Perhaps that's not really consistent with the biblical Beatitudes. It feels right, though. I've just discovered that all the concrete, juicy parts of my sermon for Sunday are actually an incipient sermon on Matthew 27:25. Which would be fine, except that I'm preaching on Matthew 4.
This would also be less frustrating if I hadn't had to spend this morning recreating the work I did on it yesterday morning that somehow didn't save; or if I weren't in class 1-9 today and 9-3 tomorrow; or if I had any real idea where the other part of the sermon is going; or if it weren't my last sermon (last day, in fact) with this conregation; or if there weren't so damn much going on in my life that isn't currently preachable material.
I suppose it's good for me to stretch, but I'm usually a big believer in the "whatever you're feeling, just dance it" school of sermon writing. It's hard to figure out what I feel strongly enough about to preach when everything at the top of my mind I can't say in this sermon. (Some other sermon, someday, but not this one.)
In other news, I'm not sure how much I'm really back from hiatus yet (see "not currently preachable" above). I really need to be focusing all my writing energy on my thesis (draft due March 1; 2 pages down, 48 pages to go), but I have at minimum gender balance awards for both J-term and spring semester to post, so I'll try to pop in again soon.
Showing posts with label preaching. Show all posts
Showing posts with label preaching. Show all posts
Friday, February 08, 2008
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Yes, I'm preaching again
Or trying to. I'm supposed to preach at my brother's wedding on Sunday, and I'm having a hard time coming up with things to say about wedded bliss... or marriage in general, really. So here:
| You Are a Purple Crayon |
 Your world is colored in dreamy, divine, and classy colors. You hold yourself to a sky high standard, and you are always graceful. People envy, idolize, and copy you without realizing it. You are an icon for those who know you. And while it is hard to be a perfectionist, rest assured it's paying off! Your color wheel opposite is yellow. While yellow people may be wise, they lack the manners and class needed to impress you. |
Friday, August 03, 2007
Must be preaching time again...
... 'cause Spud's back online! That's right, folks, camp is almost over and I'm preaching at my home parish on Sunday, so I thought it was about time to get back to procrastinating. I mean, blogging. Blogger tells me I haven't posted since May 28, so here's a brief recap of the summer before I revive my RevGalBlogPals status with a Friday Five.
~Graduated from seminary. Have apparently mastered divinity.
~Got ordained to the diaconate.
~Trained staff
~Directed two core camps and two day camps (Sorry, don't have pictures of that yet. I forgot to bring my camera cable with me this summer.)
~Worked as nature specialist for a day camp that I didn't have to direct
We clean up the camp Monday and Tuesday, with an end-of-camp staff dinner Monday night. Before that I have to finish my sermon for Sunday and write staff evaluations. Oh, and my cousin's wedding shower is tomorrow. And my future sister-in-law's is next week. And I'm moving soon. But before I do that I need to organize and turn in some reflections and recommendations for next year's camps. So, I'm not quite out yet - but there's light at the end of the tunnel. If I can just manage to survive the next four days, I should be able to handle the next couple of weeks after that.
~Graduated from seminary. Have apparently mastered divinity.
~Got ordained to the diaconate.
~Trained staff
~Directed two core camps and two day camps (Sorry, don't have pictures of that yet. I forgot to bring my camera cable with me this summer.)
~Worked as nature specialist for a day camp that I didn't have to direct
We clean up the camp Monday and Tuesday, with an end-of-camp staff dinner Monday night. Before that I have to finish my sermon for Sunday and write staff evaluations. Oh, and my cousin's wedding shower is tomorrow. And my future sister-in-law's is next week. And I'm moving soon. But before I do that I need to organize and turn in some reflections and recommendations for next year's camps. So, I'm not quite out yet - but there's light at the end of the tunnel. If I can just manage to survive the next four days, I should be able to handle the next couple of weeks after that.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Random thoughts and questions
~It's hard to practice the absolution with a straight face when you're absolving four Care Bears (one of which is winking at you) and a Care Bears Cousin. Also it feels kind of weird randomly absolving your stuffed animals every time you walk by them.
~Did Campbell's Tomato Garden soup always have so much zucchini? I'm pretty sure I ate Tomato garden a lot my year in St. Louis and my first year at SWTS, and I don't remember a particularly large amount of zucchini, but I poured a can into a bowl today and it looked like a lot, so I checked and found that zucchini is indeed the third ingredient, after water and tomato puree. This is very sad for me.
~828 words is way too much for the intro and conclusion to a 5-7 minute sermon. It's actually not a bad problem to have, though, since I have until Thursday to work it out.
~It's kind of strange that I have a stuffed raccoon (a purple one with a heart-shaped lightbulb on his belly, but a raccoon nonetheless) given how little I like raccoons and how much I really don't think they're cute. I'd sort of managed to forget that my Care Bear Cousin is a raccoon until I went to "anoint" him for "healing" this afternoon, and up close it's very clear that he's a raccoon. (That's not as weird as it sounds - I have to do a practice healing service in our play church class this week, so I'm practicing praying over stuffed animals. Hmm. Yeah. I guess it's still almost as weird as it sounds.)
~Did Campbell's Tomato Garden soup always have so much zucchini? I'm pretty sure I ate Tomato garden a lot my year in St. Louis and my first year at SWTS, and I don't remember a particularly large amount of zucchini, but I poured a can into a bowl today and it looked like a lot, so I checked and found that zucchini is indeed the third ingredient, after water and tomato puree. This is very sad for me.
~828 words is way too much for the intro and conclusion to a 5-7 minute sermon. It's actually not a bad problem to have, though, since I have until Thursday to work it out.
~It's kind of strange that I have a stuffed raccoon (a purple one with a heart-shaped lightbulb on his belly, but a raccoon nonetheless) given how little I like raccoons and how much I really don't think they're cute. I'd sort of managed to forget that my Care Bear Cousin is a raccoon until I went to "anoint" him for "healing" this afternoon, and up close it's very clear that he's a raccoon. (That's not as weird as it sounds - I have to do a practice healing service in our play church class this week, so I'm practicing praying over stuffed animals. Hmm. Yeah. I guess it's still almost as weird as it sounds.)
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Happy Bengali New Year
In celebration of which I just had some really yummy aloo gobi, spicy potatoes, and some sort of paneer dish. Oh, and some rice pudding. And they were homemade. And did I mention they were yummy?
In other news, if anyone runs across the sermon that's begging to be preached in Seabury's chapel for the feast of James Lloyd Breck this year, please send it my way. Barring that, I'll be spending most of my free time between now and Monday noon scavenging for it.
In other news, if anyone runs across the sermon that's begging to be preached in Seabury's chapel for the feast of James Lloyd Breck this year, please send it my way. Barring that, I'll be spending most of my free time between now and Monday noon scavenging for it.
Saturday, February 24, 2007
Now that's what you call ironic....
Feb 1, 2007: Holy Spirit hands me a sermon stating that words can't explain the way I know God by the look in your eyes.
Feb 24, 2007: Holy Spirit says, "Bwahahahaha! Now preach about how you know Jesus by the look in people's eyes."
I am not amused. (Though my roommates are.)
Feb 24, 2007: Holy Spirit says, "Bwahahahaha! Now preach about how you know Jesus by the look in people's eyes."
I am not amused. (Though my roommates are.)
Thursday, February 01, 2007
Feast of St. Brigid
I preached tonight at Seabury, which I love doing, even if it scares me. This one certainly scared the hell out of me, mostly because I preached it without notes (something I've only ever dared in class before) but a little because it's more vulnerable than most of mine.
I'm not sure that I've ever had such a powerful experience preaching before. The whole service was really powerful, actually, in a lot of little ways. I had an especially hard time distributing communion - a couple of times I had to try twice to get the words "the body of Christ" to leave my mouth. But the preaching was a lot of it. Preaching always takes something out of me, and at Seabury it always takes a fair amount, but this one really took almost everything I had. From the feedback I got, the sermon seems to have worked for the congregation also.
I did write a text for organizational purposes, and I'm putting it below, though I'm not sure this sermon works as well in text form as it does spoken. It's obviously not exact, since I didn't use the text, but particular words stick in my mind, so it's pretty close. Oh - the biblical text is 1 Cor. 1:26-31.
*****************************
Last week my roommate stopped writing, looked around her room, and said. “Every flat surface in this room has a book on it. I think I’m looking for the words I can’t seem to find in my head.” Boy, did that ring true for me. My gut reaction to most problems, certainly most writing and thinking problems, is to look for another book to fix it. Someone asks me, “What do you know about…?” and my first instinct is that I know I have a bookshelf. I start thinking about what I’ve read that I could give them, not what I know about x. In fact, if someone asks me about my own experience, I’m likely still to reach for a book. I’m likely to ask someone else to explain it for me, to flip through pages until I find someone who has.
Words hold wisdom. In words, the wisdom of one time can be pinned down and passed forward to future generations, and we can pick it up again a hundred or a thousand years later. Words are what let me in on all the marvelous thinking that people far more insightful than I are figuring out. Words are how I figure out what I’m thinking. That’s a lot of why I feel so at home in this place. The seminary often wants to tell us that words, especially written words, are of immense worth – are, in fact, worth more than experience. And I already tend to hold words over experience as a source of wisdom, so that becomes a pretty comfortable place for me to live. I get to hide out in my love of books, and call it wisdom.
But the things that mean the most to me, the things that show me God most clearly, are not, in the end, books. In fact, maybe part of why I look so quickly to books is that when it comes to God, words don’t come easily to me. I want to hear how someone else has taken a smell, a glance, a texture, and translated it to the written word, because I need to put it into words somehow in order to preach it.
The closest I can come to articulating my desire for God is very often to open the hymnal and sing “Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm, whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm, be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray, your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.” The closest I can come to articulating what I believe, what the Church believes, about God, is usually to quote Scripture or Augustine or Madeleine L’Engle. For the same reason, I was never much good at writing Happening affirmations or psych notes or love letters. I was always better at collecting quotations for my friends and lovers than writing out my own sentiment.
But even there, even with the most articulate words I can find, they don’t go far enough. No words can convey to you the way that I know God by the touch of your hand, by the taste of fresh chamomile, by the smell of my grandmother’s perfume. Maybe some of you know something about what that’s like – maybe words can take us far enough to meet in the middle between our experiences of God – but they’ll never take us all the way across. How can I tell you about the particular glow of a torch on the lake, when it’s not really about the glow at all but everything that brings me to the place where I see that glow? How can I tell you?
I can’t. But I find a little comfort, and a little clarity, in wondering whether maybe God couldn’t either. Whether maybe that’s why the Word became flesh; as Paul says, “became for us wisdom from God.” I’d like to think that God can shape words to do exactly what they ought to do; that God’s eloquence far outshines any of ours. But after centuries of speaking to us, maybe even God couldn’t explain God’s love for us without coming himself and looking us in the eyes.
I'm not sure that I've ever had such a powerful experience preaching before. The whole service was really powerful, actually, in a lot of little ways. I had an especially hard time distributing communion - a couple of times I had to try twice to get the words "the body of Christ" to leave my mouth. But the preaching was a lot of it. Preaching always takes something out of me, and at Seabury it always takes a fair amount, but this one really took almost everything I had. From the feedback I got, the sermon seems to have worked for the congregation also.
I did write a text for organizational purposes, and I'm putting it below, though I'm not sure this sermon works as well in text form as it does spoken. It's obviously not exact, since I didn't use the text, but particular words stick in my mind, so it's pretty close. Oh - the biblical text is 1 Cor. 1:26-31.
*****************************
Last week my roommate stopped writing, looked around her room, and said. “Every flat surface in this room has a book on it. I think I’m looking for the words I can’t seem to find in my head.” Boy, did that ring true for me. My gut reaction to most problems, certainly most writing and thinking problems, is to look for another book to fix it. Someone asks me, “What do you know about…?” and my first instinct is that I know I have a bookshelf. I start thinking about what I’ve read that I could give them, not what I know about x. In fact, if someone asks me about my own experience, I’m likely still to reach for a book. I’m likely to ask someone else to explain it for me, to flip through pages until I find someone who has.
Words hold wisdom. In words, the wisdom of one time can be pinned down and passed forward to future generations, and we can pick it up again a hundred or a thousand years later. Words are what let me in on all the marvelous thinking that people far more insightful than I are figuring out. Words are how I figure out what I’m thinking. That’s a lot of why I feel so at home in this place. The seminary often wants to tell us that words, especially written words, are of immense worth – are, in fact, worth more than experience. And I already tend to hold words over experience as a source of wisdom, so that becomes a pretty comfortable place for me to live. I get to hide out in my love of books, and call it wisdom.
But the things that mean the most to me, the things that show me God most clearly, are not, in the end, books. In fact, maybe part of why I look so quickly to books is that when it comes to God, words don’t come easily to me. I want to hear how someone else has taken a smell, a glance, a texture, and translated it to the written word, because I need to put it into words somehow in order to preach it.
The closest I can come to articulating my desire for God is very often to open the hymnal and sing “Lord of all gentleness, Lord of all calm, whose voice is contentment, whose presence is balm, be there at our sleeping, and give us, we pray, your peace in our hearts, Lord, at the end of the day.” The closest I can come to articulating what I believe, what the Church believes, about God, is usually to quote Scripture or Augustine or Madeleine L’Engle. For the same reason, I was never much good at writing Happening affirmations or psych notes or love letters. I was always better at collecting quotations for my friends and lovers than writing out my own sentiment.
But even there, even with the most articulate words I can find, they don’t go far enough. No words can convey to you the way that I know God by the touch of your hand, by the taste of fresh chamomile, by the smell of my grandmother’s perfume. Maybe some of you know something about what that’s like – maybe words can take us far enough to meet in the middle between our experiences of God – but they’ll never take us all the way across. How can I tell you about the particular glow of a torch on the lake, when it’s not really about the glow at all but everything that brings me to the place where I see that glow? How can I tell you?
I can’t. But I find a little comfort, and a little clarity, in wondering whether maybe God couldn’t either. Whether maybe that’s why the Word became flesh; as Paul says, “became for us wisdom from God.” I’d like to think that God can shape words to do exactly what they ought to do; that God’s eloquence far outshines any of ours. But after centuries of speaking to us, maybe even God couldn’t explain God’s love for us without coming himself and looking us in the eyes.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Sermon prep
8:55 AM: Roommates to class.
8:56 AM: Decide to drink the last cup of coffee. Open fridge to find soy milk frozen.
8:57 AM: IM Tripp to ask about the wisdom/possibility of microwaving frozen soy milk for my coffee.
9:00 AM: Microwave frozen soy milk for coffee.
9:01 AM: Power blows on my side of the suite - a first.
9:02 AM: Pour coffee.
9:03 AM: Convince computer to restart on battery power.
9:04 AM: Wander downstairs to find receptionist.
9:05 AM: Call maintenance from receptionist's desk, since own phone is plugged in to charge.
9:06 AM: Maintenance promises to check breaker.
9:08 AM: Return upstairs. Open sermon file.
9:12 AM: Power comes back on.
9:13 AM: Wireless comes back on.
9:14 AM: IM Tripp to apologize for cutting out mid-conversation.
9:15 AM: Close conversation in a civilized manner.
9:16 AM: Begin to learn sermon.
9:17 AM: Maintenance and buddies come upstairs to test suite's fire alarms.
9:18 AM: Fire alarms begin going off.
9:20 AM: Fire alarms stop going off.
9:22 AM: Fire alarms go off again.
9:25 AM: Fire alarms stop, maintenance leaves.
9:27 AM: Yodabeth blogs to ask, Does this mean God doesn't want me to preach without notes tomorrow after all?
8:56 AM: Decide to drink the last cup of coffee. Open fridge to find soy milk frozen.
8:57 AM: IM Tripp to ask about the wisdom/possibility of microwaving frozen soy milk for my coffee.
9:00 AM: Microwave frozen soy milk for coffee.
9:01 AM: Power blows on my side of the suite - a first.
9:02 AM: Pour coffee.
9:03 AM: Convince computer to restart on battery power.
9:04 AM: Wander downstairs to find receptionist.
9:05 AM: Call maintenance from receptionist's desk, since own phone is plugged in to charge.
9:06 AM: Maintenance promises to check breaker.
9:08 AM: Return upstairs. Open sermon file.
9:12 AM: Power comes back on.
9:13 AM: Wireless comes back on.
9:14 AM: IM Tripp to apologize for cutting out mid-conversation.
9:15 AM: Close conversation in a civilized manner.
9:16 AM: Begin to learn sermon.
9:17 AM: Maintenance and buddies come upstairs to test suite's fire alarms.
9:18 AM: Fire alarms begin going off.
9:20 AM: Fire alarms stop going off.
9:22 AM: Fire alarms go off again.
9:25 AM: Fire alarms stop, maintenance leaves.
9:27 AM: Yodabeth blogs to ask, Does this mean God doesn't want me to preach without notes tomorrow after all?
Friday, September 01, 2006
Reason #13, 497 Why I Am Not Cut Out For A Rector
I love preaching (yeah, I know), but sermon writing/prep makes me absolutely batty and desperate. Ok, let me qualify that. Trying to craft sermons longer than about six minutes makes me absolutely batty and desperate. Crafting 3-7 minute sermons is still kind of fun, even a couple of weeks in a row. Still, I'm glad to be looking in a direction that's less likely to include someone expecting me to preach 10-15 minutes every week for thirty years running.
Saturday, August 26, 2006
Time to go
There are things I like to do with people, and there are things I like to do alone. Sermon writing and packing are things I do best when left to my own devices. Unfortunately, they also seem to be things about which my parents want to advise me. I do not blame my parents for the fact that I'm unhappy with several parts of tomorrow's sermon. It is not at all their fault that I seem to be in a rut right now (not a preaching-the-same-thing-every-week one, but the kind where I seem to be utterly unable to fix the mistakes that I know are there). It's also not an invitation for them to explain to me what I should do about it (especially since neither of them has ever actually DONE it. Come to think of it, I'm not sure the last time either of them wrote anything other than an email or a memo.)
It's time for me to get back to Evanston - unfortunately, I've got another week, in which I still have to pack all my stuff, fix this sermon as best I can, write another one for next Sunday, and spend a lot of family time.
It's time for me to get back to Evanston - unfortunately, I've got another week, in which I still have to pack all my stuff, fix this sermon as best I can, write another one for next Sunday, and spend a lot of family time.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
Pleased
I've had a lovely (also busy) last couple of days. I successfully preached in chapel on Thursday and received some very kind feedback on the sermon (which is posted below). I helped with a bridal shower that was a lot of fun. I scored a run (for the first time ever) in a softball game (albeit a very informal game against ourselves). I am scheduled to preach at my home parish Labor Day weekend, when a good chunk of family will be in town for my grandmother's 90th birthday. (I don't know how many will come to hear me preach, but my grandmother will be very happy that her family came to see her and her granddaughter is preaching, even if she doesn't actually hear most of the sermon, which is possible.) It's reading week, and today I am taking an Official Day Off. I'm doing lots of laundry (which I actually like doing), but otherwise I'm reading for pleasure, drinking coffee, watching movies (maybe even a baseball game tonight if I can get the TV in Junkin Common to tune it in). Tomorrow is back to work, but today is sabbath time.
Monday, May 01, 2006
One more down
Not the history paper, sadly - I still have to write that one tonight. However, our preaching schedule has had to be rearranged, and so we each get to chop off a sermon. This means that I do NOT have to preach two different sermons two days in a row this week. Once I finish the history paper tonight, I can devote nearly all my energies to prepping Thursday's sermon - which is good, because it needs some work before I dare preach it in chapel. Then I don't have to preach again until May 19.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Public Service Announcement
Not everyone is cut out to preach without notes.
Of this, I am living proof. Oi.
I look forward to coming back and writing out the manuscript version for next Thursday. In the meantime, I am pleading with the Holy Spirit for help, because tomorrow morning I have to do it note-free for class.
Did I mention I'm really not good at this?
Of this, I am living proof. Oi.
I look forward to coming back and writing out the manuscript version for next Thursday. In the meantime, I am pleading with the Holy Spirit for help, because tomorrow morning I have to do it note-free for class.
Did I mention I'm really not good at this?
Sunday, April 09, 2006
Palm Sunday
I've had various bits of unfinished thoughts floating around my head all day, none of them ready for a post. Since it's been a couple of days, though, I'll share the Palm Sunday sermon I preached in class Friday, which is of course already written. I didn't preach it absolutely precisely according to the script, but this is pretty close. (I should probably note that the audience for this sermon was a classroom full of seminary people, not a parish congregation.)
*******
Palm Sunday makes me batty. We start out with a beautiful liturgy of palms, which fits well into the Lenten progression of time through the Gospel, and then bam! before the service is over, Jesus is dead – except, not really, because we’ve still got Maundy Thursday and Good Friday ahead of us, and he can’t really die until we hear it from John’s Gospel on Friday. We’re expected to fit all of Holy Week into Palm Sunday - not giving anything away for those who will actually be around for the Triduum, but also making sure that the people who won't be back until Easter don't walk in and say "Jesus died?" I just don’t understand Palm Sunday.
Add it to the list of things I don’t understand about Holy Week. Palm Sunday, I can scoot by on. Last year, I had a much more terrifying realization during Holy Week: when Good Friday came, I discovered that I didn’t know who Jesus was. And in fact, a year later, after courses in systematic theology, in New Testament, in biblical theology, I can report that I still don’t know who Jesus is.
Don’t get me wrong here - I both loved and passed those courses, and wrote more than one of my papers on who Christ is and what the cross means. In fact, my final paper for theology talked about that Good Friday experience and how Dr. Wondra’s Magic Chart describing the main theologies of the work of Christ had helped me find some clarity about the matter. And it was all true. Theologically - or, more accurately, intellectually - I can manage. I can do the mental gymnastics. But it’s like taking an online quiz: “What’s your soteriology?” So I can confidently tell you that on that quiz, I scored as a mix of Christus Victor and union/communion with God - God is the agent of our salvation, we experience sin as having power over us, reconciliation plays out in union with God, etc. That’s my preferred theological understanding of Christ and salvation.
I just don’t know who Jesus is. I don’t get it, deep in my gut, even after a year of letting it marinate, just as I know in my gut that it doesn’t make sense to skip straight from the procession into Jerusalem to the crucifixion. This year, though, I think I'm ok with that.
I’d still prefer to know. I’m used to knowing things. I like knowing things. That’s where I’m comfortable, is learning and knowing and understanding things inside and out. And I still think it’s important to keep pushing at that understanding. But it’s ok, for now, that I don’t entirely understand this.
Thinking about the Palm Sunday propers this week, I started humming a song that I hadn’t thought about in several years, at least since college. It says:
Listen to the Lord as he speaks softly
Listen to the words of a perfect man
Listen to the miracle of God incarnate
Listen even when you don’t understand
We used to sing it as a round, so that the last line would echo - “listen even when you don’t understand, understand, understand.” That’s how it sounded in my head this week, too. And as powerful as that line can be in the middle of July, I think it speaks especially directly to us as we prepare to enter Holy Week. Listen even when you don’t understand. Not “listen to hear x, y, or z” – as I learned last year, we don’t get to qualify what we’re willing to hear. Just listen.
So that will be my discipline for the rest of Lent this year, as we head through Holy Week. I’m asking for God’s help in trying to unclench my intellect’s iron grip, and in listening even when I don’t understand. I expect to understand very little, this week - and perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But I’ll be listening, and I invite you to listen with me, as we move through the marvelous, terrible, mysterious events of Holy Week, watching and hoping for Easter.
*******
Palm Sunday makes me batty. We start out with a beautiful liturgy of palms, which fits well into the Lenten progression of time through the Gospel, and then bam! before the service is over, Jesus is dead – except, not really, because we’ve still got Maundy Thursday and Good Friday ahead of us, and he can’t really die until we hear it from John’s Gospel on Friday. We’re expected to fit all of Holy Week into Palm Sunday - not giving anything away for those who will actually be around for the Triduum, but also making sure that the people who won't be back until Easter don't walk in and say "Jesus died?" I just don’t understand Palm Sunday.
Add it to the list of things I don’t understand about Holy Week. Palm Sunday, I can scoot by on. Last year, I had a much more terrifying realization during Holy Week: when Good Friday came, I discovered that I didn’t know who Jesus was. And in fact, a year later, after courses in systematic theology, in New Testament, in biblical theology, I can report that I still don’t know who Jesus is.
Don’t get me wrong here - I both loved and passed those courses, and wrote more than one of my papers on who Christ is and what the cross means. In fact, my final paper for theology talked about that Good Friday experience and how Dr. Wondra’s Magic Chart describing the main theologies of the work of Christ had helped me find some clarity about the matter. And it was all true. Theologically - or, more accurately, intellectually - I can manage. I can do the mental gymnastics. But it’s like taking an online quiz: “What’s your soteriology?” So I can confidently tell you that on that quiz, I scored as a mix of Christus Victor and union/communion with God - God is the agent of our salvation, we experience sin as having power over us, reconciliation plays out in union with God, etc. That’s my preferred theological understanding of Christ and salvation.
I just don’t know who Jesus is. I don’t get it, deep in my gut, even after a year of letting it marinate, just as I know in my gut that it doesn’t make sense to skip straight from the procession into Jerusalem to the crucifixion. This year, though, I think I'm ok with that.
I’d still prefer to know. I’m used to knowing things. I like knowing things. That’s where I’m comfortable, is learning and knowing and understanding things inside and out. And I still think it’s important to keep pushing at that understanding. But it’s ok, for now, that I don’t entirely understand this.
Thinking about the Palm Sunday propers this week, I started humming a song that I hadn’t thought about in several years, at least since college. It says:
Listen to the Lord as he speaks softly
Listen to the words of a perfect man
Listen to the miracle of God incarnate
Listen even when you don’t understand
We used to sing it as a round, so that the last line would echo - “listen even when you don’t understand, understand, understand.” That’s how it sounded in my head this week, too. And as powerful as that line can be in the middle of July, I think it speaks especially directly to us as we prepare to enter Holy Week. Listen even when you don’t understand. Not “listen to hear x, y, or z” – as I learned last year, we don’t get to qualify what we’re willing to hear. Just listen.
So that will be my discipline for the rest of Lent this year, as we head through Holy Week. I’m asking for God’s help in trying to unclench my intellect’s iron grip, and in listening even when I don’t understand. I expect to understand very little, this week - and perhaps that’s the way it’s supposed to work. But I’ll be listening, and I invite you to listen with me, as we move through the marvelous, terrible, mysterious events of Holy Week, watching and hoping for Easter.
Wednesday, April 05, 2006
Sermon update
I should clarify here that I have significant problems with the idea that pride and low self-worth split cleanly along gender lines - my besetting sin is much more pride than lack thereof.
It seems also at this point that this is not the sermon I'll be preaching on Friday. Another one, which I thought was a Good Friday sermon but wrote down anyway because I couldn't get it out of my head, seems now to be appropriate for heading into Holy Week rather than Good Friday itself, and may actually be my sermon for Friday (once it's fleshed out and polished).
It seems also at this point that this is not the sermon I'll be preaching on Friday. Another one, which I thought was a Good Friday sermon but wrote down anyway because I couldn't get it out of my head, seems now to be appropriate for heading into Holy Week rather than Good Friday itself, and may actually be my sermon for Friday (once it's fleshed out and polished).
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Strange day
~At lunch, a friend told me that if I didn't make sure I heard the helpful noise when I closed my ziploc bag, my piranha would get out and eat my flesh. He later offered to piranha-sit for me if I agreed to play softball again this year.
~Also at lunch, the apple I was halfway through eating magically leaped right out of my hand and across the table to hit another classmate in the face. Very out of the ordinary in my world.
~There was a new episode of Gilmore Girls tonight. (Hey, there hasn't been one in weeks. It's become a strange thing.)
~I spent the morning successfully making conversation with various people I don't really know.
Ok, the two top ones are the weirdest part. Now I'm trying to write a sermon about pride and humility, coming out of the propers for Palm Sunday, which is itself a strange thing to me. If anyone has helpful input, particularly about the notion that pride is men's sin and unworthiness is women's, I'm open.
~Also at lunch, the apple I was halfway through eating magically leaped right out of my hand and across the table to hit another classmate in the face. Very out of the ordinary in my world.
~There was a new episode of Gilmore Girls tonight. (Hey, there hasn't been one in weeks. It's become a strange thing.)
~I spent the morning successfully making conversation with various people I don't really know.
Ok, the two top ones are the weirdest part. Now I'm trying to write a sermon about pride and humility, coming out of the propers for Palm Sunday, which is itself a strange thing to me. If anyone has helpful input, particularly about the notion that pride is men's sin and unworthiness is women's, I'm open.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)