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April 7, 2013 2:27 pm

Four steps to discipleship

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by    in Liturgy,Sermons

Today was my second sermon ever. I mentioned last week how I found I was struggling more than with my first sermon. Before going out to preach, I still wasn’t 100% happy with it; but after having said it, I am actually finding it better than my first sermon. Anyway, here, you can listen to it, read it (although I did ad lib a bit). But as it is long, I’ll provide a summary too.

sermon2

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Sometimes, we are locked in the cage of our own worries: fear of failure, or of what others might think, stop us from acting. And so we try to shut out that fear, going on with our lives as though there was no way to go out of that cage. That’s where the disciples are at the start of the Gospel reading, before Christ appears to them: fear-stricken, behind locked doors. And then something happens that transforms them into the bold apostles who stand up before the Sanhedrin, saying “We must obey God rather than any human authority“.

The transformation happens in this house, in this upper room, when Jesus appears to the disciples. And it has four steps:

1. Receive the risen Christ – and lean on him in all that we do. I cannot stress enough that he is already there, in our midst, even behind locked doors – no matter how many times we go back and lock the doors again. Our part in it is to recognise his presence. And that can be done through pausing, looking around us, praying, drawing near for communion, seeing Christ in our friends. But Christ needs to be the unquenchable source of our discipleship: because if we follow something else, that something will run out.

2. Receive his peace. That follows naturally from step one – as we know that Christ who defeated death is on our side; although sometimes it doesn’t feel quite like that. Again, pause, and make sure you receive Christ’s peace before rushing out. I think that in giving us his peace, Christ unlocks the door – if we run out too fast, we might hurt ourselves quite a bit.

3. Receive and embrace his command, which is simple: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you”. We are to model Christ in our discipleship – be real imitators of him, and that means doing everything out of our love for God and for others, and in a spirit of submission – even when our will goes against what is asked of us.

4. Receive the Holy Spirit: we are not alone in this action!

I think that we each tend to focus on one step rather than all four. But they are equally important, and sequential. You can’t embrace God’s command without first receiving Christ and his peace – that would not be a race of perseverance.

If we follow all four, though, we will run that race to the end, with boldness and with peace. That’s why the liturgy goes: “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord”. We are to go beyond the church’s confines, but we are to be assured of that peace. And the response grounds this action in Christ: “in the name of Christ, amen.”

Peace be with you.

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March 31, 2013 3:20 pm

The Anecdote

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by    in Uncategorized

Next week, I’m preaching for the second time (you can listen to my first go here). And while one would assume that the experience should make it easier and less daunting, it doesn’t. There are many circumstantial reasons for this:

  • a lot less prep time (“only” 2 weeks’ notice this time round)
  • I don’t have the excuse of it being my first time as a safety net
  • The lectionary falls on Acts. Which is great, but it was a lot easier to just go with the message already spelled out in the Epistle last time (using the Gospel passage as a hook into that). This time, the sermon can take a fair amount of directions, and it’s a bit harder to pick one and stick with one.

Crucially, though – I have been given advice. It came in two forms: one was on the back of a conversation (of which, in fairness, I probably only remember the least useful bits!), and was given relatively independently of the passages: that I should pitch the sermon in the context of Easter. Because that’s “where people were going to be”. Probably great advice, the only issue is, I’m not quite sure what that means: after Easter Sunday, should we consider people to be on the road to Emmaus? Or further along the road, with the resurrection properly sunk in? Or should I wait until the Ascension for that*? Should I preach to both Peter and Thomas called Didymus?

anecdote

Photo: THOR, reused under CC license

The Joke, The Anecdote and The Three-Part Structure: the Trinity of sermon-writing?

And as I’m trying to weave the church calendar into the sermon, I’m also reminded of the various pieces of advice that are, seemingly, valid for all sermons. You find them in books on sermon-writing (among which the two David Day ones are very helpful). That there should be a joke, and an anecdote, to pepper the whole tedious business for our yawning congregations. Thankfully, though, the abuses of the practice of The Joke, which ended up unrelated to the sermon, have been put to light and it seems that this is far less common now. I think the same goes for the anecdote.

Writing the sermon, I was scratching my head, trying to think of an anecdote to tell which was fitting to the sermon, but finding I probably do not have any to offer. This was a real block to the writing process. Once I realised that I didn’t need an anecdote as such, I was freed to let the sermon flow.

There is a real risk in giving rules about what sermons should include: that we end up seeing  helpful rules as a compulsory system, and that The Anecdote becomes The Joke: forced, stale, and potentially worse, what people focus on and retain from the sermon. I would even argue that if it does not come naturally into the sermon, that is, without trying to fit one in, then an anecdote is detrimental to the quality of the sermon: it makes it bitty at best, self-contradictory at worst. (But yeah, if it does fit in naturally, then it makes the sermon all the more powerful and relevant!) So maybe there will be one in my sermon, but I don’t aim to include one at all costs.

Dead to rules, alive to the Bible

Despite this, I do believe one of the rules of sermon-writing should be upheld and observed at all times: preach from the text (rather than from a hypothetical point you’re trying to make). That rule can be applied, because it influences the entirety of the sermon, not just one part of it or its structure. And because it directs us to a source, it helps us avoid Bible-hopping.

I thought I had nothing to say about these two passages. Then I started to write, trying  to explain what was happening in either of the passages, and what was surprising. And a mini-structure  for the sermon just appeared. That’s what preaching from the text means: letting it guide you on a journey whose destination you don’t quite know yet.

This complete dependence on Scripture explains why it is so daunting to preach: these are powerful words we are wielding. And I hope I always tackle preaching with that same fear – that I never become blasé about what I’m preaching from. But at the same time, it is incredibly reassuring: because Scripture supports our preaching; and, relying on it, there’s no way to go terribly wrong!

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* That said, I love the church calendar, and love using it. But that’s for another post!

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November 25, 2012 5:01 pm

Pray for your pastor

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by    in Calling,Lists,Prayer

As you will know if you’re a regular reader of this blog, I delivered my first sermon last Sunday. I am incredibly grateful to all who prayed for me on that occasion; and I’ll reiterate that it went really well.

Photo taken from christmasstockimages.com, reused under CC License

Up until last week, whenever I read or heard “pray for your pastor”, I would never think much of it. I’m not sure what my excuses were; but I think that deep down I was thinking a combination of the following four things:

  • The preacher is more qualified than me. He will pray before preaching. That prayer will be better than mine.
  • The preacher will get the inspiration of the Holy Spirit anyway. There’s no need to pray.
  • That’s his job, for which he has been trained; he does not need any prayer in the first place
  • That’s for Sunday. Pleeeeeeenty of time.

These are the most insidious of arguments, because they each hold a tiny nugget of truth. That makes them ring “true-ish”; and makes them all the easier to use as excuses. But each of these arguments is also twisted. Let’s go through them again:

  • The preacher has some level of qualifications; and yes, he will pray before preaching (as well as, hopefully, through the week!). It does not mean that his prayer is better than yours. On the contrary, writing a sermon is no easy task; and it comes with its burdens, stresses, and feelings of low self-esteem. These may impede the preacher’s prayers for his own sermon: for instance, he may feel like he should have done a bit more preparation and he can’t present that work to God (that would be stupid, but stressed people do stupid things). Then your prayer is truly needed; and the knowledge that he is prayed for makes the preacher bolder in his own sermon-writing.
  • The Holy Spirit will inspire the preacher. But that does not supersede the need for prayer (or preparation). There is a famous joke about a young curate who, every week, spent hours preparing his sermons. He was mocked by a very Pentecostal colleague who told him “I only wait to hear from the Spirit”. Enthused by the idea, our young curate decides to try it out. The  next week, when they meet, the Pentecostal colleague asks: “So, did the Spirit speak to you? What did He say?” The curate answers “Yes. He said ‘you’ve been very lazy this week’.”
  • Hopefully, the preacher has undergone some form of formal training. It will generally be the case; and where not, he should receive some form of support by those who are trained. But no training can fully prepare for the sharing of the living Word – or else, that Word becomes dead; and preaching merely a mix of manipulation and of teaching of old doctrine. Only through prayer can we ensure that what the preacher says will genuinely touch the hearts and minds of the congregation.
  • The sermon will be delivered on Sunday. It will, generally, have been written beforehand. Especially in the case of someone preaching for the first time, this will take place days, nay, weeks in advance. Prayer is necessary at all stages of the sermon-crafting, up to the delivery and even beyond that. Additionally, as I’m sure you’ll find, Sunday isn’t that far around the corner.

So pray for your pastor. Pray for his health, his energy, his drive, the inspiration of the Holy Spirit – through the week. Pray that he may be a true imitator of Christ, and that he inspire you to be, in turn, imitators of Christ. Pray that he may move you, challenge you, and speak words relevant to you and to the rest of the congregation. Pray that he may move himself, and be once again reminded with great awe of his own nature as a beloved child before God.

What’s your excuse? What will your prayer be?

—

Note: given recent news about female episcopate, it might be worth saying that, in the above article and, I’m sure, in many places through the blog, I have used the masculine as a generic term. It is not a theological statement! In this case, the preacher is a “he”, but might as well be a “she”. I find dual writing “he or she” tedious and cumbersome for the reader as well as for the writer; and abhor the abbreviation “s/he”. The plural sometimes works, it felt very odd to use it here. So if your pastor is female, I will leave it to you, reader, to make the appropriate substitutions!

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November 18, 2012 7:14 pm

Drawing near the throne

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by    in Bible,Sermons

Today, I gave my first sermon ever, in the university Chaplaincy at Warwick. A fairly daunting experience, but I’ll get back to that later (probably next week), but ultimately an amazing one. So this week, I thought I’d share the sermon here.

The readings it is based on are Mark 13:1-8 and Hebrews 10:1-14 and 19-25. Here, you can find a downloadable version of my notes, and you can also listen to the recorded sermon here:

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At 1,200 words, it is a relatively short sermon (by evangelical standards if not necessarily by Anglican standards), but it would be an exceptionally long blog post, so here is a quick run-down of what I said.

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It is easy to focus on what we do: on the fact that we go to church, that we pray, that we hang out with friends, etc. Regardless of the type of action that we focus on (even if it’s the action of others whom we  identify with), that becomes what we boast in, but also what we rely on: it becomes the temple that the disciple is telling Jesus about in Mark 13:1.

In doing that, we are, in some way, choosing what God should be well-pleased with. We are coming to God, yes – but on our own terms, isolating certain areas of our lives that we wish to show off to Jesus. And, as he retorts, this is all vanity.

Thankfully, our actions are not what give us salvation, or what makes the Father well-pleased. That means that, equally, they do not condemn us. Thinking that we are doing things in order to please God in our own strength; or that if we sin or, worse (!), do not show up at Bible study, we will be bringing shame to the name of Jesus – thinking that is futile. And it flies in the face of Jesus’s continuing work of intercession.

See, in the same way that, because we are in Jesus, we can ourselves call God “Abba”, “Father” – in that very same way, because we are in Jesus, when God looks upon us, it is his Son he sees. Therefore, in him, God is well-pleased with us. And we can therefore draw near the throne, not trusting in our own righteousness or in our own strength, but knowing that God sees Jesus in us.

When we come to Jesus, we can stop looking at the past to justify us, we can stop trying to show ourselves up to God. We can do like Zacchaeus, and allow Jesus’s transformative power show in exclaiming all that he will do. That’s how the “Therefore” in Hebrews 10:19 works: because of the sacrifice made once and for all, we can draw near the throne.

But drawing near the throne without listening would be pointless. We need to consider, as Paul says, how the work of Jesus transforms us. We need to reflect on how our lives have been changed; to feel part of God’s family; and finally, to look to Jesus as our perfect reflection, which keeps on spurring us on to good.

And we need to remember that it is not only ourselves who are allowed to draw near the throne in Jesus, but also anyone who believes in him. We must see Jesus in others, and see that they have just as much justification to draw near the throne as we do. Then, let us reflect that unity in keeping on meeting together, and loving one another.

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