Outside In: Why the Holy Spirit uses the voices of the voiceless

Acts 3:1-10

            A lot has happened between last week and this one in the book of Acts. Last week, in Acts 1, the disciples were watching Jesus ascend into heaven and acting dumbfounded that he didn’t give them the military victory they were after. This is a far cry from this week, in Acts 3, as we find Peter and John doing their absolute best Jesus impersonation, healing in the same way that Jesus healed, speaking in the same way Jesus spoke; simply, being pretty good followers of Jesus. Somehow, in the span of two chapters the disciples figured it out. Something clicked. And that something is the Holy Spirit.

            I’m going to briefly touch on Acts chapter 2, which we did not read today or last week because it is a traditional reading on the day of Pentecost at the end of the Easter season and we will read it then, but it is critical to understanding what made the disciples change so here’s a little context. In Acts 2 the Holy Spirit descends, people start speaking in tongues, they hear one another each in their own language, and the disciples emerge as different creatures. The Holy Spirit wrecks their old lives and makes them into the Jesus-followers they always should have been when he was alive. This is very good news for all of us, because, frankly, we don’t get to see Jesus face-to-face today, but we have the very same Holy Spirit messing with us that they did on that first Pentecost. And it can change us like it did them.

            So when Peter and John come across a man crippled by the gate, begging for a handout, they do the Jesus-thing: They heal him. They don’t give him food or money; they give him health—something he didn’t even ask for. Health is always a first sign of salvation. Every time. But they also give him more than that. This man, who was the least of those on the outside of the temple, becomes the one who witnesses to God inside the temple. The outside has come in. This is what Jesus was always doing.

            The man who was on the outside because of some imagined unworthiness becomes worthy because of what the Holy Spirit does through ordinary people. This is a story of how God makes the outside in. So, who are our outsiders? Who are we keeping at arm’s length? Because those are not just the people we are called to be nice to, or to feed, or to clothe; we’re not even called just to welcome them—yes, all that, but much more. Those are the people who will preach to us. They will tell us about God far more surely and more persuasively than the people on the inside. They are the ones whom the Holy Spirit will use, because they know what it feels like to be treated as unworthy.

So, who feels unworthy here?

Pastors, preachers, prophets: Why you might be some of those and what it means for your life

Mark 6:1-29

Every so often there will be a survey of people across various professions where they are asked about how happy they are in their work. Without fail, you’ll find that when these surveys are taken people in service industries declare themselves to be happier and more fulfilled in their work. At the top of the top you’ll usually find pastors. We are the happiest and most fulfilled in our jobs, but, as our health insurers will tell you, we’re also some of the least healthy professionals out there. Something about Jesus telling us to die to ourselves just doesn’t work well for the insurance industry.

            But there’s something else at work here. Anybody who does the work of following Jesus in a capacity where they feel unable to walk away will inevitably find themselves in a tricky place, because preaching Jesus means preaching against the comfort of people you love. Preaching Jesus means telling people you really like that they are dirty sinners. Preaching Jesus means creating distance between your words and your relationships. This is partly why over 70% of pastors report they have no close friends.

            I don’t say any of this to focus this message on me. I’m saying this because, in spite of some of your best efforts, the same work I do you are called to, as well, in different ways. You visit the sick, you teach, you even preach!—every one of you.

When I was interning in Oregon in 2009-10 in one of my first newsletter articles I talked about my faith upbringing and, as can happen when you’re in the echo chamber that is theological education, I slipped into language some people did not understand. I wrote that my parents were my first preachers, bringing me to church when I was just a baby. That week I had a member of the church, a grandfather of a classmate of mine at Luther no less, come up to me and say, “I didn’t know that your parents were pastors!”

I realized my mistake. I say preacher and the first image that comes to mind is “pastor.” We have to expand the meaning of that word again, because—let me tell you—pastors cannot be the only preachers. There are too many people preaching things. They’re preaching politics, they’re preaching sex, they’re preaching hedonism—they’re telling you that life is about pleasure and anybody who tells you differently is selling something. You all need to be preachers in your own ways, because nobody discovers God’s love for them and nobody hears about Jesus’ death or resurrection apart from your telling them about it.

God's Word, or why "real" preaching matters

Isaiah 40:1-11

There’s a Lake Wobegon-kind-of-story of a pastor who preached his Sunday morning sermon as he did every week, got down from the pulpit, led the rest of the service, shook hands with his parishioners, and then went home only to discover that over the course of the week, much to his surprise, the members from the congregation started doing the things he preached that they should do. He preached about evangelism, so one of the flock went out and started knocking doors in their town telling people about Jesus. The pastor personally thought this was a little pushy, but it did seem to be the gist of what he was talking about. He preached about helping the poor, so one of the flock bought a meal for a local family, and then charged it to the church. So at least he was in the spirit of what the pastor had said even if the practice was somewhat lacking. The pastor preached about how Jesus comes before family and friends, and several members of the church reported back that they took his advice and had kicked their adult children to the curb, who were really just playing video games in their basement, anyway, most of the time.

            At first the pastor rather liked this new congregation of people who listened to him, but as the week wore on and new report after new report reached his ears of congregation members doing outrageous things in pursuit of the ideal he was preaching, he gradually became overwhelmed. So, he got up in the pulpit the next Sunday and begged the people “Please, go back to not listening to me!” he said. Because everybody had taken his advice and things had gotten very complicated. And nobody was taking his advice in the way he imagined they should be doing it. He had expected things to go one way, and it had gone quite another. In the end, he concluded that it was much better when the pastor’s preaching didn’t change a thing.

What happens when you write a scathing sermon directed at one person

Scripture: John 7:37-52

           We are terrible at interpreting scripture. Seriously. Terrible. The Pharisees remind me of this every time they come into the picture. I get this sickening sense that I am one of them most of the time—this feeling that I see exactly what is convenient in the Bible and ignore anything that is not. I do it. You do it. The TV evangelists do it. We are all Pharisees who see and hear exactly what we want.

            I figured I would get the bad news out of the way. There is good news here, but it’ll have to wait a minute.

In today’s reading the Pharisees have a problem with Jesus—well, you can say that about pretty much every story in John’s Gospel— and, in this case, the problem concerns his hometown. He isn’t from the right place. The Pharisees scoured their scripture and found no account of a prophet coming from Galilee, therefore, being the good teachers of the law that they were, they informed Jesus that he could not be a prophet. Their Bible said it; they believed it; that settled it. Like so many of us who take the Bible seriously, the Pharisees had laid out all the rules about what a future Messiah would look like. They had the Torah in one hand, the prophets in the other, and a clear certainty that God was bound to the written words he had given.

My Preaching Stats

Because, let's face it, all pastors should have trading cards. Here--in order to procrastinate just a little on a dreary, really dreary, way too dreary (seriously am I in Oregon right now?) kind of Friday--are the sermons I've preached by books of the Bible.

Book	#
Genesis	19
Exodus	5
Leviticus	0
Numbers	1
Deuteronomy	1
Joshua	0
Judges	0
Ruth	1
1 Samuel	0
2 Samuel	4
1 Kings	4
2 Kings	0
1 Chronicles	1
2 Chronicles	0
Ezra	0
Nehemiah	0
Esther	0
Job	0
Psalms	12
Proverbs	0
Ecclesiastes	4
Song of Solomon	1
Isaiah	5
Jeremiah	1
Lamentations	0
Ezekiel	0
Daniel	1
Hosea	0
Joel	1
Amos	1
Obadiah	0
Jonah	2
Micah	0
Nahum	0
Habakkuk	0
Zephaniah	0
Haggai	0
Zechariah	0
Malachi	0
Matthew	6
Mark	6
Luke	26
John	19
Acts	6
Romans	6
1 Corinthians	6
2 Corinthians	1
Galatians	5
Ephesians	1
Philippians	0
Colossians	1
1 Thessalonians	1
2 Thessalonians	0
1 Timothy	0
2 Timothy	0
Titus	0
Philemon	0
Hebrews	0
James	0
1 Peter	0
2 Peter	0
1 John	2
2 John	0
3 John	0
Jude	0
Revelation	15

What a boring, un-annotated list that is! OK, here's something better. (Wait, you're thinking, this topic could be potentially not-boring? Maybe that's a stretch, but less boring perhaps.)

The key stats:
Total sermons: 165
# on the OT: 64
# on the NT: 101
OT books preached on at least once: 17 out of 39
NT books preached on at least once: 14 out of 27
Book preached on most often: Luke (26 times)
Books preached on more than ten times: Luke, Genesis (19), John (19), Revelation (15), Psalms (12)
# on the Torah: 26 (15.7%)
# on the History/Writings/Wisdom of the OT: 27 (16.4%)
# on the Prophets: 11 (6.7%)
# on the Gospels: 57 (34.5%)
# on Acts/Letters of the NT: 44 (26.7%)

Shocking and Humble

I'm not preaching on John 10:22-30 as many preachers will be this coming Sunday--I'll be in Acts with Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch thanks to the Narrative Lectionary--but as we were talking about John's Gospel at our local text study one subject that came up was the radical nature of what Jesus was saying: "The Father and I are one." That is a stunningly bold statement. Honestly, I'm not surprised that the immediate response of the Jews was to pick up rocks to stone him. Jesus was without a doubt violating the first commandment--openly and blatantly. Any observing Jew would have felt the same way those early ones did--in fact, in their shoes I would have been the first one picking up stones.

Time and again in the gospel witness, Jesus does and says a thing that is utterly shocking, which is an important thing to remember for we Scandinavian pastors who are so utterly not. It's astounding how we make a message that is so radical and earth-shattering so completely normal. Each of us are called to proclaim Christ crucified and risen, as Paul says, "a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to the Gentiles" (1 Corinthians 1:23). Well, how have we made that message so utterly lame? Why are our words not equally shocking? I don't doubt that our people are sometimes complacent, but we're fooling ourselves if we don't believe that there are things we believe that will shock them. The Gospel I want to proclaim is utterly absurd; it absolutely flies in the face of the way that pretty much everything in our world works. It should be absolutely jarring to hear. So, why won't I preach it?

The Courage to be Humble

From the Hallock ecumenical men's breakfast. Theme: Courageous men in scripture 

 

            I begin just about every one of the sermons I preach with our reading for this morning from Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Well, that might not seem like a verse that has much to do with courage, but courage in the Bible is a lot more than picking up a rock and killing a giant. It’s more than going before Pharaoh and saying “Let my people go;” it’s more than following Jesus out on to the water and more than a night in a lion’s den. Those are our primary images of courageous men in scripture. We don’t have biblical sports stars, but we do have King David, Moses, Daniel, Abraham, Solomon—religious and political leaders.

            And then there’s Jesus. Of course, it’s easy to talk about courage and Jesus. Savior of the world, died on a cross for us, gave the ultimate sacrifice; courageous, no doubt. But the way that Jesus was courageous was not the same as David or Moses. Jesus was courageous in denying the need to so desperately hold on to life, humbling himself to the point of death. It takes profound courage to be humble, especially when you are on the right side of a question, especially—one would assume—when you are the God of the world.

Jonah: Why Bad Preaching is Sometimes Good Preaching

Text: Jonah, chapters 3 and 4

            The good news for me today is that Jonah preached the worst sermon in the Bible and he just so happened to have more success than all the Old Testament prophets put together, so if today’s sermon is really lousy it may not matter.

            I still remember the worst sermon I ever heard. It was so bad that I could not shake it from my mind a day later or a week later or even today—years later. This wasn’t just your typical, unremarkable sermon or a sermon that said things with which I disagree. I’ve heard plenty of those sermons, and even though I find myself cringing and sometimes resisting the urge to bang my head with a Bible I can at least chock those up to differences in theology; not just bad preaching. However, this particular bad sermon was a problem because the pastor, who was a guest preacher at the church where Kate and I were worshiping, made the sermon into a performance—not about God, but about—well, there’s no other way to put this—it was all about him. He played some songs he wrote, while singing along with the piano. He talked a lot about his life. The only mentions of God were segues between his experiences. He made the sermon all about himself. It was horrible to sit through.

            The funny thing about that sermon, however, is that it stuck. In fact, after that Sunday morning an idea started to germinate in the back of my mind, and it was this: maybe some of the best preaching is actually, strangely, really bad preaching. Maybe even when the pastor tries to make it about him and her self God will work through that person to say something that gets the cogs turning. Then, I realized, we have the perfect model for this in scripture: Jonah! Who better to remind us that neither a person’s motives nor their preaching acumen matters? God is going to work through the sad, sorry preacher no matter how much they refuse to listen.

            This is good news, because there is plenty of bad preaching out there. There is plenty of preaching about the news or about the pastor him or her self. There is preaching completely out of touch with your lives, completely out of touch with the lives of young people, or old people, completely out of touch with the poor… or the rich; preaching unwilling to focus on the Gospel and unable to convey the message of salvation by grace through faith; preaching that forgets about Jesus, preaching that turns political; preaching that tries to use God’s word for its own ends.

            And yet, God works through that. That is the fascinating thing. There are those who have beliefs I find simply wrong that nonetheless experience the fullness of God’s word and who, through that word, come to know the God who created them, died for them and will raise them when time comes to an end. There are plenty of Christians who believe all sorts of things in large part because of their pastors who tell them all sorts of things—things that find their justification in some odd verse here or there in scripture but seem completely out of touch with the God we experience in communion and the forgiveness of sins—but you know what? In spite of that, these people are hearing and learning about the God behind it all—behind all the nonsense and the pastors’ egos.

            Jonah was a horrible pastor.

            He wanted nothing to do with those Assyrians who, he believed, deserved to die because of their heathen ways and warring against God’s chosen people. To Jonah, Nineveh represented everything that was wrong in the world—all the undesirable peoples that were acting contrary to God’s word; people, who God tells us, “did not know their right hand from their left.”

            Into this mix walks Jonah, still dripping in whale vomit, and he preaches a momentous five word sermon that is long on judgment and without any promise: “Forty days more and Nineveh shall be overthrown,” he preaches. It might be the worst sermon in history. He completely misses the important part; the part where he tells them on whose authority this message comes—the prophetic introduction that always begins these kinds of sermons where the prophet says, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel” or something along those lines. Jonah makes it sound as if the message is just his idea. You have forty days to get your affairs in order then you will be smitten. Sorry, chaps.

            The funny thing—well, there are so many funny things about Jonah, but one of the things that is funny about this story—is that the people of Nineveh listen to this horrible sermon and they believe it immediately. The king even goes to the extravagantly unnecessary step of putting not just his people in sackclothes of repentance but doing the same thing to their animals as well. I can imagine walking around the giant city of Nineveh with its one hundred and twenty thousand people wearing potato bags with goats and sheep and chickens looking just the same. Now, that would be a sight. Oddly, they do this even without a promise that this will appease God. Jonah didn’t even tell them to repent. Instead, the king seems to wonder aloud, “Who knows? God may relent and change his mind.” It’s like he figures it can’t hurt, so they might as well try.

            So, to recap: Jonah preaches a horrible sermon, the people repent—and how!—and God changes his mind; the city of Nineveh is saved, which is where we find Jonah by the final chapter of the story. It is here we discover that Jonah is not just a bad preacher but that he is also a vindictive person. He doesn’t care that the people repented. He wants bloodshed, he wants vengeance, he wants those outsiders—those enemies of Israel—shown the true force of God’s wrath. He wants fire to fall from heaven, like with Sodom and Gomorrah. He does not understand that salvation requires forgiveness for our misdeeds because he cannot see past the other-ness of the Ninevites. They are bad; he is good. A just God should punish them. Jonah, unlike Nineveh, cannot change his mind.

            A comic strip appeared on my Facebook feed two weeks ago from a group called Radio Free Babylon. They put out these daily comics called “Coffee With Jesus”—I don’t often do advertisement but check them out if you’re on Facebook and you won’t be disappointed. Anyway, this comic strip always has somebody talking with Jesus over coffee, and on the 29^th of October the strip looked like this: 

Check out RFB on Facebook here.

            Isn’t that just it? We make it complicated. We make it about the evil of others. We sit, like Jonah on the hill, waiting for our enemies to be destroyed. Our inner sense of justice yearns for that kind of vengeance, because—honestly—they deserve it. They deserve death. I can hardly say this without thinking of that scene from Lord of the Rings where Frodo tells Gandalf that Bilbo should have killed Gollum—OK, I just completely lost all of you who don’t know Lord of the Rings so feel free to plan your grocery lists in the next 20 seconds of the sermon. But anyway, Gandalf responds to Frodo with one of those epic J.R.R Tolkien philosophical segues, saying, “Many that live deserve death, and some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo?”

            Can you give it to them, Jonah? Can we?

We need to get off our ethical high hills. We need to stop preaching bad sermons, because even when we preach the opposite God will work through our inadequacy. We need to applaud Nineveh because repentance takes admitting that there is something wrong with us in the first place. That is the harder path. It’s the path Kevin has to take to ask Jesus for forgiveness. It’s the path Bilbo took in sparing Gollum’s life. It’s the path before us every day of our lives, because all of us are both in need of forgiveness and forgiving. All of us are preaching bad sermons. Not just Jonah. Not just that pastor playing piano and singing his songs. Not just me. You too. Each of you occasionally preach—to your friends and families, to people you know and people you do not, on the internet and in your living rooms—and sometimes you preach poorly. It doesn’t matter. God will work through you. God will upend the natural order of the world in spite of you. That is the promise Jonah never knew. God is at work, changing things, doing things, forgiving things, and our words—though necessary—only work through the one who gives them meaning.
Thanks be to God for that.

The art of NOT using a sermon illustration

I remember very plainly a time when a fellow seminarian explained her approach to the sermon illustration. She said that she was always looking for them and when a particularly striking one came around she would apply it the coming Sunday. From the start something about this struck me as funny. Instead of starting with scripture she was starting with an image or a metaphor borne out of her life experience. I can't deny that it had meaning to her, but I wasn't sure it would work well conveyed to an audience.

Four years later I find myself in much the same spot. The world is full of countless metaphors, some even that fit with the text for this week, and yet I have some serious reservations. Personal experience is both crucial and dangerous for proclamation. It's crucial because you need to live in the world to make any connection with the lives of the people to whom you are preaching. You can't sit at home and play Modern Warfare 3 all day, or sit in your office and read the Bible all day, and expect to speak a message that has both relevance and gravity. However, personal experience is dangerous because it often precludes the different and opposing personal experience of others. This is why I am cautious to use my life, or a symbol therein, to make a point. I am biased by my own experience, and I will never get away from that.

In my infinite wisdom--having served a parish now for a grand total of three weeks--I am learning how not to use a sermon illustration. I have a congregation of people who want to get to know me, so it's hard, but the end result is that I honor the message for what it is: God's word for the people. When Jesus says that the kingdom of God is like a mustard seed it is undoubtedly a great sermon illustration, but much of the appeal of Jesus' words is their timelessness. A sermon is not meant to be timeless--at least it rarely achieves that feat. A sermon is meant for a particular time and place, trusting in the Spirit to move in that moment with that people.

So excuse me if I don't use that illustration. If there's one thing I am sure of it's that it's not about me, and let's keep it that way.

Theology and theopoetry

I heard the worst sermon of my life this morning. Kate was there. She can back it up.

With that said, sorry I haven't posted in awhile. I'd say I've been busy, but it's been more like uninspired to write. I have other things to be doing; I always have other things. Lately, blogging hasn't been the most important thing. From now on it might be. Who knows.

Anyway, back to the subject.

This was most bizarre, unfortunate 25 minutes I have ever spent in a worship space (This wasn't my home church and I won't say where it was; even if I did say, it was a guest preacher, so it is no reflection on the church in question). The pastor preached in a way, but really it was a show that had a little bit of interpretive dance and far more singing and playing of piano than should ever occur in lieu of a message. Please understand that I have no problem with music--even music in a sermon--but there comes a point where it is simply shtick. This was shtick in spades.

This is a classic example of theopoetry gone astray. Theopoetry is an attempt to speak of God not in systematic terms, as theology is wont to do, but with language that expands the horizons of how we might view God. It is creative language; and at its best it is splendid. I say this because I love theopoets who honed the skill. Rob Bell, Barbara Brown Taylor, John Polkinghorne, Madeleine l'Engle and even Garrison Keillor are theopoets in their own ways.

Yet, for each brilliant thinker who widens the net casting for God there are those who just don't get it. The pastor this morning just didn't get it. He destroyed the structure of the message but without offering a word that was the least bit creative. Rather than projecting us forward into what it might mean to live as human beings in God's creation, he seemed to be trying to call us back to something... something that I didn't understand; something vague and unreal. It didn't feel spiritual; in fact, it felt close to laughable.

I believe theology is useful to ground us. It is useful because it recalls the wisdom of those before and treats their witness as something spirit-filled. But many people who study theology tend to give it too much weight. To me, God hardly seems systematic. Life is poetic: the good and the bad. I love theopoetry because it admits that, lives in it, and at its best conveys what it means to be human.

My profound hope is that we stop with the gimicks; the singing preachers and half-hearted jokes, and let's start dwelling in scripture faithfully, preaching boldly and admitting that words fail. That would be a nice start.

Reflection on Preaching and Pop Culture

This started out as an inquiry into stories. What is it that resonates with people? And more importantly, what does that say about our relationship with God?

It seems like a funny question on some level. What does God have to do with Twilight or Eminem? Yet, if we are going to talk about the Spirit with any kind of integrity it seems like we have to acknowledge that God must be capable of working through what people find meaningful, even if it seems banal. Millions of people see something of value in these and other icons. Why?

There is something valuable in the story. Twilight offers a storyline that appeals to a generation of girls and young ladies; in fact, its sales are an indication that it is appealing to adult women as well. Its popularity is indicative of a story that speaks meaning into the difficulties that women face. It speaks into the confusion of puberty as well as our yearning for love in adulthood. To divorce sex and God leaves the church impotent to speaking into that reality. There might be a cogent message here for 21st century Christians, but the only way to address it is to look openly at what it is that makes Twilight an often guilty pleasure for so many.

Eminem has a similar appeal that, while crossing gender lines somewhat more than Twilight, is predominantly a male phenomenon. Eminem's message is not primarily about sex, but it deals with the human tendency to hate, and at its best it is about coming to terms with who we are. He doesn't have it figured out, and maybe that's why it's hard to see him as a storybook character. The evolution of his career seems has been for the better, but the end remains unwritten. Regardless, there is something about him that resonates. The pain and sometimes hatred that inspires his lyrics has moved a generation who consider him a voice for their trials. Surely, there is something Christian in that.

Finally, I opened up to the idea of WikiLeaks. This I was more skeptical about than the others in part because it is dehumanized. Eminem is flawed, but that can be explained by his utter human-ness. Twilight is a very human novel. WikiLeaks seems to presuppose a kind of omniscience. And yet, this too is a very human tendency. We want to know things; it says something about us--even if it isn't always something good.

With the process of sermon-writing finished, I have come to realize that this has always been about story. I struggled most with the WikiLeaks topic because it didn't lend itself well to narrative. Our stories undergird the meaning in our lives. Moreover, the Christian story gives meaning back to the stories that we hold dear. Too often the problem preachers have is that the Christian story that we are attempting to proclaim is ignorant of the prevailing stories in the culture. This has been an exercise in understanding how we can talk about those forces without selling out to them; in short, how we can re-focus the power that they have on the cross where we claim ultimate meaning lies.

This is possible only through my own story-telling. As a preacher I am only as good as quilt I can fashion from the threads that connect the stories that my parishioners bring, the stories that the culture has ingrained in us, and the overarching grand narrative of God in the world. This is the challenge of preaching and pop culture, but I am coming to think that it is also one of the only ways we can be authentic to life in the here-and-now while proclaiming the "not yet"-ness of the gospel.