Sermons

“Sharing in the Word”

Habakkuk 2:1-3; Romans 10:12-15 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – January 19, 2020

Worship/Life Series #4

 Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might remember you are present in all our shared words, sighs, tears, and laughter.  In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.

When I was planning this sermon series back in October, I was trying to figure out which sections would line up with which weeks.  I knew we wanted to kick off at the beginning of the year, to get that New Year’s resolution juju, as well as the 2020 Vision kick.  And I knew we needed to contain it to January, since the dates for my trip to Germany were already set.  So it seemed like it worked to focus on the three major parts of our worship service in chronological order: prayer, preaching and communion.  And at the time, it seemed like a bonus that the sermon on preaching matched up with our long weekend honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.

What better moment to invite you to consider how well you engage with the preaching here at VLM than the day we’re remembering one of our nation’s most prominent, influential preachers?  What could possibly go wrong?  Back when 25-year-old me was ordained, it was comforting to know that King also began his ministry at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church at 25 years of age.  Now that I’m 5 years older than he was when he was assassinated, I have to give up on the comparisons.  Leaders like King, whose preaching literally changed the moral direction and the rhetorical memory of this country, are intimidating for the rest of us.  We wonder if preaching can possibly have any impact if it’s not “famous” preaching.  If our words are not recorded by the evening news, where do they go?  I don’t actually know anyone that’s gone into ministry planning to become the next MLK, but there are times when you wonder why you keep doing it when it seems the world isn’t listening.

Blessedly for me, I am a Christian preacher, so I know that Jesus is present wherever two or three are gathered, regardless of the world’s attention.  God cares about the words we say here and how we attend to each other’s spiritual growth.  I also know that making preaching happen isn’t solely my responsibility.  As we get started today, I want to talk to you about some words that I say to you every week, which I’m not sure I’ve ever fully explained before.  It is my firm belief that by delivering the sermon, I am only doing the first half of the job.  The other half is yours.  The words I use each week to introduce the sermon-opening prayer are words I learned from one of my mentors in ministry, the late Rev. Bruce Naylor.  Say them with me, if you know what I’m talking about: “Will you pray with me and for me as we move into the Word together?”  And then the prayer itself, which always begins the same way, reflects that same truth about us doing this together: “Holy God, blessing the speaking and the hearing of these words…”

Have you thought about what your responsibility is during the sermon?  When I’ve asked you to pray for me, have you realized that without your prayers, my soul may struggle to catch hold of the winds of the Holy Spirit and my mind may fumble trying to transform that Breath into words that transform?  Have you considered that the sermon isn’t truly complete until it’s burrowed into your heart, through your ears and your mind, your presumptions and distractions, to find fertile ground in your soul?  What does it mean to ask God to bless the hearing of a sermon?  The words are already on the page.  But their journey into your mind and heart offers yet another opportunity for God to work.  This is a project we do together, week in and week out, always invited to keep our eyes and ears open for the voice of God and occasionally bumping into luminous moments of revelation.

I thought I saw an interesting reflection of this joint process in the reading from Romans 10. Paul is concerned with sharing the good news of Jesus with the Gentiles.  He has become convinced that all they need to do to find salvation is “call on the name of the Lord.”  And then there is this evocative cycle of questions: “But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed?  And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard?  And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him?  And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?”  I’m not sure what those questions bring to mind for you, but for me, they conjure up an image of a congregation that has heard the word preached faithfully for years, from whose midst a member rises up in answer to a call to ministry, whom that same congregation eventually sends forth to continue that faithful preaching of the good news.  Ensuring the proclamation of the gospel is not something preachers do; it’s something congregations do, in partnership with the ones called to preach.

So if half the responsibility for fruitful preaching belongs to the listeners, what practical advice is there for how to do that more effectively?  About a week and a half ago, I decided to ask my sources, AKA, my friends on Facebook.  I was offered numerous helpful tips I would like to share with you today.  But before we get into the details, I wanted to share one response that really struck me.  My friend Carrie is part of a Jewish synagogue so large they give a portion of their service each week over to teenagers going through their rites of passage.  Here is what Carrie wrote about her experience: “I think that some of it for me is the rhythm of the service.  At my synagogue the order is standard prayers, Torah and haftarah reading in Hebrew (I sometimes follow along in English), bat/bar mitzvah kids giving their sermons somehow connecting the ancient words to their lives, and then finally the rabbi giving hers, which is almost always in response to what the youth have spoken about.  All of this means that by the time she speaks, my mind is ready.  I’ve said hello to friends, marveled at the accomplishments of the kids, let my mind wander, etc., and now I’m really ready to engage.”

Some of what Carrie mentioned there will come up in the suggestions we’ll get to in a minute, but there are two things she describes that are worth highlighting.  First of all, she alludes to the fact that it often takes our brains a while to catch up with our bodies and really be present in worship.  There are numerous things that happen in our worship service before the sermon – some of you might argue too many things – but what if the reason for that is to allow our minds a chance to settle in and get fully prepared to encounter the Living Word?  We move through so much of our lives ensnared by constant distraction.  It’s no wonder it takes us a while to prepare to listen and engage with our whole beings.

The other thing my friend noted in her response was that by the time the rabbi starts speaking, Carrie’s mind has usually already wandered a bit.  This is important to talk about.  Another friend, Robert, concluded his comments by saying, “If I can’t keep my attention (for whatever reason), I guilt-freely let my mind wander, trying to keep my earthly matters and the Christian journey as congruent as I humanly can.”

You may remember in last week’s sermon on prayer, I introduced the idea of the Words/Sighs spectrum, in which one end involves paying very close attention to every word and the other end of the spectrum is when you just let the words wash over you and trust the Holy Spirit to guide your meditations.  I think it’s fair to say this spectrum can apply to preaching as well, if applied carefully.

A word or phrase or idea may catch your attention and lead you in a direction that isn’t where the rest of the sermon is going.  It might be a wild hare, but it might also be the kind of tangent that is one of the most fruitful forms of engagement one can have with a sermon, because it is itself a creative process.  A wandering mind can just as easily be the Holy Spirit’s playground as the devil’s, and if you’ve faithfully attended to your spiritual formation over the years, it’s actually much more likely to be God at work.  If you can’t remember the point of the sermon the next day, but you’re still thinking about the thing it made you think of, that is also success.

That said, what if you really do want to pay attention to the words?  A number of methods came up repeatedly.  Some suggest, as Carrie did, following along with the scripture reading.  If you have taken it in through your eyes as well as your ears, you are more likely to hold it in your mind and recognize it when it comes up in the sermon.  Here at VLM, you could also pick up a copy of the actual sermon manuscript and follow along with that.  Many people are much better at absorbing the material if they’re reading along and not just hearing the words.  On the other hand, some people listen more carefully if their eyes are closed.  Just make sure you don’t start to snore!

Having the sermon manuscript also gives you more room to take notes than your bulletin allows, and taking notes, or even doodling, about the themes of the sermon is a method many people employ.  Particular phrases, ideas or quotes stick with you longer if you write them down, whether you ever refer back to them or not.  Taking notes encourages you to notice and question word choice, which brings the material deeper into your mind.  It’s also a way to “talk back” to the sermon without disturbing your neighbors.  Most of the people who say they engage with sermons best by talking back noted that they only do it when they’re listening to sermons alone in their cars!

There are often characters in a sermon, whether from the scripture passage or another story that is told.  Considering how you identify with them or not is yet another way to engage with the text. Remembering situations others you know have gone through is another way to engage creatively with the characters.  You might even realize there’s a friend you should share the sermon with.

If you get our Sunday Afternoon emails, you’ve probably noticed that I try to sum up the sermon in one or two sentences where I link it in.  What if you wrote down a summary sentence as the sermon was finishing up and then compared it to mine later to see whether we heard the same sermon?  Or perhaps you could just jot down all the things you don’t agree with, and that would keep you plenty busy.

We can’t talk about how we engage with preaching in worship without addressing what to do if you disagree with the preacher.  It’s going to happen.  Each of us comes to scripture with a unique lens, based on our life experience, our social location, our understanding of authority, our faith convictions and much more.  When we go to apply scripture to our modern-day life, the differences in our perspectives will reveal things that others couldn’t see before.  So what do you do when the preacher is wrong?   I have devised an easy, 9-step process to help you!

Step one: pray.  Pray for wisdom and reconciling grace and courage.  None of us likes disagreement.  We don’t like accusing others of foolishness any more than we like admitting we’ve been foolish.  So pray for God to help you figure out which one it is with grace!  Step two: check if what you heard was really what was said.  When the manuscript is available, this is especially easy.  You could also just ask someone else who heard the sermon or the person who delivered it.  Maybe there was a nuance you missed.  Maybe there was another side of the story offered that you didn’t hear because you got distracted by the part you didn’t like.  Step three: pray.  Step four: Try to understand why the thing you disagreed with was said.  Can you see how the preacher got there from the scripture reading?  Can you consider what you know about the preacher and use that to help you offer the benefit of the doubt?  Step five: pray!  Step six: decide how important the disagreement is.  As Disciples, we cherish our individual liberty to interpret scripture.  Just because the preacher said it from the pulpit doesn’t mean that you have to believe it!  But perhaps it cut too closely to how you understand your identity as a Christian and it deserves further attention and dialogue.  Step seven: (can you guess?) Pray!

Step eight: if you have discerned that the matter is important enough to give more energy to, schedule a time to talk to the pastor about it.  (On the way out of worship is not the best moment for this!)  Your perspective could very well be a gift to the preacher, especially if you’ve completed steps 1-7 beforehand.  You know things the preacher doesn’t know, and she knows things you don’t know.  If you talk about those differences, you’ll both come out wiser.  It’s also entirely possible that the two of you aren’t as far apart as it seemed.  Sometimes having the chance to ask clarifying questions and hear something re-worded helps us understand that what we thought we heard wasn’t quite what was intended.  However step eight goes, step nine is still the same: pray!

It’s important to remember that any given sermon is not the entirety of Christian belief.  No one sermon can explicate the fullness of the gospel or even one pastor’s perspective on it.  Preachers have a wide variety of preaching styles, and one preacher’s sermons over the weeks will include a variety of categories.  Some sermons aim to bring comfort, some to challenge.  Some of them are instructional; some are intended to encourage or exhort.  Often it’s the sermons we call “prophetic” that get the most attention, positive and negative.  Our world is broken.  It was broken when Jesus lived in it; it was broken when Martin Luther King, Jr., lived in it, and it’s still very much broken today.  The gospel speaks to that brokenness.  Preachers are called to lift up the light of scripture and proclaim again and again God’s vision for fullness of life for all creation.  The forces that demean that life are insidious and subtle.  Their influence often seeps into our own hearts and tempts us to defend things the gospel finds indefensible.  If we can share in the word together, as equal partners in welcoming the Living Word into our midst week after week, we can overcome the defenses that crop up within us and become fertile ground.

Faithful preaching doesn’t leave us as it found us.  Thank God!  When we engage with the sermons we hear, with any of the methods we’ve explored today, we invite the Holy Spirit to bear fruit within our souls.  The sermon becomes a shared moment of transformation, one that brings life and hope and courage.  Faithful preaching, carried out by the whole community gathered in this room, is at the center of the vitality God is calling us to seek.  May we engage in it together, carefully and continually.  Alleluia and Amen!