Drink Upstream

Measured and Articulate

There is no question that we live in a pretty divisive time.  Every time I turn on the TV or hit up the old interwebs, I find folks trying to:

(a)  Cram everyone and every opinion into a convenient little package.
(b)  Set those groups in some kind of diametrically oppositional framework.

Then it seems like the folks that buy into the us/them ideology start screaming at the other side. 

'Heretic'

'Apostate'

'Terrorist'

'Nazi'

'Fascist'

'Racist'

All words hurled at the "other guy" in an attempt to knock her down a peg.  It's become frustratingly prevalent....even to the point where I'm pleasantly surprised to find something like this.  It makes me proud to be a part of a denomination where one of our leaders is this measured and articulate when dealing with folks he/she doesn't necessarily agree with. 

Sermon: Obedience

I wasn't terribly thrilled when my slot on the calendar lined up with "Obedience" on the topical calendar (the good news is that my next one is "Ressurection.")

After reading Bill's last sermon post, I made a comment that I wished I had heard him, because I was interested in hearing his timing and cadence.   With that in mind, I recorded myself reading this one.  But, it turns out that without a congregation around me, I don't speak with the same cadences and I certainly miss the interplay with them...so this is a pretty lousy recording that comes off stiff and stilted.  But, here it is.  We're working on a podcast of the service...but that won't be coming down the pipe for a while.

The pdf is available, too.

(if you don't see the audio controls above, or want to download the raw file, here you go.)

P.S. - This is the first sermon I've preached where I really felt like I went out on a bit of a theological limb (even though I think it's a fairly solid limb I went out on.)  If you have comments on my limbs, or want to tell me how badly wrong I am, I'd welcome that...but I want you to tell me what I said that makes me just a smidget uncomfortable...not the other way around.

Pardon my language....

but this shit makes my head want to explode.

Look towards Garland, if you see smoke, you can safely assume I've lost my lid.

Boo.

Sermon Crafting (Deux?)

My next "preaching" assignment (though I don't like calling it "preaching") is in a few short weeks, which means it's time for me to start figuring it out.

We're in the middle of a ten-week series we've entitled "Dead Ends and U-Turns."  We're looking at specific stories from throughout the whole Bible where God's people hit what we've been calling a "dead-end moment," and we're looking at the ways God worked in, amongst, and through God's people to cause a U-Turn in their lives, their situations, and their worlds.  And we're asking, "What similar dead ends do we find ourselves at, and what U-Turn might we be called to make?"  Each week has a scripture (or two) and a theme of sorts.

October 12 will find us with Exodus 17:1-2, discussing Obedience.  Go read the passage, then continue reading.

Post-sermon Crash

So, here it is... the fruits of the last two weeks of sermon crafting. Arguably my most Marxist sermon. Thanks for to those who were reading along.

Eleventh Hour

Sermon Crafting

I still tremble a bit as I climb the steps leading to the pulpit. Just behind the knees, a shake that the robe--thank God--hides from the people of the pews. It is a feeling far beyond the fear of public speaking that others talk about. I'm used to standing in front of a crowd, reading a carefully studied passage or telling a practiced story. I've done it many a time as lector. But preaching is different. When preaching, I'm presenting a shard of my own faith, full of its mistakes and holes and weaknesses. And there they sit, spread out among the pews, the Church Expectant. While I babble, the congregation stares forward with expressions that run the gambit from "Go ahead: impress me" to "Aw, he's trying so hard".

While in the pulpit, my internal editor (we'll call him Ed) chugs along, reviewing the text, evaluating and discarding changes on the spot. Ed, mind you, has been doing this work for the whole week preceding and he has kept me up late Saturday night to make me rewrite a line, a paragraph, a page--ten or fifteen times. The text of the sermon never actually sits on the page, but in my mind, and the page, even a completed manuscript, is really just notes. The internal editor wants the final text, the one that comes out of my mouth, to be perfect, but the internal publisher (Pub?) keeps fighting it, reminding me to lift my head, to speak to the congregation, to explore this latest draft out in the open so everyone can hear it. Theirs is an argument that rages on during the fifteen to twenty minutes of preaching.

Even on Such A Day

We prattle about your sovereignty...especially we Calvinists;
   all about all things working together for good,
   all about your watchful care and your severe mercies.
And then we are drawn up short;
   by terror that strikes us, in our privilege, as insane;
   by violence that shatters our illusions of well-being;
   by death that reminds us of our at-risk mortality;
   by smoke and fire that have the recurring smell of ovens.
We are bewildered, undone, and frightened,
   and then intrude the cadences of these old poets:
       the cadences of fidelity and righteousness;
   the sounds of justice and judgment;
       the images of Sodom and Gomorrah;
       the imperatives of widows and orphans.
Even on such a day we are not minded to yield on your sovereignty,
   We are, we confess, sobered, put off, placed in dread,
       that you are lord as well as friend,
       that you are hidden as well as visible,
       that you are silent as well as reassuring.
You are our God.  That is enough for us ... but just barely.
We pray in the name of the wounded flesh of Jesus.  Amen.

On Reading Isaiah 1, September 11, 2001.
From Awed to Heaven, Rooted in Earth: Prayers of Walter Brueggemann

Sermon-crafting, Listening to the Text

In seminary, we often interviewed one another about Biblical texts during sermon prep in order to gain new insights, to share experiences, and to open new preaching paths. When I was an intern in Lynnville, TN, I had two meetings during the week that took this process even further. One was a lectionary study group (the Lewisburg Lectionary League) that gathered five or six Presbyterian pastors to discuss the text. Wednesday mornings, driving to Lewisburg, I often thought of Karl Barth, hiking to a neighboring German village to meet all day with local colleagues and then hiking back to preach the next morning.

My other meeting was Lynnville Pres's Bible Study (and informal worship committee), where we read the texts for each week and I opened the floor to thoughts and reactions from the congregants gathered there. Of the two, this discussion was where my weekly sermon was born. Questions raised, connections made, problems found, those Monday night studiers gave me plenty to consider during the next six days of sermon writing (I include Sunday as a writing day). Since that time, this birthplace of the sermon has been lost as I've moved on to only occasional preaching; it requires a dedicated group of listeners.

So, in this first week of blog entries, I am turning my ears to y'all, our readers. The two texts are these: Matthew 20:1-16 and Exodus 16:2-15. If you get a chance, please read these texts. And then comment with your thoughts. What stands out to you? What do you see in these words of Scripture? And what do you hear for the Church (capitalized or not, however you understand it) in this time and this nation/world?

Thank you to anyone who takes the time to do this, to walk this journey with me.

Sermon-crafting, A Survey

On September 21, I have the honor of preaching again at the church where I work. Before I do, though, I wanted to put a question out to anyone who reads this:

What do you expect of a sermon? Or rephrased: what do you listen for when a minister preaches?

As an example answer, I'll give you what I have often heard. Many people tell me that they expect to be "spiritually fed" by a sermon. The job of the minister is like that of a server, presenting nourishment for the soul that is from God.

Now, that's not my thought. I'm just passing along an answer I have heard from some. I'm searching now for other answers.

The U.S. Doesn't "Torture" And Other Simple Rights and Wrongs

Warning: This is an obvious, long-day-of-traveling, everyone-else-has-already-said-it post. But I thought it an issue worth raising on our nearly defunct blog.

"In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism."

President Bush flattered Pope Benedict yesterday with these words during a joint public appearance. If you remember, the Pope's first message upon his election introduced us all to the "dictatorship of relativism", while he called the Roman Catholic Church to return to the doctrinal standards of the faith. The phrase was well-tuned towards Europe, Latin America, and Africa, where dictators have often used the Catholic Church for their own means or disposed of church leaders when they got in the way. Time and again, doctrinal standards become subservient to the Fatherland, los Descamisados, or whatever idealized national identity is at the time purported by an authoritarian regime; Marxism, Nazism and Jingoism sweep up churches, student groups, the disenfranchised, and great crowds of "people with guns" so that the core of doctrine is discarded for a more permissive interpretation.