Monday, August 27, 2012

Sermon Series Starters


Last Friday’s Five laid out kindling to spark our imaginations, asking
  • What are two texts or topics you wish you could hear a sermon about?
  • What are two texts or topics you wish you could preach a sermon about?
  • What's your favorite sermon you've ever heard or preached? What makes it your favorite?
I’m not sure I won’t blur the lines between Sunday learning and sermons in this conversation, and I am wrestling with what kinds of sermons I might wish I could hear. Sure, I’d like to have more conversations about how we are called into the world and I’d like to talk more with people about death and resurrection and heaven, and I like the idea of more pointed teaching about things like the Lord’s Prayer, praying with the Psalms and the Creeds, but, in my understanding, the Word we hear on Sunday isn’t really meant to be about what we want to hear, but how God is speaking to us where we are ─ what we need to hear that day.

It’s easier for me to think what I might preach.  First off, I think I’d like to preach on all those stories in the Bible that seminary professors reference, saying, “Everyone knows this story….”  (The same can be said of hymns.) Every congregation is filled with people who bring their own unique and different story into worship that day. Often, even if you have been raised in a Christian and church-going tradition, your experience of faith formation may look very different from the person sitting beside you. And then there are those of us who didn’t go to church weekly from birth to eighteen, or even fourteen. We can’t talk about sharing a common narrative unless more of us know the family characters and their stories.

Similarly, I’d like to preach on the women of the Bible like Ruth and Sarah and Esther, and invite other women to preach on them also. I wouldn’t be in seminary and preparing for ordained ministry if I hadn’t stumbled into the paths of women vicars, pastors and preachers during the past fifteen years. It’s kind of like being in elementary school or even high school, and being asked, “What career do you want?” How can you imagine, even with Google, that you might want to be involved in a ministry for refuge settlement, or a food bank, or be involved in micro loans unless you meet people and hear stories about people who are doing those things? How can we lives as disciples without learning the stories of the people before us?

And when those knowledge gaps yawn in front of me, I'm grateful for the reminder from a recent sermon that regardless of whether we remember the meat of the weekly preaching we hear, we are fed, nourished and nurtured by it. One especially memorable sermon was preached in Advent by a school chaplain where he told the story of the Christmas truce in 1914 during World War I. The chaplain's storytelling had a way of transporting us back to that night, helping us imagine the loneliness or isolation of the soldiers and the poignant gratitude we feel for being together and safe. My memory of our hymn selections isn't a lot better, but I believe we closed the service singing, “In Christ, there is no East or West.” Thanks be to God for meeting us where we are.

Friday, August 3, 2012

Friday's Top Five

RevGalBlogPals' Friday Five asked, "What are 5 things you do or things you have bought that have made your life simpler/easier to manage?" and as a bonus, "What's something you wish you could manage better?"

5) After reading earlier comments I'll jump on the bandwagon, and praise Google Calendars. I can access school, church and home (x4) and sync all of them to my phone. Updates on my laptop or on my phone show up in both places instantly. I could live without most smartphone features, but reliable access to our household's calendars preserves my sanity! Similarly online polls like Doodle for setting meeting times has put an end to round robin emails and phone calls trying to find agreement.

4) Facebook Groups, like RevGalBlogPal, but also ELCA Clergy, classmates on internship, classmates not on internship and various ministry cohorts help keep conversations focused on a common theme. Hootsuite helps me manage conversations on Twitter and follow threads and chats when I can.

3) My phone's Volume Button. No joke. Giving myself permission to turn my phone to silent and place it face down so I cannot see the pulsing green light that alerts me to messages and phone calls has helped me disconnect at important times, like family meals, sermon writing and face-to-face visits. My laptop's power button hasn't got as much use, but it's another important feature. Turn it off to play board games with my daughter, for meals, for sleep and at least one day a week, leave it off for the morning. The world is always there when I turn it back on.

2) A treadmill. I ran, I swam, I biked; I practiced yoga and rock-climbed. I like all of them in but I'm not a gym rat and I don't especially want a crowd around for workouts. 3 summers ago, we bought a used treadmill from a neighbor down the road and while I'm not walking across the state on the Mountain to Sea Trail anytime soon, I am walking a lot more often, and further, and faster, than I would if we didn't have it, and that keeps me healthier and more fit.

1) The number-one investment that keeps life manageable ends in a three-way tie between books, my knitting needles and my banjo. But regardless of which one really has my attention in the moment, the value they each hold is that they provide an outlet that isn't academic, theological, pastoral or professional.Whether I'm reading a mystery or a Mary Oliver poem, ripping out stitches (or better yet, adding rows) or picking a very slow Cripple Creek, the time reminds me to get out of my own corner of the world and look up and breathe.

Bonus: Making a really excellent pot of coffee? No, seriously, I can wear a lot of hats really well, juggle and move from one thing to the next and work effectively, a lot of the time. But I don't do a great job at remembering that I'm connected to the people around me, and more than that, I really love them and want the things that make them well and happy, whether that means I unplug and play a game of chess, watch a movie I might not pick, cheerfully talk on the telephone, or empty the dishwasher. So I'd like to get a little bit better at managing life less and living life more.

Just like Letterman, right?
Hope you thought of some of your own top five. Let me know what they are.