love letters from the edge

There are people who like to study up on the text they will preach to a congregation.  Then there are people who like the act of preaching.  There is much overlap and nuance between these 2 groups – they are by no means opposites.  While I am almost always astonished by what I learn when I study a text, I must confess to enjoying the act of preaching more than I do the researching to preach.  I have found this is a careful balance to maintain so that I don’t end up preaching internet forwards or chicken schlock for the sole due to a lack of study.  (Ok, really.  This isn’t going to happen.)

BUT: If you hear me preach, and you detect soft, fluffy filling, call me on it, would ya?

My internship has had me on a pretty tight preaching schedule.  I think I’ve preached some 20 sermons thus far, and have many more to go.  So, I’m still establishing what my habits around getting ready to preach are.  So far, I’ve noticed a feeling that accompanies me each time I sit down to try and start to write the actual sermon.  It’s part anxiousness, part excitement, part dread, part ….well, I don’t know.  It’s a feeling that keeps me on my toes and, literally, on the edge of my seat as I write.  Usually, I feel like I am on an egdge when I am writing a sermon. It’s not a comfortable feeling, which I think is critical.  I wonder if you’d feel it, as a listener, if I were lounging, feet propped up, waxing on and on about grace and the like.  ”Isn’t it just, well, …super?”

It’s like I am writing a love letter each week, but a love letter that reads like a sweeping, epic drama.  It’s a love letter that includes heartache, betrayal, forgiveness, and redemption all mixed up with the mundane, the absurd, the tedious, the ordinary, and the extraordinary.  Just ready the Bible sometime.  It’s all in there – sex, drugs, and rock & roll.

“Preach like there’s someone who is about to die and is going to hear it.”  This was the advice given in my first introduction to preaching class.  It seems sitting on the edge of my wooden chair is the least I can do.

What do you think about preaching?  Or about sermons you hear?  How do you write?  What do you anticipate as a hearer?  When do you want to stand and clap?  When do you want to throw something at the preacher?

we can handle the truth

About a month or so ago, I had a brainstorm for an interactive sermon.  I can’t recall what the text was that I was preaching on now, but I ended up focusing my sermon on lies and truth.  In order for the sermon to work, I was going to need congregation participation.  They’d played along when I’d asked them to do other unfamiliar things during worship, so I held out hope.  

As I explained to people what they would have to do (read the piece of paper, boldly, and then tape it to me – I was wearing a shawl type thing), they eagerly reached out for different signs.  What I had tried to get across to them in this brief explanation was that they were reading lies, things that are untrue about them, but that we sometimes believe.

 

just gimme some truth

One of the ladies took one of the signs, read it, and then looked at me, clearly handing it back, saying “But I don’t believe I’m worthless.”  I reminded her that these were lies, and that this was sort of a skit, so it didn’t mean it was the particular lie she believed.  With this settling in, she thoughtfully took the sign that said “I’m unloveable” and said to me “Now this is one I believe.”

For those interested in the technicalities, I had the sign at the top in the picture “Jesus is bigger than our lies” on the inside of the shawl-like thing I was wearing, so after they taped all the lies to me, I turned the shawl around for the big reveal, the truth.

The interaction I had with people before the service even began really impacted me. The sermon I preached was about as direct and heartfelt as it could be, and i’m not even sure I stuck to the script, so to speak.  It is hard to believe the truth sometimes, especially the truth of the Gospel when it’s in direct conflict with what everyone else tells you, directly or indirectly.

That sermon illustration hangs on my office wall now, cobbled together with tape and pins.  I just couldn’t throw it out.

11

hatched sermons?

I just counted (I know, I know) and I’ve written and preached 11 different sermons since starting here September 3rd.  By the end of 2008, I will have preached 17 times.

I’ve never really been a notches-in-the-belt kinda woman, but this frequency of preaching has me practically carving the hash marks with a rock onto a wall!  It has put me in close touch with the realities of preaching every week, or twice a week.  While there is intense time put into each one, the intensity of this time compared to the time I would give a sermon I was preparing to preach at school?  No comparison.  But these sermons, I dare say, are better than the ones I would give at school.  Living with real people and then having the task and honor of preaching the Gospel to them brings out something in me that reflects….well, the real world in light of the Gospel.  It’s blinding.

all you need is love

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been preaching a lot.  Weekly even.  And what I’ve been finding is that, no matter the text, I end up preaching about love.  About God’s love for us that never ends.  Ever.  It’s exciting and exhausting and a privilege to put words to that love in a sermon.

Recenlty, I was a participant in a Bible study where I was asked to take a minute and think of the people who loved me and that I loved.  (How often are you asked to do that?)  I sat back in my chair and closed my eyes and was flooded with names and faces of people in my life that I love and who love me.  I thought “we only get a minute?”  Then, when our time ended, the leader had a little hand-held device that cut out heart shapes from paper.  She told us that we were to cut out a heart from bright pink paper for each person we had thought about.

We each sort of reacted to that instruction with varying degrees of “oh!”  and I wondered aloud if there would be enough paper for the 5 of us to complete this exercise.  A woman sitting next to me said “That’s why I came tonight.  I don’t have many people in my life that love me.  That was a long minute.”

I am still shocked to think of this and to write the words she bravely uttered to us.

I suddenly felt selfish.  As I had envisioned the amount of paper I would use and the handfuls of hearts I could clutch if I truly tried to replicate the amount of love I have in my life with paper, well, it felt gluttonous in light of this woman’s empty hands.

A wise pastor friend of mine, Tom, once said something like this to me during my seminary journey: “We’re engaged in studying matters of the heart.  We’ve got to be aware of our own hearts and to clearly communicate God’s love to people.”  

He didn’t limit this statement to preaching from a pulpit during a worship service.  But I know that it does no one any good for me to write sermons that are full of church jargon so I can pontificate in such a way that shuts people ears and does not speak clearly about God’s love.

Look at this delicious definition of the word pontificate: “express one’s opinion in a way considered annoyingly pompus and dogmatic.”

So consider me officially trying to get to the heart of the matter in a sermon in a clear and direct way.

Here ends the pontificating.  For now.

that was a good one

I stood at the entrace to the sanctuary at the conclusion of the worship service shaking people’s hands.  I received many compliments about the sermon I preached, peppered with “very nice” which I’m never sure about – what does that really mean?  Anyway, the comment I took to heart was from a man who, as he warmly shook my hand with both of his and looked into my eyes, said simply, “that was a good one.”

Here’s hoping there’s more where that came from.