Sermon Prep: Preaching Dreams

My spouse rarely remembers his dreams. Unless they are about bugs or snakes, he'll wake up completely oblivious to that alternate life he's lead overnight. Sometimes, I'm envious of his dream-amnesia. I regularly wake up foggy from dreams, their wisps interfering with my morning routine, disturbing my sense of the present. My dreams are often emotionally-charged, peppered with characters who feel like real people, and it takes effort--like wiping sleep from my eyes--to move from the dream world to reality. My dreams instruct me, help me solve problems, let me know where my relationships need work, and at the least, signal where my major stressors lie.

But recently, JT had a dream that he remembered. It's such a rare event, that I was really excited to hear about it. I propped myself up on an elbow, thrilled for this view into his psyche, his ambitions, his dreams. I expected tales of flying or fighting robots or a fantastic meal that he ate in a beautiful locale with ingredients that we may be able to mimic in real life.

"Well," he started. "We were in bed in the morning, and Jo [our daughter] woke up. You brought her into bed with us, but she wouldn't go back to sleep. So, she started naming us, pointing and saying, 'Mommy. Daddy.'"

So far, this dream was unimpressive. In fact, it the exact scene we had experienced only an hour or so before, when Jo actually did wake up, come into our bed, and proceed to name us all. I continued to wait for the moment when reality would blur and Jo would sprout wings or start singing opera or something.

"So, then I said to her, 'Who are you?'" he continued. "And then--this is the weird part--she pointed to herself and said, 'Jo. I am Jo.'" He had been silent for a few minutes before I realized he had related the entirety of his dream. Yes, his dream had departed from reality: or daughter had never said her name. Much less put together a short sentence to accompany her self-introduction. But it seemed like there should be more. If he was remembering it, there must be something remarkable.

"Really?" I said. "That's what you dreamed?" "Yep," he said, rolling out of bed. And that was that.

It's make me think a lot about dreams. Me? I put a lot of stock in them and enjoy trying to stretch out that space between dreaming and awake so that I can remember the things my mind is working on when I'm not exactly there to run the show. And so often, they are impossible imaginings, wild and exciting, and I'm left dizzy trying to figure out how to translate the to life. But JT's dream was so simple, so small, so possible. And suddenly, his dream felt more like prophecy than my own.

I'm preaching this week at a classmate's church. He uses the lectionary, and he typically uses three readings: from the Hebrew Scriptures, Psalms or Epistle, and Gospels. I was intimidated by this task at first, unsure how I would handle navigating three texts during worship, and how I might craft a sermon that was harmonious. I assumed I would be simply picking one passage and lightly brushing upon (or perhaps even ignoring) the others in my message. But last week, as I read the passages again, I understood: these are about dreams. All of them are about dreams.

Check them out: Genesis 37: 1-28, Psalm 105 1-6, 16-22, 43-45, and Matthew 14: 22-33.

I'm not sure where this message is headed yet. I'm not entirely sure I can wrap it all up with a bow. But I do think that there's something here worth exploring: something about the dreams God has for us, about our own dreams and how we follow them, and how it's possible, even in reality, to live out our dreams.

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?

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: Rev. Frank A. Thomas on Happy

Last evening was commencement for Eden Theological Seminary's Class of 2014. Rev. Frank A. Thomas Matthew 5: 1-12. Having read one of his books for the preaching class I took this past semester, I was excited to experience his message firsthand. His message was dynamic, relevant, connected to the gospel message, and delivered in a way that made me feel spoken to and not preached at.

Rev. Frank A. Thomas--See? He talks with his hands.

offered a message entitled, "What Makes You Happy?" based on

Thomas' "exegetical bridge," as he called it, was to draw the connection between Pharrell William's hit song, "Happy" and the Beatitudes (working the translation from "Blessed are..." to "Happy are..."). Beyond just making a nicely little connection and pointing us towards a great pop culture artifact (he tipped me off to 24hoursofhappy.com--a 24 hour music video of people being happy to "Happy."), he dug deeper into both Pharrell William's story and the message of the Beatitudes to categorize 'happiness' as "offering your gift to the world in the purity of your call and in the discipline of your hard work." 

Over and over, Thomas came back to this phrase, molding it, defining it, redefining it, growing it, and eventually planting it into the hearts of those gathered to hear. By the end of the message, Williams' song had been redefined from a catchy hit to a call to discipleship, a celebration of living out the gifts God has given each of us in a way that is pure and disciplined. Perhaps one of the most powerful layers Thomas added to the message was his inclusion of Mother Teresa's "Anyway" poem. By the end of the message, he had everyone there responding to being "Happy, Anyway."

I think what stuck out most to me about experiencing Thomas' message in person is that his presence wasn't anything particularly striking. He talks with his hands, which was great for me to see. So far, I haven't seen many people who talk with their hands as much as I do preach from the pulpit. Seeing him do it helped me to understand how it might be possible for me to do the same. At the same time, he did have a nervous habit of messing with the tassel on his mortarboard cap, and pushing on his glasses.

But embodiment isn't want captivated us. It was the message itself. I had a deep sense that Thomas was simply convicted of the truth of his message, of the work he had put into it, and of the Spirit's work in its reception. It was the message that connected us to him in that moment, the message that did all the work for him. No doubt he read the room well, though, several times stopping and calling us to listen harder, to catch on to what the Word was speaking, and to respond to it ourselves. He was both teasing and gentle, assertive and generous, and he brought me to a space of excitement, honor, and truth about my own sense of call and how to live it out in the world.

The whole evening was a proud event. I watched people who I've watched come to bloom over the course of the last three years experience a culminating moment, and any time that happens, it is such a celebration. There was sweetness, a tinge of sadness, but overall excitement at the idea that if each of these people is able to live into the purity of his or her call and pair it with the discipline of his or her hard work, the world will be changed. That is reason for celebration, indeed.