"Senior preachers" this Sunday!

I wrote my first sermon more than four decades ago for a Youth Sunday service. That undelivered sermon led to a five year "sabbatical" from church membership - but that's another story. The art and craft of preaching fascinate me. Following my "sabbatical" I stumbled into this reflection on preaching in a poem by George Herbert, a seventeenth century Anglican priest and poet:

            Lord, how can man preach thy eternall word?

                        He is a brittle crazie glasse:

            Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford

                        This glorious and transcendent place,

                        To be a window, through thy grace.

            But when thou doest anneal in glasse thy storie,

                        Making thy life to shine within

            The holy Preachers; then the light and glorie

                        More rev'rend grows, and more doth win:

                        Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin.

            Doctrine and life, colours and light, in one

                        When they combine and mingle, bring

            A strong reward and aw: but speech alone

                        Doth vanish like a flaring thing,

                        And in the eare, not conscience ring.

Preachers have the audacity to speak of and for God before the faithful, who gather to encounter the Word of God. The gravity of that responsibility and opportunity humble the faithful. As we prepare for this year's "senior sermons," here are a few thoughts about my intent when given the privilege of preaching thirty-six to fifty times each year.

Goal three in my fifteen to seventeen minutes (It was twenty to twenty-five minutes thirty years ago.) is to help us to connect with our tradition. Scripture did not fall from some ethereal realm in a vacuum. People trying to live faithfully in covenant with God wrote, compiled, saved, and copied it for millennia. Interpreting a passage of scripture without acknowledging them would be as wrong as voting without awareness of the candidates' positions. The more we know about the setting from which a text emerged, the more clearly we can hear the author and ultimately God speak. The image of the Lord as our "shepherd" always has meaning, but placing it in the exile and not in the glory days of David and Solomon deepens its potency.

Goal two is to address our contemporary context relevantly. Our tradition asks theologians to have a bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. We have always believed, for example, that absolutes like "love your neighbor" ask different things of us depending on our circumstances. People of power and influence and people of impotence and want have distinct capacities and opportunities to love. Addressing contemporary contexts always wanders into the political and controversial. I try to leave the most volatile issues for occasions when listeners can speak back, but faithful proclamation cannot ignore the biases of the gospel. A passage in Deuteronomy declares, "If there is among you anyone in need ... do not be hardhearted or tight-fisted toward your needy neighbor" (Deuteronomy 15:7). The application of that verse to a Wall Street banker and Over-the-Rhine beggar vary, but the text considers both responsibile for others as well as themselves. Regardless of our political leanings, scripture considers no one "self-made."

Goal one is to glorify God and draw us closer to God. No one can know God fully, but preachers have the opportunity and blessing of pointing to where and how we experience God. Anything proclaimed about God on Sunday must hold true in the light of nuptials and births and in the dark of betrayal and death. Platitudes and placebos cannot bear that weight. By the grace of God, the faithful often hear God speak in and in spite of the stumbling words of a preacher who trembles beneath the responsibility while reaching for the possibility. In Herbert's words: "when thou doest anneal in glasse thy storie, / Making thy life to shine within / The holy Preachers; then the light and glorie / More rev'rend grows, and more doth win: / Which else shows watrish, bleak, and thin."

Thanks be to God, our "senior preachers" this Sunday will have little awareness of that. I do not and prefer not to know what they will say, but I believe God will speak in and beyond their words. May those who have ears to hear, hear.  

            Lenten Blessings,

            LP

What's "on the ledge" to be used?

As I prepared to compose this item, my eyes rested on the ceramic mug on the window ledge in front of my desk. It blends blues and browns beautifully, has a handle that fits my hand perfectly, and features the Greek word for "fish" within a fish (an ancient Christian symbol) overlaying a simple cross. The mug came from a friend and the initials of the friend who crafted it are on the bottom. It has been with me for years, but I never have used it to drink coffee or tea. It sits on my window ledge, always beautiful but seldom noticed, capable of many things but used only to catch sunlight and dust. What would the artist who created it think of that? Would he rejoice that I do not risk chipping or breaking it, or would he lament its unfulfilled purpose?

Each of us is as beautiful and as potentially useful as my ceramic mug. Our Lenten journey challenges us to ponder what the artist who shaped us would think of the ways we accept and respond to the gift of life.

No one can do everything, but we all have little-used and under-developed talents. Is there at least one that we would like to dust off? Some chronologically gifted folks keep their attitudes young by regularly trying something new. Many people avoid or climb out of ruts by keeping their interests varied. It's probably best not to take up lacrosse at eighty or begin woodworking at six, but whenever we develop a new ability we change the way we view the world. With so much to see and experience, we grow closer to the Artist as we experiment with our capacities and proclivities.

No one can do everything, but we all have passions, intense longings to learn about a particular topic or pour ourselves into a particular area of study or service. Unbridled passions can lure us into danger, but unfulfilled passions can leave us hungry for life despite all we are and do. When we always wait for a better time or place to try to make a difference or to expand who we are, we reject part of our lives. If a book keeps calling, an opportunity constantly catches our eye, or a gnawing feeling that we should become involved refuses to go away, perhaps it's time to take time, even if that means juggling the schedule or resetting priorities.

Life is a gift. We have nearly unlimited ways to receive and use that gift with gratitude. The abundance of our lives increases the more we live on purpose. That holds true even when our purpose is to relax a little more and develop our talent for observation and reflection. (Some people call that prayer.). Unless something within them is seriously flawed, people who live on purpose surround others with wonder and help them to live more abundantly as well.

Tomorrow morning I plan to drink coffee from that beautiful blue and brown mug. I may decide that it's best suited for my window ledge or I may risk using it daily. Either way, I will have gained something. That reminds me of words attributed to Jesus: "Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it" (Mark 8:35). That's reason enough to ask whether it's time to get off the ledge.

            Lenten Blessings,

            LP

From the news: Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, wonders what prompted Adam Lanza, the gunman in the Newtown shooting, to put down his rifle after killing twenty children and pick up his pistol. Aware that often "amateurs have trouble switching magazines," he finds himself saying, "I believe ... that if Lanza had to switch cartridges nine times versus two times there would likely still be little boys and girls alive in Newtown today."

Walk with Jesus on purpose.

"Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return." Those words from our Ash Wednesday services remind us that life is a journey. We are made of earth and return to the earth. We receive life from God and return to God. We cannot decide not to journey, but we can decide how we will travel.

This year's MWPC Lenten journey will follow the overall theme, "Eight Extraordinary Days: Jesus' Holy Week Journey." The synoptic gospels (especially Mark) suggest that Jesus traveled only once to Jerusalem and that he went there on purpose. He wanted not only to see the Temple and the Holy City of his tradition, but also to challenge that tradition and the Roman authorities who ruled his country. He had lessons to teach, assumptions and practices to challenge, and experiences to share. He did not know everything that would happen on his journey, but he knew how and with whom he wanted to travel.

Lent reminds us that we promised in baptism to follow Jesus and challenges us to examine ourselves and reflect on how we're doing. The Lenten disciplines of fasting (giving up something) and study and service (picking up something) are not ends in and of themselves. They are tools to help us to identify what and whom we most value and what and who draws us to and distances us from what and whom we most value. If we give up sweets during Lent, when we hunger to satisfy our sweet tooth we can reflect on the many people, plants, animals, and elements on which we depend to have anything to eat. Recognizing our dependence can help us to live more intentionally in relationship. If we pick up an extra time of scripture reading or an extra act of service during Lent, when we make the necessary adjustments to our schedule we can reflect on our primary goals and longings in life. Remembering what we most want to do and be can help us to make better use of our time and other resources.

In all of this it is important to remember that we have promised to follow Jesus. We make decisions, but are not in control. We have priorities and goals toward which to travel, but the journey itself matters most. Our Celtic forbearers recognized this in a spiritual practice they called perigrinatio. Unlike a pilgrimage, which is a journey to a particular place, a perigrinatio is an inward journey in which we follow where God leads. The classic illustration is three Irishmen who set out to sea in a boat without oars for seven days. When asked why, they responded, "because we wanted for the love of God to be on a pilgrimage, we cared not where." During a Lenten peregrinatio we focus less on "completing" our act of giving up or picking up and more on discerning where God speaks and leads as we give up and pick up. A perigrinatio is less a task and more an orientation or reorientation. We are dust and to dust we shall return. To what and whom does God call us as we receive the gift of our lives with gratitude and live with faith? Wherever we go, how can we offer the best of ourselves to our deepest loves?

Have a holy Lent, friends. Walk with Jesus on purpose. We cannot know precisely where he will lead, but we can expect the journey to transform us.

            Lenten Blessings,

            LP