From the Rector
EDITOR’S NOTE: During Fr Robert’s sabbatical, the Bell & Tower will publish a series of articles he wrote to explain the Episcopal liturgy.
This week we look at the sermon.
Now we come to the point in the liturgy, having heard the Gospel, when we invite someone into the pulpit to offer some insight into the transformation made possible and offered in the Gospel. This is the only reason for preaching. It is not about elucidation, edification, or enlightenment. It is about transformation. You may note that over and over in the Gospel the stories are not descriptions of Jesus or even descriptions of events in his life. The Gospels, over and over again, are stories of people changed by their encounter with Christ.
The rich young ruler, the disciples, Lazarus, the blind, demoniacs, lepers, and many more discovered who Jesus was. Each of these stories offers us the distinct possibility that to see and to be seen by Jesus means to be changed.
So the preacher is given the task of walking us through the decisive promise given to us in the Gospel. The Gospels—and preaching—are a witness to and an enactment of Christian change. Whether the sermon challenges us to action, repentance, giving, praying, loving, or more the sermon is not offered for disembodied contemplation. It is offered to remake us in the image of the one who offers us abundant life. The preacher notes for us the change that unfolds in the Gospel and then invites us to become part of the story, too.
The preaching task has been, for many decades, either divorced from personal experience and testimony—especially within the Episcopal Church—or so reliant on personal narrative that it becomes hard to fathom about whom the sermon is being given. They sometimes seem exercises in dry analysis or, more dreadfully, in therapeutic acting out.
Yet, much of a sermon’s place and power derives from the preacher’s ability to connect the transformation of those whom Jesus met, with the transformation he or she experienced when he or she met Jesus. It is witnessing. It is not only a testimony of some past occurrence, though.
Crucially, it is a witness to an abiding hunger to be further transformed—to be drawn up and in to the holiness of Christ’s enduring compassion. Preachers often preach out of a need they themselves have— when they can connect that longing and need for transformation and growth with the longing of their community then the Holy Spirit may make something of that moment and use it to draw us into a deeper union and connection in and with Christ.
So the preacher is tasked with discerning his or her need and hope, the community’s need and hope, and what the Spirit is doing in the community at any given time. It’s a delicate blend of insights in which we look to the Gospel and ask questions. What change is happening in the story? Why is Jesus drawing this out of these people in the story? Is this something I need, see, or long for in my life? How can I articulate this news in such a way that it can be Good News? How can we hear and respond to this as a community?
Yet all of these questions really emerge from one. Each sermon is ultimately an attempt to offer a take on the question, “Who do you say that I am?” This is the challenge Jesus offers each week and when we find an answer together we are changed—because who we say Jesus is also says something about who we long to be.
Our society is one that is hyper-individualized and networked rather than organized. The cultural trends are such that any church that is simply an institution that one signs up for is bound for failure. The same organizations that once represented the backbone of civic society (clubs, fraternities, civic organizations, boards, etc.) are facing similar decline. How many people are flocking to join the Elks? Sure, they do great work and have a storied history and yet they are on the downward slope of decline.
Most fraternal organizations have seen a decline of a third of their membership or more, while others, including the International Order of Odd Fellows, have seen a membership decline of almost 98 percent in the past century. Yes, the Church is not the Elks club, but it is facing the same cultural headwinds that these sorts of organizations face.
Our task is in some ways much simpler: we have to rediscover our identity as a people who are always seeking the answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” Preaching offers the space and time for us to explore different ways of approaching that question.
The structural, programmatic, and institutional answers to challenges in the Church will be almost irrelevant (or at least as relevant as choosing the kind of marble for a tombstone) without serious work as a community of faith to offer a compelling answer for ourselves and for the wider world about our belief in the transforming person and power of Christ in our individual and common life.
Who do we, as a community and as individual believers, say Jesus is?
How we answer that question will shape, guide, and direct mission and ministry. How is he reaching out to us (and us to him)? Who is he calling us to reach out to as his Body? Where is he leading that we fear to follow? More important than what God is calling us to do is who God is calling us to be as a people formed in the image of Christ. How do we see ourselves fitting into the mosaic image of Christ in which each piece helps form an icon of Christ’s living Presence in the Body?
These are the kinds of transformations at the heart of the Gospel that the preacher works to illuminate—transformations rooted in Jesus’ question. You may not be asked to preach on it but Jesus is asking you, too: “Who do you say that I am?”
Yours in Christ,
—Fr Robert