There’s a cartoon in my
files. The caption reads “Preaching
101.” The image is of a preacher
standing behind a pulpit situated directly in front of a brick wall. Every preacher feels like that from time to
time. I learned on Sunday that not only
preachers feel this way.
I was greeting people in the
foyer of the church after the early service.
The sermon was the last of a series I’ve been doing on David’s life and
faith. I felt like I had offered a
stirring and challenging call to “a deep and abiding relationship with the Lord
God Almighty in our best moments and in our worst moments too. It’s about relationship—whole-hearted, sold
out, give and take, listen, pray, and respond, day in and day out relationship
with this mysterious, sovereign, large, unpredictable God of the Bible whose
love makes the sea look shallow and whose grace makes the world’s greatest
philanthropist look like a cheapskate.”
It was stirring and challenging to me anyway. So one of our most committed followers of
Jesus shook my hand and said, “Good sermon … but it probably won’t do any
good.” Pulpit, meet brick wall.
What’s a preacher to do? We can’t just give up—even if it feels like
we’re making all the progress of using an ice pick to sculpt a granite
statue. God called us preachers to
this, right? “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct,
rebuke, and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction” (2 Tim.
4:2). This is our job—in my mind anyway,
our most important job. So I guess we
just keep at it, trusting that God’s word always gets something done whether we
can see immediate evidence or not, trusting that some of the seed will fall on
fertile soil and produce an abundant crop in God’s good time. No wonder Paul threw the word “patience” in
his admonition to us preachers.
We rarely see quick results, but
I’ve been at this well over 30 years, and the crop does come in. Sometimes in people and places you’d least
expect. So, let’s keep at it, brothers
and sisters. Even if it’s not doing
anybody any good that we can see, it’s at least doing more good in us than we
may realize. There’s a story attributed
to the Jewish author, Elie Wiesel. The
story came to mind when our church member offered his commentary on my sermon.
A just man comes to Sodom hoping
to save the city. He pickets. What else can he do? He goes from street to street, from
marketplace to marketplace, shouting, “Men and women, repent. What you are doing is wrong. It will kill you; it will destroy you.” They laugh, but he goes on shouting, until
one day a child stops him. “Poor
stranger, don’t you see it’s useless?”
“Yes,” the just man replies.
“Then why do you go on?” the
child asks.
“In the beginning,” he says, “I
was convinced that I would change them.
Now I go on shouting because I don’t want them to change me.”
Preach the word, brothers and
sisters, in season and out of season.
God is doing more in others than you can see just now. And just as important, God is working that
word into you.
_________
By the way, if you’re interested in reading the sermon that “probably
won’t do any good,” you can find it here:
John, your sermons have done me lots of good over the years!! Keep shouting!
ReplyDelete