Transcript

I heard Monday night from President Laney that Dean Waits was leaving. Oh, that's too bad, really. I appreciate the introduction and the informal nature of this occasion. I know it's a dinner speech, and then we go from here to the service of worship, and I know something of the nature of the assignment. But I'm honored by it. I think we've had a remarkable three days. Inspired, we've been informed, and some of us have been depressed. I mean, how are we going to preach after hearing all this extraordinary ability? But it's been good time. Every speaker has set a fine table. And we've had some of everything. We've had from black -eyed peas to escargot. We've had crawfish and lobster. It's just been remarkable. And such a variety of gifts have been shared with us, and I have not sensed in anyone lecturing about preaching or preaching. I have not sensed that anyone took the assignment lightly and said, let's just make it potluck. Every meal was well-prepared and beautifully served, and generated conversations about preaching that I have welcomed, and I do appreciate the Dean and Gerald and others who designed the program focusing on the pulpit for this year. We have had so many tables set, and I don't know what Dr. Gardner has for us. Is Dr. Gardner here? He's not here. He's got an hour to get ready. Well, I don't know if he's going to push out the dessert cart or what. He is a great preacher. When Ebony Magazine published the ten outstanding black preachers in America, the first big spread, the others got smaller pieces, but the first big spread, Dr. Taylor, great human being, great preacher, and he's going to have the privilege of having a marvelous worship service as the context for it. I hope you've left a little room for dessert. Personally, if I had my privilege of instructing him, I would tell him that I'm ready with all this rich stuff. I'm ready for some turnip greens and cornbread and something like that. But it's been a good time for me. I have pondered a great deal about this assignment or this invitation. It's from the dean. It's an assignment. I know it'll be informal and be somewhat brief, but what will be the subject matter? So I have decided, wisely or unwisely, I have decided to go back to the material in the folder that is marked P301. Introduction to preaching. Now, that may not be a good move, but I realized that I should share that because I have an advantage over most of the people, maybe all the people in the room. It was an advantage that once Bishop Odin had as a teacher of preaching. I have the privilege of hearing the first quivering sermon of students. Now, some of you who don't understand what that is like will sometimes say to me, poor Fred, you mean you listen to all those beginning sermons. Yes. I have since Nettie and I came to Emory, to Atlanta and to Candler. I have listened now to a little short of 6,000 sermons. Workshops, classes, this and that, a little less than 6,000. It was a worry of mine when I moved from just teaching New Testament to teaching some preaching. It was a worry of mine that my ear would be bombarded and I would grow homiletically deaf. Then I would get to where I was not listening, that the student up there quivering through that first sermon, just in knots and doing the best she could, he could. And I would be sitting there with my mind wandering because it was here we go again. But not through any discipline of mind, not through any activity or exercise of my own. God has seen fit to give me a listening ear through all those sermons. And I still listen every semester to those sermons as though not just their first sermon, but mine too. And once in a while the student will preach a sermon, first sermon, rough as a corn cob, some of them. But some of those sermons move me and I find it difficult to start the discussion because I want us to just sing the doxology and leave. But I feel we owe it to the student to make comments. And I would never want the student to think that it was a pretty good sermon. So we just start the crucifixion right there. But I want the persons in the room who have been my students and others to know that I have the best job. It's a very busy job, but the best job on the faculty. I want to go back to P -301. Dr. Gayle O'Day and I teach that course. We use adjunct people for this and that. We use helpers in classes. But we're very careful about the course. We don't let anybody else teach P-301. If there's a guest on campus who can teach preaching, we let them teach an advanced elective. But we teach P-301 because that is the important course in the field, because that's the way we start. And that's where the students are introduced to the importance of the ear and the mouth. To learn how to listen. The Bible takes listening very seriously. The word listening is translated in the Bible more than 50% of the time by the word obey. The Bible doesn't know the difference. It is a fundamental word, but so hard to do. We all have marvelous mechanisms for not listening. It is difficult to do. The Bible recognizes this. And you know that marvelous passage by the servant, the suffering servant in Isaiah 50, God opened my ear and I did not rebel. The word literally is God dug out my ear. You don't just listen. It takes an act of God really to listen. And in order to serve, the servant said, I gave my back to the Smiders, my cheek to those who pull out the beard, my face to those who spit, and then God opened my ear, most painful of all of it. But I didn't rebel. And so we start with the introduction of the ear. Because as Professor O'Day said in her lecture yesterday, it is the person who can hear the Gospel, who can preach the Gospel. Preaching is like singing. If you don't have the ear, then you don't have the voice. We start with that. It's just so extremely important. And we talk about the mouth, of course, speaking, because our culture tends to minimize speaking. Sticks and stones break my bones. Words will never harm me. Words, words, words. Yeah, anybody can talk. All of that is false. It's false. And unless the students begin with a profound respect for words, and what it is that you do when you say something to somebody, unless a student can understand that speaking is the fundamental human sacrament, you can mow the yard with the extremities of your body. You can paint the basement of the church with the extremities of your body. But if you witness for Jesus Christ, you get a lump in your throat, because that's so hard to do. And anybody who says words, words, words, anybody can talk has never tried to bring up an important subject with anybody. I know husbands and wives who just put it off and put it off because it is so hard to speak. And then to speak of the most important subject, God's grace in Jesus Christ, it is a matter for those who really preach. It is a matter of drawing the breath in pain to tell the story. This is why it is so, so difficult to preach, to stand up in a room and see strangers there, and yet share with them that which is more intimate than your family. More important than life to folk that might have just been passing by, stopping in. So, Professor O'Day, and I think we ought to start P-301, because it's not just a matter about the ear in the mouth, the ear in the mouth are connected. Did you remember what Isaiah says? Morning by morning, God wakens my ear. God wakens my ear so that I may sustain with a word. God wakens my ear so that I can sustain with a word the person who's weary. They are related. You don't just go hear lectures on preaching and then prepare a sermon. It's not that easy, it's not that smooth. One doesn't just hear preaching and then go preach. There's a lot of distance between the ear and the mouth. What goes in the ear to the brain, to the heart, to the soul, and then out the mouth. It goes in the ear and if the student was really listening, the books are grabbed and the student runs to the library. And the library closes and you say, where did that student go? And the student has gone to the chapel. Get ready. Ear, brain, heart, soul, and out the mouth. We teach at Candler P-301. There are some people in this room that have taken it from me and they're sitting there mad now. But what I want to do, what I want to do, and this may not be wise, but I'm going to do it anyway. And if you don't think it's wise or if you feel insulted, don't tell me about it. I'm a fragile human being. This is what I'm going to do in P-301. It's been a long time since some of you took P-301. In P-301, we don't start immediately on exegesis to get something to say and then designing the sermon and figuring out how to fashion a way to say it. We don't start there. We do that. We get into that. That's what we're instructed to do. But we start with comments prior to that. What I did in preparation for tonight was to open. It's the third drawer down in my filing cabinet. And every semester I teach P-301, there's a folder there. And I took session one sheet out of all those files. I am in my 12th year here. I took them all out and read them and digested in a few statements. What do I say to the student in P-301 before we ever start working on sermons? And that's what I'm going to tell you. Now, students who've had this course as recently as this semester, I don't want you to feel like, oh, I've heard all that because I remember having you in class and you weren't listening. So I took all those folders. And there are quite a few because some years I teach it both semesters. Took all those folders. I noticed several things. Most of what I say in that opening session is the same every time. I change it a little bit to make the dean and others think I'm continuing to create and all that. But basically it's the same. I boiled it down into 14 statements. And I'm going to read these to you. If you recognize it, so much the better. In fact, I would be keenly disappointed if I say anything in these 14 statements that you had not already embraced and lived out yourself. But there is nothing so delightful, especially in a week when we've just had so many new and marvelous voices among us to hear something we recognize. This you will recognize. I will just read the 14 statements. Number one, we have all heard good preachers. But no one preaches well enough to be imitated. Find your own voice and prepare your own sermons. Your favorite preacher may be a violin. And you may discover that you're a trumpet. I'm not going to elaborate on these. Number two, the key to consistently effective preaching is the discipline of daily work. I'm sorry about that. It is very often not exciting. But remember, there is more to walking than just not dancing. You have the right to call the simplest task Mickey Mouse only after you have mastered it. Number three, the surest way to stop growing is to stop reading. The surest way to rest satisfied with your achievements is to stop reading. And to read thoroughly and to master one good book will enable you to read all other books with greater speed, with greater ease, and with greater profit. I'm tempted to stop there. People waste so much time on books. Number four, carry through on every impulse to its conclusion before other new and fresh impulses smother the preceding one. A preacher cannot live very long on impulses unattended. Number five, even the most careful professional attention to the sins of others does not release you from struggles with your own. When attending to your own soul, select resource material which makes a demand on you because many devotional books weaken rather than strengthen character. But beware, there are sins of the spirit as well as sins of the flesh. Even an answer to prayer can leave you feeling smug, superior, and exempt. Number six, learn to live with the fact that there are few, if any, clues to your effectiveness as a preacher. Both popularity and unpopularity are absolutely worthless as tests of the value of your preaching. Number seven, do not expect everything you preach to be confirmed by your pulse. Not all sermons will have visceral support. But how you feel about a matter may not be a true register of its importance or its merit. Some things are true even while we're asleep. Number eight, you are not obliged to be everywhere and to say everything. Leave some things unsaid and some meetings unattended. Choose your times and your places carefully so that your words will proceed out of silence and your presence will proceed out of absence. Number nine, do not be seduced by the fact that much of your seminary education is designed to prepare you to handle crises. Most likely, it will not be the crises so much as the routine demands of ministry that will really test your mental. Number 10, we roll right along. Major tasks do not simply consume energy, they generate energy. I believe this. Put both your hands to a significant assignment and you will discover miraculously that you have even two more hands to take care of your other duties. The minister who burns little energy has little energy. Number 11, seriousness of purpose does not require heaviness of manner. In other words, if I may drop a note, it doesn't mean you've got to look like a sad dork of some sort. Remaining light on your feet does not contradict but honors the importance of your work and being pleasant, cheerful, and full of good humor will serve your listeners as a sure sign of the presence of God's grace. Number 12, remember that preaching is not simply about Christian subjects. But is itself a Christian act. What this means at its very minimum is that the preacher respects all listeners as sinners of value, of meaning, of decision, of thought, of feeling, of action. Every listener must be given room to say no to your sermon. Otherwise their yes will be meaningless. Number 13, there will be times when what you want to do and what you have to do exactly coincide. Thank God for those occasions because they will be rare. There will be many occasions when what you want to do stands at some distance from what as a minister of the gospel you have to do. Number 14, you very likely, while in seminary and beyond, will experience lapses of your own personal faith. Do not panic. In the interim, I suggest you do two things. One, let the church believe for you until your own faith returns. And secondly, remember that even when you are experiencing distance from God and feeling all alone, it is still better to be true than false, to be brave than cowardly, to be generous and selfish, to be kind than cruel. In 12 years, I'm going to read this list again. Thank you. Thank you.