Listening for God and preparing a sermon are a big part of what a pastor does. And we all know that when God speaks there is, at best, a 50/50 chance we are going to like what we hear. When one stops to listen, who knows what absurdities God might utter. A few years ago I read a book by Will Willimon entitled, “Preachers Dare: Speaking for God.” “Good title,” I thought.
Of all the things we do in the church, the idea of the sermon is one of the strangest. How odd to think that a bunch of folks gather on Sunday morning to listen to a man or woman stand up to speak and that through that person we expect God to speak. Willimon recounted that one of the most important ideas for preaching is that God speaks: God spoke at creation, God spoke to Abraham and Moses, God spoke at Jesus’ baptism and on the Mount of Transfiguration. But God also speaks through: God spoke through the prophets, God spoke
through Mary and her famous song, through John the Baptist as a voice crying in the wilderness, through an itinerant preacher from Nazareth named Jesus, through the apostles like Peter and Paul. And in ways I can never understand, God speaks through folks called and set apart for the task of preaching.
Gardner C. Taylor, sometimes referred to as the “dean of American preaching”, wrote “Preaching is a presumptuous business” where someone dares to “stand up…and declare that he or she brings from the Eternal God a message.” Willimon wrote about how the mission of the preacher is to “talk about, with and for God.” In preaching, as Willimon sees it, the human
and eternal intersect in a way that the preacher’s sermon can become God’s Word through the work of the Holy Spirit. Surely the fact that a preacher can say something which causes one to change their life and follow Jesus is proof of God’s Word being active. If this idea bothers you, think about how I feel (lol). The whole notion might be enough to cause me to find an excuse to skip the sermon this week…maybe just a song or two would suffice! Someone once asked me if I was ever worried that no one was listening on Sunday morning. I responded by saying that I was more worried that someone might be listening and actually go and do something based on what I said! Talk about responsibility! What idiot would take that on??? (please don’t answer that…lol).
Saying that one’s preaching is God speaking is not to lift up the preacher to a place above the congregation or to adopt a tone of authoritarianism. Willimon reminded preachers like me of our task….to speak that God may speak and to speak what God has spoken! Karl Barth wrote that preachers “speak only what we have received and what we have received is not under our control.”
Who in their right mind would stand up and say “Turn the other cheek” unless God spoke it to them first? (again, Please don’t answer that…) unless God spoke it to them first? (again, please don’t answer that…) I never cease to be amazed at how God will take what I say and use it to speak to someone. Most of us are horrible listeners… and even the best preachers are not even close to being up to the task to speak for God. Therefore, whenever the channel from my voice to your ears becomes a pathway for God’s Word, it is truly a miracle. Each week I open the scriptures and listen to what God might be saying. Then, I step behind the pulpit on Sunday morning to share what God has spoken to me. Might I sometimes speak a word from Wilson instead from the Lord? Most likely. But even then I trust that God’s grace and God’s voice is more powerful than whatever might come out of my mouth. Let it be so.
Pastor Wilson