Hilton Head Island, SC – December 28, 2014
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 4:1-9; Romans 10:5-15
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent? – Romans 10:14-15 (RSV)
Preaching Perusings For A Pen-Ultimate Sermon
Let me begin by saying that I am delighted to see all of you here this morning: long-time friends and former-parishioners and newer friends and present-parishioners. You are very kind to make the effort to attend worship on this Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s, and I feel genuinely honored by your presence. This is a major day in my life, and many thanks to you.
It is only fair to warn you that I have been thinking about this sermon for the past eleven years. On January 4, The Chapel Without Walls will celebrate the eleventh anniversary of its founding. For the first seven of those years or so, I was quietly scouting around for a youngish, probably-retired minister who might be willing to take over as pastor of The Chapel. All the possibilities who would have done very well were not interested, and the very few who were interested might not have done so well.
Then, in the providence of God, beginning a few years back, three other ministers started attending The Chapel with regularity,. First there was John Melin. John is a Lutheran pastor who spent his entire ministry in foreign countries, mostly in Europe, including stints in such exotic cities as Jerusalem, Moscow, and Amsterdam. More than a year ago, John and his wife Barbara moved back to Europe, to the South of France. But he is back in the States now for a couple of months, and we hope and trust that he will be an occasional wise man from the east who will grace us with his presence in the pulpit for several Sundays each year.
Next, in the order in which he also appeared at our doorstep (which is not really our doorstep at all, since this is The Chapel Without Walls and we do meet within the walls of Congregation Beth Yam) was Robert Naylor. Bob is a United Church of Christ minister who spent virtually all his career in Connecticut. Now he and his wife Gretchen divide their time between Cape Cod in the summer and Hilton Head Island in the winter. In case you’re wondering, by the way, Bob and Gretchen are elsewhere with family for the holidays. Bob is also a church consultant, and he goes from congregation to congregation throughout the Northeast and elsewhere in the country helping churches through crises or to learn better how to do what they already do well.
Then, within the last year-plus, Adrienne O’Neill and her husband Larry started coming to The Chapel. Adrienne is a United Methodist minister, and has served as a hospital and hospice chaplain. She also served a church in Rhode Island, and from there she and Larry moved to Moss Creek a few years ago. In addition, Adrienne is the State Director for the Parkinson’s Action Network. She herself was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease several years ago, and decided if you can’t beat ‘em, you may as well join ‘em, which she has done.
With these other three clergy as integral partners in our congregation, a new and unanticipated light began to dawn on yours truly. We don’t need a minister to succeed me; we’ll invite all three of these new kids on our block to join the party! And lo, and furthermore behold, they all agreed! The congregation also affirmed the new arrangement. And I agreed to continue on as one of the co-pastors to maintain continuity for the foreseeable future. What this all means in practice is that Adrienne and I shall each preach seventeen to twenty sermons a year, and Bob and John will take the other Sundays. So here we all are, on what I had long thought would be my last sermon preached from this pulpit. As it now is, with the new team ministry, I might still be tottering up here ten or fifteen years from hence.
That is almost the complete introduction to this sermon, except to explain the peculiar title. During Advent I preached a series of three sermons called Preaching Perusings for a Non-Advent Advent. Incidentally, there is no such word in the dictionary as “perusings,” plural. You could look it up. I coined the word, frankly, because it became an alliteration, when yoked with “preaching,” and I adore alliteration, except that I never say “adore.” To peruse (verb) means rather quickly to scan something, as a book or newspaper, or to dip briefly into some subject or another. The “pen-ultimate” part of the title means “next-to-last.” That term is in the dictionary. This is the next to last of all the combined sermons I shall preach into the dim and distant future. And with that, the homiletic introduction is now finished.
Years ago, however, when I thought this would not be my pen-ultimate but my ultimate (my last) sermon, I started a file called “Last Sermon.” Anything I thought would apply to a last sermon I carefully stashed away in the file. Well, dear hearts, even if this isn’t the last, it is going to have a lot of those perfectly pithy perusings about this and that and the other. If I used all of them, we would be here till next Sunday. As it is, we will likely be finished by 6:00 PM or so.
What I shall now say is me speaking only for myself. Some clergy would likely agree with what I shall say, but others would have quite different opinions on the issue. That is both understandable and acceptable. For me, the greatest privilege of being a parish minister has been the challenge and the awesome responsibility of preaching. I find it hard to believe that almost at age 76, and because of the providential affirmation of Messrs. Melin and Naylor and Ms. O’Neill, Mr. Miller now has the opportunity to continue preaching as long as I am able, without having to do it every Sunday, of which I am probably still able but increasingly unwilling. John and Barbara Melin drove all the way from Minneapolis to be here today, starting very bright and early Friday morning and arriving on the island last evening. Adrienne, on the other hand, leisurely drove across the bridge earlier this morning. And the Naylors are off the island.
Anyway, although I relished pastoral care and teaching and administration and working with members of church staffs, preaching has been the ministerial niche which most kept my spiritual and mental juices flowing. I learned preaching from several masters in the mid-20th century. Preaching in general is now very different from what it was back then. I will admit that though the theology of my preaching has changed considerably through the years, the essence of how I do it hasn’t changed much, if at all. Today, fifty years plus nine days after I was ordained, I am about as homiletically “with it” as the two centenarians, George Burns and Irving Berlin, were “with it” for brutishly bawdy comedy or rock and roll.
Years ago theology professor Tom Trotter wrote, “The glory of the ordained ministry in my view is this: The minister is the last generalist in a society that has become so overspecialized that humane services and wholeness are difficult to find. In this sense, the ordained minister may again become the parson (person) in the community, not because he or she is necessarily the most learned, as in an earlier time, but because he or she is the most whole.” I’m not at sure about the latter statement, but it has been a vocational gift to me from God to be a generalist in churches largely consisting of specialists of one sort or another. I have been blessed by all of them.
Preachers fret a lot about being relevant. Craig Barnes said something very interesting about that. He is currently the president of Princeton Theological Seminary, and at one time was pastor of the Christ Presbyterian Church in Madison, Wisconsin, the church I grew up in and in which I was ordained. Dr. Barnes wrote, “The problem with this success at being relevant is --- well, God. The church marketers are claiming that they can make the church relevant to you, but when they do this, God ceases to be God and becomes instead just one more optional resource. By contrast, the historic churches and the seminaries that serve them are filled with old theological traditions. Most of them don’t feel particularly relevant on any given day. That’s by design. Their devotion is not to make the gospel relevant to the individual, but to make the individual relevant to the gospel. That is the function of our creeds.”
What a magnificent summary of the tension between trying to preach relevantly and trying to be true to the Gospel! But how much different is preaching today from what it was in the time of Jesus or the apostle Paul? There is at least one major difference. In the 1st century, Jesus was proclaiming the kingdom of God, and Paul was proclaiming Jesus (almost certainly to the dismay of the risen Christ, but that was last Sunday’s sermon.) Nevertheless, Jesus and Paul did their preaching to people who had never before heard or heard of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus gave many distinctive parables of the kingdom, of which one of the earliest was the so-called parable of the sower and the seed. All three synoptic Gospels include it in the narrative. Jesus related what everyone knew, that a farmer at that time scattered wheat or oat or barley seeds by hand. Inevitably the seeds fell on different kinds of soil. Some soil was thin, some rocky, some weed-choked, and some very good, rich soil. So it is with preaching, Jesus explained to his disciples. You say what you need to say, and you hope it takes root, but it will never take root evenly for everyone to whom you speak. Furthermore, some types of preaching and preachers appeal more to some people than to others. Do your best, said Jesus, and keep on keeping on. There is no way around this phenomenon of being unable to connect well with everyone.
It may not be evident to you, and I have almost never considered openly stating this, but I assume everyone to whom I have ever preached is, in at least a minimal sense, familiar with Christianity. That is, everyone knows at least a few of the tenets of the Christian Gospel. They might agree with almost none the tenets, but they do know them. However, I also believe we all need help in learning how to live the Gospel in our daily lives. Thus in my ministry, I hope I have consciously become much more of a teacher than technically a preacher of Good News which no one ever heard before. A few members of Congregation Beth Yam call me “Rabbi.” I’ll be honest with you: I like it! And the historical figure I most admire was also called Rabbi.
Somebody wrote some excellent thoughts in the November 13, 2013 issue of Christian Century. Unfortunately I failed to write the author’s name on the quoted page, which is No. 32. Some of you will tell me, “You could Google it.” I respond that if I tried, my computer would crash, and it would not be a good thing to have a computer crash the week in which we moved to The Seabrook. And Christmas intervened in the middle of that week. And I would have gone absolutely stark-raving mad because of my computer crashing prior to this congregational celebration. And you would not want me to go stark-raving mad - - - would you? Of course not.
Anyhow, this anonymous writer said something profoundly ponderable. “As I see it, thinking is important in a religious life, but not belief. Belief is only one result of thought, and in my experience, belief can actually suspend thinking. Probing, struggling, even arguing with God and with the texts of our traditions is honoring God in ways that I used to understand only belief to be. As Thomas Aquinas said, ‘The more we probe for God, the closer we come.’ Or as the poet William Butler Yeats wrote in one of his best poems, ‘God guard me from those thoughts men think/ In the mind alone;/ He that sings a lasting song/ Thinks in a marrow-bone.’”
The Church of Jesus Christ is filled with all kinds of people, as is every congregation of the Church. A Chapelite sent Lois and me a Christmas card, in which she included bloopers from various church bulletins and newsletters. Among them: “Don’t let worry kill you off – let the church help.” “Potluck supper Sunday at 5:00 PM – Prayer and medication to follow.” “Miss Charlene Mason sang ‘I will not pass this way again,’ giving obvious pleasure to the congregation.” And finally, “The Rector will preach his farewell message after which the choir will sing, ‘Break forth into joy.’” You can’t beat the Church, but it can beat itself if it tries.
How long should a sermon be, especially a pen-ultimate sermon? Eric Graham was the Scottish Episcopalian Bishop of Brechin in Scotland, and an auld Scotsman told him exactly how long sermons should last: “Five pandrops weel sookit and nae crunchin’.” In English that translates as “Five peppermint drops well sucked and no crunching.” Well, we’re almost there.
But what other pen-ultimate thoughts might be included in a pen-ultimate sermon? The 19th century philosopher Henri Frederic Amiel said, “Life is short and we have not much time for gladdening the hearts of those who travel this way with us. Oh, be swift to love! Make haste to be kind!” O.B. Kretzmann was the President of Valparaiso University in Indiana. When he died on New Year’s Day in 1976, a publication quoted something he had written years before. “I lie quietly as the sky beyond my window turns from gray to blue and the inevitable bruises of the soul seem to heal, the night flies, and my own little acquaintance with grief assumes its true perspective against the majesty of all the years in which he has caused this glory to happen. For a moment I am secluded into peace; the shadow, a hint, a fraction of what is to come. For suddenly I know, with a warm contentment, that there will surely be a day when I shall bridge for the last time this chasm, narrow but deep, between the solemnity of the night and the glory of the day, and there will be angel beyond the window, visible only to God and to me, and a voice, far beyond the stammering of earth, telling me to come home.” That may be florid prose, but it beautiful and comforting prose, and maybe only a preacher could write words like that.
Or there is that classic, complex, difficult, alcoholic, haunted, Nobel-prize-winning Southern novelist, William Faulkner: “All the moving things are eternal in man’s history and have been written before, and if a man writes hard enough, sincerely enough, and, with unalterable determination never, never, never to be quite satisfied with it, he will repeat them, because art like poetry takes care of its own, shares its bread.”
“But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Rom. 10:14-15) Those are distinctively 1st century questions, but they also ring true for the 21st century.
For reasons completely unknown to me, I believe God called me to be a minister of the Gospel. If I were He, I don’t think I would have done that. I am grateful to those of you who are here today whom I knew in another church and in another life. I also am grateful for those of you who have known me in this church and in this new life. I am grateful to my three colleagues in ministry that together we shall try to keep the light of the Gospel glowing in this congregation for however many years God shall grant us. I thank God that He has given me sufficient health and strength to assist in leading worship nearly every week over the past fifty years, and I trust that He shall guide me in the time to come, however much of it there shall be.
What a glorious burden and frightening flight it is to preach to people with bruised spirits