Of all the questions we have heard since LEADERSHIP was launched, two have distinguished themselves for being asked the most often: 1) What has happened to great preaching? and 2) Who are the great preachers of today? With these questions in mind- plus a host of others-we began to develop and assemble the material for this issue’s theme, Preaching and Worship. Two clippings came to my attention that individually do not directly address these questions. Together, their impact has started a chain reaction of thought that I want to share with you.
The first clipping came from Fredrick Buechner’s book Telling the Truth and freezes in time-like a flash picture-a scene that could occur any Sunday morning in almost any church. In fact, this may have been the setting in which you found yourself last Sunday morning:
“The sermon hymn comes to a close with a somewhat unsteady ‘Amen,’ and the organist gestures the choir to sit down. As the preacher climbs the steps to the pulpit with his sermon in hand, he hikes his black robe over his knees so he will not trip over it on the way up. His mouth is a little dry. He has cut himself shaving. He feels as if he has swallowed an anchor.
“In the front pews an old man turns up his hearing aid while a young mother slips her six-year-old a Lifesaver and Magic Marker. A college sophomore home for vacation, who is there because he was dragged there, slumps forward with his chin in his hands. The vice-president of the bank, who twice that week seriously contemplated suicide, places his hymnal in the rack. A pregnant teenage girl feels life stir within her body, and a high school math teacher, who for twenty years has managed to keep his homosexuality a secret, creases his bulletin down the center with his thumbnail and tucks it under his knee.
“The stakes have never been higher. Two minutes from now the preacher may have lost his listeners completely to their own thoughts; but at this moment, the silence is deafening. Everyone knows the kinds of things he has told them before, but who knows what this time, out of the silence, he will tell them?”
This little vignette established the context of my thinking. Some pastors confess that this scene- week in and week out-provokes the most agonizing introspection, frustration, and personal despair. Others, in less guarded tones talk about “dissatisfaction with my preaching.”
The last clipping came from John Claypool’s new book The Preaching Event. It’s a collection of Lyman Beecher Lectures he gave at the Yale Divinity School in February of 1979. In the introduction he talks about what he considers the most intriguing of all subjects, namely: What does God do and what do we humans do in the drama of everyday events? For him the answer has not been totally found in phrases like “Let go, and let God,” or on the other end of the continuum,”If not now, when? If not you, who?” He sees the middle ground as the image of a duet, where one partner invites the other to participate in a shared adventure. And from this positive response, something comes that neither one of the two could have created by themselves.
Claypool then tells the story of what happened as he was preparing for these historic lectures:
“By the end of the second week of January, although I had worked diligently several hours each day, I had gotten absolutely nowhere. Not one word had been set down on paper. To be honest with you, a sense of panic began to set in. I thought to myself, ‘Here I have had two years (since the invitation was accepted), and now I am about to make an absolute fool of myself!’ All kinds of self-recrimination and anxieties swept over me. One afternoon in deep anguish I laid down my pencil, and in what might be called an “exercise in honesty,” I took the whole situation straight to the Father. I openly acknowledged how blocked and immobile I was at the point of creativity, and admitted the panic that was building up because of this. I did not hear any audible voice or see any visual images, but after I had emptied myself before my Maker, the following impressions came to me:
“The people at Yale would like to renegotiate this contract. They would prefer that Jesus of Nazareth give these lectures, for across the years the words that have really been significant have all emanated from him. However, (and I smile now when I think about it), the impression came that Jesus had laryngitis at this time, and he would be unable to give the lectures himself. Would I be willing to agree to work with him in the formulation of the material and take them to New Haven and deliver them in his stead? If this were agreeable, I would have to work very hard and be available to receive the material as he would give it. It was not up to me to worry, but simply to work in receiving, and then go and deliver them as best I could.
“All I can report to you is that from that day forward, things flowed with incredible creativity. I have never worked as hard in my life as I did in the subsequent five weeks. There was an intense human effort on my part as I thought about ideas and words, evaluated them as best I could, and wrote and rewrote. Yet I can testify that in the midst of all this, I had the feeling I was working with another. It was not as if I had been reduced to something impersonal and was being dictated to, but there was another presence with me in the study upstairs at home; and the giving of the material itself at New Haven had the feeling of a duet, not a solo.”
After reading this, my mind immediately recalled the little lad in the Gospel of John, who was ushered into the presence of the Lord clutching a bag containing five loaves and two fishes. Not much is said about him other than that he was prepared and willing to share what he had with the Master. His responsibility did not include breaking, blessing, distributing, or cleaning up; he only needed to be in the right place at the right time, prepared and willing. But that alone didn’t get the job done. To feed the multitude it took a duet-the lad and the Lord. And because they sang together, their song will be remembered as long as the Christian message is proclaimed.
The imagery of the willing, prepared lad caused me to go back and examine the original questions. Could it be that the questions have been put in the wrong way? And that the problem with these questions is to be found in the questions themselves? Great preaching as compared to what? Great preachers as compared to whom? On the few occasions Jesus used the word great, he used it in this way: “The greatest among you (preachers or whomever) must be the servant of all.”
And doesn’t the servant’s responsibility end and the measure of greatness begin at the place where he or she is willing to lose one’s own identity in order to serve God’s greater purposes?
Jesus set the example. He never worried or was anxious about results or how he would be measured among men. Even though he was the Christ the single focus of his life and ministry was to realize and accomplish the will of his Father. Though they were two, yet they were one.
What has happened to great preaching? Who are the great preachers of today? If there are answers at all to these questions, I suspect they are to be found in those deafening, pregnant, Sunday morning moments when two hearts, two spirits, and two voices become one, and deliver the living Word.
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