The Words of My Mouth - January 21, 2007
I never wanted to be a Saturday morning sermon writer. The preachers I always admired seemed to have their act together much earlier in the week. They seemed to have folders filled with clippings, wonderful tidbits from newspapers, Christian Century magazine, and the latest theological journals, and poetry by Mary Oliver and Wendell Berry. I was taught in seminary that when I have a theological observation about something that happens in real life, I should write it down and file it one of those folders, or at least save it somewhere in a virtual folder on my computer. That way, when a sermon needs just the right illustration, I would have a whole drawer of them from which to choose.
It doesn’t really work that way for me. So far, nearly three years into a regular preaching gig, I still do not have that drawer full of pithy observations and brilliant, shining illustrations. I don’t even have a folder. Clearly I failed to heed the lesson of my mentors.
I intended to be one of those preachers who write on Thursdays. I try every week. In fact I wrote this sentence on Thursday. (This one, too!) But, as I was explaining to someone last week, too much happens between Thursday afternoon and Saturday morning. My sermons need longer to cook than the really proficient preachers’ sermons do, apparently.
Our texts for today are about preaching, in a way. Proclamation is happening left and right in Scripture today. I love this beautiful image in Nehemiah. The Book is opened and read, and the people stand themselves, to hear it. I can see in my mind’s eye Ezra in a pulpit, something like this one, and the people surrounding him, eager to hear what the Book has to say for them. And they wept for the beauty of it when it was read to them, the words bringing them to tears. And when they could no longer compose themselves, could no longer contain the beauty of those words, when their legs and backs could no longer bear the weight of it, they bowed down and worshipped God with their faces pressed to the ground, so moved were they by the proclamation of the Word of God. And all the while, Ezra, moved by his love for the people, interpreted the Word carefully, so that the congregation might fully understand the beauty, and hope, and redemption within, so that they might be drawn closer, ever closer, to God. It’s a breathtaking image.
What Nehemiah describes is the ideal for most preachers I know. When we go to seminary, what we think about, dream about, hope for, is a chance to carefully and lovingly interpret scripture for a congregation we love, so that they might be drawn closer, ever closer to God. We attempt to open up the Book in the presence of the people, open up the hope, the redemption, the beauty that is found within. Not because we are somehow closer to it than they are—we want them to stand with us when we read it, even if the standing is figurative—but because we have somehow, for some reason we can’t articulate, been asked to do this thing.
Because it is important to us, we look for help anywhere we can get it-even huddled at our computers while our spouses and children sleep in on Saturday morning. That’s why it was with some curiosity that I read in Luke about Jesus preaching in the temple. The more I looked at it, the more astonished I became. The preaching lesson from Jesus goes something like this:
- Read Scriptures
- Close the book
- Sit down
- When people look at you funny, say “What? You heard me!”
This must be the shortest sermon on record!
The words from Jesus’ mouth are pretty bold that day in the synagogue. They are words that will trouble the waters in his hometown, where he is known as Mary and Joseph’s boy.
At first glance, it would appear that what Jesus is saying is that the Word of God lies in the hearing of the words on the scroll, that the very act of unrolling and re-rolling , with the spoken words that come sandwiched in between, are enough to transform ink on papyrus into the living Word. But what if it wasn’t the words themselves, but the speaker who made the words into the Living Word of God? If for words to become Word, Jesus—or somebody very Jesus-like—must read them, then we are in a spot of trouble. Try as we might, we will never be Jesus, even though the effort is worthwhile.
So, which is it? Is it the ink on the page, or is it the speaker of the words that makes a mere speech in to a proclamation, a divine Word? I’ll let you in on a little secret: sometimes I want too much from a sermon. Sometimes I want so badly to be Ezra, that it just doesn’t work the way I planned. Sometimes I agonize over each word, massaging each syllable, sculpting every paragraph until I have taken what could have been a divine enough word and have made it into a golden calf. It happens; maybe it’s the kind of rookie mistake that many preachers make.
When this happens, I am reminded once again that the Word of God is neither ink on paper, nor electrons on a computer screen, nor the efforts of a well-meaning preacher with a lively imagination, great illustrations, and passable diction. (Someone I might be after many more years of this.) The Word of God is, in fact a living, breathing, Spirit. That is what brought the crowd listening to Ezra to the floor. That is what made them weep for joy at the hearing of it. That is how Jesus could proclaim the Scriptures fulfilled at the hearing of them.
There is a saying, attributed to St Francis: “Preach the gospel at all times. Use words if necessary.” The kernel of truth hidden in those ten words is that sometimes words get in the way of some really spectacular gospel. And that is a tough thing for a person who “does words” for a living to say. I stand here every week and bring a word because I am a minister of Word and Sacrament, and we reformed Christians decided long ago that the two go together. So, we don’t come here and enact empty ritual, fulfilling our religious obligation for the week. We share a Word proclaimed. We come here expecting— hoping—to sit and stand and sing and pray in the presence of the living Word, the living, breathing, Spirit.
And the preacher’s hope is that the mysterious thing, the mysterium tremendum, will happen somewhere in the time and space between her breath leaving her lungs with each word, and the vibrations entering the structures of your ears. And she hopes that some divine alchemy happens which turn the words of her mouth into a vehicle for Living Word. Whether she has spent too much time and attention on those words of her mouth—or not enough.
But since mere words are not enough and if in fact words can sometimes get in the way, then the proclamation of the gospel cannot just be the domain of preachers, can it?
In fact it cannot. The proclamation of the gospel is what we do after the words cease to vibrate, when the preacher’s breath has left the building, when the ears have gone on to other things. It is what the crowd hearing Ezra did after they picked themselves up, dusted themselves off, dried their tears of joy and left the square to “eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared,” forever changed by having heard the familiar words one more time.
Every Sunday, before I begin to preach, I pray. I always end the prayer with the familiar words from the Psalm for today (Psalm 19) “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our redeemer.” But the beginning of that Psalm is just as important: “The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.” The Psalmist understands that even if their were no words, the glory of God would still be proclaimed. The Word of God is a living, breathing, Spirit. The words of our mouths are only the beginning.
Thanks be to God!
