As my 10thanniversary of ordination rolls around this week I’m reflecting on my short time in ministry. Today I’m thinking about preaching. I remember the first sermon I ever gave, it was sunrise service Easter morning at Good Shepherd Lutheran in Sandy, UT. I was in college and planning on attending seminary after graduation. After I delivered the sermon, I sat down in the pew and cried my eyes out. I felt so privileged to stand in that pulpit. That feeling of privilege and honor hasn’t diminished one bit.I've found that I can’t write a sermon without prayer. Although too often I try and I hit a block and my sermon feel s dry and lame. That’s usually my reminder that I need to pray. Without fail, every time, I mean every single time, when I ask God for help immediately after an idea will come that breaks open the scripture and allows the writing to flow. Prayer is the foundation of preaching for me. My prayer is usually something like “God, please help me write this sermon. Give me the words you want your people to hear. Help me to understand this scripture. And not just the words, Lord, but give me also the ability to deliver the sermon so that your word goes deep into their hearts and helps them know your love.” I love preaching. I think it is so fascinating and interesting. There’s so much going on, so many parts, that I imagine when I’m tired of everything else I’ll still want to preach. I love the first part, which is simply studying the scripture. I read the assigned text and just write down all the questions I have about it. Then I ask God to speak to me personally, what does He want to say me. That’s usually when I get convicted. I’ll never forget writing a sermon on forgiveness and feeling God convict me that I was holding a grudge against my Dad. I hadn’t talked to him in 4 years and so I called him that Saturday night and re-established a relationship. The scripture works on me, and it is endlessly interesting to me.Of course the next part is figuring out what God wants to say to His people through me through this scripture. When I’m figuring out a sermon I’m thinking of individuals. Often I actually write the sermon with only one person in mind(and half the time they don’t show up to church that week!) I am working to balance my theological training, with pastoral care issues with the state of the world and the news and make it something that people actually will hear and be impacted by.And then there’s the actual preaching of the sermon which is a whole other ball game. The Holy Spirit fills you up and you start preaching and you can see the words falling on different people in different ways. And so there’s the mid-sermon audible to take it a slightly different direction or add a line or delete a certain line or emphasize a particular point in response to what you see the Spirit doing. And it’s still not done. Because now the people get a chance to respond. Most of them don’t tell you(really) what they felt about the sermon. Which is fine, because it’s meant to be a vehicle through which God does His work and often God’s just uses a word or a line or a story to spin off a whole different idea in a person’s mind and heart and speak just to them. Sometimes people will tell me that it really spoke to them, and that is very gratifying. I’m a sucker for compliments—it’s probably a flaw of mine, but it’s true. The handshake line at the end of church feels like my report card.Writing a sermon is like creating a piece of art. As the artist I’m never fully satisfied, and it’s never out of my mind until I’m working on the next one. I’ll go home and ask my wife what she thought. She gets tired of me asking and I’m learning not to ask. Because really me asking that question turns the sermon into something about me rather than something God used to do something. It diminishes it. but I still want to know, I want credit. Forgive me. And then Sunday night I’ll rehearse the words in my head and wonder if I think I said the right things or not. I love it. I get excited to preach. I’m never happy with my sermon before I preach it. I’m so glad I get to do this. And I’m amazed that God would deign to do anything in someone’s life through my preaching. I’ve been preaching for 10 years now. I don’t know if I’m getting any better at it. I remember preaching my first sermon at my first congregation, Our Redeemer’s in Helena Montana. It was a good sermon(by which I mean it was well received) afterwards my senior pastor congratulated me and said that I was going to have a hard time topping that. I worried about that for a minute, but I think the way I preached that day is how I’ve preached every day. I tend to use a lot of personal stories. I follow my professors advice and make sure I’m never the hero of the story, but usually the stooge(which isn’t hard to do!). And half the time I’m preaching to myself and the things I know I need to hear. I need to hear that God loves me, that he really does, even though I don’t think he does, he does. And I figure other’s need to hear that too. I assume I’m not all that different than the people I’m preaching too.Being a preacher shapes the way you look at life. Everything is spiritual. I see every experience through the eyes of a preacher and am always wondering ‘if that will preach.’ And it usually does.
It’s a lot of work, preaching. It’s fascinating how tired I am after I preach. I usually am buzzed for about an hour and then I crash hard, especially if it was an emotional sermon. I put my whole self into a sermon. I love it, probably more than anything else I do as a pastor.