behind bars, in a prison in New Jersey where I was a chaplain.
It was a morning service, and it was held in the prison gymnasium. For an altar table, I had an old, metal teacher’s desk, and instead of candles on either side of the table there were two rusting electric fans.
No one wore their Easter best in that congregation. The men all had on their state-issued beige jumpsuits. Sister Rose, the nun who was the chaplain supervisor, wore the plain gray pants and plain white shirt she always wore. No one wore their Easter best that morning. Except for me.
I didn’t wear a robe because I wasn’t an official minister yet- I was still in school. So, I wore a suit…with a pink shirt and purple, flowery tie. My wife that morning had said I looked ‘handsome,’ but when the inmates saw me- they said I looked ‘pretty.’
‘Do we have two lady preachers this Easter?’ one of the men asked.
Sister Rose tried to begin the worship service with singing. I say tried because the music was played on a cassette player and because Sister Rose was one of those worship leaders who mistakenly thought that adding hand motions to the singing would somehow make the songs more ‘contemporary.’
Sister Rose insisted that we all do what looked like jazz-hands as we mumbled our way through ‘Trading My Sorrows’ and ‘Amazing Grace.’ The hispanic inmates all pretended, suddenly, not to know a word of english. The others all stone-walled Sister Rose. No one was about to participate in the “worship.”
No one except for me, who had no choice.
My sermon was simple. I just unpacked the Easter Gospel for them.
‘Because he lives,’ I said, ‘so will you live…forever’
And someone replied: ‘Amen.’
You might have 5 months or 5 years, you might have LIFE in here- but because he lives you have a lot more LIFE to look forward to.
You have more future with Christ than you have time to serve in here, more time ahead of you than days to measure behind bars.
And some sitting in the plastic chairs started to rock and respond: ‘Come on, come on now.’
It’s not just anybody God raises.
God didn’t choose at random to raise from the dead.
God chose Jesus.
The Jesus who was:
Hassled by the authorities.
Accused by the rich and the powerful.
Beaten and Sentenced and Sent Away to be Forgotten.
‘That’s right’ some of them shouted out.
God raised Jesus. The Jesus who:
Doubted he had the strength to get through the trials that lay ahead of him.
Promised Paradise to the convict next to him.
God chose him. God chose someone like you.
And the ‘Amens’ grew louder.
As soon as he’s out of the tomb, what does he do?
He goes to his friends. The same ones who lied to him, turned their backs on him, broke their promises to him.
And what does he do?
He sits down and eats with them. He embraces them. He forgives them.
I looked at them as I said it, knowing that everyone of them had lied and denied and broken promises to land where they were that morning.
Easter, I said, means you’re forgiven.
Many of them were up on their feet, with their hands in the air, saying ‘Praise Him.’
And if you needed one word to describe how the Easter Gospel hit them
one word heard in their praise’s inflections
one word seen in their eyes
If you needed one word it was: Joy.
Except-
Sticking out like a sore thumb, sitting in the second row was an inmate named Victor. I had seen him around. I’d talked to him in the laundry room.
That Easter morning you could tell from his eyes and his clenched hands and the way he was sitting when everyone was standing with their arms in the air: he looked terrified.
In the midst of all that joy there was also fear.
Easter begins with fear.
At least that’s the way Mark tells it.
Early in the morning three women approach the tomb, carrying herbs and expensive oils. They come that morning to comb the tangles out of Jesus’ matted hair, to sponge away the dried blood and to massage myrrh in to his bruised and broken skin.
They come that morning to anoint him, to perform the ritual cleansing before the tomb is sealed for good. Only, when they get there the tomb is empty.
And then, an angel tells them the news.
And they’re struck with fear.
They’re so terrified they run away, so scared they don’t breathe a word of what they’ve seen or heard.
“Jesus has been raised; he is not here…he’s gone ahead of you to Galilee.”
The Easter message, the good news, it fills them with fear.
But fear is not what we associate with Easter.
When we think of Easter, we think about springtime renewal or life after death or how love is stronger than the grave. But we don’t think of Easter as being something that could strike terror- that’s what Mark calls it- terror into our hearts.
How is fear any way to conclude the greatest story ever told?
The fact is the four Gospels are all a bit different in how they tell the Easter story. You can almost feel the writers wrestling with how to reduce the mystery of resurrection into words.
They’re all different.
Except for the fear.
I’ve heard my skeptic friends say the empty tomb was just invented the by the disciples. But that doesn’t make any sense because the one thing the Gospels all agree on is that the disciples- none of them- wanted a resurrection. They’d all gone back to their lives, back to fishing and to their families.
They didn’t want a resurrection and when they first hear news of it they’re struck with fear.
The first time I ever baptized someone- it was at that same Easter service in the prison.
When I finished my sermon, Sister Rose led another hymn. For most of the singing Victor sat in his chair, looking scared, until he came up to me.
His jumpsuit was starched and unwrinkled and buttoned neatly all the way up to his collar. His long black hair was pulled tightly into a ponytail.
While the others sang, Victor bent in towards me and he told me he wanted to be baptized.
You mean, like today? I asked.
And he said: Yes, right now.
Well, I’m not really supposed to do that sort of thing, I said. I’m just a student. I don’t have the proper credentials. I could get in trouble.
It was then I realized the hymn was over and everyone was watching us.
Your bishop would never even know, Sister Rose giggled.
Okay, I said.
You know how, right? Victor asked me.
Sure. I mean, I’ve read about it.
You’ll need water, Sister Rose pointed out.
Right water- can you get us some water? I asked one of the guards.
And a bowl, Sister Rose said.
The guard was gone for a moment or two and then came back with a styrofoam soup bowl and a dripping water bottle. I poured the water into the bowl.
Sister Rose reminded me that usually the minister prayed first so I did that. When I finished the prayer, Victor asked me:
Can I say something?
Sure, testify. Give your testimony.
Some in the crowd started mocking him, expecting another jailhouse conversion kind of story. But he ignored them and in his quiet Spanish accent he said:
Jesus Christ appeared to me two months ago in my cell.
I know it sounds crazy but he was as alive as any of you.
I haven’t told anyone about it until now.
It scared me to death and it still does.
Because if Jesus is really real then he could upset my whole life.
He turned back towards me.
Are you ready? I asked.
No, he said, but go ahead anyway.
And I baptized him.
Christ is Risen! He is Risen indeed!
How can that scare anyone?
What about the Easter Gospel could make you run from here, never to come back and never to tell a word of it?
Would it scare you to discover that God is out there? On the loose.
Would it frighten you suddenly to believe that God isn’t in this sanctuary or up in the clouds or in our hearts but out there, in the world, waiting for you to show up?
You should be scared.
Because this isn’t a God who comes back from the dead to tell that when you die you will be with him in heaven. No, he doesn’t say anything like that, and he doesn’t even wait by the empty tomb for his disciples.
He goes to Galilee.
Galilee.
Where Jesus first proclaimed good news to the poor, the prisoners, and the oppressed. Where Jesus cured those the righteous wouldn’t dare touch. Where Jesus stood on a hill and told the crowd to turn the other cheek and to love their enemies.
Galilee. Where he ate with sinners and forgave sin and stilled storms and told his disciples that with just a tiny bit of faith they could the same and even move mountains.
You see-
If the story ended at the Cross, then the disciples can mourn him. They can remember the good times, and they can go back to their lives.
But if he’s risen then they must go out. They must do and teach and preach and serve. Because the angel says he’s in Galilee and that means it’s all starting all over again.
If he’s risen, if he’s waiting down the road in Galilee for us, then you can bet he has plans for us.
If he’s risen then there’s a good chance he’ll mess up our lives just like he messed up theirs. If he’s not cold on the slab, if he is raised, then there’s a good chance he’ll ask us to march out into the world to make some kind of difference for him.
And maybe that’s what’s scary about Easter. Because when you get down to it, we really don’t want God to interfere with us, to make demands on us, to cost us anything.
We prefer a God who is safely inside this sanctuary or up in the clouds or locked away in our hearts.
We don’t want a God who is wandering around the broken places of our world, tapping his foot and impatiently waiting for us to show up.
That sort of Living God could scare a person to death.
Sample Sermon: Would Jesus Still Have Come…?
John 1.1-18
To those of you who know me, it may come as a surprise to learn that I tend to be contrary by nature.
Towards the end of my first semester at the University of Virginia, my freshman year, I was invited one Saturday night by my friend Ben to a Christmas party. The party was hosted by Campus Crusade for Christ and was held in the home of their campus pastor. Back then, I was still new in my faith and in many ways I wasn’t confident about being a Christian. Back then, Ben was the only Christian I knew at school.
As their name implies, Campus Crusade is an aggressively evangelistic organization, and even that is putting it mildly. Of course I didn’t know that at the time and Ben had grown up in the mountains of Southwest Virginia where most of the Christians he knew hoarded guns and canned goods in their basements in anticipation of the apocalypse. An organization like Campus Crusade probably seemed tame to him. It was during my first semester, about this time of year, that Ben invited to this “party.”
Now I shouldn’t have to tell you that the word ‘party,’ to a college student, conjures particular images and elicits very specific expectations- none of which were matched by the gathering Ben took me to that Saturday night. In fact, in all my years of college and graduate school, this was the only party where I was asked to take my shoes off at the front door.
Ben and I walked there that night, in the cold and thin snow, to a neighborhood just off of campus. Walking up the short driveway to a small ranch home, I could spy through the big bay window in the living room a glimpse of the evening that lay ahead of me.
At first I thought we must be at the wrong house; this must be a tupperware party or a bridge club. Ben though assured me it was the right address. I thought about running away then and there- and probably I should have- but Ben’s a lot bigger than me and I didn’t want to aggravate him.
When Ben knocked on the door, this skinny guy with a soul patch under his lip and a guitar slung across his back answered the door. When Ben introduced me, the guy- the student pastor- shook my hand with disproportionate enthusiasm and said: ‘Jason, yeah, Jason- Acts 17.7.’ And I replied: ‘What?’
This must have been his secret Christian greeting and because I didn’t know what he was talking about, because I didn’t even know my name was in the bible and because I didn’t reciprocate with ‘Michael, yeah, archangel of the Lord, Daniel 12.1’ he gave me a sad, pathetic sort of look and ushered me inside.
But first he asked me to take off my shoes.
Everyone else must have drank the Kool-Aid before I arrived because I didn’t fit in and couldn’t understand how people seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once we were inside, Ben abandoned me. He mingled around the house while I stood near the dining table in my threadbare socks eating chocolate covered pretzels and looking at my watch between bites.
You can imagine how much my mood improved when Mike, the campus pastor, asked us all to circle up in the family room for a sing-a-long. I ended up sitting shoulder to shoulder on a sofa with two other people.
On my left was a girl who began every sentence with ‘The Lord just put it on my heart to ________‘ and who looked at me like I was as crazy as I thought she was.
On my right, with his arm resting uncomfortably behind me, was a 50-something man who worked in the dining hall. He had a long, scraggly beard and was wearing a Star Trek sweatshirt and had earlier over chocolate covered pretzels asked me if I thought the incarnation was a violation of the Prime Directive.
Across from me, sitting on the brick hearth, was a girl named Maria. I recognized her from the little Methodist church I tried to worship at a few times. I remembered her because every Sunday when it came time for the congregation to share their joys and concerns Maria would grab the microphone and hold the congregation hostage for 20 or so minutes while she narrated the ups and downs of her romantic life.
Unwisely, I thought, Ben sat next to her on the hearth.
We sang songs whose words I knew only vaguely and whose tunes seemed unseasonably fast-paced. Mike, the pastor, strummed his guitar and led us in a breathy, earnest voice while his pregnant wife accompanied him on a small plastic keyboard on her lap.
When the singing was over, Mike, assuming a serious tone of voice, asked us to open up our bibles. I felt like the music had stopped and I was the one without a chair. I hadn’t noticed before but I was the only one who hadn’t brought a one.
‘Luke, chapter 2’ Mike said. Everyone but me read along as Mike read aloud: ‘In the days of King Herod…’
After he finished the reading, Mike asked everyone to share what the passage- what Christmas and the incarnation and the coming of Jesus- meant to them. And for several long minutes people around the room said things like:
‘I’m so thankful Jesus came into the world to die for my sin.’
Each person’s sharing was slightly different, but they were all about Sin- about Jesus reconciling it, suffering the wages of it, dying for it.
Then for a few moments a pause settled over the room. It took me a while to realize that it wasn’t a holy silence or even a meaningful one. It was everyone waiting on me to say something. Eventually I realized I wasn’t going to be released until I offered some testimony of my own.
Okay, maybe it sounded sarcastic but with all sincerity I wondered out loud what was genuinely on my mind. I asked a question:
‘If there’d been no Fall, would Christ still have come?
If humankind had never sinned, would there still have been Christmas?’
From the group’s embarrassed reaction you would have thought I’d just called Jesus’ mother a dirty name. Everyone looked at me with confusion. Mike looked at me with pained sadness and Ben looked as blushed as the pastor’s wife’s red corduroy dress.
An awkward silence fell over the room until Ben summoned a fake laugh from somewhere in his belly and somehow just kept the hahaha’s going.
I suppose it was only obvious to me how Ben was hoping he could just keep laughing and laughing and laughing until we sang another song or did something. But for pastor Mike I was clearly a neophyte to the faith (or a fool) and this was what he would’ve called ‘a teachable moment.’
He slung his guitar behind his back and started to gesture with his hands like it really pained him to break it down so simply for me.
‘Jason, the reason Jesus came,’ he explained, ‘is he had a job to do: to rescue us from our Sin so that we can have a relationship with God.’
For a few minutes more it sounded like he was rattling off lines memorized from a pamphlet about the wages of sin.
‘But what I was wondering: If we had never sinned, would Jesus still have come?’
‘But Adam and Eve did sin; we do sin. I’m a sinner. I’m not ashamed to admit that’ Mike replied and did so rather condescendingly.
That’s when any hope Ben had for me to keep my mouth shut went out the window. ‘That’s not my point,’ I said. I mean…
“Is the incarnation something that comes out of God’s frustration and disappointment with us? Or out of God’s overflowing joy and desire for us?”
“Is Christmas just the beginning of a rescue package that bails us out of our suffering and sin, or is Christmas even deeper and more mysterious than that?”
The group just watched us go back and forth, staring at me like I was either an idiot or a heretic.
The pastor’s wife was biting her lip, and where I had spent the first 30 minutes of the evening wondering how I could escape she was now clearly wondering how she could get me out of her house.
No one seemed to appreciate the budding theologian in their midst.
It didn’t help matters that the only person sympathetic to my perspective was the bearded 50 year old with the Star Trek shirt whose sole contribution to my cause was to say ‘Dude, that’s deep.’
Meanwhile the girl sitting next to me had placed her large KJV bible in the crack of the sofa cushions, erecting a barrier between us and making clear that she was not with me.
Finally someone said out loud: ‘Well, I know I sin all the time and I’m just grateful he came to die for mine.’
As if rendering a verdict, Mike said: ‘Praise God!’ Then he swung his guitar around like Church Berry and we sang another song.
For all the confusion my question caused, the answer is YES.
Would he still have come?
Would there still be Christmas if there’d been no Fall? YES.
Even though I couldn’t have articulated it back then, that’s what John’s Gospel is getting at in chapter 1: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’
Even before he’s felt in Mary’s womb, John’s saying, before he kicks or she begins to show, HE IS. He’s before time.
Before the stars were hung in place, before Adam sinned or Israel’s love failed- before creation is even set in motion God had already chosen to one day take flesh and live among us.
That’s what today’s Gospel is driving at:
That when you talk about who God is, at the center, at the core- when you talk about who God is and always has been and always will be- at the heart of God is God’s eternal choice to become incarnate.
And maybe, maybe if we hadn’t sinned his name would’ve been different. Maybe he would’ve had a different mother. Maybe he would’ve spoken a different language or died in a different way.
But he’d still be because he was always going to be- Emmanuel, God with us.
You see, John wants you to see that Christmas is a moment that the momentum of God’s life has always been heading towards.
I waited until we walked to the end of pastor Mike’s driveway before I said to Ben: ‘Well, that was an awesome party.’
And he belly-laughed, not at the evening but at me, at what he thought was my contrariness.
‘But it’s a good question!’ I growled. Ben just laughed some more, and by the time we were leaving the neighborhood he said: ‘I don’t see what difference it really makes.’
Back then our friendship was still new and it was governed by politeness. So I let it go. Back then I wasn’t bold enough to say what I’d say to him now, today.
That INCARNATION names a love every bit as deep and unconditional as CROSS.
That you’re holy and you’re loved and you’re graced not only because God took flesh to save us but also because even before creation morning God chose to be with us.
That the Gospel’s not just that in the fullness of time God came among us to suffer for our Sin. The Gospel’s also that before there was time God decided to join his life to ours no matter what.
The Gospel’s not just that Christ died for me.
It’s also that before there was even the promise or notion of you…before you did your first good deed or told your first lie…before you made your life a success or made it a disaster…before you said your wedding vows or before you broke them…before you held your children in your arms or before you estranged yourself from them…before you first laughed or wept or kissed or shouted out in anger…before you gave your life to the Lord or before you turned your back on him…before the oceans were even born God said ‘I do’ to you. Forever.
That’s the Gospel too.
Would he still have come? Would he still have taken flesh?
Of course, and that means the invitation for you to come to God is always there because it’s always been there.
We were back on campus and crossing the footbridge over Emmett Street when Ben said: ‘Your question- it doesn’t really change how you celebrate Christmas? Does it?’
And I said: ‘No.’
But I was wrong.
Because if the answer to my question is yes, then the way to celebrate Christmas is to love God back- not for what he gives us, for life and eternal life and forgiveness and healing and hope and salvation; not out of gratitude or fear or admiration or wonder.
If the answer is yes, then the way to celebrate Christmas is to love God back simply for his own sake. The same way he loves us.
You Need Blood on Your Sermon
A while back I was talking with Lauren Winner and she reflected, bemusedly, about what she must have been thinking to write a memoir, Girl Meets God, at only the age of 24. Acknowledging an inevitable psychological need to reveal parts of herself, Winner also acknowledged that she would rather err on the side of divulging too much of her life than too little. The Church needs more authenticity she said.
I think the same can be said of the pulpit.
Preachers need more authenticity.
Cormac McCarthy, my favorite novelist, admitted to an interviewer that he has no interest in literature that doesn’t have death in it. Matters of life and death are too important to neglect for a novel to ring true.
Likewise, Gardner Taylor, the dean of black preachers, often critiqued younger preachers for sermons that had no blood in them, meaning there was no sign in them of the preacher’s own struggle with life and faith.
While it’s certainly inappropriate for preachers to use the pulpit as their own private confessional or to coerce the congregation into playing the role of therapist, in general I think more preachers’ sermons need to have blood on them.
Too often preachers are reticent to speak of themselves and when they do it lacks any sense of grittiness. The lack of urgency I critiqued earlier just as often stems from the flat, safe nature of the preacher’s personal witness. What preachers offer up are innocent illustrations from their lives, tame slices of life that are no more urgent or gritty than ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things.’
The preacher, as the historic black church has understood her, is one called from among the people, as one of the people, to bring a Word on behalf of the people. This representational role of the preacher requires, I think, the preacher to give witness to the people’s own on-the-ground struggles. For the sermon to be a Word that makes contact with the listeners, the sermon should be a testimony that emerges out of the crucible of the preacher’s own suffering and wrestling with the scripture and the faith.
Naturally, this can’t be a week-in, week-out mode of preaching nor should the preacher’s personal testimony overwhelm or contradict the meaning of the scripture text itself, but the common reluctance to preach personally betrays a kind of homiletical docetism; in that, when the preacher seems determined to appear less than real, someone who doesn’t struggle with the same issues and questions the rest of us struggle with. The bitter fruit of such preaching can be the proclamation of a Messiah who also seems less than real. We cannot authentically preach an incarnate God if our message avoids the stuff of our own fleshly lives. After all, if ‘Israel’ itself means ‘to contend’ with God, then any faithful testimony of this God needs to bear the scars of having contended and prevailed.
In the sermon below I risked revealing a bit of my fractured relationship with my own father to explicate Luke’s parable of the prodigal son. My own shock and resistance to Luke’s Gospel mirrors the shock of the elder brother.
Sample Sermon: The Father’s Feast
Luke 15.25-32
The feast was the father’s idea, the patriarch of the family. The feast was how he’d wished for everyone to mark the occasion.
As far as feasts go, no expense was spared.
The food laid out across the long table was lavish and decadent and appropriately precise: with bottles of reds and whites, trays of lasagna and scampi, platters of artichokes and eggplant and prosciutto and, for later, tiramisu.
This wasn’t comfort food or a potluck.
It was a celebration.
And everyone had dressed for the day. Women wore fur and broaches and heels. Men wore pinstripes and silk scarves.
From the size of the crowd gathered there, it looked like the whole town had been invited to share in the celebration.
Music was playing, but the smooth notes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett could barely be made out beneath the din of all the ‘good to see you’s’ and the ‘do you remember the time?’
The music couldn’t be heard above the laughter and the clinking of glasses and the scraping of serving forks across chafing dishes and more than one person saying to another ‘I never thought this day would come.’
This was last winter, and I’d made the long journey to return to my family’s home in Cleveland for my grandfather’s funeral.
The feast was his idea. Everyone on that side of my family is nominally Catholic. Food is their true devotion and a proper altar always has more than one loaf and a single cup. So it was fitting that we should mark my grandpa’s wake not with sadness but with celebration.
We’d been driving all day- my sister and my son, Alexander, and I- and we still got there late. We pulled up and got out of the car, and as soon as my sister saw my dad she ran in her heels to him and smothered him with a hug and a kiss, wrinkling his tie and making a scene before he could even get a word out of his mouth.
When she finally let go of him, he looked at me and then sheepishly motioned like he meant to hug me too. Almost reflexively, I shook his hand instead.
He looked at his watch. ‘You’re late,’ he said, ‘I was afraid you’d gotten lost.’
‘I haven’t been here in a long time,’ I said with trace amounts of reproach on my lips, ‘but I found it.’
My son Alexander was standing in front of me, standing on top of my shoes actually, looking up. ‘Who’s that?’ Alexander asked with his trademark subtlety.
I stammered. ‘X, this is your Grandpa Mark.’
‘Aunt Lisa’s Dad?’ he asked me.
‘Yes, Aunt Lisa’s Dad.’
Crowded inside were several limbs and branches of my family tree. I hadn’t seen most of them since I was a boy. They were like artist-renderings of the people I remembered.
I’ve shared with you all before how my father walked out on us when I was 11 or 12, and how for another dozen years or so we spoke not a word. For a long while, he was dead to me, entombed in bitterness.
I’ve alluded before to how I reconciled with him, just before I got married. We talked, and we agreed to “wipe the slate clean.” My words.
But we never wrote anything else on that slate. Our reconciliation was only that in the strictest sense; it hadn’t led to a renewed relationship. I think maybe he still felt too guilty to pursue it, and I think I just wanted the peace of mind, I just wanted to be able to tell myself that I’d done my religious duty.
I hadn’t gone there to be angry, not at the start. I’d even looked forward to it in a way I was only vaguely aware of. I’d even taken Alexander with me- to introduce him to them, to justify who I was now, to make them proud.
Or, to rub their noses in my own pride.
The first thing that set me off though was that hug my sister gave him.
That she would reserve such extravagant gestures for him after everything he’d done to us, that she’d brought him a belated birthday gift that I knew she couldn’t afford, that all it took for her to be filled with joy was for the three of us to be together- it lit some dormant fuse in me.
It didn’t help matters that as soon as I went inside what I heard from nearly every relative there was: ‘It’s so good to see you. We’re so proud of your Dad. It’s such a shame we don’t see more of you.’
Like it was my fault!
And then there were the pictures.
All around the party, set on easels, were elaborately arranged and framed collages of family photos. Each collage was arranged chronologically so that the first frame of pictures by the front door were all in black and white, set in Italy, when my grandpa was just a boy. Looking from frame to frame, from picture to picture, I started to grumble under my breath.
I grumbled because I noticed how somewhere between the third and fourth frame of pictures I stopped being in them. It was like Back to the Future except this time no one had bothered to notice how I was disappearing from all the pictures: from family Christmases and vacations and just the ordinary moments. And an anger that had been simmering inside me rose to the surface.
If I’m honest, I resented seeing how my father evidently had his life together: how the drinking was behind him, how he’d learned to be a husband to someone, and how he was a good father to her children, how with my grandfather gone he’d inherited the family’s mantle. And it’s not that I’d never wish that for him. It’s that I wanted contrition first. I wanted penance first. I wanted a list of ‘I’m sorries’ written in his small, slanted cursive and I wanted them to fill up one his yellow legal pads.
‘Let’s go sit down and eat’ my sister urged.
‘Not right now,’ I said, ‘I’m not hungry.’
It’s the party that sets him off, if you read Luke’s parable closely.
Whatever resentments the older brother was harboring, whatever anger lay buried inside him already- it’s the singing and the dancing and the feasting and the rejoicing that send him over the edge. Why shouldn’t it?
Ancient Judaism had clear guidelines for the return of a penitent.
Ancient Judaism was clear about how to handle a prodigal’s homecoming.
There was nothing ambiguous in Ancient Judaism about how to treat someone who’d abandoned and disgraced his family.
It was called a ‘kezazah’ ritual, a cutting off ritual. Just as they would have done when the prodigal left for the far country, when he returned home members of his community and members of his family would have filled a barrel with parched corn and nuts. And then in front of everyone, including the children- to teach them an example- they would smash the barrel and declare ‘This disgrace is cut-off from us.’
Having returned home, thus would begin his shame and his penance.
So you see, by all means, let the prodigal return, but to bread and water not to fatted calf.
By all means, let him come back, but dress him in sackcloth not in a new robe.
Sure, let him come back, but make him wear ashes not a new ring.
By all means let the prodigal return, but in tears not in merriment, with his head hung down not with his spirits lifted up. Bring him to his knees before you bring him home.
It’s the party that sets him off.
Here’s the thing: the elder brother, he’s absolutely right.
The music was still barely audible above all the remembering that was going on. Most everyone had sat down along the long table, tucked napkins into their collars and started feasting, eating and reminiscing as though both were sacred acts.
Meanwhile I was seizing any excuse I could find NOT to sit down and join in the celebration: I fussed with Alexander at the children’s table. I went to the bathroom- four times. I retied my tie.
‘Oh, gosh, I forgot something in my car’ I said and while out there judiciously eyed the pressure in each of my tires. I tied my shoes. I tied Alexander’s shoes. I tied the four shoes of two children I’d never met until just then. I checked messages on my voicemail, and I looked at the photo collages, staring at each picture intensely, almost daring someone to disturb me.
With the crowd and the commotion, I’m not sure if anyone noticed.
But there was a chair near my Dad that was refusing to be anything but empty. I’m sure he noticed.
After a while my sister crept up next to me.
‘What’s your deal?’ she asked me.
‘I told you I’m not hungry.’
‘Well, just sit down then.’
‘What, am I going to upset your dad?’
She held her breath.
I didn’t look at her.
I was staring at one of the photos. It was in frame five in the corner near the bathroom and the piano with the crucifix above it and the fake potted plant next to it. It was a picture of my Dad on a golf course somewhere sunny with my step-brothers.
I pointed my chin at the picture, ‘I don’t have a picture like that. I don’t have any pictures like that.’
‘You’re right’ she said, ‘but he’s here now. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?’
Now, you don’t know my sister. Most of her wisdom has been gleaned from Cosmopolitan, US Weekly and the Lifetime Channel. Suffice it to say there was no precedent to suggest she could teach me something about grace.
Everyone calls this the Parable of the Prodigal Son. Everyone always has, but Jesus doesn’t steer this story so you’ll be confronted by the younger brother. Jesus leaves this story deliberately hanging___________
With the elder brother standing outside the celebration, refusing to join in, refusing to swallow his pride, choosing to be right rather than rejoice with the Father.
The prodigal’s sin is obvious. We don’t need a warning story to teach us that it’s wrong to wish our father dead and burn through his fortune with hookers. At least, most of us don’t need that kind of warning.
The other brother’s sin is harder to spot, but it’s also closer to home. And Jesus wants us to know that it’s just as treacherous.
I’ve done enough pre-marital, marital and divorce counseling to know. I’ve planned enough funerals. I’ve led enough small groups and bible studies. I know enough of you and I know enough of your youth to know.
To know that just about any of you could get up here this morning and tell a story just like mine.
Just about every one of you could tell a story…
about outstanding grievances
about someone who if you saw their name on the invite list you’d say ‘no thanks’ and turn back the other way
about someone who hurt you
or broke something in your life
or took something from you that can never be given back.
Every one of you could give this parable your own details and cast it with the characters in your own life and stage it around your own dining room table.
Every one of you could tell a story about a relationship that was left to flounder or half-heal because contrition is still past due.
And all of you are good people.
You’re probably right in most cases.
I’m sure you have your reasons and your justification. I won’t argue with that.
But you should know. You should know what Jesus wants you to know-
There’s two ways to go to hell.
Sure there’s the obvious way.
But refusing to celebrate what fills the Father with joy
Wanting to charge someone for the same grace that was freely given to you
Begrudging another mercy when it was offered to you
Wishing justice for someone when you received pardon
Well, you can be good and you can be right and you can be justified- you can be religious and you can have all the right reasons and still be every bit as wayward as a prodigal.
And just as far from Home.
Sample Sermon: A Full-Bodied Plea
1 Samuel 7.1-6, Acts 9.1-9
The first time God’s presence disappeared from my life I’d been a Christian for seven years. I’d been a candidate in the United Methodist ordination process for a year and a half. I’d been a seminary student for two semesters, and I’d been a solo pastor for three months when a member of my tiny little congregation at Linvale United Methodist Church outside Princeton, New Jersey went home one Sunday after the 10:00 worship service, climbed downstairs to his basement, spread out the plastic tarp that was still dirty from a long ago family camping trip, unlocked the deer rifle with which he’d once taught his son to hunt in the Pine Barrens, sat down in a wrought iron lawn chair, and killed himself.
It had been seven years since I’d given my life to Christ. I had ten ‘Master of Divinity’ courses notched on my transcript. I’d been a minister for a dozen or so Sundays. And, suddenly, God just wasn’t there anymore.
His name was Glenn.
He came to church with his daughter-in-law. Sometimes her husband, his son, came with them. He was named Glenn too. They always sat in the very middle of the sanctuary near the center aisle.
At the end of every service I would stand outside on the steps of the church porch. He would make his way through the line and would shake my hand and say ‘Nice sermon…the organ sounds out of tune though’ and then he would walk off down the sidewalk and drive away in his red PT Cruiser.
Every Sunday it was like that until the Sunday he drove home and decided to take the key hidden in a kitchen coffee can and unlock his gun cabinet.
Later that afternoon, his daughter-in-law called me at my apartment. And when she told me what he had done, I couldn’t help myself. Without thinking how it might sound, I just asked her: ‘Why? Why would he do that?’
She didn’t have an answer.
Even if she’d had an answer, she was crying too hard to get the words out. And besides, an answer wasn’t really what I was asking for.
What I wanted was something more like absolution. Because listening to her sob in to the phone, I felt stabbed by guilt: guilt that I never took the time to get beyond: Nice sermon…the organ sounds out of tune.
I was just a ‘part-time’ pastor. I had books to read and papers to write and classes to attend and he never fit into my schedule.
She caught her breath long enough to ask me if I would come over to Glenn’s house.
I said yes.
And it wasn’t until I hung up the phone that I realized: I’d never even been to a funeral before.
After a drive in my car that I quite honestly hoped would never end, I met them at Glenn’s house.
Neighbors standing in the street stared at me as I got out of the car and walked up to the house.
When Glenn’s daughter-in-law answered the door, I hugged her there on the front porch- not because I knew that was the right thing to do, not because I was overwhelmed with empathy or even because I’m a natural hugger- I was just terrified to say anything.
She led me down the hall to Glenn’s kitchen where we all sat down while she started to rummage through the refrigerator to make sandwiches no one would eat. Even if we couldn’t articulate it, we all sensed that eating would’ve violated something sacred.
Sitting in Glenn’s kitchen I noticed the appointments and To-Do’s written on a Philadelphia Phillies calendar next to the black rotary phone on the wall. A shopping list was scotch-taped on his fridge door next to faded 3×5 photos and postcards. He needed eggs and creamer.
I sat there with my hands on the pink formica tabletop acutely aware that my 10 ‘Master of Divinity’ courses had in no way prepared to do anything for them.
We sat in the quiet for a long time. It was only later in my ministry, after I’d been with several other grieving families, that I understood the silence in that kitchen. It was because all the usual cliches we wield against death were off limits that afternoon.
No one in that kitchen could fill the silence with: He’s in a better place. At least he didn’t suffer. God must’ve needed him in heaven.
There was none of that. There was no bright side to look at, no reason to find, no pious explanation to smooth out the tragedy.
Glenn’s son, Glenn, sat next to me playing with the coffee can I later learned had held the hidden key. He broke the silence by telling me he didn’t want any mention of his Dad’s suicide at the funeral service. ‘Not one word’ he told me and I realized it was something of a threat.
What he said he wanted was what families always say they want: a celebration of his life. Back then I wasn’t brave enough to ignore what they wanted.
The funeral came a few days later.
They held it at the funeral home. Glenn’s family said it was because the steep sanctuary steps would’ve been too difficult for the pallbearers, but even then I knew better.
Everyone gathered there that Wednesday morning knew the details of what had happened, yet we were all willing accomplices in keeping it a secret.
In my homily I said exactly what the family wanted me to say. You would’ve thought Glenn had died peacefully in his sleep after a long and happy life.
I preached about God’s mercy, about how God-in-Christ shares our grief.
Mostly I preached about God’s presence in our lives, in the here and now, to bring us comfort.
At that point, I’d been a Christian for about 1/3 of my life. At that point I’d earned 30 credit hours in seminary. At that point I was about 8 minutes into my first ever funeral sermon when I realized that what I was saying about God’s presence wasn’t true.
I don’t mean it was false in a general, universal way. I don’t mean it was false for anyone in that funeral parlor. It’s just that as I was speaking the words, I realized they were no longer true for me.
In the weeks that followed it got worse.
My prayers felt like they’d bounced off the ceiling and come back to me unheard.
Where before my faith had felt as real inside me as water or blood, now it felt dried up. Sunday mornings my preaching felt hallow and rang false.
I don’t know how it happened exactly or why, but it felt like God’s presence had been amputated from me. I could remember what it had felt like to have it as a part of me, and now all I could feel was its not-there-ness.
I didn’t not believe in God anymore. God just wasn’t present to me anymore. It was like God had gotten up and left.
After a while I realized that could be problem for a pastor.
No offense but I could never put up with church people for a living if God wasn’t real to me and present in my life.
Nothing changed for a couple of months.
I didn’t know what to do. I thought about dropping out of seminary. I applied to teach school in New York City.
I made the mistake of sharing my dilemma with my ordination mentor here in Virginia; he very helpfully suggested that maybe I shouldn’t be a minister after all.
I confided to a theology professor who didn’t seem to understand and who, without a trace of irony, suggested that if I didn’t have God in my life I could at least teach at a seminary.
What they didn’t understand was that I wasn’t worried about my career. I just wanted God back.
As Advent approached, I made an appointment with a pastoral counselor. He was one of my teachers, my favorite. He had counseled me in the months before my wedding, helping heal me in ways that even now make my marriage possible.
As a student, I took to calling him my Jedi Master and I still do.
My session was not what I expected.
I sat in a hard cane chair and he sat in a matching one directly facing me, our knees not more than 10 inches apart.
At first I just told him everything I’ve told you. I guess what I was expecting was for him to pull some psychological method from his counselor’s toolbox to break my spiritual logjam. I expected an Ordinary People, Good Will Hunting sort of counseling breakthrough.
Instead he just listened to my story. When I was finished, he asked me in his faint Minnesota accent: ‘Jason, have you tried fasting?’
I assumed I’d misheard him.
‘Fasting? You mean like not eating?’
He nodded his head and laughed a little.
‘No.’
‘Maybe you should.’
‘Seriously?’ And I thought to myself: This is not very impressive counseling technique. I mean I was expecting Jungian archetypes. I was expecting to get to my childhood or my subconscious by way of Freud.
I wasn’t expecting fasting.
‘Seriously?’
And he said: ‘If you’re hungry for God, then why not say it with your whole body instead of just with your mind or lips?’
So I fasted. All through Advent. Monday to Friday. Sunup to sundown. And it worked. It worked in a way I can’t pinpoint or describe.
I wish I had more dramatic story for you. But there were no huge epiphanies. No angels came to me like they did for Elijah or Jesus when they fasted in the wilderness. God didn’t speak to me in a voice louder than my rumbling belly.
But I can tell you:
At a time in my life when God didn’t seem present to me, a simple experience like hunger reminded me of the basic, daily fact that I owed my life to God.
Fasting called my bluff.
Fasting forced my desire for God to be more than sentiment, to be about more than the words in my mouth or the thoughts in my head.
The feelings of faintness, the constant growls in my stomach, the headaches; thinking about my favorite pasta recipes, thinking about the waffle-maker in the school dining hall, thinking about the take-out sushi place across the street from my apartment- fasting meant there was never a time I wasn’t contending with God.
Instead every day, from the moment my alarm clock beeped me awake in the morning to the time I started cooking dinner at night, it was like my whole body was pleading with God.
And with both my stomach and my soul feeling empty, it was no contest which one I wanted more to be filled.
Throughout history God’s People have fasted for a variety of reasons: to repent, to commune with God, to face temptation, to imitate Christ and prepare for baptism, to grieve or to express solidarity with the poor.
Yet fundamentally- fundamentally in scripture fasting is a response, a response to a moment that comes in life that is so significant, so serious that, good or bad, it can only be described as sacred.
So when King David hears from the prophet Nathan that his son is going to die, David responds by fasting.
When the Israelites turn their backs on Moses and Yahweh, Moses responds by fasting.
When Elijah’s life is threatened by Jezebel, Elijah flees to the desert and fasts.
When the Risen Christ appears to Saul and confronts him about the blood on Saul’s hands, Saul responds by fasting.
And when the presence of God disappears from Israel for a generation, Samuel responds by gathering the People at Mizpah and calling them to fast.
The point of fasting is not the results. Fasting is not a manipulative tool to get you a predetermined outcome. Fasting is not an instrumental practice; it’s a responsive practice.
It’s not: if you fast, you will get. It’s: when something like this happens to you, you should fast.
The Hebrew Bible uses five different words to describe how you and I are made in God’s image; the Hebrew words for soul and flesh and breath and heart and body. In other words, it’s our whole selves that comprise God’s image not just our interior selves.
It only makes sense that if we’ve been made in God’s image in this way and if we need to encounter God’s presence then we would yield our whole selves over to him- not just our spirits but our bodies too.
I thought I’d end this sermon by challenging you to fast, but I know most of you won’t. To many of you fasting sounds too ancient. To others it sounds too new-agey. To some it sounds too Catholic and still others of you don’t want God messing with your Mondays through Saturdays.
So I’m not going to challenge you to fast.
But I will warn you-
There will come moments in your life: a child will die, a marriage will fall apart, your sin will stare you back in the face, some injustice or tragedy will overwhelm you, your prayers will dry up or God will disappear.
And in those moments there is no way you can go to God with anything other than a full-bodied plea.
Get Lost in the Story
For the first few years of my preaching, thinking every Sunday sermon needed to include a ‘slice of life’ anecdote, I neglected to mine the deepest reservoir of imaginative potential: scripture.
It sounds self-evident now, but when I started preaching I tended to view the given text in isolation, attempting to draw out the meaning of the passage and then apply an illustration that would connect to the text’s contemporary implications. Trying to come up with an original, vital anecdote every week can prove to be an exhausting endeavor, and viewing the pericopes in isolation can ignore the elegance with which scriptural texts are woven into the larger fabric of scripture.
It’s common wisdom that the form of the sermon should be match the rhetorical form of the text. A sermon on Romans 8, in other words, should attempt to echo the loftiness of Paul’s own language in describing the impossibility of anything separating us from Christ Jesus. The form of the sermon should match the form of the text is a common preaching pointer; that is, don’t say what Paul said, do what Paul did. This method alone could yield surprisingly imaginative results.
But I think you can take this principle a step further. What about having the narrative arc of the sermon match the narrative arc of a particular character? What is there, for example, in the beginning, middle and ending of Peter’s story that has Gospel in it? Why can’t Peter’s story produce a three-part narrative sermon?
Not only can we allow a biblical character’s narrative arc to create the form of the sermon, I believe we can allow scripture’s chronology to create the structure of the sermon and even the worship service itself. Let me explain.
A couple of years ago I was struggling with how to preach Holy Week in light of the fact that so few worshippers, as a percentage of the congregation, attended the Holy Week services. How to bridge the gap from Palm Sunday to Easter? How to expose my listeners with the riches of texts around Christ’s passion? Then it occurred to me that there’s no rule from on high that the sermon needs to come at the middle or end of the worship service. For that matter, there’s no rule that demands the sermon stand as a discrete unit within the worship service. Why can’t the sermon be broken up into parts across the service, divided, for instance, according to the chronology of Holy Week?
One Palm Sunday we did just that, breaking the service into thirds with abrupt and distinct mood shifts for each part and setting the scene with palms, live lambs, a foot-washing basin and a fully set Passover seder. The ‘sermon’ became a series of vignettes that unpacked the events of the week ahead.
For a recent Holy Thursday service, I followed this same principle of using scripture to lead my imagination. And I wondered what it would be like to hear Isaiah’s Suffering Servant songs in the context of Holy Week. What would it sound like, I wondered, to put one of Isaiah’s songs in the mouth of Mary as she anoints Jesus? Or on the lips of Jesus as cleanses the Temple? So again the service was structured chronologically. Isaiah’s songs were set to contemporary Americana music and the sermon was preached, referencing both Isaiah and Gospel passages, in a lessons and carols format.
Too often we think that to be creative we have to turn to the options given to us by media and technology, but I truly believe we can be most creative by getting more deeply lost in the story.
The sermon below is a sermon Nicodemus. Rather than dwelling on the familiar ‘born again’ language of the our initial meeting, I tried to follow Nicodemus’ narrative thread to see what good news John might want us to hear in the breadth of Nicodemus’ story.
Sample Sermon: Nicodemus
The Gospel of John
The first time he met him it was Passover about three years ago.
All that week the man from Nazareth had been performing signs and miracles. He’d even stormed through the Temple courts one day with a whip in hand, shouting that they’d turned his ‘Father’s’ house into a market.
That got people’s attention.
The city was filled with hundreds of thousands of pilgrims for the Passover Feast. It was easy for the man from Nazareth to attract a crowd. Many of those who listened to him and watched him, believed in him, believed on his name, believed he was from God.
Some had quite opposite reaction. Still others stayed silent- and safe- on the sidelines.
The first time he met him it was Passover, three years ago.
It was long into the night. The streets and the sky were dark. Dried blood still marked the doorposts of the places where the feast was celebrated.
One of those who’d seen Jesus among the crowds, came knocking. At an upper room. Jesus was asleep when he heard the sound at the door- it would be a while yet
before his Father’s will kept him up all night. Nicodemus knocks on the door. The city was filled with travelers and pilgrims; he would’ve had to ask around to find
the right address, or he would’ve had to follow Jesus and wait in the shadows. Nicodemus knocks on the door and waits to step inside the threshold before he pulls
his hood down. No one’s awake but why chance it.
1The first thing the man from the shadows says is: ‘Rabbi.’ As in, ‘Teacher.’ As in, ‘you know something I don’t.’ Still standing in the entryway, he says to the groggy-eyed Jesus: ‘Teacher, we know
you’re from God. You couldn’t do the signs you do were you not.’
Teacher, we know… We know. He doesn’t say ‘me.’ He doesn’t say ‘Teacher, I know.’ Jesus notices that beneath the cloak his visitor is wearing the robes of the ruling
priests. He’s come in the dead of night- not an official visit, Jesus guesses.
‘Teacher, we know…’
Jesus can see there must be more to it than that. This priest didn’t come all the way out here in the middle of the night just to say that.
So Jesus rubs his eyes more awake and motions to the table for Nicodemus to sit down. He lights some candles and notices how Nicodemus sits in the shadows with his back to the window.
Jesus breaks a piece of leftover bread and pours a cup of wine and offers it to him. Nicodemus says no thank you.
And Jesus can tell by looking at Nicodemus’ anxious, edge-of-your-seat eyes that there’s something about Jesus that reveals something about Nicodemus. Something that is empty, incomplete. Even though Nicodemus has it all.
The truth is, Jesus tells him, it’s one thing to see what I do, to listen to me teach. It’s another thing to see what I point to: the Kingdom of God.
To see that, to experience that- it’s like…being born all over again.
Something in what Jesus says strikes a threatening chord. Nicodemus hears the challenge in it: ‘The life you have now isn’t quite enough. You’ve got to be born again, a second time, from above.’
Nicodemus, he’s a teacher of the law. A Pharisee. He knows what Jesus meant. It’s not that complicated. He just doesn’t want this to be about him so he pretends to not understand. He asks questions, poses qualifications. Clergy are good at that.
How can this be? You can’t mean that… What are you saying? ‘You’re not listening,’ says Jesus. And Jesus tells him that for someone to enter God’s Kingdom, you’ve got to learn
how to live all over again. All Nicodemus can think to say is: How can this be? Jesus goes on to say something about how much God so loved the world and how
no one will really believe until the Son is hoisted up for everyone to see. Nicodemus goes on pretending he doesn’t understand. Except, he really doesn’t understand. It was still night when Nicodemus went home.
He left without ever asking what he’d come to ask, without ever confessing what it was he secretly believed.
Nicodemus didn’t see him again until later that fall.
The leaves had turned, the air had cooled and the harvest was in. Once again thousands of pilgrims had returned to Jerusalem, this time for Sukkoth. The Festival of Booths- the holy days when Jews gave thanks for the harvest.
For the week long festival, make-shift booths were set up all over the Temple grounds and in every nook and cranny of every side street. The pilgrims slept in the booths to remember the forty years Israel had wandered in the wilderness and how the Lord had satisfied their hunger and their thirst.
Every day during Sukkoth, bulls would be sacrificed. Every day prayers for rain offered, and even prayers for the Resurrection of the Dead.
At night, there’d be dancing around fires as worshippers waved palm branches and called upon God to send a Messiah, ‘Hosanna’ they’d sing.
Jesus comes late that year, about the fourth day. As soon as he arrives he starts teaching in the Temple.
Some in the crowds press him by asking: ‘How do we know you’re from God?’ And the man from Nazareth responds bluntly that ‘if you were doing the will of God you’d see that I’m from God.’
Others in the crowd conclude that the Messiah himself could not do more than this Jesus can.
Others, others like Nicodemus, just stand by silently- and safely-on the sidelines. The holiest day of the week long festival is the seventh day.
Day seven comes and inside the Temple priests (priests like Nicodemus) process around the altar, carrying basins filled with water from the well at Siloam. Seven times they process around the altar and on the seventh turn around they pour the water over the altar to praise the God who never lets his People go thirsty.
That’s inside the Temple.
Outside the Temple, on the seventh day, refusing to go away, Jesus declares to the crowds: ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.’
That gets people’s attention.
The priests and the Pharisees send the Temple police to arrest Jesus, but the police, at least for now, are afraid to touch him. They come back empty-handed, and the Pharisees go through the roof, screaming Jesus is a fraud and anyone who listens to him is accursed.
Nicodemus is there when the police come back empty-handed. Biting his lip and not meeting anyone’s eyes, he just listens to their rage. After a few moments, finally and hesitatingly, he speaks up and asks his fellow priests: ‘Doesn’t the Law require us to give this man from Nazareth a fair hearing?’
All eyes pivot to Nicodemus and they snap at him: ‘Why, are you one of them?’
Standing there in the light of day with all eyes on him, Nicodemus doesn’t say anything more. Whatever he thought about Jesus, whatever he believed about Jesus, he kept it to himself. He kept it private. He still didn’t understand what Jesus had said about being born again.
The third and last time he sees Jesus it’s Passover again. The city’s filled with the same familiar strangers. This time Nicodemus doesn’t come knocking in the dead of night.
And that week when his fellow Pharisees try to trap Jesus with questions, Nicodemus doesn’t rise to his defense. When a plot is hatched and Jesus is arrested, Nicodemus is certainly there and presumably says nothing. When Jesus is put on trial, Nicodemus doesn’t speak up, doesn’t step out, doesn’t risk the life he has for a new one.
I don’t know where Nicodemus was exactly when they crucified Jesus, but I wonder if he was there.
I wonder if, when they nailed Jesus to his Cross, Nicodemus remembers and suddenly understands what Jesus had meant when he told him that many will believe when the Son of Man is lifted up for all to see.
Or, when Jesus cries out in agony, I wonder if Nicodemus begins to understand what Jesus had meant that God so loved the world that he gave…
Or when the soldier spears Jesus’ side and water rushes out, I wonder if Nicodemus is there and remembers the man from Nazareth saying: Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
I wonder because when Jesus finally dies, all of his friends have fled in fear or shame. Even his mother is gone.
To do anything but leave Jesus’ body hanging there on his Cross was to out yourself: as a follower, as a believer, as an enemy.
I wonder because it’s Nicodemus who steps from the safety of the sidelines to bury Jesus in the plain light of day.
The perfume he purchases to bury Jesus costs the equivalent of seventy-five years’ worth of wages. And surely when he drained his savings account someone would’ve asked what all the money was for and Nicodemus would’ve said: ‘Jesus. It’s for Jesus the Messiah.’
And the size of the perfume, 100 pounds, would’ve been eye-catching and sensational and would’ve required help to move. And again, someone would’ve asked ‘What’s all this for?’ and Nicodemus would’ve had to say: ‘For Jesus. I’m doing it for Jesus.’
Only a few hours have passed since the trial. The crowds would’ve still been angry and lingering as Nicodemus bore his awkward burden down the same streets and up the same hill that Jesus had carried his Cross.
It would’ve taken time to bury him, and in the light of day anyone can could have found him out.
Anyone could have watched as he and Joseph pulled the twisted nails out of wood and bone.
Anyone could have seen them as they gently carried his broken body down and, with the attention of midwives, wiped his still raw wounds and cleaned his body and combed his spat upon hair.
Anyone could’ve spotted them anointing his body with a 401K’s worth of perfume and spice.
Anyone could’ve watched as they respectfully wrapped his naked body in linen and then buried him, rock by rock, all the while singing psalms of lament.
Singing like they didn’t care who heard them or how different this would make their life now.
Singing like they knew faith in this Jesus can be many things but it can’t be PRIVATE.
Singing like they knew faith in this Jesus can be practiced in many ways and in many places but NOT IN SECRET, NOT IN YOUR HEART.
There in the open, in the light of the fading day, anyone could’ve listened as Nicodemus, this priest, performed the funeral rites over Jesus‘ grave and then prayed, as Pharisees did, for Resurrection.
That day, Good Friday, is the day Jesus died, but I think it’s also the day Nicodemus is born.
Again.
Resumes and Resurrection
By my count, in these ten years, I’ve traced the sign of the cross on the foreheads of 8 babies. I’ve thrown earth on the caskets of 3 children and buried something like 80 people.
How best to preach funerals?
The sheer demographics of our denomination, aging and graying, makes it an important question.
It’s a question I wrestled with when I first started ministering and noticed the disparity between how I was trained to preach funerals and what my congregation’s expectations were for how I would preach funerals.
In seminary I was taught the sound principle that funeral sermons, as the funeral itself, should proclaim the Resurrection. They should be about God and God’s raising of Christ from the dead.
As a matter of theological principle, I concur.
I bristle when families request to release balloons at gravesides, play secular music, show film clips, or read extra-biblical poems, and it depresses me that such requests have only increased with the passing of years. Why do so many think an email forwarded poem honors or in any summarizes a person’s life? Why do so many think its appropriate to sum up a loved one’s life by way of exclusive reference to their hobby?
Too many, thinking they’re novel and the first person ever to request it of me, want their loved one’s funeral to be a ‘celebration of their life.’ What they usually mean, whether they’re aware of it or not, is that they want the funeral to be a celebration of the deceased’s life and not a celebration of the life that defeats death.
I get the propriety of what I was taught in seminary but experience has shown me that many have contrary expectations. Where I was taught to proclaim the Gospel, cultural practices (and prejudices) have taught them to expect a eulogy. Thus the high premium on the pastor who knew the deceased well as well as the standard by which many funeral sermons are judged: ‘It sounded like you knew him/her well.’
I wish more listeners would grade me instead by saying ‘It sounded like you know the Gospel well’ or ‘It sounds like you know Jesus Christ well.’
But as much as I wish that were the case, it’s not and probably won’t be any time soon, given our post-Christian culture.
So what to do?
And how to do it well?
I’m not at all convinced I do this well, but I offer my approach.
The introduction to the baptismal ritual has us say that through the sacrament ‘we are incorporated into God’s mighty acts of salvation.’ This is the lens through which I approach the funeral sermon, helping me look for bits, anecdotes and memories when I counsel and prepare with the family.
What baptism means, I think, is that what’s important about our lives is how they participate in Christ’s life. Accordingly, in preparing a funeral sermon I try to brainstorm a particular scripture called to mind by the deceased’s story. Often the scripture is not overtly about death or resurrection at all. Every funeral sermon text need not be Psalm 23 or Revelation 21. Instead the scripture could be a sort of parable or allegory or analogy of the deceased.
For example, I’ve used the Book of Ruth and the Prodigal Son for dysfunctional or unusual families. I like to use the Wedding at Cana for folks with no obvious religious life but who enjoyed life, or ‘Christ our Advocate’ scripture for lawyers.
In doing so, I try to renarrate the scripture in light of the deceased’s life. I think this opens up a way to be faithful to scripture and also to honor the assembled’s expectation. It also alleviates the burden of ‘knowing’ the deceased; in that, rather than the sermon needing to be a eulogy-like litany of facts- too many funeral sermons sound like resumes with resurrection at the end- all that’s needed are a few pregnant images from the person’s life to make the scripture sound contemporary and alive.
I preached the first sermon below for a man I did not know at all. I preached the second for an eleven year old boy who committed suicide.
Sample Sermon: The Best for Last
John 2.1-11
This is an unusual miracle. Even by Jesus’ standards.
No blind person receives sight. No ailing, innocent child is restored to life and health. No cowering, fearful disciple is rescued from a perilous, threatening storm.
And here there are no antagonistic priests standing on the sidelines, squinting with suspicion.
It’s not the usual sort of miracle. But, it’s the sort of miracle I think George would like. It’s just a party. In Cana, a little burg near Nazareth, Jesus’ hometown.
A wedding.
And there’s not yet any of the usual Jesus-talk of SIN or DEATH or REPENTANCE or FORGIVENESS and RECONCILIATION.
There’s just a party. There’s just a party, and I imagine MUSIC and COUPLES and SONS AND DAUGHTERS and GRANDCHILDREN and DANCING and CANDLES FLICKERING SHADOWS IN THE DUSK and CHILDREN PLAYING and OLD MEN and OLD WOMEN WATCHING and HOLDING HANDS.
There’s just a party…dirty plates scattered on the tables and wrinkled napkins wadded on top of them and empty flasks of wine.
And outside the kitchen-underneath the porch roof- are six stone jars, twenty gallon jars being saved to use at Church.
It is an odd sort of miracle. Not Jesus the Healer, the Teacher, the Prophet. It’s just a party, a celebration, a feast- where Jesus is just a guest.
It is a curious miracle. Jesus makes no pronouncement. There’s no preaching, no proclamation of what this means, or what this signifies.
When the wedding planner dipped her glass into one of the jugs and tasted the wine, she simply chalked it up to the groom’s exceedingly good manners- he spared no expense.
Only the disciples watch and see…truly see. See these baptismal jugs turned into party supplies. See that this Jesus will abide by no conventional, no sentimental, no tame religious expectations.
Only they watch the wine- that had been water- and see that God is present there among them- not in prayer or piety- but present at a party.
Of course, the modern reader may find this “miracle” puzzling at best.
After all, I mean…how could Jesus do that? Really. How could he turn ordinary water into exceptional wine?
No one noticed after all. No one saw him do it. No one heard him take credit for it.
How can we believe that something invisible worked over so many visible, tangible things like jugs and water and cups and lips?
Isn’t more likely that it’s just a party?
And of course, they- you- would be right.
Except, of course, that someone like Jesus, someone like St. John, they might point out that you could never really explain, never really prove how you felt about George.
Certainly those of you gathered here could point to the visible, tangible things you shared with him:
- Golf Trips and Poker Matches and Pool Games
- Yard Work and BBQ with Shelly
- Playing Matchbox Cars with the Grandkids
- Teaching You to Drive, Elaine
- Telling you how you were ‘his love forever’
You could of course point to all those visible, all those tangible, all those obvious things.
But someone like Jesus, someone like St. John, would dare you to prove, to explain that invisible ingredient in all those visible things:
- The unspoken ways he let you know that you were loved
- The way he could make you laugh with his dry humor
- The way he could be a teacher without your ever noticing you were being taught
- How he could turn the ordinary things of life into something extraordinary for you
After all, you all are the ones who got to watch him, to see God present among you- not in prayer or piety but in and through this person.
So you see, this wedding at Cana; this water into wine, it is an unusual miracle, but it’s not just any party.
It is, rather, a display of abundance.
- A gesture of extravagance.
- A glimpse of transformation and new possibilities.
- An act of unlimited welcome and hospitality.
- A moment of surprising grace and just a foretaste of it.
And so it’s no surprise that, in these 2,000 years of following Jesus, the Church has most always thought of heaven, not as billowy clouds and streets of gold, but as a party, a wedding celebration, a dance, a feast.
And after everything you’ve told me about George, how he lived life to its fullest and enjoyed every moment of it, I think this the image of heaven he’d prefer.
This wedding at Cana, this water into wine- it’s not just a party. Instead, through it, I invite you all to see what I believe with all my heart that George now sees: the abundance, the extravagance, the celebration of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. A feast-going God who, for George and for each of us, does indeed save the best for last.
Sample Sermon: The Greatest in the Kingdom
Matthew 18.1-6
My first memory of Jack-
It’s from confirmation, early this fall.
We were learning about the Book of Genesis, at the very beginning of the Bible, and we were at the part in the story where God calls Abraham and makes his covenant-his promises- with Abraham.
That morning I had a hilarious and slightly inappropriate slideshow prepared which illustrated Abraham’s story with Legos.
But my PowerPoint wouldn’t work that morning so, on the fly, I decided to act out the story with the kids.
“I need a volunteer for the lesson” I said.
And, as soon as I did, a skinny arm in a polo shirt was the first hand to go up. I picked him out from all the other raised hands. I called him forward. He stood in front of me with the crowd of students around us.
I put my hands on his shoulders, and I began to set the scene for Abraham’s story. But before I did, I stopped mid-sentence and I looked down to the boy standing there in my arms and I said: ‘Wait, tell me your name again.’
And he said: ‘Jack.’
‘Jack,’ I said, ‘today you’re Abraham.’
And he gigged and said: ‘Cool.’
With my hands on his shoulders, I told the story of God calling Abraham to come near and look up at the stars in the night sky and to imagine that all of those stars in the sky every one of them was like a promise of God.
A promise that would come true for him.
With my hands on Jack’s shoulders I explained how those stars were signs of the all great things God wanted to do through him.
Thursday night I held Jack’s hand and I rubbed his hair and I put my hands on his shoulder again, with my voice caught in my throat, I whispered: ‘Lord, receive Jack into your Kingdom with the same love and joy we have for him.‘
That’s what I said, but really what I was praying was: ‘God make it not so.’
God make it not so.
And that’s been my prayer for four days.
Sean and Jennifer, Riley and Connor-
There’s nothing I wouldn’t do to bring Jack back.
And there’s nothing any one of us here wouldn’t do to make you whole again.
And just because that sounds impossible doesn’t mean every last one of us won’t try.
Ever since I let go of Jackson’s hand in the hospital room, I’ve wanted to one-up Job. I’ve wanted to shake my fist at the sky. I’ve wanted to curse and shout at God.
Because it’s not fair. It’s not fair.
I think even Jesus Christ would agree that those may be the truest words we can speak in this sanctuary today.
I know I speak for everyone when I say I don’t want to be here. I don’t want any of us to need to be here. Because I want Jack to be here still.
I want his snarky smile and warm hello to greet me on another Sunday morning.
I want his skinny arm to shoot up in the air to volunteer before he has any clue what I’m about to ask him to do.
I want him to kneel over the altar rail here in May and I want to lay hands on him and confirm him- just as I’d planned.
I want to see what this church can become with him as a part of it, practicing a faith he didn’t need me or Andrew or Sarah Lynn or Steve to teach him.
I want Jack.
I don’t want to wade through questions that will never have answers.
I don’t want this grief that right now feels more real and nearer to me than my faith.
And I don’t want to celebrate memories.
Because there weren’t enough of them. And there are too many dreams still remaining.
These last few days I’ve realized there’s not a lot I’m certain of.
I can’t answer the question: ‘Why?’
I don’t know why Jack’s not here.
I can’t answer the why question. And neither can any of you.
But the one thing I do know, the one certainty I can lean on, the one question I can answer isn’t why, it’s: ‘Where? Where is Jack?’
The where question comes up several times in the Gospel stories. It happens more than once where the disciples interrupt to ask Jesus questions about heaven.
The disciples, like a lot of grown-ups, always want to worry themselves with questions about heaven, like: Who’s in? Who’s out?
Except when it comes to heaven, the disciples just assume they’ll make the cut. After all, they’ve earned it.
The disciples don’t doubt they’ll make it to heaven, but they want Jesus to tell them their place in it. They want to hear Jesus tell them that one day they will sit closest to God’s throne. They want Jesus to tell them that there will be a VIP section for them right at very center court of the Kingdom.
They want to hear Jesus reassure them that of all the creatures in the world they are the most cherished.
“The disciples asked Jesus: Who is the greatest in the Kingdom?”
And Jesus responds-
Jesus responds by picking a child out of the crowd.
Matthew doesn’t say- maybe Jesus picked the child out at random.
Or maybe…maybe the little boy in the crowd was a boy who loved to participate. Maybe he was the sort of little boy who never tired of helping. Maybe Jesus picked him out of the crowd because his skinny little arm was the first to go shooting up in the air when Jesus said: ‘I need a volunteer for the lesson.’
And I imagine the boy in that crowd he might’ve had a Yankees cap on top of his blond, brown hair. Maybe he was wearing a Hoyas T-Shirt.
And when he raised his hand to volunteer for Jesus, I imagine maybe his other hand was holding a lacrosse stick.
I imagine maybe the disciples asked their question on a Monday and since it was a half-day this little boy was on his way to go hang out with his friends.
Jesus calls on this little boy and calls him over.
And Jesus puts his hands on his shoulders. Matthew doesn’t say- but maybe Jesus starts to explain, starts to answer the disciples’ question, but then stops and asks for the little boy’s name.
‘Jack’ he says.
And then to all the grown-ups who think they have things figured out, to all the adults who think they have the answers to life, to all the disciples with their assumptions about heaven- Jesus tells those grown-ups that if they want to get into heaven, then they have to be like this little boy.
That if they want to know heaven they have to know this little boy.
They’ve got to get to know this kid.
This kid who’s:
humble and innocent and trusting
so alive and open it reminds you life is a gift
so spontaneous he can take a sleeping bag in the youth room and pretend to be a caterpillar in the Garden of Eden
so spontaneous he can swing himself around a doorframe in the morning and say: ‘Mom, today you smell great.’
You’ve got to know this kid.
This kid who was a wonderful big brother. This kid who could make any parent seem like a great parent and who made you look forward to the kind of parent he would be one day.
You’ve got to know this kid, Jesus says.
A kid who would slow his pace in the shuttle run just so a friend wouldn’t finish last.
If you want to get into heaven, Jesus says, if you want to know about heaven then you’ve got to get to know this little boy.
No, you’ve got to become just like him.
Some of my memories of Jack-
Jack helping me re-enact the Sermon on the Mount. Jack with a fistful of kosher salt, throwing it at Ben Schoeffel to Jesus’ words: ‘You are the Salt of the Earth.’
Jack seated on his knees around a Passover Table for a lesson on the Eucharist. And Jack somehow taking bitter herbs and grape juice and undercooked lamb and turning it into an alcohol-free frat party.
Jack. just a few weeks ago, for a lesson on the Body of Christ and how St Paul says we’re all gifted to play a part in Christ’s Body, it was Jack’s body we traced on brown butcher paper to represent Jesus’ Body.
It’s going to be hard for me to read the Bible and not think of Jack.
And on the one hand, that terrifies me.
And on the other hand, I think that’s the way it should be.
Because Jack was filled with a spirit that could’ve only come from Jesus Christ.
I can’t begin to answer why Jack isn’t here, but I do know where Jack is now.
I know because whenever anyone asks Jesus about heaven in the bible, Jesus responds by saying ‘You’ve got to know this kid.’
Whenever Jesus talks about heaven, he doesn’t say anything about billowy clouds or streets of gold. He never points to Peter and says: ‘You’re going to be manning the gates for eternity.’
No, he talks about kids:
“Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
‘Let the little children come to me, for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’
‘Let the little children come to me…Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.’
And then at the end of the Bible, the passage this past Sunday Jack would have heard in confirmation if he’d been there, St John paints a picture of a day when tears and sadness will be no more.
And at the end of that passage is a picture of God with children.
I can’t answer the why question.
But I do know where Jack is now.
Somewhere else in the Gospels Jesus says the door to heaven is ‘small.’
But I think it’s small in the sense that its like 4 feet tall.
Because when the disciples ask about heaven, Jesus says it’s kids like Jackson who are the greatest in the Kingdom.
And there’s another time when they ask Jesus about heaven.
Jesus says heaven belongs to those who mourn, those who cry, those who grieve and ache and wish it weren’t so.
And that may not be good news, but it does means we’ll see Jack again soon.
Five Nuts and Bolts
1. The Banks of the Jabbok
When asked about his own effectiveness in the pulpit, Gardner Taylor replied that ‘the key to a great sermon is to fix yourself more firmly…to the seat of a chair. It may seem like a flip throwaway line, but its perhaps the best preaching advice anyone can receive.
To the extent my own preaching has avoided being a complete disaster, its due to the amount of diligence I’m committed to putting in during the week. Naturally, everyone’s manner of preparation will vary. For some the sermon will come a piece at a time during the week. For others the sermon will require brooding all week long and come all at once on Friday or Saturday. The manner of prep can vary but I’m convinced the need for preparation and study is absolute.
My own habit is to read, study and brainstorm the possibilities in the text for about three hours each day, Monday through Thursday. While I have the upcoming sermon series planned 18 months ahead, I write the sermons from week to week. Those three hours can come in snatches during the course of the day or sometimes they come all at once- now that I have children I most often wake early in the morning and am the first there when they unlock the door at Starbucks. On Friday, then, I write the sermon. It can take all day. Sometimes it takes not nearly that long. I save Saturday morning for writing the ending and editing the sermon down.
Preaching is a gift but, no less than painting or music, its a gift that requires our work or it will never become a craft. Too often I think talk of the Holy Spirit and spontaneity in the pulpit is just a guise for laziness. I’ve never understood why the Holy Spirit, who is always involved in the carefully orchestrated, foreshadowed acts of scripture, is always maligned by being associated with spontaneity.
Fair warning: chances are your congregation won’t understand it either.
Here’s one golden nugget of wisdom I can offer after ten years in the pulpit. If you’re hungry for one absolute in all this that you can stick in the pocket of your preaching robe, here it is: the amount of work and effort you put into your sermon preparation will convey to the congregation and will give you credibility with them. Whether your every sermon is Pentecost redux or not, they will respect you for respecting them by preparing so intently. This will in turn give you credibility in every other facet of your ministry.
Another fair warning: that absolute comes with a correlative. The opposite is also true. Your lack of work in sermon preparation will show (they’ve listened to sermons their whole lives!) and your credibility will suffer. You cannot mask or dissemble your lack of effort in the previous week with canned filler material. We’ve all received the same email forwards. We’ve all heard the same generic stories from illustration books and we’ve all seen the same video clips and can sense when their connection to the text is tenuous at best.
You can’t fool the congregation into thinking you’ve devoted time and sweat to your sermon when you have not.
A part of this work, I believe, should be writing out your sermon manuscript. I don’t always preach from a manuscript or from a pulpit, but I always write a complete manuscript. I know not everyone holds to this habit, but here is why I do.
I was taught preaching by a famous black preacher, who impressed upon me the fact that even the great black preachers, who often appeared spontaneous in their delivery, wrote out their manuscripts. The reason for this, he said, was the esteem in which the black church holds the Word.
The power and beauty of the Word requires our own devotion to and precision of language. After all, we believe salvation comes by hearing. We believe the chief act of this God is to speak. We believe that before he was Jesus, the Son was the Word.
Words matter in our faith. To proclaim this faith with the integrity it deserves, I believe, requires we take care with our words. Such care, I believe, requires more than an outline, idea, or notes. Our words have more than utilitarian function. To be made in this God’s image is to be able to create and give life…with words. Preaching from an outline or notes is fine provided there is a manuscript behind it.
Preaching is less about being Peter, suddenly blessed with the words to convert thousands. Preaching is about wrestling with the Word and, like Jacob, being blessed week in and week out. The proper venue for our preaching isn’t Pentecost so much as it is the Jabbok River. It’s where we go week in and week out to meet God, even if the encounter leaves us limping.
2. Themes
A few years into my ministry, after suffering a seemingly endless number of summer Sundays in John 6 and having nothing more to say about Jesus as the Bread of Life, I decided my previous esteem for the lectionary was in doubt.
While the lectionary has its commendable attributes, I no longer preach from it. The reasons are primarily dogmatic. The lectionary’s progression through scripture presumes that listeners worship every Sunday. This may be the case in many churches but in my contexts the majority of listeners worshipped closer to twice a month. The lectionary’s tendency to skip around and over texts left many such listeners with the feeling of scattershot preaching. I’m also aware that a majority of congregants, rightly or wrongly, do not feel as though they know scripture, and, again rightly or wrongly, the lectionary contributed to that lack of self-confidence. To them, the lectionary’s calendar gave each Sunday the feel of an isolated scripture text viewed out of context from the surrounding material.
For these reasons, I tend to preach according to sermon series of 5-7 sermons. While I’ve already registered my caveats about anthropocentric sermon themes (How to Live without Fear), I do prefer themed sermons which follow a book of the bible, a portion of a book, spiritual practices, Christian beliefs or a character’s narrative arc. I realize the lectionary is almost sacrosanct in seminary settings and, possibly, many churches, but I’m mindful that the preaching of the Reformers seldom followed such a schedule, instead tracking through whole books of the bible at a time.
Scriptural sermon themes are ideal are for a number of practical reasons. Short series are easy to communicate and promote. They create anticipation and a clear sense of what’s coming next for those who might not otherwise come again next Sunday. In such series, it’s clear where you’ve been and where you’re headed and thus accommodate the frequency of attendance for the average worshipper. I’ve found that sermon series allow for deeper and more rewarding study and sermon prep. Rather than jumping with the lectionary between passages or books, whose connections- let’s be honest- are often tenuous at best- I’ve found my preaching edified by concentrated study. Finally, and most importantly, I think such sermon series, particularly when they cover a book of the bible, give the congregation the feeling of having mastered a part of the bible. Such an increase in self-confidence in turn creates in them a deeper hunger to hear scripture and a greater anticipation to hear it preached.
3. Apprenticeship
The best advice I ever received as a novice preacher was to identify a preacher, whose style and delivery I both admired and felt approximated my own desired style and delivery, and to mimic that preacher. The advice actually included the suggestion that I obtain or transcribe a manuscript of a sample from that preacher, memorize it, and then videotape myself delivering that sermon in the manner of the preacher. The thinking behind this advice was that in mimicking a master I would intuitively learn what makes a sermon work and then I would be more likely to create one on my own.
This is exactly what I did and to this day my own preaching looks and sounds an awful lot like the preacher who gave me that advice. My preaching may not always be exceptional but I do know what makes a sermon work, thanks to this advice.
To a large extent, preaching is not something that can be learned in a classroom or from manuals or on our own.
It’s a craft. Like woodworking, painting or bricklaying, it’s a craft best learned by imitation and apprenticeship. It’s no accident that most of the Church’s great preachers grew up in congregations where they listened to the preaching of great preachers.
Thanks to the internet and media libraries this mode of imitation is easier to pull off than it was when I was in seminary. I’d encourage you to find a master and make yourself their apprentice, if only virtually.
4. The Most Important Thing
Some will bristle at this suggestion but I offer it anyway, fully believing in its truth. In your ministry, preaching is the most important thing you will do. Theologically, I believe this is true. Bringing a Word on behalf of your congregation is a sacred vocation. But, really, I say this for practical reasons.
I realize the Emerging Church conversation has had much to say about the decline in the relevance of traditional preaching, even wondering if preaching has a future, but there is no other aspect of your ministry in which you will engage, form and equip a greater number of your congregation. The preaching event is when the greatest number are exposed to you. Indeed for many the preaching event will be their only exposure to you or to the life and ministry of the church. The commitment and quality you bring to the pulpit each week significantly determines how the congregation views you and evaluates you. What’s more- in many areas of your ministry you are a generalist and in many of those areas, such as finance, education, recruitment or planning, lay people in your congregation will have a greater expertise. Unlike any other facet of your work, preaching and worship are the venue in which you are the resident expert and you should leverage that opportunity to your advantage.
This isn’t to say the time you spend with a particular family in crisis isn’t more valuable. It’s to say that you cannot have such moments with every family in your congregation. You can’t build close, personal relationships with every one in your community. You can’t personally disciple every individual.
Preaching is when everyone gets to have twenty minutes with you. It makes no sense, therefore, to waste that opportunity by giving it less time and attention than you would to any other part of your ministry.
5. Proclamation Not Exhoration
Stanley Hauerwas says when Methodists use the word grace they have no idea what they’re talking about. The word suffers from overuse.
The same could be said for the word ‘prophetic’ when it comes to preaching. Too many preachers, and I count myself among them, have felt the burden or compulsion to be prophetic in their preaching role. So common is this compulsion it’s curious that those who God has actually called to be prophets (Jeremiah, Isaiah, Amos et al) comprise a relatively small group of the human community.
If, as I said before, theology should be done on the slant, then prophetic preaching should be done on an even slighter slant. The prophetic should be used sparingly in the pulpit, if at all. The danger of confusing the preacher’s own hubris with God’s will is too great. So is the danger of giving a particular issue greater attention than is warranted. So is the danger of inflaming your congregation unnecessarily. Very often, what seems to necessitate prophetic preaching in the moment recedes in urgency with the passage of time.
The sermon I included above (“The Form of God’s Shalom”) is, I can honestly say, one of the few sermons I’ve preached in recent years that could be taken as overt prophetic preaching. The context of the sermon was the hostile reception of many in our congregation to our church’s welcome of Muslim neighbors into our building. The situation had, to me, an obvious parabolic quality and the ugliness of many congregants was such that a blunt address was needed. Even still, the sermon lacks an insistence that my listeners agree with my perspective, arguing instead for them to accept the validity of my perspective. What’s more, I think at the point I preached the sermon the congregation had learned to trust me. Comments generated the sermon reflect this. I received very few critical or angry reactions from the congregation. The only hostility I received came in the form of death threats and hate mail from ‘Christians’ around the country after the sermon was posted the Jesus Creed blog.
I remember leaving seminary thinking, for some reason, that my every sermon needed to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. What I’ve learned over the years is that brute prophetic rhetoric only shuts down your listeners’ openness, and if actual transformation is the desired end then a certain charity in your preaching is required.
Despite what I thought when I left seminary, I’m even more convinced today that preaching is fundamentally proclamation not exhortation. Even in those parts of the epistles where Paul transitions into horatory, it’s almost always placed in the larger context of proclamation of the kerygma. Finger-wagging exhortation not only alienates listeners, it does a disservice to the announcement of the Gospel.
Now, this is not to say that sermons should not be relevant to social issues or that the pulpit should be politically neutral. The delicacy of exhortation, however, is that the message is tied inextricably to the bearer of that message; so that, to reject the message one must reject the messenger as well. Jeremiah is a good example to call to mind.
Rather than exhortation, I believe preachers should introduce social issues in their sermons A) gradually over time and B) through the third person.
I think it’s critical to acclimate your congregation to the expectation that you will, from time to time, be referencing events in the world. Nurture them along in this expectation so they learn how to hear you when you decide to preach in this way.
I’ve found that using a story from within the life of the congregation is a much better way to get at social issues than exhortation. An anecdote from lay people working at a homeless shelter, for example, or an experience from the mission field allows listeners to approach an issue- like poverty and economics- narratively and digest the implications in a deliberate way. Putting your exhortation on the lips of a congregant, in the form of a quote in an illustration, instead of exhorting the congregation yourself is another easy device. Another option is re-narrating the scripture text in colloquial language so that they can make the connections, say, between the Cross and torture themselves.
What’s key in all this, I think, is that the preacher not abuse their office. The sermon, after all, is a one-way affair. The listeners don’t get to respond so charity is essential, charity in how you regard them in the sermon and charity in your assessment of them. Most congregants do, in fact, want to conform their lives to the Gospel. They, as do we, only require the safety and space to inch towards that on their own terms. Sanctification, after all, does not imply we become saints overnight or after a single sermon.
A Few Brief Bits
Write 250 Words a Day
Some invaluable advice I received in a creative writing class in college was that I should adopt the habit of writing at least 250 words a day. Really, it’s only two paragraphs. They need not be brilliant examples of writing. It doesn’t need to be the great American novel, a dissertation or moving sermon. It can be about anything under the sun.
The sheer habit of writing, however, will prime your creative pump and make the writing of the sermon at week’s end much easier.
Find (and Don’t) Apologize for Your Voice
Any writer and any preacher needs to find their unique, authentic voice. I believe God calls us not in abstraction to fill a general role. God calls us in our particularity to preach. Our call is every bit as incarnational as our Savior. Your call to preach necessarily entails your own individual voice. Too many preachers get frustrated thinking they have to be just like another preacher. There’s no mold you need in which you must conform.
God can use your life, experiences and perspective to bring a Word no one else can bring. There should be vitality and urgency in your sermons, knowing you have something to say that no one but you can say.
The only rule about finding your voice is that there is no rule to finding your voice other than writing and preaching, writing and preaching, writing and preaching…learning what works and trusting your instincts….and trusting that your listeners will meet your gift with gratitude.
Beware the BS Radar
Maybe its because I came to faith late in my teens and was previously a ferocious cynic, or maybe its because many of my friends and family are still very much unchurched. Perhaps its because I know how savvy youth are in their ability to discern and evaluate what is authentic and what is not.
For whatever reason, I think preachers would do well to recognize- and operate on the realization- that listeners have an acute, sensitive and highly developed radar when it comes to bullshit.
Empty bromides, canned jokes, insincere praise, vacuous propositions, trite illustrations. It will all register on their BS radar.
Incidentally, this is connected to my caution that the congregation will know when you’re prepared for a sermon and when you’re showing a movie clip because you’ve nothing to say.
Even if they dare not tell you, listeners know BS when they hear it. You do, right? So it’s astounding how so many of us preachers shovel it from time to time in our sermons under the delusion no one will call us on it. Be true and do the work that authenticity requires.
Be Creative
The first caution about being creative is the caution above about your listeners’ BS radar. Being childish and trite is not the same thing as being creative.
The second caution about being creative is that technology is now omnipresent in our culture. Using PowerPoint and YouTube are not creative in their own right and they’re certainly no longer counter the status quo. This just makes the bar for creativity higher.
Use your imagination.
Variety
Scripture is replete with manifold forms of communication. Logical exposition is a surprisingly a small portion of the scriptural witness. So why is that variety not evidenced in our preaching? If our sermon forms were any indication, someone new to the bible might suspect our scripture resembled something more like the Quran, filled with rational rules and precepts.
To preach biblically is to let the bible’s moods and methods lead us. Preach narratively. Preach poetically. Preach parabolically. Lament. Unsettle. Praise for Praise’s sake. Challenge. Draw a vision of God’s future.
Read
I remember a preaching professor closing class by saying ‘Next week is reading week. So for God’s sake read.’ Another mentor told me upon graduating that the best advice he could give me was to subscribe to the New York Times. It’s some of the best writing available out there and it will teach you how to write better sermons, he said.
No doubt you’ve heard similar advice given to you from others, but I’ll repeat because these ten years have born it out for me: What you preach, how you preach, how well you prepare to preach, the ideas that come to you to preach etc – it all hangs on you reading.
Read as much as you can as often you can as diversely as you can.
Your preaching will be blessed for it.
Some Suggested Reads
Fully aware there is no shortage of preaching texts and even more aware that our reading tastes mirror our own idiosyncrasies, I nevertheless offer you some texts that have sit on my shelves with dog-eared pages, inky notes and not a little sweat pored over them.
On Writing
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
Ron Carlson Writes a Story by Ron Carlson
The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade by Thomas Lynch
On Preaching
I Believe I’ll Testify by Cleophus Larue
The Heart of Black Preaching by Cleophus Larue
The Gottingen Dogmatics by Karl Barth
The Undoing of Death by Fleming Rutledge
Not Ashamed of the Gospel by Fleming Rutledge
0 Should Christians Pass Out Tracts?
Click here for the Christianity Today article.