|
Jim Boushay and Rickey Sain
Joy to the world when heaven and
nature preach
·
Pursuit of vision. I have lived in the pursuit of a vision both personal
and social. Personal: to care for what is noble, for what is beautiful,
for what is gentle; to allow moments of insight to give wisdom at more
mundane times. Social: to see in imagination the society that is to be
created, where individuals grow freely, and where hate and greed and
envy die because there is nothing to nourish them. These things I
believe. And the world, for all its horrors, has left me unshaken.
Was
the Christmas season sermon out of date or out of touch in these
too-fast-moving times of war and peace? Did it speak to the cultural
longing for clearer social meaning and more focused religious purpose?
Was it able to relieve some of the nation’s polarizing political
conflicts and moral tensions?
One way to answer those three questions is with yet another and related
question: Is pulpit preaching ethical? In other words, did the preaching
in neighborhood churches at Christmas time tell the truth of human
failings and foolishness? And did it, as well, point in the more
important direction of a fuller vision of ways to achieve more of the
common good all through the year—both material and spiritual good? In
these times of seeming economic scarcity and of the plague of war, did
the preaching ethically address those and other bedeviling concerns of
health and wellness?
At home we each asked the other a few of those same questions about
preaching. Particularly would we come upon germane, Jesus-centered
preaching during the last half of December as the Christian world
observes the four Sundays before Christmas, known as Advent, in
anticipation of the December 25 ritual celebration of the Christ child’s
birth? The Old Testament’s book of the prophet Isaiah foretells the hope
and birth of a redeeming savior. Drawing from Isaiah as well, three of
the four New Testament evangelists—Matthew, Luke, John—speak of the
overwhelmingly good tidings in the birth of Jesus.
Nearly any question about out-of-touch or unethical preaching is likely
to produce some controversy, certainly at any time of the year and even
more so during the avowedly religious and sacred season of Advent
leading to Christmas. Good! The controversy can be helpful in several
ways.
In late December we deliberately went in search of good preaching across
a half-dozen Christian denominations in Chicagoland. We visited churches
within about a two-mile walking distance from our home across the street
from Oak Park Conservatory, a landmark compass point.
In a sense we went on a local pilgrimage, seeking larger global truths,
wondering aloud in particular if good preaching might have a
practical positive impact on shaping cultural values
What were the results of the search from December 17 to 25? At one
church to remain nameless, we heard ineffective preaching, primarily
because the preacher seemed unprepared in the subject matter while also
halting in delivery. At the remaining five places of worship we heard
generally compelling examples of effective and helpful preaching. The
five included two churches in Oak Park—Ascension Catholic Church and
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church; one in contiguous River Forest—First
Presbyterian Church; one nearby on the northwest side of
Chicago—Galewood Community United Church of Christ; and one directly
west in Forest Park—St. Bernardine Church.
Before indicating what we found, we acknowledge upfront two of our
biases concerning good preaching. For one, there’s great comfort in
hearing the preached words well, carefully hearing them spoken slowly,
not having to strain to hear, a difficulty resulting from either a less
than sufficient church sound system or different kinds of hearing
impairments among congregants. For us that kind of heard preaching
generated a feeling of relaxation and acceptance in the moment of
hearing the sermon delivered. Nothing surpasses a good story—one told
and heard well—a rich story drawn from a combination of secular and
sacred material which the preacher uses to ensure a delivery that is
heard well by a captive audience.
The second bias is a preference for preaching arising from a pastoral
theology which is deeply interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary. That
kind of preaching draws from materials cutting across geographic
boundaries and conventional categories. Expansive preaching that avoids
diminishment based on identity politics or on forms of social
stratification undoubtedly has capacity to capture the imagination in
new ways.
In the five spaces where the preaching was, we think, quite effective,
each preacher openly acknowledged that American society is living in
contradiction, with references made more than once to the
not-going-away-anytime-soon tensions of war and peace, scarcity and
abundance, the profane and holy, and other polarities bedeviling our
lives.
To us this was good preaching. It was mindful that the People of God are
pretty much doing the best we can in a time of violence and grossest
confusion. Variously the preachers were clear that we are dependent on
divine justice and mercy…and on the Christian imperative which beckons
us to grow into our higher human selves. Gently that imperative urges us
on to compromise and to forgiveness of each other’s weaknesses, moving
us more toward improved acceptance of the richness in differences.
Each preacher found ways to call out the torturous human complexity
within and before us, and all around us. The preaching spoke to the
varying levels of real existence. The preachers themselves were generous
and understanding—and compassionately aesthetic when they spoke in a
comforting, decent, civil language that said life often is tough on all
God’s wounded children.
The sermons insisted in varying degrees of sobriety that life together
in community and family can be joyous, given a hopeful attitude of not
giving up amid the longing and striving for social, political, and
personal renewal. Each sermonizer seemed to respect both the tragedies
and triumphs of the past, with each nevertheless pointing to the
challenging promises of a hoped-for brighter future.
·
At
the Ascension Christmas Eve Mass at 4 p.m., preacher Fr. Myles Sheehan
was passionate that “God takes delight in you” and that the coming of
Emmanuel (from the Greek for “God with us”) means that “God is not
against us,” a strong echo of the apostle Paul's comforting question
in Romans 8:31. The homilist said, “We are a mess” but still our lives
are deeply graced by God and rich in complexity. While we might
otherwise “feel overwhelmed by banality and stupidity,” the coming of
Jesus is “the definitively remarkable” peacemaking event of history.
·
At
the late afternoon Advent Jazz Vespers service at Good Shepherd the
Sunday before—known as “Gaudete” Sunday, Latin for “joy” from the day’s
scriptural texts—preacher Rev. Barbara Berry-Bailey talked movingly of
“the human tendency to stereotype and make snap judgments,” a practice
that can keep us separated, she said, from the embodied peacemaking and
joy when engaging family members and neighbors.
·
The
conversational, colloquial story-telling style of preacher Rev. John
Hays at First Presbyterian, at the 8 p.m. Christmas Eve candlelight
service, was a glad surprise. In an elated, urgent voice, the preacher
ardently told of the wonders—as opposed to the calamities—of the
unexpected. The preacher drew easily yet insistently from the day’s
scripture readings of the unexpected circumstances of Jesus’ birth,
repeating key words of mystery and wonder, enlivening the sense of God’s
abundant presence and love of humankind through the liberating birth.
Handel’s Messiah, a favored musical oratorio of the season, calls Jesus
“wonderful”…”counselor”…”the prince of peace.” The preacher affirmed
that the presence of Jesus is fulfillment of God’s faithful promise down
through the ages to be with us—variously termed “an enfleshment” of
God’s comfort and peace in human form. Historically that happening has
come to be accepted as an extraordinary occurrence in the time of Jesus,
as well as now in our own times of brutality and great political
discord.
·
A
little later at the 11 p.m. candlelight service at Galewood Community
Church, congregants read from the traditional texts of the season from
the Old Testament (Isaiah) and the New Testament (Luke). That ritual
action was then followed by three preachers—pastor Rev. Jo Carole Bundy,
associate pastor Rev. Dr. Calvin Morris, and minister of reconciliation
Ms. Charlene Hill—separately offering a prayerful series of
mini-preachments related to the imaginative power of the readings. Each
was a prayer, first, of lamentation about pain and suffering and,
second, of elation when affliction is transformed into joy. There was an
additional challenge to the congregation with the use of the powerful
words of theologian, author, mystic, and poet Howard Thurman. His
lyrical words were a reminder that the work of Christmas is: to find the
lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among sisters and brothers, and
to make music in the heart.
·
And
last, at the 9 a.m. Christmas morning Mass at St. Bernardine, in his
homily the preacher, Rev. John Rolek, drew the pragmatic picture of
faith in a God whose love for humanity, now beleaguered seemingly on all
sides, sent Jesus as a “sure sign of hope in peace and in the promise of
freedom from oppression.”
Good out loud, vocal, ethical preaching seems to touch the bases: the
ambiguities and paradoxes of existence, the weariness and its demonic
hold on us, the moments of excited insight and blessed assurance. The
preaching styles stayed reasonably simple in content and delivery.
And now in these post-Christmas days, those varied messages of hope
commingled with pain are still providing us two with the opportunity to
think about, learn from each sermon’s fullness of texts deployed and
from knowledge the preacher shared. It did not hurt preaching’s cause,
of course, when a sermon quoted from the newspaper, or from a TV show
or, even better, quoted lines about lightness and darkness—or awe and
alienation—from a novel of robust adventure.
Equally appreciated were the smidgens of dynamic poetry, brought into
sermonic play as a delightful instrument to entertain and edify.
We were among the willing hearers. We took pleasure when the preaching
roamed the perplexity of the human geography. Preaching is especially a
gift when it offers a euphonic and compassionate picture of God's grace
and mercy coming through the dissonance and life-denying inanities of
troubled and tumultuous times.
In each of the five different pulpit settings, it was the whole picture
that seemed to sustain and comfort. Wholeness is whole and real and,
therefore, holy. Congregants heard that we’re all something of a human
and divine adventure in progress. We are the accumulation of what has
gone before us from biblical times, and up to now.
Occasionally some of our family members and friends will tell us that
good preaching can, yes, embolden them to be supremely, lovingly
confident in God, to live life more fully, to not fear loneliness,
isolation, and death. An abiding sense of wholeness can help us to do
and say and be anything in the name of honoring God’s gifts, extended
throughout the human family. The preachers spoke of graceful ways to
rejoice in suffering when it befalls, urging us to see beyond the
prevailing pains of the pressing present.
Conceivably if wholeness is the big picture which the preaching painted
in words and images, then we really did hear and see the miracle
experience of Advent and Christmas. We face so much upheaval and change
that is social and economic and religious in impact. Isn't that what any
good preacher wants then? To say something worth hearing? Something for
the hearer to ponder against the swirling hurricanes of hopelessness
and the rushing tsunamis of despair?
History may be a useful guide here. American philosopher George
Santayana said, Those who do not learn from the mistakes of history are
doomed to repeat them. Good preaching, we think, is one way to sustain
us—first in not repeating mistakes, and second in birthing
At the end of the service when leaving, we thanked each preacher as we
were able for the beauty of an ardent and real message. We appreciated
the preacher’s courage in challenging us to grow in compassion. The
seasonal scriptures tell us God was compassionate beyond belief in
sending the Christ child: God’s way of gifting and gracing us with
freedom from oppression of self and others.
To echo the compelling, ethical, uniquely American preaching (from the
pulpit and from their writings) of Reinhold Niebuhr in the mid-20th
Century and Ella Pearson Mitchell in our own day, good preaching calls
the people of God to the active work of justice and mercy. In response
to that joy-to-the-world call, we ourselves learned that local preaching
does indeed demonstrate the capacity to show some of the universal ways
we let heaven AND nature sing.
References: Kathy Black, Worship Across Cultures: A Handbook
(1998); E. K. Bailey and Warren W. Wiersbe, Preaching in Black and
White: What We Can Learn from Each Other (2003); Oscar E.
Feucht, Everyone a Minister: A Guide to Churchmanship for Laity and
Clergy (1974); Willard Jabusch, The Person in the Pulpit:
Preaching As Caring (1987); Samuel D. Proctor and William D. Watley,
Sermons from the Black Pulpit (1984)
Jim Boushay and Rickey Sain, Sr. serve, respectively, as president and
executive director of Resources Unlimited, an education institute in
social justice and civic engagement. Their co-published essays,
articles, and reviews on religious and secular subjects have appeared in
a range of print and electronic venues. |