Updated 19 February 2012
Finding Grace
Lent 1
Genesis 9.8-17; 1 Peter 3.18-22; Mark 1.9-15
It’s almost a year since the earthquake and tsunami hit
north-east Japan. One year on and the debris is just beginning to wash ashore on the beaches of the western USA. They are expecting human remains amongst the flotsam. Four thousand people are still missing.
One year on and the immensity of the devastation has hardly been touched by the efforts to clear and restore. The destruction testing the resources of the third richest nation on earth. Whole towns and villages just gone. But, of course, it’s the human cost that strikes home – more than 20,000 dead. A mother grieves for her 12 year old daughter lost in the water and mud. Determined to find her body despite the end of the official search, she gains her licence as a heavy digger operator and borrowing a digger starts turning over the acres of deep mud. Koharu’s body is eventually found, but not by her mum, Naomi. She was washed ashore on a beach seven miles away.
What’s to be said to such hurt and loss? The weight of it is awesome; shocking; terrifying.
To read the rest of the sermon click here.
north-east Japan. One year on and the debris is just beginning to wash ashore on the beaches of the western USA. They are expecting human remains amongst the flotsam. Four thousand people are still missing.
One year on and the immensity of the devastation has hardly been touched by the efforts to clear and restore. The destruction testing the resources of the third richest nation on earth. Whole towns and villages just gone. But, of course, it’s the human cost that strikes home – more than 20,000 dead. A mother grieves for her 12 year old daughter lost in the water and mud. Determined to find her body despite the end of the official search, she gains her licence as a heavy digger operator and borrowing a digger starts turning over the acres of deep mud. Koharu’s body is eventually found, but not by her mum, Naomi. She was washed ashore on a beach seven miles away.
What’s to be said to such hurt and loss? The weight of it is awesome; shocking; terrifying.
To read the rest of the sermon click here.
Overcoming reluctant feedback
In his important and disturbing essay Why Johnny Can't Preach (P and R Publishing Phillipsburg) David Gordon writes,
".... almost everywhere I go, when I ask people about their church home, they almost universally say that their minister is "not a great preacher," which we all know is just a polite way of saying: "Well, we don't really benefit from his preaching, but he's a very good minister in other ways." And while I'm delighted to hear that ministers are faithful in visitation, compassionate in caring for the sick, efficient in administration, or winsome towards the youth or the lost, I'd be even more delighted to hear someone say the opposite: "Well, he's a little awkward at visitation, but he is outstanding in the pulpit; and the preaching is so good, and so nourishing, that we put up with the other minor defects in other areas."
For all of us who preach the hard fact is that those who hear our sermons are often reluctant to gives us usable feedback. They may well describe our shortcomings to other people who ask, but at the door of the church a short positive comment is all that is likely to be forthcoming. Indeed the preponderance of the easy compliment sometimes makes the occasional angry response all the more welcome. Somehow we need to create strcutures and spaces where our preaching can receive more fullsome and useful feedback. I believe preaching to be an art, and just like any artist we need heartfelt comment and debate of our work. Part of creating space for such feedback is the appreciation that preaching is an aspect of our common life as people of faith rather than a celebrity star turn. For a poetic take on that (well, almost) see the blog here.
".... almost everywhere I go, when I ask people about their church home, they almost universally say that their minister is "not a great preacher," which we all know is just a polite way of saying: "Well, we don't really benefit from his preaching, but he's a very good minister in other ways." And while I'm delighted to hear that ministers are faithful in visitation, compassionate in caring for the sick, efficient in administration, or winsome towards the youth or the lost, I'd be even more delighted to hear someone say the opposite: "Well, he's a little awkward at visitation, but he is outstanding in the pulpit; and the preaching is so good, and so nourishing, that we put up with the other minor defects in other areas."
For all of us who preach the hard fact is that those who hear our sermons are often reluctant to gives us usable feedback. They may well describe our shortcomings to other people who ask, but at the door of the church a short positive comment is all that is likely to be forthcoming. Indeed the preponderance of the easy compliment sometimes makes the occasional angry response all the more welcome. Somehow we need to create strcutures and spaces where our preaching can receive more fullsome and useful feedback. I believe preaching to be an art, and just like any artist we need heartfelt comment and debate of our work. Part of creating space for such feedback is the appreciation that preaching is an aspect of our common life as people of faith rather than a celebrity star turn. For a poetic take on that (well, almost) see the blog here.
Preaching in an amnesic society. Practicalities of design and delivery here.
What is preaching? Ten aspects blogged here.
Designing a sermon
What sermon styles and structures serve the maintenance of Christian collective memory best? Often the answer to that question will be 'any that are effective generally.' Unfortunately it's all too easy to preach without giving enough thought to the basics of what's effective. Paying attention to things that serve the collective memory of the faith can be a way into overcoming that oversight. Sometimes the design of a sermon confuses what is otherwise pertinent and useful content.
Occasionally in these pages a sermon will be analysed so as to demonstrate what decisions were taken about style and structure, and the reasoning behind the choices made. You can find the first such analysis of a sermon for Pentecost here or you can find the sermon script without commentary here.
Occasionally in these pages a sermon will be analysed so as to demonstrate what decisions were taken about style and structure, and the reasoning behind the choices made. You can find the first such analysis of a sermon for Pentecost here or you can find the sermon script without commentary here.
Preaching that's
alert to the contemporary,
passionate about Christian memory,
and
works to be heard.
Every Christian gathering is a mnemonic event. Christians gather to remember that they are remembered by God. This is an actual re-membering: a way of putting together again the Body of Christ in order that it may be dispersed into the world when the gathering is over. In the coming together each individual's faith memory is renewed as it is reincorporated into the collective memory of the people of faith. We remember by communicating with one another, and that remembering enables us to live out the faith. Without that social remembering our individual memories fade.
We live in forgetful times which make it ever hard for an inherited faith to heard. This website is dedicated to the ways preaching can help overcome our contemporary cultural faith amnesia. You are free to use anything you find here in assisting your own Christian memory work or that of a congregation of which you're a part. All that is asked of you in return is acknowledgement of PreacherRhetorica as the source.
This is a work just begun. Do come back often to see how we're progressing.
Updated 19 February 2012.
We live in forgetful times which make it ever hard for an inherited faith to heard. This website is dedicated to the ways preaching can help overcome our contemporary cultural faith amnesia. You are free to use anything you find here in assisting your own Christian memory work or that of a congregation of which you're a part. All that is asked of you in return is acknowledgement of PreacherRhetorica as the source.
This is a work just begun. Do come back often to see how we're progressing.
Updated 19 February 2012.
