Birthing the Sermon

Women Preachers on the Creative Process

Jana Childers

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2001
• ISBN:
  9780827202429
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

Where do preachers get their ideas for sermons, and how do they turn those ideas into great sermons week after week? Sharing their experiences, these dynamic women preachers take us through their process from conception, through development, to the actual delivery of the sermon and beyond. Each chapter includes a sermon that illustrates the results of that preacher's labor of love. Contributors include: Barbara Shires Blaisdell, Teresa L. Fry Brown, Jana Childers, Linda L. Clader, Yvette Flunder, Mary G. Graves, Linda Carolyn Loving, Barbara K. Lundblad, Karen Stokes, Barbara Brown Taylor, Mary Donovan Turner, Margaret Moers Wenig.

CHAPTER 1

Barbara Shires
Blaisdell

I never intended to preach. I entered seminary not to pursue professional ministry but in search of something. Exactly what I was searching for was not at all clear to me. I was on my way to law school, to a profession that I hoped would help me make a real difference in a suffering world. The Christian faith of my childhood had lost credibility, given the suffering I had seen. The church of my childhood fell far short of its calling—that seemed all too clear to me. That my observations and my doubts about my faith and my church were not at all original did not occur to me. I entered seminary with questions, with outrage over the world’s evil. I entered seminary with very few role models of women preachers and with ecclesial authorities relieved that I was “just” on a spiritual search and not on a career path toward ordination. I entered seminary to challenge the good people there and found instead that they shared my questions, my doubt, my righteous indignation at suffering and counted that as faith. They taught me to notice the way in which my questions, doubt, and indignation at injustice were shared by God. They held out a vision of the church as a sign, an imperfect sign, to be sure, but a sign nevertheless, to the broken world of God’s work toward healing and justice for the world. I left the seminary more assured but not completely certain about the faith. I left with hope but also with a lot of questions still about the church. I left, still not intending to preach. Twenty years later, after a lot of prompting and cajoling by God and the church, I enter a pulpit twice every week, week after week with fear and trembling, with belief shaded by doubt, with good news unavoidably shaped and nuanced by my own flawed soul.

I am very privileged to spend some of my time with young seminarians, both men and women. I find, especially in the women, a startling contrast to my own experience. They are far more certain of their call to ministry, far less haunted by self-doubt or even by doubts about the church. I am thrilled to know that they have experienced far fewer barriers on their paths to ordained ministry. But I am occasionally troubled by what appears to me sometimes as a sense of entitlement and ease about what Barbara Brown Taylor calls “the preaching life.” And I wonder about my self-conscious struggle to write, week after week, a word of grace to a broken world from a broken heart. I wonder if that experience has anything to offer to my younger sisters just starting out in ministry. I am fairly sure, though, that five or ten years into ministry, after the first failures, after profound disillusionment with the church’s petty power struggles, after the glorious joy of baptizing or dedicating babies and the depth of despair of burying friends in one’s beloved congregation, the weekly experience of trying to find a word of grace for oneself and one’s congregation has some common struggle. To that struggle, I will dare to speak a word about my experience in the hope that it may help another.

Inspiration and Routine

Foremost in that struggle: How do I find the time to write, to pray, to do adequate research? I am sure that God can be trusted to inspire a good word, week after week (even as I am restless with anxiety about just that each week). I am equally sure that God finds my heart and mind more open to that inspiration if both heart and mind are prepared and fertilized by prayer and study. Not that there haven’t been times when I got into the pulpit totally unprepared, only to preach a sermon that seemed to move people and to offer them something of what they needed. But when I have let that experience make me lazy, my own soul goes hungry, and I cannot help but worry that the congregation is hungry as well.

So how do I find the time, amid the hospital calls and new member meetings, while writing liturgy and reports to the board, while supervising staff or trying to get a bulletin printed on ancient, inefficient equipment? It helps to break it up into manageable segments—and not to save it all for Saturday night. To be practical for a moment, I break up my study and preparation in this way.

On Monday I read the scripture, meditate, and journal. I use a form for meditation known as Lectio Divina. At this point, I am reading the scripture for my own soul. I am reading less for edification than for what my grandmother would have called sanctification. What is going on inside me? What does this sacred text have to say to me about that? How is the Spirit lifting me beyond myself in this text? On Monday, my task is to begin to glimpse and to pray over what in my life will enhance and what will hinder the gospel I am called to bring to the people the following Sunday.

On Tuesday I begin in the same way I did on Monday. I read the scripture. I pray and I journal. I also read commentaries on the text. These help open me up to aspects of the text that my own eyes did not see, to questions that I did not notice needed to be asked. The commentaries are the beginning of conversation with the Christian community and tradition. They often lead me to read more about history and cultural context. Sometimes they confirm the nudging I felt on Monday toward a particular direction for the sermon. Sometimes they seem to indicate that an honest appropriation of my own issues will provide manna for the following Sunday (whether or not I actually make personal reference to those issues—and I usually do not). Sometimes the commentaries reveal to me that my own issues are in the way of my seeing the gospel in the text. And the task becomes one of getting myself out of the way.

On Wednesday each week I reread the text, journal, and pray, looking back over what I have written two days before, looking forward a bit to where I might go. My Thursdays are set aside for writing a solid first draft. Thursdays are the hardest day of the week. I don’t go into the office. I ask elders or colleagues to make all but life-and-death hospital calls. I have nothing to distract me but my own soul. Facing the blank computer screen every Thursday morning is an act of faith. I come to it filled with anxiety, and yet I sit down and begin to write in an attempt to live as if I trust my belief that God will indeed inspire a good word. Almost always words fall across the screen that I didn’t know I knew, or believed, or understood, felicitous words for which I cannot take credit. I am sure that there are also words that are too narrowed by my own issues and agenda. But the experience of typing words that heal me, repeating them on a Sunday, and hearing that they had a healing effect on others convinces me that God does indeed provide a good and reliable word.

I have a generous congregation that allows me this whole day to pray and to write. I asked for it by quoting Urban Holmes, who in his book Spirituality for Ministry made a marvelous case for the importance of spiritual self-care for clergy and argued that parishioners would, on the whole, be comforted and not angered by being told that the minister was unavailable because he/she was praying and studying and writing.¹ There are those few parishioners who resent my Thursdays away from the office, but a very wise chair of my board of elders once said to me, “Letting those folks determine your priorities for ministry is like deliberately letting flies into your kitchen.”²

Fridays are my day off. I play and rest and clean my house. My prayer life on Fridays is lighter and clearer and often provides a fun or funny insight into what I wrote the day before.

Saturdays, assuming Thursday went reasonably well, I spend two or three hours refining and rehearsing. There are Saturdays when I have to start all over, and the process takes all day. But I hate those, so I work really hard to have enough done by bedtime Thursday so that Saturday can be reasonably light.

Life Practices

In addition to a weekly routine, there are four life practices that aid my writing when I do them and hinder my work when I don’t. I read constantly. I see a lot of movies. I get daily physical exercise. I write three pages of whatever junk is in my head and on my heart every morning as a prayer to God.

In order to keep my mind stimulated enough to produce eight to ten pages of creative material every week, I need to read constantly: theology and Biblical scholarship, of course. But I also find that good novels and writing that is honest about the human condition give me insight and perspective, even if I never use them in a sermon illustration. I don’t read “sermon help” material. I don’t find it helpful. But a reading of a novel like Anne Lamott’s Crooked Little Heart is a winsome corrective for the current tendency (at least in Californian culture) to focus only on the “positive” side of human experience and human motivation.

In order to find time to read, I watch very little television. I am sure this puts me at a disadvantage in terms of the knowledge of pop culture. But the time it gives me is astounding. I do go to movies and rent movies and use them to make me more visual and more concrete in my preaching. I am hoping to be able to use video clips in worship within the next year, for I am convinced that the church must learn ways to better reach our culture of visual learners if we hope to communicate.

I also find that my writing improves when my body is active. I don’t pretend to understand all the connections, but when I walk or hike or swim daily, I have more energy and perspective to write. Often, on my writing Thursday, I will get up early and write for several hours, only to be stuck by late morning. Then a long walk will do amazing things to clarify what it is I am trying to say, how it can better be ordered, and what is superfluous and can be ditched.

Finally, I try to write in prayer every morning three pages of whatever junk is in my head. This is rarely material for a sermon. This is material that gets in the way of a sermon. Because the writing is a form of prayer, it does lift whatever is on my heart to God. And getting it out on paper makes it less likely to get in the way of my other writing.

The sample sermon I am including here is one for Mother’s Day in my congregation in Concord, California. Concord is about thirty miles east of San Francisco. It is a study in contrasts. It lies between San Francisco–Berkeley, one of the most diverse, liberal, postmodern places in the world, and California’s great agricultural Central Valley, a place every bit as conservative as the midwest or new south. The congregation is pulled by that contrast. It is at once conservative and liberal, postmodern and fighting to hang on to many premodern and modern ideas and values. The challenge is to preach in a way that comforts the anxiety of living in a world of such rampant change and lack of cultural consensus about what is good and right and beautiful, while at the same time challenging the church’s tendency to insularity and triumphalism. This particular sermon attempts to invite the listener to self-reflection about the limits of our ability to be in mission and ministry to the needy of the world if we do not recognize the needy within ourselves.

Mother to Mother: Centered in a Circle of Need

LUKE 17:12–19

Happy Mother’s Day! You won’t be surprised that today’s sermon is especially aimed at mothers. Now, if you are not a mother, please don’t feel excluded. There is much in the scripture for today that is important for all of us to hear. In fact, there is no mention of motherhood in this text. It’s just that there is something in the story that I think is particularly important for those (mothers or fathers or grandparents or caregivers or teachers or nurses) who have as a part of their daily task the care and feeding and loving and molding of others.

And the question that the text raises is this: How do we, amidst our busy and demanding lives, stay centered, focused, inspired for the hard work that we do? I suspect that you are like me: I consider it a wonderful privilege to serve God by trying to make a difference in God’s world. Don’t you? Most of the time, my work with people and with my family provides such joy that when people ask, “What keeps you going? What inspires you?” it seems like a silly question. The sheer joy of the work does.

Jesus had many teachings about what his disciples were to do to make a difference in the world: clothe the naked, feed the hungry, visit those in prison, give hope to the hopeless. Those are the obvious passages that we as Christians use for inspiration for making the world a better place. But there are days, aren’t there, when the work is not quite enough, when the chaos out there hooks the chaos in here and it is hard, very hard, to stay centered or to even remember why it is we do what we do.

But there is this story from the gospel of Luke that helps me in this regard. It’s not one of the passages we would perhaps look to first for inspiration. It’s an unusual story in many ways. But it is one of my favorites. It’s the story of Jesus and the ten lepers. Listen to it with me. (Luke 17:12–19 is read.) 7

One reason I love this story is that there is room for everybody here to climb inside it. Most of the stories about people who encounter Jesus are about an individual person. But this story stands by itself in being not about a single individual but about a group who are standing in a circle together because they are standing in a common need. This little congregation of ten may be made up of very different individuals, but they can stand together now because they know they all need something. And they look at Jesus from a distance and wave and say, “Lord, have mercy. Help us.”

The name of their particular disease is leprosy, one of the most feared diseases of Jesus’ day. Many have made the connection between leprosy and HIV/AIDS in our day. It would have had the same social connotations that HIV/AIDS or the rampant disease of unwed mothers do in our politics today. But the name of the need isn’t really what matters. What matters is how many of us have such a need, how many of us belong in the company of those who are calling for help…and not just as helpers. One of the things we who are seeking to change the world for the better often lack is the recognition that we are every bit as needy as the world. One of the dangers of being helpers and healers making a difference in the world is that—so in touch are we with the pain all around us—we forget our own hurt, our own real needs. One of the things we must acknowledge if we are to remain inspired in our work, one of the things we must admit in order to stay centered as mothers, fathers, helpers, teachers, caregivers—is that we belong in that circle of need.

So, if there is any sadness pressing against your heart today, you belong in that circle. If you’ve got some guilt that you cannot seem to get rid of, you belong. If your soul is tired or confused or scared and lonely, you’re in the group. If you are right now in the middle of a hard decision you don’t know how to make, you’re in. It doesn’t have to be you that’s on your mind. It could be someone else you care about who’s in trouble, and you’d do anything to help but you don’t know how to help: If so, you have a place, too, in the circle of those of us who cry for mercy.

People in that circle don’t have to feel close to Jesus. You don’t have to be a part of the church community. You may be wrestling right now with profound doubts about your faith. You still belong. You can still find your center in this circle. The folks in the circle in Luke’s story were not close to Jesus. Nor were they members of any church. They stood off in the distance, a long way off from the pious and the organized. But they were part of the circle. So welcome to the circle, whoever you are, whatever the current state of your heart. Raise your hand with the rest of us and call out your need. I’m here in this circle too. We can call out together, “Hey Lord, have mercy. Do you see us over here? Will you have mercy?”

I hope you don’t mind who else is with you in that group. This is something that we owe to each other and to our world: that we don’t mind too much who else is in the circle with us, calling on God. Recognizing your own pain and hurt can put you in very different company from what you have been used to. That’s the thing about leprosy. When the doctor diagnoses you a leper, you lose all your old memberships. In Jesus’ time, a leper couldn’t stay where he or she used to belong. No more family. No more job. No more club meetings. They were required to leave their place, their positions, all their relationships and wander on the outside of things. Lepers in the gospels stand for all who have lost their old identities, their smug place in the world, their illusions of being “in” and have found themselves in the much simpler membership in the fellowship of pain, which is not very exclusive company.

In the particular group of ten about which Luke tells are some folks who used to mistrust each other, who would not have lowered themselves to talk to each other. In that circle are old racial enemies: Samaritans and Jews. But it’s funny how all those old divisions don’t matter any more. They don’t matter when you know that where you really belong is in the fellowship of need and suffering. One of the most inclusive and warm groups that I know is Narcotics Anonymous. Black, white, women, men, gay, straight, rich, poor—all can stand in the circle of need and cry for help. I hope you don’t mind too much who you stand beside when you ask for help…including fundamentalists…and liberals…and bigots…and rednecks…and drunks…and people who smell like a whole lot of money…and people who smell like the streets. If you don’t mind who you stand with in this circle, then your need has probably taught you well enough to raise your hand with the rest of us and say, “Me too!” And if you have ever wondered why the church is full of so many imperfect people, so many hypocrites and sinners—this is why—they all stand in this circle of need, with more questions than answers, with flaws and wounds—jus...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Contributors
• Chapter 1 - Barbara Shires Blaisdell
• Chapter 2 - Teresa L. Fry Brown
• Chapter 3 - Jana Childers
• Chapter 4 - Linda L. Clader
• Chapter 5 - Yvette Flunder
• Chapter 6 - Mary G. Graves
• Chapter 7 - Linda Carolyn Loving
• Chapter 8 - Barbara K. Lundblad
• Chapter 9 - Karen Stokes
• Chapter 10 - Barbara Brown Taylor
• Chapter 11 - Mary Donovan Turner
• Chapter 12 - Margaret Moers Wenig
• Notes