Stop and start

Every so often, usually between 5 and 9 pm on a Saturday night when I am lurching toward the finish line of another sermon (or grinding my teeth in frustration at the sermon that just won’t come together), a terrifying thought pops into my head. All of a sudden it occurs to me what a laughable, horrifyingly presumptuous thing it is to get up in front of a group of people and presume to speak on behalf of or about God.

This sounds just a touch melodramatic or self-important, I know. But I don’t mean for it to. I don’t mean to convey the idea that people who prepare sermons somehow have a more important vocation than the person who swings the hammer or sets the bone or drives the cab or empties the bed pan. It probably has a bit of an odor of false humility, too. I can assure you that this, too, is not the case (at least no more than usual). This is not me saying, Yes, we preachers have such a weighty (and important) burden to bear. Could you please spare a thought for those of us who have to tramp up and down the mountain each week to receive a divine word for the unwashed masses. No, no, no, not at all.

It’s not that I’m necessarily afraid of being wrong (although sometimes I am afraid of this, and I probably should be more often). It’s not even that I’m afraid of being boring (which is far worse than being wrong these days) although this, too, is an occupational hazard when your job is to keep alive an old, old story that has been talked about by a great many people over a great number of years, and which a great number of your listeners already know very well. My kids (among others) unburdened me of the illusion that everything that comes out of my mouth is riveting and insightful quite some time ago.