Standing in the Council of the Lord

I did not send the prophets,
     yet they ran;
I did not speak to them,
     yet they prophesied.
But if they had stood in my council,
     then they would have proclaimed my words to my people,
and they would have turned them from their evil way,
     and from the evil of their doings.

Jer 23:21-22 (NRSV)

On this Sunday morning I woke early, got a breakfast bar, cracked open a diet coke; sat down in front of my WordPress Write post screen, and began thinking about what to write after a Christmas week that I think of as heart bruising.

Most Sundays of my life by this hour I’d be going over my sermon. It would be outlined, at least; often written out in full, and I would be mentally rehearsing it. What phrases did I want to hang on to? What transitions?

Most of all: what outcome?

Only in my freshman years in the pulpit did I read a manuscript. Reading a sermon is like reading “I love you” to your lover. It just doesn’t work.

African American politicians have a secret weapon; they’ve all been trained in the tradition of the African American pulpit. The best preaching in the history of the world has occurred in the black pulpit in America. I hope it still is.

Sermons are good or bad based mostly on what hearers do because of them, or rather because of how God speaks to hearers through them,

Do hearers re-examine their lives? Change priorities? Forgive their husbands, wives, siblings, parents? Do they begin to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God?

If so, then, the sermon is a good one.

George Buttrick told his preaching class he once graded a sermon. The preacher disputed the grade. “Sir,” he said, “this sermon has won 110 people.” Buttrick replied, “Won them to what?”

Our culture’s preference for statistical evaluation can’t do right by most sermons.

I personally like time bomb  sermons, the subversive kind that you carry home in a pet caddy, feed, house break, and cuddle every night—only to find you’ve adopted a pet that eventually breaks your house, makes your present lifestyle unlivable.

Now that I don’t preach three times a week, as I did for 30 years, there’s a hole in my life. Small group Bible studies help fill it, but cannot entirely.

I miss the gale of gospel wind. I miss the still small voice.

Preachers hold in trust the Word of God for their people.

I don’t mean, as one fundamentalist said, that the preacher is the only one who knows the Word of God. I mean, God gives to the shepherd the food for the flock in a way they can’t get for themselves any other way.

Using a different metaphor, if preachers don’t stand in the council of the Lord, they don’t have hammers, wind or fire they need to build the spiritual building.

I miss the preaching that comes  not just from an intellectual commitment to scripture, but from an experience of nothing worthy of God happening in the church that doesn’t arise from its encounter with the written and living Word.

What a treasure it is to be called to stand before the fire for the sake of a people.