In 30 years, and over 10,000 sermons, I can say with complete honesty that I’ve never directed a sermon at a specific person. I’ve never used it as an opportunity to tell someone off, put someone in their place, or treat them as a captive audience that I was going to set straight. I have always approached my time in the pulpit as a sacred space where tremendous trust was being given that must be treated with the utmost reverence. I have no doubt failed many times, but never knowingly and intentionally. That being said, I am regularly accused of that which I am denying, though almost always tongue in cheek.
“Preacher, you really stepped on my toes today.” Or, “You were talking straight to me today.” Sometimes, “Has my wife/husband been talking to you about me?” All of which are common refrains in the foyer after services. What’s so funny to me is that I know the point they took away from the sermon - which they felt was directed at them - was not even a point I was attempting to make. It is like they were listening to a completely different sermon. Long ago I learned that the sermon I prepare, the one I preach, and the one you hear are rarely - if ever - the same sermon. I learned long ago to attribute this phenomenon to Isaiah 55:11 where God says about His word, “I send it out, and it always produces fruit. It will accomplish all I want it to, and it will prosper everywhere I send it.”
Currently, Honey and I tend a 60x60 garden. We don’t till the ground and plant in rows as much as in curated boxes. For us it just looks prettier, more uniform and organized and most of all, is easier to keep weeded. That being said, I never cease to be amazed at all the places where life and growth springs up unintentionally. Every year there is a surprise, “unplanted” sunflower that grows where it wants, zinnias that return even though they aren’t perennials, squash that takes root in a path instead of a garden box, and once there was a pumpkin vine that decided our compost pile was a perfectly suitable location to spread about and bear pumpkins.
Sometimes, I am caught quite off guard and astonished at the places where His preached word takes root and bears fruit…even as it’s happening. Recently I spent some time conversing with someone that really doesn’t fit the church mold, but in whom the seed of the kingdom has clearly taken root. This persons vocabulary wasn’t biblical, but their language was most certainly the fruit of the Spirit. I’m not even sure they knew that the things they were talking about were straight from scripture and deeply rooted in the theology of Christ, but there it was sprouting right before my eyes in a most peculiar place. I’ve long since stopped being shocked by these sorts of spontaneous blooming’s — I’ve spent my life reading and telling stories about men who would be our least likely choice becoming God’s anointed — but I still like to stop and smell the roses wherever they bloom.
I often see this in others, but every once in a while I catch a glimpse of it in myself. Yesterday something dawned on me (that’s just a more palatable way for me to say that God spoke to me — a phrase that terrifies a lot of folks that I love) as the words were coming out of my mouth — words I had prepared days earlier without the slightest connection or realization. It was Father’s Day and I was preaching about three fathers who demonstrated tremendous trust in God and led their families to do the same, but who also made plenty of mistakes, and sometimes, felt like their ambitions were greater than their abilities. Despite their best efforts, the task seemed too great. The men were Noah, Abraham, and Moses. It was the words of Moses that took root in my heart and blossomed right before my eyes as they came out of my mouth.
“Moses was also very aggravated. And Moses said to the Lord, “Why are you treating me, your servant, so harshly? Have mercy on me! What did I do to deserve the burden of all these people? Did I give birth to them? Did I bring them into the world? Why did you tell me to carry them in my arms like a mother carries a nursing baby? How can I carry them to the land you swore to give their ancestors? Where am I supposed to get meat for all these people? They keep whining to me, saying, ‘Give us meat to eat!’ I can’t carry all these people by myself! The load is far too heavy! If this is how you intend to treat me, just go ahead and kill me. Do me a favor and spare me this misery!”
By the time I got to the words, “How can I carry them…” my throat began to close and I choked on the words, as I tried to choke back the tears. Though my circumstances are quite different, the sentiment of Moses was painfully familiar. I have long said that most of my sermons are just private conversations I have with God in public, but they aren’t usually this transparent. As I was trying to force my way through this passage, I heard the words coming back to me, “I never asked you to do that.”
Moses had assumed that God wanted him to deliver Israel from bondage by violently overthrowing the Egyptian oppressors, but he was wrong. God never asked him to raise his fist, only to raise a staff in trust and allow Him to do the rest. Our love for others and our desire to help them and protect them often leads us to think it is our responsibility to save them, foolishly ignoring the fact that we can’t even save ourselves. We have to turn to Jesus for that. We realize only Jesus can save us, but then we think Jesus wants us to save everyone else.
By this point in the sermon I am just trying to get through it and get to the end of it because my emotions are being held together by a thread. The knockout blow came from the Isaiah passage I’d chosen several days before. “Listen to me…I have cared for you since you were born. Yes, I carried you before you were born. I will be your God throughout your lifetime—until your hair is white with age. I made you, and I will care for you. I will carry you along and save you.”
So much of the stress and grief and exhaustion I’d been crushed under the last few months, lifted like a dandelion seed carried on the breeze. “Cast your burden upon the Lord and he will sustain you.” Martin Luther once wrote, “We preach best what we need most” and Augustine of Hippo described his method of preaching this way, “I nourish you with what nourishes me; I offer to you what I live on myself.”
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