Reading Up: The Preaching Life by Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Brown Taylor (or BBT as I like to call her now that we're BFF) has a real knack for saying what she's saying without saying it. Or, as my short story teacher called it, showing instead of telling. Perhaps because of the title of this book, I was expecting something a bit more prescriptive, but with BBT, prescriptive is never even on the menu (see 36).

But the closest she gets is in her chapter entitled, "Preaching." The chapters before have all been leading up to the vision of the preaching life, task, and moment that she presents here, so the concept in all its fullness isn't foreign at all, but seems an obvious extension of how she understands call, church, and the world. Most succinctly, BBT understands preaching to be a cooperative task between God, herself, and the community of faith--discount any of the three, and you have something that would be classified as other than preaching in BBT's book (ha!), I think.

The accumulated effect of her conversation about life, call, church, the world, and preaching is a sketch of the pastor as careful observer of the world and lives that God loves so, so dearly. And she is also the bearer of a difficult but good news that is not so easy to deliver or to receive if you're doing it honestly. It strikes me that BBT is so effective because she is so adept in that art of indirect speech Rollins emphasized. Though, I will say more in a moment about when that speech goes silent.

When I was in college, I majored in English and sociology. When people asked me what I was going to do with that, I would laughingly tell them, "I'm going to watch people, then write about it." At the time, I hadn't encountered the Gospel--at least not in any meaningful sense of the word 'encounter.' And so, as my vocation has become a bit more clear and as my faith has deepened and begun to truly shape my life, I would probably now say that I'm going to watch the world, listen for the Word, and then write about that.

The second half of The Preaching Life appears to be a collection of sermons. And so, I'm moving through those a little slower than the first half, savoring them. But one thing I notice about them is the same thing I noticed about her sermon at the Festival of Homiletics--they don't really have endings. I mean, they end. That's true. But they don't feel finished. I told a classmate it felt like being invited over for a meal, encountering a lavishly set table, lifting the lids of still-simmering pots to smell the flavors to come, beginning to have a good conversation over a glass of win, then, at the moment when supper will finally be served, of having all the food packaged up in Tupperware and sent home with you to reheat and eat in front of the television.

I think I understand that BBT creates these scenes, sets them in front of the congregation, and begins the task of looking at them together, expecting the examination to continue after that particular moment of examination is over. This is a subtle art. And I admire subtlety a great deal. But in the preaching task, sometimes the Good News needs some additional help in being revealed. And this is where celebration makes all the difference.

In my first preaching class last semester, Dr. Grundy had us write the 3-minute ending of our sermons first, emphasizing celebration. For many of us, this was a new idea, one we had to learn from textbooks, and then from actually hearing some of our classmates who knew what they were doing do it. It felt uncomfortable, I'll admit, to be asked to add so much flesh and skin to the sermon, but it was effective. Very few of us left the assembly wondering how God might carry us forward into the next day with the message we had just received. And I think this is what's missing from BBT's endings--the understanding that God's hand is held out to us in that moment for us to grasp and walk into the new life waiting there for us. And that takes daring, dedication, and imagination all at once.

And so, here's my preaching goal: to be BBT with celebration. Not a shabby goal, I don't think.

Here are a sampling of the quotes I want to continue to bathe in:

• "God has given us good news in human form and has even given us the grace to proclaim it, but part of our terrible freedom is the freedom to lose our voices, to forget where we were going and why" (5).
• "Our job is to stand with one foot on earth and one in heaven, with the double vision that is the gift of faith, and to say out of our own experience that reality is not flat but deep, not opaque but transparent, not meaningless but shot full of grace for those with the least willingness to believe it is so" (13).
• "When God calls, people respond in a variety of ways. Some pursue ordination and others put pillows over their heads, but the vast majority seek to answer God by changing how they live their more or less ordinary lives" (27).
• "For me, to preach is first of all to immerse myself in the word of God, to look inside every sentence and underneath every phrase for the layers of meaning that have accumulated there over the centuries. It is to examine my own life and the life of the congregation with the same care, hunting the connection between the word on the page and the word at work in the world. It is to find my own words for bringing those connections to life, so that others can experience them for themselves. When that happens--when the act of preaching becomes a source of revelation for me as well as for those who listen to me--then the good news every sermon proclaims is that that God who acted is the God who acts, and that the Holy Spirit is alive and well in this world" (33).
• "Understood in this way, preaching becomes something the whole community participates in... If the preaching they hear is effective, it will not hand them sacks of wisdom and advice to take home and consume during the week, but invite them into the field to harvest those fruits for themselves, until they become preachers in their own right. Preaching is not something an ordained minister does for fifteen minutes on Sundays, but what the whole congregation does all week long; it is a way of approaching the world, and of gleaning God's presence there" (34).
• "The church's central task is an imaginative one" (41).
• "It is a matter of learning to see the world, each other, and ourselves as God sees us, and to live as if God's reality were the only one that mattered" (44).
• "The theological word for this experience is revelation, but the process, I believe, is imagination" (48).
• "My relationship with the Bible is not a romance but a marriage, and one I am willing to work on in all the usual ways: by living with the text day in and day out, by listening to it and talking back to it, by making sure I know what is behind the words it speaks to me and being certain I have heard it properly, by refusing to distance myself from the parts of it I do not like or understand, by letting my love for it show up in the everyday acts of my life. The Bible is not an object for me; it is a partner, whose presence blesses me, challenges me, and affects everything I do" (60).
• "A sermon, on the other hand, is an act of creation with real risk in it, as one foolhardy human being presumes to address both God and humankind, speaking to each on the other's behalf and praying to get out of the pulpit alive" (74).
• "When I say 'I' from the pulpit, I want them to say, 'Me too.'" (84).
• "This is one of the hardest and most rewarding aspects of the job. We do not make sermons out of air; our creations, poor or brilliant as they may be, are always variations on someone else's theme. The main melody is always a given, and even when we launch into our own bold improvisations we are limited to a scale of eight notes" (87).

Reading Up: Unlearning Church by Michael Slaughter

As I was reading Michael Slaughter's Unlearning Church, I had this strange notion that I had read it before. I went to look at my bookshelf to see if it was shelved in my collection of "United Methodist Here's How To Do Church" books. It wasn't. But gazing at that ever-expanding shelf (the connection is always being educated), I realized I'd probably read a number of things very similar to this: a pastor of a large church (always male), writing in very general terms about a very specific way in which he has grown the Church (now, whether that is church is his church or THE church is another debate for another day). And so, I'm wondering what I can learn about preaching from it.

It's not a book about preaching, as much as it is a text that is wrestling with the space in which preaching happens--namely the church. Chapter 4, entitled "Thriving in Paradox" is a pretty helpful primer to postmodern culture, if you're not living in the middle of it already, and its tips about church itself are good things for preachers to consider as well: that knowing is not as important as experiencing; that hard questions do not require easy answers, but rather spaces where they can be asked; that diversity is a reality and actually leads to greater community than homogeneity. I guess this would be the greatest strength and weakness of the book: how it does a good job of identifying what church and leadership might look like in the postmodern world, and how obvious all of this is to a young leader already. Oh wellsies.

The second half of the book is geared directly toward church leaders, and it was there that I was able to glean a few things for preaching. I want to touch on Slaughter's idea of a "trainer-coach" that he outlines in chapter 7, "Replicating the DNA." He writes:

"In the church setting, we need to help trainer-coaches break down the messages presented in each worship experience so they can formulate specific plans according to the needs of those in their cell groups. We design each weekend worship experience with supplemental curriculum for the trainer-coaches to use." 

I've had some experience in churches who have used a Sermon/Learning style, but what Slaughter outlines here seems to be different--seems to be an intentional effort to equip leaders in the church to be able to engage the message presented in worship in ways that connect with a small group's life. My knee jerk reaction is that it is preposterous to know how the message is going to connect with an individual or a group. To plan a curricula around that seems kind of presumptuous. Then again, creating space to reflect on the message isn't a bad thing. How then might this idea be a little less top-down management-style and something that is more organically available to the congregation's small groups?

I was also intrigued by his description of the Family Room in chapter 3, "Engaging the Whole Person." Evidently, it started as an experimental space for in-between the Christmas Eve services where people could gather to converse, share prayer concerns, connect with trained lay-pastors, or...whatever else. It was set up like a living room with couches, candles, and coffee tables, and was hugely popular for folks leaving the services. It has evolved into an ongoing ministry at Ginghamsburg. Certainly in a large church, the setting of the family room has something to offer. It makes me think about the early Christian home churches, with the community gathered to hear the Word, pray, learn, and sing. I know the movement toward home churches and small in-home groups is a popular one, but I wonder how many of us have actually experienced hearing a sermon in that environment. Or actually processing a sermon immediately following worship. More things to chew on.

Though Slaughter claims to have abandoned the pastor-as-CEO model for church, his book still reads like a business how-to. But here are a few quotes that I'd like to chew on to inform my preaching:

• "Some people at Ginghamsburg say, 'Mike, you don't feed me anymore.' Many of these people forget that our connection with God is never complete until we make the commitment to sacrifice our personal needs and come down from the mountains of our personal spiritual journeys to serve the needs of the oppressed and hurting all around us" (107).
• "UnLearning leaders [or preachers?] go beyond the latest leadership fads and technological innovations to the ancient practices of spiritual formation--the practice of daily disciplines that Jesus was committed to, such as prayer, solitude, meditation on the Scriptures, fasting, fellowship, service, generous giving, and commitment to simplicity of lifestyle" (109).
• "A Christian [preacher] is not someone who makes an intellectual statement of belief, or who commits to a lifestyle of little do-good-isms that have no spiritual motivation. A Christian is someone who is like Jesus" (113). What does it mean for the preacher to be like Jesus?
• "Postmodern people are looking for authenticity. They do not seek explanations about God so much as they seek authentic life-demonstration of biblical relevance. UnLearning leaders are more about a demonstration of a greater-works-than-these, authentic faith than about simplistic Jesus slogans and magic faith formulas. Their greatest persuasion point is authentic life experience, not argumentative reasoning" (115). 
• "So many times we try to tell other people the will of God in their lives, rather than that God's desire is simply to live in them, period" (119).
• "You'll keep the godfathers and godmothers of your church very happy if you continue doing church the way you've always done it--without any risk or change. But we don't have time to play the kingdom of church. We have time only to obey one voice--the voice of God. Do not settle for anything less than God's creative purpose" (127).

Preaching Lessons: John Bell Part II

When I read that Bell's lecture was on "Hidden Women in Holy Scripture," I knew I wanted to attend. Not only would I be enjoying the lovely ringing of his Scottish accent, but I would be hearing about something so often overlooked in preaching that I find myself desperate for it: taking up the female in the Bible.

Bell began his lecture by acknowledging the power of the male reading of the Bible in its shaping of how we read it now. The male gaze tends to overlook the female, to under-read her, to skip over her contributions to the story in ways that are unfaithful to the fullness of the Biblical witness. I'm kind of glossing over this point because it's one that I already understand, but if this is coming as a novel concept to you, leave a comment, and I'd be happy to chat with you about it.

Mostly, the lecture was John taking up stories of women in the Bible and reading them imaginatively and with value. For example, he read the parable of the lost coin as just as strong a witness as the parable of the prodigal son. Why hadn't he seen God there before, he wondered aloud. He read the story of the Samaritan woman at the well with such imagination: he saw her as a woman who was outgoing and vibrant, who was persuasive and outgoing, and who had these gifts redirected in her encounter with Jesus. It was a pleasure to listen to, really.

The best part of the lecture was the handout he gave with a breakdown of Biblical women, their appearance in the Testaments, and how they were treated by the text (Protester, Deliverer, Sexual Intrigue, Victim of Male Cruelty, Honored by God). It is a fantastic resource for preachers who would like to dig further into stories that don't come to light all that often, or for engaging familiar stories from a different vantage point. I'll plan to post a link to this sheet here sometime in the near future.

Here's a link to a PDF of that handout. Feel free to save and use!

After the lecture, a group of us from Eden approached John for a photo. But I also needed to ask him a question. At the beginning of his lecture, he acknowledged his male gaze, but he also spent a long time discussing how males and females read the Bible differently. I didn't want to categorically take his remarks as still being sexist despite their awareness of the male gaze, and so I approached him about it. I said, "I have a sincere question. Do you really think that men and women read the Bible differently?" He answered yes, that he thought that there were different sensibilities brought to it. I asked a further question about how he thought cultural conditioning might just be a part of this, and he acknowledged that it could. I thanked him for adding that nuance and left it at that.

When I looked around the room, I noticed that the majority of people in the session were women. Listening to a man tell us about women in the Bible. Now if Bell's assertion was right, that men and women read the Bible differently, then what exactly could he tell a group of women about women in the Bible, since we've been reading it as women the whole time? I'm being ridiculous to make a point. Bell's assumption that men and women read the Bible differently assumes a culture that conditions us differently. The reason his reading of these stories is novel to us is because we, as women, also live in a culture that has conditioned us to gloss over these stories, not to preach these stores, not to know what to do with them. Just because we are women does not mean that we have eyes to see.

By upholding the false dualism of the male and female gender, Bell not only excludes anyone who considers themselves to fall outside of those two poles, but also assumes a greater democracy in ways of knowing than is fair. More than his maleness clouding his ability to see these stories, it is his conditioning in maleness that does so. And he forgets that women are often conditioned in the exact same way. This is a long way of saying that yes, a man and a woman might read Scripture differently. But so might a woman and another woman, a man and another man, a woman and a transgender person, a man and a boy, a woman and a girl. What Bell illustrated well is that when you begin to value differences in reading, the possibilities for revelation in the Biblical text absolutely explode. But his binary understanding of that reading actually do more to reduce it than to explode it further.

Preaching Lessons: Peter Rollins Part II

This was technically a sermon, but when Rollins stood up and said, "Well, I don't really preach, so we'll see how this goes," I opted to think of it as lecture instead. More on this later in this post.

His sermon title was "Encountering Ourselves in the Other," and he used the story of Paul's conversion as one example of this general point, but the biblical text was never actually read, nor did he really do any digging into it.

Rollins' talk began with a discussion on scapegoating, our human tendency to want to project our own brokenness, our own faults, onto something outside ourselves. When we see people differently than ourselves, we generally have three responses, Rollins said: to try to co-opt them into our way of thinking and being (what you've got is clearly wrong and you need what I have), to tolerate them (you've got what you've got, I've got what I've got, let's call it good), or to learn about oneself from the other (what can you teach me about my own beliefs). "What's most terrifying about the other," Rollins points out, "is when I glimpse myself in their eyes and see that I am also other to myself."

It's precisely because of this terrifying mirror effect that Rollins believes that scapegoats are actually our salvation. Here he launched into a reading of Paul's conversion in a way that exposes how the very thing that Paul wanted to get rid of (the followers of a resurrected Christ) were where he actually found his salvation. Because the scapegoats in our lives actually expose our own brokenness. And if we are open to that, we might also just be open to getting over it and becoming whole within ourselves as opposed to trying to make the world whole around us.

"We all want to escape our brokenness, to run away. But the truth is that God is not in the escape, but rather sharing the stories of our brokenness."

After having heard Rollin's previous lecture, I felt like this talk brought his point into full relief. In actually acknowledging our issues, in engaging our scapegoats, we actually engage ourselves in ways that can lead to wholeness. In many ways, I felt like Rollins was echoing much of what we heard in Yvette Flunder's sermon--wholeness is stigma removed from our brokenness so that we can walk back into the world with head held high. Christian faith isn't a homogenizing process, but is the process of realizing that difference instructs, that healing comes in honesty not blending in, that in faking perfect believe, we are missing out on the gift that honest doubt gives us.

As my friend Jeff and I walked to the next session, we talked about the genre of Rollins' talk: was it a sermon? Was it a lecture? Was it storytelling? We acknowledged that Rollins didn't dig into the biblical text at all--actually, it was an illustration from Batman that stuck with us most (that Batman could have done a lot more good in Gotham City if he had just dealt with his anger over his parents' death; he could have then graduated from beating up criminals with the latest military-grade weaponry to giving kids schoolbooks. Not a bad point). Jeff made a point that stuck with me, though. He said that yeah, most of the time, you need to do the exegetical digging to wrestle out your message, but some weeks, he said, "You just need to get up there and say what needs to be said."

I think there's some truth to this--there are times when the truth needs to be spoken. I brought this up later to Dr. Grundy, and he nuanced it further, saying that yes, the truth can be spoken plainly, but that it also needs to come from a place of authentic wrestling with the text. He is the preaching professor, so I'm going to take that seriously.

So, then, (this sounds obvious) the preaching task assumes the preacher's relationship with the biblical text. A congregation assumes the person preaching has wrestled with it. But I'm also wondering about how the preacher makes assumptions about their relationship with the biblical text, and whether those assumptions are fair and how they come into play. Rollins' work is mostly outside of traditional church, and so his assumptions about his audiences relationship with the biblical text are different than your average preacher's (though whether they should be or not is a different story altogether). And if your congregation's relationship with the biblical text is zilch, what is the appropriate way to present yours? I have no doubt that Rollins knows his Bible. But he didn't lean on it to preach this message.

I'm toying here with some kind of line. Everything I have read on preaching, everything I have been taught about preaching, and 95% of what I'm hearing at the Festival about preaching tells me that the foundation of the sermon is the biblical text. I guess the question I am asking is how much of that foundation is it necessary to reveal? Rollins acknowledges preaching is an art of indirect speech, so it's quite possible that he utilizes layers of stories to build on a foundation that he's just not as interested in making apparent. Where is the edge of this preaching task? And how does it intersect in an age of increasing biblical illiteracy and pop-culture immersion? And what is the preaching task in between. So far, the answer for almost everyone in the Festival has been, "Stick to the text." But in Rollins, I'm hearing something different. And it intrigues me.

Preaching Lessons: Peter Rollins Part I

Peter Rollins says a lot. It's both thick and quick, and a little exhausting. A classmate said, it was like watching theological ping-pong when he plays both sides of the table. But worth it. His talk was entitled, "Fools for Christ: The Sermon as Weapon of Subversion," and he focused mostly on the approach and content of the sermon, using storytelling, psychological, and family dynamics research to explore the idea of the sermon as subversion. 

At its core, Rollins was sharing how to preaching in a way that is "disruptive and disturbing." And what is more disruptive and disturbing than telling the truth about things that nobody wants to tell the truth about? He spoke at length about systems and transgressions of the system that actually enable the systems to remain in place. It is the "allowable cheats" that keep people from questioning the larger problems that may be present in the system. So, he asks, what happens if we get honest about the things that nobody believes, but we all pretend we believe? 

Nothing short of transformation.

He did a sample reading of the parable of the prodigal son, reading it as tragedy (in the classic definition of nothing changing through the course of the drama) compared with a reading of Luke Skywalker in Star Wars subverting his father's expectations in a way that actually wound up being sacrificial for his father in the end. And so he asked, "What is the thing you can't go to....because it is the one thing that will change everything."

And so, in preaching, the radical move is in exposing what everybody already thinks, the stuff we already knew, but which we didn't want to know we knew. And this makes church the place where we come to get a clearer look at our devils and demons.

And the purpose isn’t just to talk about hard or awkward or uncomfortable things for the sake of talking about them, it is for the sake of transformation, for the sake of salvation, even.

In his sermon, Rollins gets into this more fully, so I won’t dive into it a ton here. But it was helpful for me to realize early on that he was engaging with embeddedness—not only in our theology, but our embeddedness in systems of oppression, systems that hold us back and yet somehow we hold up (consciously and unconsciously), systems that keep us from functioning as full people in the world.

For Rollins, the way to handle embeddedness isn’t to share the right answer, isn’t to continue to beat upon it like a hammer against a wall. Rather, he says that just saying the wall is there at all oftentimes begins that process of transformation in ways that allow for more creative means of taking down the wall. Makes sense to me.

But Rollins also considers preaching to be “an art of indirect speech.” And so subversion isn’t in aggression or confrontation, it’s in the layering of stories that bring to the surface the things which have been held down for so long, we’ve started living our lives around them, like a pile of magazines that started as a decluttering project and have now become a coffee table we move around in the business of our everyday lives. Which is exactly what he embodied in his lecture: the accumulation of his stories had the cumulative effect of helping us to recognize what had always been there in our preaching—the idea that we are called to tell the truth—in a way that made us wonder why we hadn’t been doing it all along.

Preaching Lessons: Brian McLaren Part II

"Light Fires, Issue Permission Slips, Invite others into Interpretive Community"

McLaren's lecture focused on what he understood the charge for preacher to be right now. Here's my outline:

Light Fires:

• Light a fire of hope, concern and courage wherever you go.
• Light your own fire first--"You can't be a purveyor of abundant life if you are so much of a workaholic that you can't enjoy it yourself."
• Light fires in others around you.

Issue Permission Slips:

• Give people permission to dance, to be happy, to move, to do something different. McLaren worked with the metaphorical and literal implications of dance for quite a while. Suffice it to say, dancing is good.
• Give permission to dance to a new tune.
• Give permission to dance with new partners (especially ecumenical partners, for McLaren).
• Give permission to innovate.

I never quite got the invite part of things. I think this is when he was talking about ecumenism. But yeah. Get others on board, I guess?

The implications for preaching and worship were mostly common-sense--dry dusty liturgy that nobody is passionate about is not worth keeping around. Write something new. Do something new. Perform something new. Dance something new. But mostly, do it with passion and excitement.

In terms of preaching formation, I really didn't get much out of what he was saying here. He seemed to think that he was saying something quite novel, especially when he discussed moving away from preaching a theology of salvation to a theology of creation, and maybe in the larger context, he is. But to me, most of what he was saying was pretty obvious. (I wanted to ask how theologies of salvation and creation differed in the first place, but thought better of it.)

McLaren was explicit in his wanting to move the church to a new place in its life, and he sees this happening through the metaphor of dance. Which is great. But at the same time, it is a little awkward to begin to try to apply his ideas to a congregational setting, especially when his ideas are being incubated outside of one. Dr. Grundy and I talked about this further--about how emergent church folks are able to offer valid critique of the church from the outside, but it fails to be able to offer much realistic advice or guidance for those working on the inside. And McLaren's advice to move beyond denominations seems to me to be a good model on a local level--why wouldn't you be working with your other brothers and sisters in faith int he local community--but he was proposing it on a much larger scale, which rang very strange to my ears. 

Preaching Lessons: Brian McLaren Part I

I attended both of Brian McLaren's sessions this morning and decided to go ahead and just write about both of them in one space. Partly because it's convenient, and partly because I don't think his sermon was really a sermon. So. On to Part I.

"The Life You Save May Be Your Own" 

McLaren's sermon was more of a show-and-tell than it was preaching for me. That said, what he was showing was absolutely worth hearing.

McLaren is working on gaining a better grasp of the Bible. In his second session, he talked about how he is beginning to understand the Bible as "story space, not a story line." The space within the stories for imagination, new understanding, and new readings is what McLaren holds to be important about the text. His book due out later this year deals with this.

But in the message, he used the story of Jacob and Esau to show how important framing of stories is for preaching and sharing the Word. Especially as we will be preaching more and more to communities who aren't familiar with the Bible. McLaren reminded us, "Stories frame us as being a hostile or hospitable community." And it's true. Our stories make up who we are and how we understand ourselves. And so, the stories we present in the preaching moment matter very deeply.

What I understood him to be saying in a nutshell is that the pericope of many of the text we preach from is awkward, inappropriate to the text, doesn't take other textual connections into account, and can generally skew the whole story. In using the story of Jacob and Esau, he asked several times, "If the story stopped here, what would that tell us about God? Does it get at the fullness of God?" Most of the time, at the traditional text breaks, it didn't.

Though he didn't seem to flesh out a really good method for handling setting the pericope, he did encourage using the "fullness of the story," which for him meant "sticking with it to the point of encountering the economy of grace." In terms of the language we've been using in my preaching class, where is the celebration in the text? He asked the following questions of the text:

• Where is God revealed in the story?
• What are the marks of God in the story?
• And did you get to the economy of grace?

To me, this way of engaging the Scripture makes complete sense and actually seems to dovetail with the work the folks doing Narrative Lectionary are doing. It also connects to the continued emphasis on biblical imagination in preaching that Brueggemann, Bell, Florence, and others are all lifting up as well. 

To be honest, I feel really freed up by all of this. As an individual who really only has a few years of getting to know the biblical text under her belt, I often leaned on the Revised Common Lectionary on a week-to-week basis. But it felt like such an unnatural and jerky way of working to me. I hadn't realized how much of my engagement with Scripture was shaped by the RCL, but it has been. Through my own personal practice of lectio divina and Bible study, as well as my school work in biblical studies, some of this is alleviated, but I can still see how much my understanding of the scope of a biblical story is influenced by the RCL. 

To leave that behind, to be able to really dig into a story in a way that is imaginative and generative feels much more thrilling than feeling like I'm researching for the sake of finding some kind of "right answer." Widening the scope, looking at the Bible as space and not plot is so helpful in engaging this way. To throw in preaching terms, I feel like this is a much more helpful way of distinguishing homiletical exegesis from academic exegesis. And it only feels natural that digging for the gracious truth in any text is going to include different parts of the story than if you're just trying to get the main plot points in.

Preaching Lessons: Jesse the Former Satanist in a Minneapolis Bar after Midnight

Being out of town for the first time on my own since having my daughter, I'm taking advantage a bit of having my evenings free. And so, last evening found myself and my classmates at a great joint a college friend recommended called Donnie Dirk's Zombie Den, which was an awesome place with awesome people, and awesome house-infused liquors. Go there if you are in Minneapolis. You may have to use your phone GPS to help your cabbie get there, but it is worth it. A fun time was had by all, but when we returned to the hotel, I wasn't quite ready for bed. And so, my friend Paul and I made our way to the British pub around the corner for a pint and some more conversation.

It was here that I befriended Jesse and his friend Craig. If I'm being honest, I'll tell you that I approached Jesse to bum a cigarette. He said he'd be happy to give me one in exchange for a joke. Because it was the best joke I could think of, I told him I was a seminarian, a person studying to enter vocational ministry. He laughed, too, but then said, "Actually, we're Christians, too! We don't go to church, but we love Jesus." He then showed me his "Saved by Grace" tattoo on his forearm, and a friendship was born. Paul and I joined their table, and the next hour of conversation was some of the best, most probing theological conversation I've had in a while. (Of note: they asked how old I was, and when I told them, they seemed genuinely excited. "You just don't see many people our age going into ministry," Jesse said. "That's awesome.")

Jesse shared his story of having been a Satanist, of having worshiped Satan for years. And of coming to a point in his life when he realized grace was more powerful than any force out there...but that he would have to step into that stream. We talked about pluralism, about love, about monogamy, about salvation, about suicide and patricide, about all our homicidal tendencies, really, and we talked about God's love poured out in the person of Jesus Christ. We talked about mystery. And we talked about parenthood. We talked about the Bible, and Jesse could quote it like nobody's business. Far better than me.

His friend Craig was more reserved, more willing to let Jesse use up most of the word count, but when asked a question, he shared such insightful, thoughtful answers. He and I became Facebook friends before the night was through, and I think a more longer-term friendship may unfold from there.

But as the night wound up, Paul and I walked home. And I said, "Jesse preached. Just as well as the rest of them." We agreed, we had encountered something special, something sacred in that pub.

But I also felt like I brought my preaching self to the table, too. Though I wasn't the only one talking, I think it was more of creating this space where we could all ask questions and think out loud. And could that be preaching? Not trying to give the answers, but at sitting at the table our literal or remembered Bibles open before us, teasing things out, knowing at the end of the night you might not have THE answer, but that the conversation will have had some saving effect anyway.

I wrote in my oral examination reflection that in many ways, I don't feel like I've found my field to preach in yet. My Wesleyan roots ground me in a tradition that values preaching outside of the church an of experiencing the Word in conversation. And as we walked home that night, I had the same feeling I've had after a good day of preaching: not of certainty that what I said was heard and integrated, but of certainty that each of us was walking away with a sense of God's truth that we hadn't had previously. Pretty awesome.

Festival of Homiletics: Wednesday Impressions

This day was so full, I'm only just sitting down on Thursday afternoon to put together my thoughts. In general, I'm just a very grateful person to have been present in spaces where I could encounter God in unexpected ways--in surprisingly beautiful lunchtime sharings, in worship, in a zombie bar, on the walk home.

A few of my classmates gathered for supper in the hotel bar and decompressed on our day. We talked about our excitements from this week--the things we are hearing that make us feel hopeful, that are shaping our understanding of the preaching task, that open us up to new ways of engaging Scripture, and of approaching the sermon. And we also discussed the things that have been difficult, that we're wrestling with, and with the things that we aren't quite sure what to do with yet. And I'm noticing our conversations are affecting the conversations of others--with Eden alums who gather with us during breaks, with clergy we share meals with, with people who overhear. We are critically engaging the experience in a way that I think a lot of people here are longing to do, but either don't have the community or tools to do. Anyway...that was my Go Eden! moment of the post.

I want to give myself a bit of space to talk here about racial diversity at the Festival. As one of my classmates put it, "There is an awful lot of salt, and not much pepper." Actually, we observed that our class alone contributes to at least a 100% increase in the number of people of color in attendance. Beyond that, a significant portion of the time spent worshiping and hearing preachers is couched in a liturgical setting that is largely WASP-y. It's interesting to see how aware of this we are because of our experiences of other traditions and practices as we engage in our studies at Eden. We are noticing the null curricula because it's not a null curricula where we study. There are a couple of things I want to use this space to begin to consider:

• While most of the preachers are acknowledging issues of racism and systematic oppression, I find it interesting that much of this engagement isn't more than a tip of the cap to it. There are some amazing people of color who are preaching and lecturing, and so part of me wonders if the unspoken assumption is that the preachers who are people of color will "deal with" that in their time or if it's a discomfort with offering a perspective when it is not one's own culture. Can a white, female preacher preach about race issues? Should she? (I think the answer is yes, with great humility and care.) And actually, I'm beginning to feel like the tip of the cap is actually a way to acknowledge without really acknowledging: "I know this is a problem, but I don't know what to say about it." Actually, there are a number of issues we've been dancing around in this same way: homosexuality, gender identification, young people in the church, the reality of pluralism. Now, I know that this isn't a Festival on Social Justice, so not every message is going to deal expertly with these things. But not dealing with them at all doesn't work either.
• I'm also noticing an approach to preaching that really gives a lot of power to the congregation--that seems to be molded around an assumption of middle-class white privilege. And looking out at the congregation, I can understand that. You are preaching to a particular people. I think it was in observing Otis Moss III's lecture that I most acutely saw this--parts of his lecture were from texts or sermons of his I had encountered before. But what was interesting is that so much of the delivery was altered, packaged in a way that seemed more palatable for those gathered. This isn't a critique of Moss, but is an issue I'm having with the conference in general. So much of the messages we are hearing are calling us to prophetic preaching in one way or another, preaching that isn't saccharine-sweet, but that sticks its hands right into the rawness of the biblical text and our lives.  
• So, then...shouldn't our form follow our content? Shouldn't our delivery be raw and authentic in a way that allows for the fullness of the preacher and the preacher's message to be preached? Or should we deliver things in a package that's easily recognizable. The answer is probably both. But the two preachers who I felt simply preached the message that God had laid on their hearts exactly as they would preach it to anyone were Yvette Flunder and Peter Rollins. Both definitely have a subversive edge, but even in their fullness of their subversive messages, they were accessible because they were speaking the truth. I think that truth transcends. I think that truth is what Yvette called speaking in tongues. I think that truth is what all of us want to do and are very afraid to. Because it requires a lot of work and a lot of honest with ourselves. But I, for one, want to do that work.

Preaching Lessons: The Narrative Lectionary

The session on the Narrative Lectionary was more of  sales pitch than anything. And I had to sit outside of the room for this session, as there was a massive overflow of people present. So, I'm just going to link the website where you can get lots more information and resources: www.narrativelectionary.org. For me, narrative lectionary makes so much sense. Mostly because the Revised Common Lectionary makes no sense to me, and I like having a structure to work within when I preach.

But here were a couple of tips gleaned from the session:

• If you're going to use the Narrative Lectionary, give your congregation warning and buy-in. Don't just change over. Tell them why you are going to do it and what you hope the entire church will get out of it by doing so. Then, when you finish the program year, give them the chance to share about their experiences and learnings. 
• If you can't or don't want to start in September, a good time to pick it up is after Christmas, when you're already moving into the New Testament readings anyway. It can make for a smoother transition.

There was also a really great metaphor for preaching--Legos. Legos used to be a free-form toy, where imagination and invention were the keys and legos were just the means of getting there. Now, many Lego sets come with directions and instructions for building specific forms. In preaching, we don't want to be telling people what to build. Instead, we want to give them the tools to be able to connect the biblical text to their own lives and to announce the hope that is present in the text. From there, people make their own connections in a living, breathing faith.

Heard the Word: Yvette Flunder

All. Right. I think all of us from Eden were ready for Flunders' message. We were ready for some church. We were ready for some celebration. And she did not disappoint. Her message title, "God is a Mighty Good Healer" was based on a phrase her grandmother would use while working in the kitchen. Flunder remembered how out of nowhere, her family would hear her grandmother exclaim, "Hey! Hallelujah!" from the kitchen while she cooked. A remembrance of God's incredible work in the world would strike her, and she wouldn't wait to celebrate. She would do it right then and there.

Flunder preached on John 9: 1-11, what she calls the "second spitting incident" in Jesus healing ministry to the blind (see Mark 8: 23-26 for the other). Early on, I could see how Moss' lecture about preaching the blues was at play in Flunder's message, so I honed in on that as she preached.

Right up front, Flunder laid on us the biblical blues, exploring the very real problem of blindness in biblical times--20 out of every 100 people was blind in some way, whether it was near- or far-sightedness, cataracts, or another sight impairment, there were no options for correction then. She used this information as a springboard into discussing the problem of blindness in places in the world today where good medical care, nutrition, access to clean water, and eye care are not accessible. She sang the eschatological blues, helping us to see the issue in the here and now.

And for most of the sermon, she riffed between the two of these, building the tension between the biblical blues and our present circumstances. She nuanced it all as she moved through the text, teasing out its meaning, walking it through in these terms. Her celebration was introduced here--that Jesus' healing isn't about just getting better...it's about "removing stigma so that we could return to productivity." And Flunder does celebrate this for a while, sitting with the idea that if we are changed, we can change the world. If we are free, we can free anyone who we come into contact with.

And as she builds this tension, she worked up to the theological blues--that many of us are unwilling to be healed. That many of us resist God's healing power because of what will be expected of us next. When the man's eyes were healed, he had a charge--to go to the "pool of sent" and to return to productivity. How many of us resist God's healing because we don't actually want to be productive?

But she continued to celebrate--to celebrate the times when we do heal. To celebrate the imagined space in which we all walked out into the world whole, bearing stigma for our difficulties no more, and preaching the gospel by sharing our experience.

But probably the coolest moment of the sermon for me was when she was able to connect her vision of wholeness with that preaching moment. She told us that she was, "Preaching in tongues." She said that her mere presence at this festival, and the fact that she was preaching out of her culture and that we (a significant majority WASPs) could understand her was the work of the Holy Spirit at work in the world and in the church that she wanted to celebrate. I want to come back to this and write more about cultures represented here, but that moment really was of note for me.

Flunder's sermon was excellent. But I'm also excited that I was able to apply Moss' lecture to it. I really believe that having a capacity to speak about and for tragedy is an important part of preaching, and Flunder gave me an excellent model for how to do that faithfully.

Preaching Lessons: John Bell

Here's the short version: Imagination is awesome. Let's use it.

"Imagination is not a bogus gift of the Holy Spirit, but is a primary attribute of God and a primary gift to the church."

Bell also fleshed out an understanding of children as models for discipleship, saying that Jesus lifted them up not because they were placid, docile, innocent things, but because they were curious, trusting, energetic, and imaginative people.

I'd hoped for a little more substance, but listening to John Bell speak is lovely no matter what. So, I'm not complaining.

But I think there's another theme here--that imagination, sacramental vision, and a willingness to engage the world in a way that is truthful without being necessarily logical is the absolute stuff of faith. And if it's the stuff of faith, it's the stuff of pastoral ministry and preaching. To walk in without imagination is to walk in without our most inherent and powerful tool for doing God's loving, healing, creative work here and now.

You know things are getting good when it's all starting to blur together.

Preaching Lessons: Lillian Daniel

I hit up Lillian Daniel's sermon this morning. Her message--Noah's Ark--dealt with Genesis 6:1-9:16. I'm not going to spend much time discussing her sermon here (but I'll include a picture of my notes). For my preaching formation, there are two things I would like to emulate:

• Daniel did an excellent job of dealing with the genre of the text. She handled its mythic nature by taking it so seriously it revealed the absurdity in doing so. She reached to other creation stories to help guide us through this assertion (namely, Adam and Eve), and then fleshed out what the metaphorical implications for the story are for her in this engagement of the text. Nicely done. 
• I'm chewing on her question of whether Adam and Eve were kicked out or released from Eden and whether Noah and the Arkers (that would be an amazing band name) were free or stranded. She said, "There is no roadmap for how to be righteous. The Kingdom of God is within you. Paradise misplaced and paradise found. It's all in perception." For me, this connected to Anna Carter Florence's comments about sacramental vision. 

You guys, I talk with my hands a lot.
Here's me flapping them at Lillian Daniel.

What I really want to talk about, though, was Daniel's lecture, "Who's Asking? (Are We Answering Questions that Nobody's Asking)." It's helpful to know that Daniel is the author of the book When Spiritual but Not Religious Isn't Enough: Seeing God in Surprising Places, Even the Church. And I am thanking God for the work she is doing. Today, she took us on a survey of preaching in America to understand just how we got to the point of church irrelevance (because to many, it is). For most of the lecture, I just sat nodding, so grateful that somebody was putting words to my experience, that someone on the inside was able to tell all the church people, in their language, exactly what was up. Here are a few things I'd like to pass on:

• The beautiful thing about pastoring a church now is that when a pastor looks out at the congregation, she sees people who actually want to be there. In his way, church shopping isn't a negative. It's a way of people making informed decisions about their faith life. And isn't that what we want?
• She lifts up the liberating effect of having people who feel that they can mark the "None" box on the religious affiliation form. We don't want people coming to church because they have to in order to vote, in order to make business connections, in order to fit in.
• She shifts the language of liberal and conserving traditions to one of open-mindedness and fundamenlism or literalism. I think this is helpful and a more accurate description of how different traditions handle Scriptural authority, encountering the Other, and a whole host of things.
• She outlined how open-minded churches have tended to market themselves in three ways, none of which matter to people who are nominally or non-religious:
• Through their activities
• Through opposition (Well, I'll tell you what we're not...)
• And through saying we are an alternative to fundamentalism/literalism. 
• She outlines non-religious people as generally falling into four main categories:
• No Ways--These people have been hurt by the church. Deeply. And actively avoid or are in conflict with the church in many ways.
• Not Latelys--These people have experience of church, but drifted away and didn't feel anything lacking after they left.
• Never Haves. These are individuals who have just never experienced church.
• Not Yets.--These are people who have never experienced church, but who are open and curious. 
• What matters to these people? Answering the question: Why does it matter to you that you follow Jesus?
• As preachers, this means actually seeking to answer this question week-in and week-out when instead we are often trying to answer questions posed by seminary professors, by our culture, or even by arguing with the pastor down the street who has different doctrinal stances than you. She urges us to stop preaching answers to questions that nobody is asking, and instead to look to Scripture to help us wrestle with the question of why following Jesus matters to us.
• And she argues that inevitably, this wrestling leads us to inclusivity, of wonder, of openness to God's movement in our lives and in the lives of people of different faiths (or no faith). So yeah. It matters.

Afterward, I went to meet Daniels and to thank her for her work. I told her that I was a "Not Yet" who has experienced a call to ministry. And then, I teared up. Being a former "Not Yet" in a church world that is still asking you to preach answers to irrelevant questions is hard. And I told her so. And I told her that I was grateful for her work because it helped those inside the church already understand how not to put the Not Yet leaders like me who have found a life-giving faith in Christianity into an irrelevant box that doesn't fit. Daniels was gracious and humble, but I hope she heard how important the work she is doing in making room for new leadership in the church. Because making room for them in the pews is one thing; letting them lead is another...and is an experience that I think will define the next era of Christianity in America...but not without a lot of growing pains. 

In prayer this morning...

...I heard my own voice, my deepest, most self-filled voice, speak with such resonance, with such clarity, with such assurance and certainty that it startled me. I don't even remember what it said. But I recognized it as my own, as most essentially my own, and was grateful to have heard it. Because having heard it within myself, I know that there's the possibility of it passing though my lips one day. One day.

Festival of Homiletics: Tuesday Impressions

Tonight, our class gathered to reflect on our experiences thus far at the Festival. It was a good, honest

Church selifes in the balcony while waiting for more preaching.

dialogue about what the Festival is and is not, and I'm grateful to be able to have conversations about concerns about issue of race, class, gender, orientation, inclusivity, theology, and our own personal experiences at the Festival in a way that is open, honest, receptive, and generative. Go Eden.

Actually, there is a real, "Go Eden!" spirit about us. We are all walking around wearing our Eden Theological Seminary pins, calling out and greeting Eden alums we see, joking about and examining our Eden culture. When we are in the classroom and in the middle of it, it's hard to really pin down exactly what it means to be a part of the Eden community--we are diverse in so many ways. But here at the Festival, out of our norm, we're beginning to see what characterizes us, and I think we're all excited to see that our ability to dialogue on issues that most people avoid (including many of the preachers and leaders at the Festival) is one thing that holds us together. Go Eden!

It's been interesting to see how people at the conference interact, too. So many of the people I talk to seem desperate for community, so eager to talk, so ready to pour out their tales of ministry to me and to each other. There is a loneliness that I think is very real in pastoral ministry. But I also find it interesting that cliques exist here, too. I've already found that some people are just not here to connect, which I find so strange. Full disclosure: as an extreme extrovert, I have a hard time not understanding why the whole world doesn't want to be my friend, so there's that.

But today, I got in line for a book signing by Barbara Brown Taylor. I began talking to the man next to me in line, an ELCA pastor from Ohio named Logan. He mentioned how refreshing it is to feel in community in the preaching task. He lamented how so much of it felt isolated to him week in and week out. As we chatted, the woman behind us joined in. Lea is a pastor in the MCC in Florida. We didn't know it at the time, but the line to get to BBT would take 2 hours for us to get through. And if we had known, I don't know that we would have stayed. But I think a big part of the reason we did is because we suddenly found ourselves in excellent conversations about vocational ministry, about our lives and loved ones, about the state of the church, about pews and chairs, about the truth about being clergy, and about the grace of being clergy. We joked that if we didn't make it to BBT, we'd autograph each other's books and no one would be the wiser. By the time we got our books signed, we were friends, having agreed to pray for one another for the next month, exchanging business cards and hugs as we parted ways. It was a simple thing to strike up a conversation with these people, but it was also an affirmation of the fact that the preaching task is never intended to be one undertaken in isolation. 

Preaching is never--and should never be--a solo endeavor. Not only is preaching undertaken in community with the Trinity, but it is undertaken in conversation with each other. The support, care, encouragement, and honesty of fellow preachers is what makes preaching possible. So often, we think it's easier to do it all ourselves, to just lock ourselves away in a room with our studies and our blank Word document. But preaching is relational. But preaching is communal. Preaching is community.

I'm also noticing the layering of the messages at this event and the larger picture that's emerging from it. So many of the messages have been focused on the tension between a seeming duality that the preacher calls the audience into dialogue with instead: Brueggeman's vessels and contents; Anna Carter Florence's view of the realm of Caesar and the Realm of God; Barbara Brown Taylor's light and dark; and Otis Moss III's blues and gospel. In each, the preacher drew our attention to how our culture calls us to consider these things as a strict dualism: this or that. But they also pointed to the mandate by God to faithful people to consider them in dialogue, in tension, balancing each other, not negating each other. Dr. Grundy says that this is a function of their examination of preaching in a post-modern context. I also assume it's a part of the preaching task in general--always balancing a tension between platitude and sincerity, between easy and intangible truth. The preaching task isn't clear-cut. It requires a foolishness that is nonsensical in the world. But these preachers are calling us into deeper and deeper foolishness in order to be more faithful to the Word we are given to proclaim. Perhaps its the immanent end of Christendom, perhaps its post-modernity. Whatever it is, I think it might just be grace-filled.

Also, in chatting with classmates later in the hotel bar, I acknowledged my own prejudice. As someone who grew up unchurched, I find that I always walk into a gathering that's any kind of churchy feeling like an outsider, feeling like there is something there, some experience, some knowledge, some secret handshake that I am just not a part of. And that is a really uncomfortable and ungenerous place to be. Today, I was reading out of Ephesians, and the following verse spoke to this particular thorn, "You too heard the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit because you believed in Christ" (1: 13). Because I have heard the Word, there is no outsider. There is no Jew or Gentile. There is no unchurched and churched. There is only faithful. And how can I be faithful to this Word if I'm constantly looking outside my own experience for validation of it. I can only seek to be faithful to the Word I am given, both to proclaim and to live out in community. This is my challenge for the next few days here--to claim my place here, to try to work myself out of my "outsider" mentality, to begin to believe that these are my people.

Preaching Lessons: Barbara Brown Taylor and MaryAnn McKibben Dana

In a dialogue and Q&A session, BBT and MAKD discussed parts of their writing work and their own engagement of the preaching task. I'm posting a picture of my full notes below, but I do want to make comments on a few points.

• Language: In so many ways, language and its revision has come up in sessions today. I also mentioned it in my discussion of some of Willimon's work. I think as a person who grew up unchurched, I understand not the simple discomfort with "churchy language," but its misappropriation and misconstrual in popular media. What I think "sin" is is likely not what your average unchurched person thinks I think it is. I think one of my areas of strength in ministry is my ability to write, speak, preach, and pray in a vernacular that is sacred and yet accessible. I'm struggling some with a tension I feel from the generation above me in changing some of this language. BBT said something really excellent, though, "Revising our language completely can be dangerous. Sure, it's accessible, but any time we open the Bible, there is the language again. We have to deal with it." I agree with her sentiment that Bible paraphrases don't deal well with the problem, I also think that with translations like the CEB becoming more common (ha!), there are ways our language might change without abandoning sacredness. But still...it's something I'm chewing on.

• MAKD on the Need To Knows for new preachers: 
• There is nothing more interesting than the biblical text. No illustration. No story. Nothing.
• Using Evernote has enabled her to organize her preaching thoughts so much better.
• Not every meal you make is a 4-course masterpiece; a modest meal can also feed those present. (So, stop being a perfectionist preacher already, Chelsey.)

• In the emergent church, the role of the pastor and the preaching task seem to be breaking open. It's an exciting time in which there seems to be a lot of opportunity to step outside of the standard 15-20 minute sermon box and to lean into the strengths of the preacher. Congregations are open to this. But BBT also shared that she thinks the preacher's role will always be as a "designated person among the community who speaks the truth of what is life-giving, meaningful, and will bear weight in a way that enables the gathered community to nod and say, 'Yes.'" Seems simplified, but I'm digging the image.

Heard the Word: MaryAnn McKibben Dana

MaryAnn McKibben Dana

MaryAnn McKibben Dana is a pastor and writer (check out her blog The Blue Room) and mom and spouse and denominational leader and spiritual speaker and OH MY WORD WHAT HAVE I BEEN DOING WITH MY LIFE??? Seriously. She's one of those people who, when you read their bio, you think, "How. How? How!" But then, when you hear her preach, she's so nice and wonderful and focused and passionate, you think, "Oh!"

So, she's a regular congregational preacher like most of the Festival attendees, and her message "Lips, Stomach, Heart" based on Matthew 15: 10-28 was a really fine example of a preacher who has wrestled with her text, come up a with a bloody lip, and is sharing her honest learnings with the assembly. Her movement from an image of "Jesus caught with his compassion down" to a God of ever-increasing grace was thoughtful, aware of the listener, couched in our current context, and really accessible. I can see why she's a great congregational speaker.

One piece of her message that struck me was her commentary on our current culture of saying more and more about less and less and her commentary on our snark-obsessed virtual world. She reads the story of Jesus and the Canaanite woman through this lens. And if Jesus' words are less than kind, our cultured response would be to expect, even demand, snarkiness back. Instead, Dana called us to something greater, to one-liners that elevate. She said, "The Canaanite woman does this: She polishes the defiled words [Jesus spoke to her] off, and hands them back and says, 'There. That's more like it.' That's our job as preachers, too, in an age of snarkiness."

So often, I get caught up in a culture of quick retort and snark. It's funny, fun, and oftentimes immediately gratifying. A deft smart response often gets a greater reaction (and support, really) than does a thoughtful one. How often, then, as a preacher, am I able to just as quickly respond with words that elevate? With words that take the conversation to a more balanced, peace-filled space, where ideas can be handed back with a little sheen of grace on them. Actually, I think that this is the pastoral care aspect of what Anna Carter Florence was talking about in her discussion of living in a parable universe--when we see sacramentally, we can preach sacramentally, but then we must also live sacramentally in our everyday conversations. One liners that elevate. Gonna let that one marinate.

Dana appeared to be a confident preacher, who brought her own style to the preaching moment. One classmate pointed out that she was herself, even down to her patterned pants, not trying to dress down or up or around or any other way that looked uncomfortable for her. She moved. She gestured. And she seemed like herself.

Her preaching inspired a conversation between a classmate and myself about how women use their voices. We talked about the breathiness that so many women adopt when addressing a large group (Dana did not do this, but 4 of the 5 women who asked questions afterward did.). Where does it come from? I said that I thought it was a way of sounding humble and unassuming. To speak with breathiness is to defer in some way, but my friend said that she found it to be sickeningly sweet. Both of us agreed that it can be one way that women choose to make their voices smaller in society. I began thinking about how clearly Anna Carter Florence and Barbara Brown Taylor spoke today, how I was captivated not only by their words, but by the strong, clear tone of their voices. It's something I need to pay better attention to in myself. How often am I minimizing myself through my voice or actions (or humor, as is often my case)? How might this be diminishing the message I have been tasked with giving?

Preaching Lessons: Otis Moss III

Otis Moss III brought it. His lecture, "Preaching Prophetic Blues in a Post-Modern World," was inspirational, challenging, and a prophetic call for preachers. For Moss, the blues represent a worldview--a way of understanding the visible world from the underside. He understands blues to be a statement of existential existence that is incomplete without eschatalogical hope, and vice versa. In short, "The gospel is not the gospel without the blues."

Moss argues that a preacher cannot preach the Good News without confronting tragedy in three forms: existential blues (What is the tragedy before us?), theological blues (Calvary is nothing BUT the blues.), and biblical blues (Scripture is literature of an oppressed people. Period.). Only by preaching the blues are we able to face tragedy head on without falling into despair. Only by being open to what makes us weep do we understand what makes God weep, and then can we find the eschatological hope that God's grace makes apparent. 

It struck me that what Moss was saying was what Barbara Brown Taylor was saying which was what Anna Carter Florence was saying: do not ignore the shadows. Do not ignore the darkness. Do not ignore the sadness and tragedy. To do so is to fail to preach the fullness of the gospel message. Blues without gospel is despair. And gospel without blues is just happy clappy.

It seems that if this is a major undercurrent of the preaching and lectures at the Festival, that it is an undercurrent in Christian life in American today. We have an incredible ability to hide our blues, to ignore them, to pretend them away for the sake of appearances. Moss says we preachers avoid the blues because we hide in the daily tasks of 'pastoral concerns,' because lament may not be in our tradition, because we fear conflict and rejection. These are more reflections of our culture than they are of our faith.

To preach with integrity is to give space for the blues and to allow them to be understood in light of the gospel, and vice versa. And incredibly, freedom is the result. Freedom to talk about our pain, our fear, our uncertainty, our darkness. And freedom to work communally toward solutions. Moss certainly struck home with many of us when he said, "If you never preach the blues, you may be a part of the structure that creates the blues for others." Ouch.

Though his message is intensely relevant for today, I imagine it's always been intensely relevant for preachers. Praise and lament are deeply related--just look to the Psalms for a quick education there--but is it inherent in our humanity to cover our brokenness and try to sing only praise? And if so, living into the image God created us in means to expose that brokenness to allow for creative healing. 

Heard the Word: Barbara Brown Taylor

Barbara Brown Taylor and students from Eden. Boom.

You can access the full-text of BBT's sermon here courtesy of Time.com.

It started of well. A hymn about darkness (Brian Wren's "Joyful is the Dark"). A vivid reading of Exodus 20: 18-21 and Luke 9: 32-36. The beginning of a sermon titled, "Inside the Dark Cloud of God." Taylor set out her preaching task early on--that while instead of preaching in the direction everyone was looking, that she instead was wandering from the crowd, looking in the opposite direction, and finding God in the darkness.

Taylor made clear that this was not some apophatic effort on her part. Rather, through Exodus 20, she digs into the idea that God IS dark. Dark like a cloud. And that dark is so, so much harder to look at, but so very formative to who we are as people of faith. She called us into a place where we wandered into the darkness, telling us that the darkness was not a place to pass through, but is actually God's home. This home is completely off-putting--we have no sense of control, of direction, of ability to use any of the tools and equipment we rely on in the light. Instead, we only have what we came in with, and the stark faith that we realize has only really taken us where we want to go anyway. The darkness, Taylor said, inspires us to hold out the broken pieces of ourselves to God and to say, "Here. Do what you want with these." It is place of true humility, true uncertainty, and true promise.

And then the sermon ended.

I wish I were kidding. As we rose and shared the responsive prayer ("A Prayer for Darkness in an Age of Glare" by Rod Jellema), I was confused. What just happened? I turned to my preaching professor who was sitting next to me and asked him, "What just happened?" He was uncertain as well. And as others filed out the door, I continued to ask myself and my classmates, "Seriously. What just happened?"

Because I had just started to step into the darkness of that cloud with Taylor. I had just begun to see how the resourcelessness, the darkness, and the loneliness might just be something where God could do some amazing work. And I was preparing to step in more fully. I was preparing to learn how the preacher might lead into that cloud. I was hoping to also find some grace in that cloud. But my expectations were left hanging, and I was left completely disoriented. Was she leaving us in the cloud to illustrate a point? Was she just pressed for time? Why didn't she deal at all with the Luke text? What is going on?

And so, after scribbling my notes, I went to make my way out of the sanctuary. And exiting at (nearly) the same time (I had to loiter just a few moments) was Barbara Brown Taylor herself. And I had to tell her. I had to stop her and say, "You know, I am completely disoriented by your message." And her response, "Well, you should be. It's not something that is preached on often. We don't talk about it." She went on to say that Scripture, Christian tradition, and our own experience all testify to the darkness, but that we still don't talk about it. And we need to. And that's when she laid it on me. "So, that's your job. You preach it so that it's not so disorienting in the future." Whoa. That was heavy. I mean, I still managed to smile for the photo, but whoa.

I still don't know about the message itself. Part of me is cynical enough to wonder a little bit about whether it was an excellent tease for her latest book. But part of me is feeling like the sense of unease I felt (and still feel) about that message is illustrative of the deeper truth of the thing--that darkness is disarming and uncertain, and you can't preach on it without experiencing a bit of it yourself. In any case, now I have to go read Learning to Walk in the Dark. Not such a horrible task, I suppose.

Heard the Word: Anna Carter Florence

When Anna Carter Florence came to Eden for Opening Convocation in fall 2013, I sat next to her at the post-Chapel picnic as my then-nine month old daughter attempted to grasp baked beans off of my plate. She was gracious and interested in my daughter, in my experience of seminary as a mother, and of engaging the conversation around her. Since reading Preaching as Testimony for preaching class this last semester, I feel further in love, and so I was looking forward to hearing what she had to say today.

Technically, this was a lecture, but I'm still going to categorize it as sermon. Her work came out of her challenge to herself and her students to live in "A Parable Universe" (incidentally, this was the title of her lecture)--a universe in which one lives in and actually expects to collide constantly with flashes of insight that can only be glimpses of the kingdom of heaven in the here and now. ACF operates with the idea that the kingdom of God is constantly interrupts and itself into the here and now. I think I'd take the approach that the kingdom of God is always available, always there, and when we are startled by it, it's not because it's just now shown up...it's because we've just now been able to perceive it.

And so, her lecture introduced the idea that parables actually happen all the time, all around us, and as preachers, our job is to look for them and to find the words to describe them to others. I. Love. This.

Now, ACF could have left it there. She could have handed us this lovely method for sermon preparation, for living the preaching life, and then dropped the mic. But she didn't. Instead, she expertly dug into Matthew 4: 12-25, acting as professor of preaching to Jesus' first sermons. She says that Jesus' first sermon sounds a lot like his preaching mentor, John's--Repent! For the Kingdom of God is near! But, she says...he doesn't just stay there. He looks around. He lives in Capuernaum, and actually lives there. He listens. He learns. He gets to know the peoples' language, their plight, their vernacular and their lives so that when he preaches his next sermon, "Follow me and I will make you fish for people," his message is much more his own. And she goes on to illustrate how Jesus mastery of parable is what makes him so easy to understand. His preaching is made up of the stuff of gossip, of town concerns, of worry, of fretting, of beautiful moments, and of tough times. Jesus sees the opportunity for parable all around, and so he speaks them. (Context matters, it seems.)

For Jesus and for us, parables are a way of putting words to how people have been seeing the Kingdom of God all along. They know how to do it already. The preaching task, then, is to have the observational clout and the guts to point it out.

I'd be leaving out something if I didn't mention how at ease ACF's presence is. While she wasn't preaching, she still gave me the sense that there is something stripped away about her--something raw and no-nonsense, something genuinely interested in the deeper thing happening in whatever is happening. What would it mean to be so keenly aware the something deeper in the preaching moment? What would it mean to walk to the pulpit with that in the absolute front of your mind--the expectation that the moment in itself is a parable? Because for me, the Kingdom of God is like listening to a female preacher tell the story of God's Kingdom here and now.

And so, I wonder if there was a parable in our prior meeting: That the Kingdom of God looks like a community gathered for lunch after church. A lunch in which, among others, an infant and her mother and a celebrated preacher all sit together and observe what a wonderful, beautiful thing it is to watch an infant try to grasp a baked bean, chubby fists chasing it across the table in the midst of a smiling atmosphere that drinks in this realm of God.

Heard the Word: Walter Brueggemann

Full text of Brueggemann's message can be found here courtesy of Time.com.

Because I attend Eden Theological Seminary, I am able to spell Walter Brueggemann's name without looking it up, without second-guessing all the doubled consonants, and without wondering if he's the right person to cite. Let's face it, Brueggemann's always got something to say about something churchy, and it's almost always pretty brilliant. So yeah. I was pretty excited to hear his message this morning.

He used three texts: Jeremiah 18: 1-12, Isaiah 45: 9-10, and 2 Corinthians 4: 7-15, all focusing on the metaphor of the potter and clay, of clay pots and their contents. Now, if I know anything about Brueggemann, it's that he is a master craftsman when it comes to words. And not just words, but streams, with stories, with texts. And so, as he began this sermon with these three strands of text in his fingers, I could seem him braiding them as intricately and as delicately as a mother braiding her daughter's hair. Lovingly, carefully, and effortlessly at once. 

"Have you ever known a preacher who had a good idea, then looked for a text to fit it?" Brueggemann started his message. And we all laughed, thinking of ourselves. But Brueggemann had an exegetical purpose in mind. He painted the scene of Paul, preparing a message for the people of Corinth, as he's searching for a text to speak to these people. And through Brueggemann's imagining, he brilliantly exegeted each text, pointing out context here, repetition here, thematic concerns here. Paul, he says, out-imagined Jeremiah and Isaiah with his Corinthian correspondence, by turning the metaphor of potter and clay into the clay pots and their contents, and asked us, "You won't mind if I out-imagine Paul, then?" No, Walter...we don't mind.

Brueggemann's task was clear: to instruct us on the treasure we have in the changeable form of the clay pot; to exhort us not to be confused about whether the pots or their contents were more valuable (it's the contents...duh); not to take the vessel too seriously; and to be sure that we understand the extraordinary power of reshaping the vessel belongs to God and not us. 

For us gathered, the message was one about the vessel of the church and its contents of the gospel message. In a time when our pot is showing its cracks, is breaking in new ways, is crumbling around us in many ways, it's easy to be concerned about the vessel. But Brueggemann is insistent that Paul is telling us that the vessel isn't important. It's the gospel that's important. 

"More is going on than us. A buoyant fidelity sustains us. And I warn us not to be talked out of the treasure of the gospel for the sake of the vessels that carry it."

"We have a moment of stunning attentiveness that the pot is being reshaped before our eyes because the form is no longer pleasing to the potter."

Boom. Brueggemann's celebration was that the church isn't in need of all the trappings of church as it is today. He stripped it down for us, saying, "We have a book, a towel, a table, and a cup, and we're back in business." These are the indispensable vessels, the ones that can carry the message.

Brueggemann's message wasn't just a good sermon. It was a sermon that taught how to write a sermon, with Paul as the every-preacher, struggling to find a good word for his church. It was a sermon that spoke to the church about the task of preaching, about God's work in and through the fragile vessels of the preacher and hearers. It was a sermon about the contents of the gospel as the contents of the message: hospitality, unity, justice, and the old, old story of God's vulnerable, self-giving love. It was a message so brimming with the content that the vessel was overflowed.

But it was also a prophetic word about a time when many don't want to give up the vessels that have become the church. And Brueggemann, owning and using his privilege as an old, white, tenured American man told us that the treasure is not the church. It's time for a new pot.

There was so much about this message to learn from: from the craft, to his accessible and humorous style, to his deftness with the biblical text. My hope is that I could cultivate a smidgen of his biblical aptitude. And so...back to the text I must go.

Wanted to include the call to worship we opened with: "Fashion us, O God, with divine imagination, mold us with sacred intention. Change us with your compassion. Transform us with joy. Birth us again, anew. Live through us today, always."

Preach Dreams: Waitress

I'm waiting tables at a busy restaurant and come to my manager (who is also my preaching professor). I'm overwhelmed.

Him: Did you get all of them some water?
Me: *looking around* Yes.
Him: Then there's no need to panic. You've done as much as you can do right now.

Festival of Homiletics: Monday Impressions

• Central Lutheran Church rocked the hospitality in terms of making sure we knew where to go, felt comfortable in the space, etc. But, dudes...do not require me to go to registration before going to worship. It makes me feel like you think I don't belong.
• Where the young people at?
• No. Seriously. Where the young people at?
• There are no young people in the program either? (For real. Nobody under 40.)
• It was amazing to watch how the congregation acted during worship, especially with regards to seating. I watched a couple pace up and down and aisle twice, looking for seats. There were at least three rows of people who could have just scooted a little closer together to make room. Neither the people sitting nor the people looking for seats made any attempt to try. Hospitality isn't just for greeters, yo. This is especially terrifying when I consider that most of these people are probably pastors.
• Where are the people of color at?
• Central Lutheran is BEAUTIFUL. I could stare at that vaulted ceiling all day long.
• Wait. Did I see a young person? Nope. Just someone wearing a bright jacket.
• Making new homiletical friends is as easy as yelling "Brueggemann!" in a bar.

Heard the Word(?): Kevin Kling, Storyteller

Kevin Kling!

So, this was billed as some kind of talk entitled, "Preaching with Holy Imagination," but I don't think that's what actually happened. Instead, I think Kevin Kling treated us to some great stories. I kept waiting for the preaching application, for the explicit link between what he was doing and what we were doing there, but I never really heard it. So, was it preaching?

Before we jump into that one, let me first say that Kling is an immensely talented storyteller. He spoke about seeing grace in the everyday things of life, and through his stories it was easy to see that he finds humor and relationships to be the means of that grace. He had the audience immediately with his wit and ease. He shared about himself in ways that could have been uncomfortable, but he did so with a grace that made it friendly, made it personal, made it sharing.

All of Kevin's stories had a sweetness and an edge to them--many of them involved his navigation of life as a person with a disability. And I noticed that Kling is a master of taking the audience right up to the brink of grace, and then giving it a flick of humor, sending the moment off in a fit of laughter. And observing this made me wonder whether grace is experienced as fully when it's packaged as a punchline. In speaking with my classmates afterwards, everyone seemed to have enjoyed his talk. And rightfully so: his vignettes were masterfully crafted, his presence was unassuming, and he kept us with him the whole way.

For me, the experience lacked seriousness, and for some reason, I equate this with grace, with preaching. It's likely this says more about me than it does Kling. But then I began to wonder whether the grace of the experience was just in the experience itself--in laughing together, in glimpsing what life for someone who is differently-abled than me is like without feeling exploitative, in hearing familiarity and difference in our lives, in hearing his witness to the power of prayer and sacramental vision. I don't know.

And I still don't know if I think this was preaching. But I can tell you that I'll be chewing on that for a while.

Heard the Word: Rev. David Lose Festival Of Homiletics 2014

David Lose looks quite pleased with himself.

Monday, May 19, 2014--6:30pm
"Singing Songs Old and New"
Ephesians 5: 15-20

Full disclosure: It took us like 25 minutes to walk the 3 blocks between our hotel and Central Lutheran Church because our little group of six is terrible at maps. When we walked into the church, worship had already started. We registered, then took our seats a few minutes into the sermon. So...maybe I missed some key parts. Keep that in mind as you read on.

Shortly after sliding into my seat, Lose began to talk about the phenomenon of hearing a song on the radio--a song one hadn't heard in years--and upon hearing it, being able to recall every word. At this, he launched into the chorus of "American Pie," with the 1,800 person congregation joining him. At the conclusion of the chorus, the assembly seemed genuinely amazed by the experience, and I sat stunned. These are not my people, I thought.

As Lose continued, he did talk about song having different functions--of building comradery, of helping to pass the long, difficult hours in certain dark periods of life, of uniting, of teaching the faith. He continued on in this vein for a while, fleshing out several examples, making some tidy connections. And as he concluded, he challenged those assembled to imagine a world without song. And then he asked us to imagine if the congregation would lead the world in song. And then we proceeded to BUTCHER "Amazing Grace" in a way I have never experienced...and I have sung "Amazing Grace" with a room full of people with advanced dementia.

As you can probably tell, this message bothered me. Deeply. I mean, it was all very nice. It was all very sweet. But come on! Music is so much more than nice and sweet! Maybe it's my reading of Moss informing my thoughts here, but music is so much more than what he's even touching on. And what Paul is calling the Ephesians to in this letter is so much more than nice and sweet hymn-sings. Music can be a weapon, subversion, unifying, sanctifying. I was waiting for the thunder of this message and only got a light mist, reminiscent of the drizzle falling as we walked to the church.

Even more than the surface nature of the message, I was bothered by the...well...the churchy-ness of it all. It felt like church people talking about and enjoying how great it is to be church people and how great it is to sing church songs. Which is wonderful. If you are a church person. I picked up on church music quickly because I love music and because one space I could regularly make music was in church. But your average unchurched millenial isn't going to walk in off the street knowing the verses to "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." Sorry, Luther. So, what then? In Lose's imagined congregation leading the world in song, what song are they singing? And would anyone else know the words?

I was also bothered by the smallness of the vision. It seemed in Lose's final vision that he was asking the world to join in one song, blending in harmony as they sang the words. But what hymnal would the world be using (because it was made clear it would be from a hymnal)? What version? What tempo? What language would the words be in? This is a long-winded way of saying that what I heard in this message was a vision of the world that doesn't actually take a pluralistic, multicultural, varied, beautiful, diverse world seriously. And that bothers me. Deeply.

Music? Yes. But singing the old songs because that's all you know? No. Definitely not.