Thinking About Preaching

Sunday after Sunday for most every Sunday for the past 22 years I have led or helped lead worship and preached a sermon to a group of people gathered for worship in a church. Since July of 2006, I have shared the preaching/worship leading with two other pastors, so that one time a month and sometimes two times a month I would not preach. But, preaching sermons is something that is just a part of my life.

Now that I am not going to be preaching this coming Sunday, I am stopping to think about preaching on this day when I would normally start thinking about what I would be preaching this coming Sunday.

Preaching has become for me the end of a process that I go through each week in which I engage in a reflection on different parts of the Scripture as these scriptures relate to my experience in life: both experiences I have had and experiences that are being formed in the present. But, it gets beyond the text of scriptures, or usually it does. At some point, I begin to feel some sense of engaging with a power beyond me; at some point, I begin to feel that I am finding some freedom from my own ideas, though I always must rely on my ideas to express what I am finding in this experience of the spirit.

At some point, if the process produces something that gives hope and begins to open a path of trsnformation in life, I end up finding that I am prone to assert my ideas, and in a strong sense, most every sermon on the first run or two simply has too much self-assertion in it. It is through working through this first one or two versions that I am working through my self towards something more than self. What I mean is that in the first round or two of writing sermons, I seem to usually have this desire to put forward a really sharp idea of mine or demonstrate something about a peculiar view I have or throw out a criticism or two of other's views. In the second round, I begin to separate the wheat from the chaff. And, if I really come to a sermon worth preaching, it is usually after I feel my self fading towards the end of the week in the sermon preparation process because I get so interested in communicating something about seeking a real transformation of our selves in faith that I lose a desire to assert or put forward my self and my ideas.

As I write these words, I realize that I usually don't get to "stage 3" of sermon preparations. Most of my sermons get preached somewhere in stage 2 and many have gotten preached while still in stage 1. But, these days, I am working harder until I get some freedom from self in this process. Last week, I worked hard but didn't quite get to clarity between two different messages from the passage in 2 Corinthians. I posted one sermon I had written out beforehand, but I had another one prepared as well. And, I couldn't find the one message that brought them together and I didn't feel like just preaching one or the other. So, I just stood up and tried to bring it together in my talking. I was doing well at first, but then I got off track by not letting the message I had started with carry on. I switched gears to the second message. Well, someone might have heard something worth hearing in the somewhat disjointed talk that highlighted two distinct parts of Paul's words without being able to find that powerful way of expressing the one message waiting to be preached.

So, did I fail on Sunday in the sermon? I don't think so. Because even though it lacked coherence, and certainly could have had a better movement and clearer theme, I did have my focus on communicating something to others that could really help us awaken to God's transforming reality in this world and in our lives. I think I am going to rewrite and repreach from that passage in the next Sunday I preach. Because I was on the way to somewhere and didn't arrive. I didn't break through to what I was getting a glimpse of. I am going to go back, work my way through the two different messages I had prepared and then revisit that passage, and see if I can get a clearer sense in my spirit what I kept being inspired by but could never quite express. There is a liberating word that I have just about seen and just about heard, but it slipped away right as I tried to grasp it, express it. Maybe I need to quit trying so hard and relax my spirit.