Wellspring UMC; Pentecost/Confirmation/Mother’s Day; May 11, 2008: “They Heard”:

-Act 2: 1-12; John 7:37-39

For years now I’ve had this thought that I’d preach a sermon about preaching a sermon. Not a tutorial of mechanics, but what goes into the utterance of the Word, what brings the Word to life, what transfers the Word to flesh from behind a wooden box turned on end, and what it is like to try to bring a Word from God to the congregation.

I’ve spent my life listening to sermons, and in fact, when I exercise and travel, I listen to them on my MP3 player. For my devotions in the mornings, I’ll wander across the world wide web to listen to artisans whose craft is taking the Holy text and breathing life into the listener by sharing what the Spirit gives. I even have stacks of books filled with sermons. Some pithy, some stodgy, some insightful, many powerful to the point where the veil of misunderstanding is torn in two and that which was misunderstood, or even non-existent, is transformed to new life. Heck, I’ve even taught a class on sermons. I love sermons.

Of course, this has not always been the case. When I was the age of our young singers and probably even the age of these who join the Church today, my bulletin was filled with evidence of quiet games – X’s and O’s from tic tac toe, grids of dots connected and shaded through the battle of minds between siblings, and all of the “o’s” on the page were blackened. That which was uttered from the pulpit sounded like that which is emitted by the teacher on a Charlie Brown cartoon – “wa, wah wah, wa wa, wah wa,” and this was especially true for me since my father was the preacher and children are much less apt to listen to their parents, than they are to tune into others.

But over time, as my faith developed, and life questions began to arise, I began to receive wisdom in what was shared by God’s servants. My father didn’t seem to be quite so ‘out of touch with reality’ as I had claimed he was, and other preachers brought new revelations. And with the interest in listening, then being exposed to four years of some of the best sermons from one of the best preachers in the nation, I began to hear things I never had before, and in the hearing, my life was shaped and molded.

Interesting enough, there are few sermons that I can remember verbatim. A quote here or a point there, but no full text. And what I’ve come to realize is that it’s not necessarily what is said but what one hears and even THAT one hears a Word from God.

Have you experienced that transition from hearing “blah, blah, blah,” to some Word that stirred you up so much that you realized that there is a lot more to life than what you thought you knew? Has the Word taken on flesh so powerfully that your flesh takes on the Word? Has the God of all things spoken to YOU, and when He did He actually changed you?

Like a column of clay, waiting to be molded and shaped into God’s creation, this is God’s intention through the craft of preaching. I say, “God’s intention,” because that’s what the sermon is about, at least, that’s how I see it, and that’s what is heard through great preachers. It is God’s Word, not man or woman’s word. Oh, there are times when pulpits have been used for human endeavors, and in fact the secular coined the term “bully pulpit” to describe this, but the focus of the sermon is intended to be God and how we might join in God’s work and/or how God desires to join with us.

Ah, but sermons are tricky things. At times they can be allusive, and at other times discomforting. The Word can be threatening, the Word can be awesome, the Word can be that which we don’t want but need to hear, or the Word can be the only thing we are able hear. The Word is mystery, but what else would you expect from the God of the universe? As such, often it’s not so much what is spoken but what is heard and that it is heard.

As a preacher, it’s wonderful to hear a great sermon, but it is humbling and a bit daunting to preach one. Unless you’ve done it, the process of putting together a sermon is hard to describe. The best way I can describe it is throwing a bunch of thoughts, ideas, prayers, and situations in a hopper, then allowing a master to produces something out of such a jumble.

The process by which I get to Sunday begins long before that day, but along the way, God speaks through prayer, study, and experiences, most often in ways unknown to my consciousness. Yes, I do research, reflect upon the scripture, try to keep current with the news and the members of this body. I think about where we are as a church and where God is leading, what is most on our hearts and minds, and I even solicit thoughts and reflections from others, but in the end, no matter what I think or want that word to be, what is heard is God’s Word.

“Huh,” some might be thinking, “What does that mean?” Well, what that means is that I don’t know what the Word is intended to be until just before Sunday, and in fact, often what I have here is supplemented by what God speaks from there (look up).

Every Saturday morning around 5:30 I wake up and head downstairs. I plug in the coffee pot, log into the computer, take a look over notes, pray over the scripture, then I literally wait. I wait for a Word, an illustration, an idea, a prompting, and eventually it comes. Sometimes far less quickly than I want, but it comes, and when it does it flows.

It literally feels as if the Word flows through my head and out of my fingers onto the computer screen. I get into a rhythm, a kind of zone, and when I am there it feels like I am connected to a power source. The key for me is to stay in that place, let go, and let God speak, and my sincere intention and belief is that what is spoken here is a Word from God.

Oh, I’ll admit that there have been times when I haven’t been as patient as I’ve needed to be. Times when I didn’t wait long enough, and honestly, those are the times when I’m most frustrated and most at risk of speaking the word I want, rather than what God wants. But what’s amazing to me is that even in those times, despite myself, God finds a way to speak to you.

Preaching is an amazing and mysterious thing, ask anyone who has done it, for in the midst of it and through it, the Spirit of Life is heard.

You can talk to any preacher with a year of preaching under his/her belt, and they’ll tell you that time and time again, folks come out of those doors after the service and say, “Preacher, I was so moved when you said, _______.” And in your mind you think, “I didn’t say that.” Or there are times when one comes to the task dreading it, KNOWING this HAS to be one of the WORST sermons you’ve ever done, and incredibly, those are often the ones that touch the most people. When such things happen, one realizes it’s not so much about what is spoken, as what is heard and that it’s heard.

When I think back on sermons I’ve preached, I often can’t tell you what the message was, and you probably can’t either. I can go back and reflect upon your responses, but I can’t tell you what topics most stir your souls or what necessarily makes a good sermon, and you would probably have a hard time doing that as well. I can’t even tell you what how this whole thing really works, and you might feel the same. But the one thing that I’ve come to understand is that it’s not so much about what is shared in the sermon, but it is about how the source, namely God, shares with us, and that God is heard.

Just before the sermon we heard John’s account of Jesus’ promise of the Spirit to the disciples. This passage finds Jesus in a dangerous and risky situation. He’s at one of the three great Jewish feasts, the Feast of Booths. There He proclaims His Divinity. The response from the religious establishment is one of outrage, and they try to seize him. In their anger they cannot hear what he says, however others do. Some agree with the Pharisees, but some want to hear more. Some are even ready to follow Jesus. In the middle of such a setting he cries out to them, “If anyone is thirsty, come and drink. Whoever believes in me...streams of living water will flow within him...whoever comes to me will receive the Spirit of God.”

Though the Pharisees close their ears, some heard Him and wanted to know more, some even wanted to follow. Maybe they remembered what was said, but my hunch is that the important part was that what they heard convinced them that this was God’s Word made flesh.

At the beginning of our service we heard the traditional reading for Pentecost from the book of Acts, the recounting of that day when the Spirit of God swept across people of all nations and creeds. These were people who did not speak the same language or even agree with one another theologically or otherwise, and yet Luke writes, “all were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit enabled them...and they all heard in their OWN native tongue one voice, one message, one powerful Word.” It really wasn’t about what was

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heard, since what was spoken was in different languages, but the power of that moment came in the truth THAT they heard, and that which they heard and received was the Spirit of God.

On this Pentecost Sunday, and any other Sunday for that matter, the Truth is that you don’t come with your mind set to hear a specific word, and in fact, what you hear might not even be what is intended to be conveyed. However, our expectations or what is spoken is not as important as THAT you heard and received some Word, some Grace, some Truth from God.

On this Confirmation Sunday, those who are being confirmed may still be playing tic tac toe, heck some adults may do the same things, such as thinking through the grocery list, and yet I’ve seen the Spirit come and snap you out of it. We’ve experienced the grace that stops our minds and focuses us to hear some Word that we need for that day.

On this Mother’s Day, we probably don’t remember what our mother’s said or did for us, as much as we remember THAT they said and did for us. In them and through them, there were times when the grace of God shone through, and in those times we heard.

So the next time you show up for church, or maybe even show up in quiet time to hold audience with God, maybe it’s not so much about what we want to hear or worrying what God might lay on us, as much as it is giving praise THAT we can hear, and that the source of that Word is the same which alighted upon the world 2000 years ago and continues to burn deep through ears to hearts to souls. Amen.