Listening to Sermons

I was washing the dishes when I heard the speech. There’s something about the hands-in-suds pose, isn’t there? I do a lot of listening at the sink.  The radio murmurs on during the clatter of dinner prep or in the quiet in the afternoon, but when I run the hot water tap and pile in the plates and the ears turn on.  Of course, speech is the same speech everyone else has been talking about this past week – US President Barack Obama’s speech at last Wednesday’s memorial service in Tucson, honouring the victims of the January 8^th shooting.

Like most others, I thought he spoke powerfully. He gave a true sense of speaking to a community, even though the community is national, even international. His words were personal and intimate.  His own power did not overpower the needs of the community. He spoke with humility. Standing at the sink, I was standing in Tuscon, connected as I listened to these strong, edifying words.

There has been talk this week of Obama borrowing the tricks of the pulpit.  Writers have noted his Biblical emphases and pastoral pauses. British journalist James Fenton, in his column View from America for the Evening Standard, went so far as to say that the President “delivered himself of his homily.” Archaic and ecclesiastical language abounds.

Now, I don’t disagree. Obama did sound like a preacher – a very good preacher delivering a much-needed sermon in a critical time. He cited the books of Job and Revelation, spoke of evil and of good, and emphasized healing. He spoke with skill, balancing emotion with reason, speaking profoundly when necessary, folksily when called for. He is a teacher while also a comforter and confronter.  His recent eulogy was a great example of what can be accomplished when one voice addresses the many.

Preaching is often depicted these days as something out of step with contemporary discourse, that it is a relic of a previous age. Maybe a genre whose time has come. We criticize politicians who proclaim to emphatically and call them preachers. But, when disaster strikes and people are grieving, politicians adopt preachers’ tones, and we are comforted.

I think that sermons are a counter-cultural act today, and a necessary one.  In a sea of information and interpretation delivered most usually to the solitary individual, sermons are unique. We sit together and listen together, asking God to listen and to speak among us. Unlike most of our entertainment, we don’t choose the subject. Or the style. We might skip a Sunday when we wish to avoid a particular preacher. But we feel awkward about that afterwards. Usually.  We consider listening to sermons in some way salutary, and we participate by thinking alongside the preacher.  Ideally, we separate the preaching from the preacher, but even at our most critical, we are aware that God is somehow involved in the complicated process of speaking and listening together.

And we do it every week.

As a teenager, I was encouraged by my Sunday school teacher to take notes when listening to a sermon. It would help me to focus and to remember what was said.  Now I’m not so sure that is the best way for me. I like to listen for the flow of it, and to see where the preaching leads my own thoughts. I have a friend who doodles during sermons for much the same reason.  It helps him to think more broadly about the words he hears.

I like sermons that provide these spaces for my reflection, and also invite me back into the reasoned flow of the discussion. I like sermons that make me feel as if I am hearing the thoughts of more than one heart. The Bible itself is constructed of a whole library of voices, sometimes in tune and sometimes discordant, as it traces the stories of God at work in history and the world. I want sermons that help me to hear that congregation. One voice speaking among the many and with the many, to the many and for the many.

I recently started an online course on lay ministry through the Elders’ Institute. The course is split in two – and the large assignment of the first section is to write a sermon using the four page technique. I’ll be interested to see what that’s about and how it will change my own views of preaching.  I will keep you posted.