I occasionally post a sermon that I have written on this site. I don’t do a lot of that as the preaching moment is just that, a moment during worship, that relies on the hearer as well as the one preaching. It is hard to read a sermon that is written to be heard rather than read. I am that style of writer for the preaching moment. Sometimes I am asked how I go about sermon preparation. If you have not asked your minister about her or his preparation for preaching I encourage you to do so!
I do the study, reading, thinking and listening during the week to ready myself to write. A title helps me so I select something and then I begin free writing paragraphs until I am out of words. I sit with those paragraphs for a day and then begin arranging them into my words for Sunday. Sometimes it takes several tries to get them into an order that makes sense and that can accept transitional thoughts. Once they are in order I tweak sentences, words, and ask my companion for her thoughts and suggestions. There is almost always a lost paragraph. Some words that don’t seem to fit the tone, flow, thought process, or are just too far out there to be said from the pulpit; but better fit smaller conversations or group study. I wonder if other that preach have a similar experience? I decided that when I have those lost paragraphs I would publish those. So, here is the first.
Tomorrow is Palm Sunday. It is the first time I have preached on Palm Sunday so I will publish that sermon text here which is my practice for a “sermon first” for me. Here is a lost paragraph from my words for Palm Sunday. Some of these words made it into the final text, but not in the form below.
“Disciples Began to Praise” | Luke 19:28-40
Post-Easter, fourth-century centered Christianity shouts “hosanna” or “crucify him” with sunrise service on our minds: an empty tomb, Mary Magdalene, divine Lordship, soteriology, and a cosmological defeat of good over evil. Ours is an overt acceptance of sinfulness seeking reconciliation without looking at the photo album (the biblical witness) and studying, recognizing, or struggling with how humans can at one moment shout “Hosanna” and then days later shout, “Crucify.” There were no marketing firms, 30 second commercials, lobbyists, or talk radio in the ancient world to swing public opinion or sway government officials. There must be more to this mystery of the human condition than simply labeling it sinful, original, or reconciled in the death and resurrection of the man, Jesus of Nazareth whom we call Christ. The scandalous gospel that Jesus preached and taught is what led to Jerusalem, to this parade day of palms and cloaks. It is the content of that gospel about the kingdom of God already, but not yet, that leads through the city gates, to an upper room, and a cross. It is when we linger with this scandalous gospel: release to the captives, sight to the blind, good news to the poor, love your neighbor as yourself, that the spirit of God might descend on us and with the multitude of disciples begin to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that we have seen, saying, “Blessed is the king, the one, who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!” (19:38).
We are living in a time when being intellectual or being perceived as an intellectual is a negative. Shows like, “Are You Smarter than a Fifth Grader” celebrates and laughs at the general lack of knowledge that permeates our culture. There is a need for “common sense,” but at times this too is not common nor sensical. If our denomination, or Christianity for that matter, is to lift the gospel message of reconciliation and social responsibility(1) to a level of prominence in our culture again, it is necessary to require a broad education of those that serve in ordained ministry and encourage them to be the public theologians that speak truth to power as well as marry, bury, and baptize. It is necessary, it is an obligation to bring education to the laity. Education that requires risk and questions rather than watering down the gospel message to bumper stickers, power point slides, or praise cheers.
This lengthy article on Truthout is a starting point for a conversation in our culture about education, intellectualism, and our need for serious people that want to solve our problems, and have the expertise to do so, because that is what the social contract of democracy asks of its citizens. It’s not about money, seizing power or keeping power. It is what made our nation great and why we feel nostalgic about the WWII generation. Below is my favorite paragraph from the article.
On Pop Clarity: Public Intellectuals and the Crisis of Language
by Henry A. Giroux | March 24, 2010
I think it is fair to say that a different notion of reading and literacy, along with the institutions that supported it, dominated the first half of the 20th century. The notion of the public intellectual was not marginalized, and such writers engaged in ongoing public conversations about political and cultural issues that were of great social importance. These intellectuals spoke to more than one type of audience and were able to comment critically and broadly on a number of issues. To be a public intellectual, you had to be a particularly attentive student of society and the problems it faced and you had to take risks by intervening in ongoing public conversations that disrupted the powerful interests that shape common sense in efforts to change the nature of the debate. Such intellectuals exemplified a mode of writing and political literacy that refused the instinctive knee-jerk reflex of privileging plain speak over complexity. Clarity today too often legitimates not only simplistic writing, but an absence of rigorous analytic thought. Clarity, with its appeal to simplicity and common sense has become an excuse for abusing language as a marker of the educated mind. Public intellectuals in the past achieved complexity and accessibility in their writing for nonacademic audiences – crafting a language that was intelligible, but did not sacrifice its theoretical rigor – while insisting on the value of providing readers with the opportunities to struggle with matters of language and meaning rather than imposing a slick authoritarian style in the name of “unadorned truth.” As we move into the 21st century, Twitter-like clarity has replaced accessibility and has grown more pernicious as it aligns itself with an array of new corporate and military institutions, a dumbed-down cultural apparatus, school systems that miseducate and a growing network of films, talk radio and television shows in which language is emptied of content and thought only creates obstacles to the desire for thrill-seeking entertainment. In an age in which the acceleration of time is perfectly suited to the eradication of thoughtfulness, pop clarity and its notion of frictionless, spontaneous truth now governs the conditions for all modes of intelligibility.
Note
1. Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.