The Art of Listening to a Sermon

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Kory Waters
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1 The Art of Listening to a Sermon Bob Setzer, Jr. Pastor Knollwood Baptist Church Winston Salem, NC September 26, 2018 Psalm 19:7-11, 14; 2 Corinthians 4:5-10; Mark 4:1-9 On the way home from church, a little boy announced he decided he wanted to be a preacher. That s wonderful, his mother gushed. What made you decide that? Well, the would-be preacher answered. I figured if I had to go to church anyway, it d be a lot more fun to stand up and shout than to sit down and listen! Take it from someone who knows: it is! In a world where big stories and monumental truths are reduced to sound bites and tweets, sitting and listening to a sermon for twenty minutes seems hopelessly quaint. Further, no one receives any training in meeting this daunting challenge. In fact, you may have attended church for 10, 20, and 30 years, or longer, and never heard a single sermon about what a sermon is, or is supposed to do. Well today, I want to take you back stage, long before the sermon appears on center stage, looking, one hopes, all presentable and polished. I want to give you some insider s tips

2 on why this peculiar way of speaking and listening called preaching, is central to the church s hope of hearing God s word in a noisy, busy, distracting world. Each Sunday, before my sermon, I pray this prayer from the 19th psalm. May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer That prayer is a heads up to both the congregation and me that we re about to enter a different kind of space and moment. Namely, one where God s word seeks and finds us, in hopes of speaking a deeply personal word. I m often amazed at what people tell me they hear in my sermons. I may have no recollection at saying anything that remotely resembles what someone has a clear, compelling sense of having heard. But often, the worshiper confesses with a measure of both gratitude and awe, You were speaking directly to me. That s when I know the Holy Spirit has taken my inept, fumbling words, and like Jesus multiplying the loaves and fish by the sea, made them adequate for somebody s ache or need. A noted Japanese artist painted a picture on a large canvas. In the lower left corner, he painted a tree with birds nesting in its limbs. He left the rest of the canvas empty. When asked why he didn't fill up the canvas, the master artist answered, "I wanted to leave the birds room to fly. The purpose of a sermon is not to leave the listener hanging on every word. The purpose of a sermon is to create a space where God can speak by creating a Scripture-rich, Spirit-breathed encounter between what God longs to say and what the congregation, or individuals within it, need to hear. One of my favorite images for a sermon is being on a road trip while listening to the radio. Some of us are old enough to remember before Pandora and Spotify and satellite radio, how radio broadcasts used to fade in and out, depending on one s location.

3 Well, sermons do the same thing and that s ok. You hear something that captures your attention and then you begin to chew on it; in the words of the Psalm, you are meditating on God s word. And as the preacher drones on and on, you find yourself rummaging around in this sacred space within, pondering and wondering, nudged and seized, by a truth meant just for you. Maybe at some point, you check back in with the sermon, much like that distant radio broadcast fading back into your hearing. If the sermon grabs your attention once again, it may draw you back in. Or maybe you decide, while pondering that nagging truth that won t let you go: No, I m sticking with this. Either way, the sermon has worked its magic. Because the purpose of the sermon is create a rendezvous point or meeting place between God and you. That incidentally, is why I alter the Psalm slightly when I pray it each Sunday morning, moving from the singular-- May the meditation of my heart --to the plural, May the meditation of our hearts be acceptable. Because it is not a single meditation or word or truth, we are after, but the particular truth God may wish to speak to you. So what does the preacher hope to bring to the conversation when he or she prays, May the words of my mouth be found acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer? First and foremost to teach and preach the scriptures, the formative stories and truths that form the people of God. The preacher is not called to offer his or her private musings on the meaning of life or the issues of the day. He or she is called to craft a word that is shaped by wrestling with scripture. And for the church, that scripture is the Bible because its bears witness to God s revelation in the life of God s people, Israel, and in the life, death, and resurrection of God s son, Jesus.

4 When Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish playwright and novelist, lay dying, he cried out, Read to me from the book! When asked what book, he answered, "Need you ask? There is but one! Even for this great man of letters, there was only one book, when he needed a word from God: the Bible. Listen to the Psalmist s deep, deep love for the law, or word, of God. The law of the lord is perfect, reviving the soul; the decrees of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple; the precepts of the lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the lord is clear, enlightening the eyes. Far from being an onerous burden, God s law is a priceless gift. For these timeless truths reveal the shape and substance of the fully human life. Little wonder there is within Judaism the tradition that when a child begins studying the law of God, he or she is given a taste of honey. That way, the child associates God s law with sweetness. As Christians, we share the Hebrew scripture with our Jewish neighbors. But as followers of Jesus, we are invited to read the Bible through his eyes. For we preach not ourselves, Paul exclaims to the Corinthians, but we preach Jesus Christ as Lord (2 Cor. 4:5) That is the most ancient and essential of Christian confessions: that Jesus Christ is Lord. This means that the light of God, shining in all creation and in the Hebrew scripture, comes to a prism point or laser-like focus in him. For the God who said, Let light shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6). Last week, my daughter called me with a theological question. It wasn t her question, but the thoughtful question of my grandson James, not quite 7-years-old. James and his mother had been reading the story of Noah s Ark. And James, a deeply sensitive soul, was bothered by what he heard. Why did God kill all the animals in the flood? he asked his mother. They didn t do anything wrong.

5 I don t know, his mother answered. Let s call Papa! So they did. So suddenly, there I am on the phone, trying to figure out how to boil a complex theological answer down to a simple seven-year-old question. I fumbled for an answer. Finally, I said, James, God didn t kill the animals. The flood killed the animals. Jesus said God loves animals and watches the sparrow when it falls. God used that terrible flood to give the world a new start. And that s why God saved all those animals in the ark: so God and the world could start over again. I m not sure James was satisfied with my answer. I know I was not. But maybe it helped him understand he was not called to love and serve a God who wantonly killed animals and people. The God of the Bible can be mysterious and inscrutable and easily misunderstood. So God sent Jesus, God s word made flesh, so there could be no doubt that God s face is turned toward us, and all the world, in lavish, resolute love. And so we gather here each Sunday in the hope that the preacher will bring a word from God, a word steeped in Holy Scripture. To be sure, the preacher will not do this perfectly. As Paul admits rather pointedly, We hold this treasure in earthen vessels, that is, fragile, vulnerable, clay pots like me! Anyone who talks for a living, as I do, is going to say some things from time-to-time that are wrong or just plain stupid. But thankfully, the word of God that seeks and finds us in this divine-human encounter called preaching, is not dependent on the perfection of the preacher but on the power of God s word and Spirit. The best I can do is to hope and pray that my words are acceptable--not perfect, but acceptable--knowing full well that I carry them to the altar in the chipped and flawed vessel of my most imperfect life. And what about you, the hearer? And may the meditations of our hearts be found acceptable in God s sight? What does it mean for you to offer up meditations on God s word that are acceptable, faithful and fruitful, telling and true?

6 According to Jesus in the parable of the soils, the quality of one s hearing accounts for a lot in the divine-human encounter. Not even he was able to sow the seed of God s word in every heart. Some hearts were too hard, or shallow, or distracted, to provide suitable ground for God s word to grab hold and unfold and flower. The Kavanaugh hearings this week--an interesting word, if you stop and think about it, hearings--demonstrated how profoundly our listening is impacted by who and what has formed us. I found Dr. Christine Blasey Ford s testimony gripping and true. As I listened to her, my heart was breaking, not just for her, but for all the women I know who have been violated and wounded and shamed by sexual violence. And knowing what I do about how sexual trauma imprints the brain, it was impossible for me to believe Dr. Ford was mistaken about her attacker. But clearly, other Americans--from some senators on the judiciary committee to some of my friends and neighbors--heard Dr. Ford s and Judge Kavanaugh s testimony very differently. To them, the whole thing was a charade, concocted by desperate foes, willing to stop at nothing to keep an ideological conservative off the high court. So how does one account for such widely varying hearing of the same testimony? It s because we don t hear in a neutral, objective way, especially things we are passionate about. We hear as we are disposed to hear by our culture, class, race, social status, politics, and a host of other factors, including the media outlets we choose to report and interpret the news. So what hope is there, when we gather each Sunday, that we might actually hear a word from God? Can God ever be heard in the hard soil of our stubborn, willful hearts? Or the rocky soil, so full of half-truths and self-deceptions, there is no room for divine truth to take hold within us? How can the seed of God s word find even a tenuous grip in the shallow soil of our busy, distracted lives, where we can t put down our smart phones long enough to listen to our souls?

7 And yet, Jesus reassures us, It is possible for God to speak, even today, even to you, even today. But only as you are willing to do the hard work of becoming the waiting, willing, receptive soil that delights in being surprised by God. Christopher Wiman is a remarkable poet. Expected to die years ago of a rare, aggressive cancer, he keeps beating the odds and churning out gripping language about a life that really matters. Wiman is also a committed Christian. Here is one of his offerings about the seed God longs to sow within us. When time's toxins have seeped into every cell. And like a salted plot from which all rain, all green, are gone, I and life are leached of meaning. Somehow a seed of belief. Sprouts the instant I acknowledge it: little weedy hardy would-be greenness tugged upward by light while deep within roots like talons are taking hold again of this our only earth. Let anyone with ears to hear, listen! cries Jesus. Because those who listen eagerly and attentively for a word from God become the good soil where a great harvest of God s Spirit and kingdom can take root and grow. And so we gather, Sunday by Sunday, hoping and praying: May the words of my mouth--and the meditations of our hearts--are found acceptable in your sight, O lord, our rock and our redeemer. We have to trust that if we have ears and hearts to hear, God yet has a word to speak. And not just a word-in-general, meant for everybody. But a deeply personal word meant just for you. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Lord Jesus, help us be the willing, attentive soil where the truth of your word has a chance. Find some tenuous hold within us that your light and life might grow us into somebody a little more like you. Help us hear and see the world, not just as it is bequeathed to us by

8 others, but as it is divinely held in trust by you. Make us heralds of your kingdom in a world full of noise about everything else. In your name we make this and every prayer, Amen.

JESUS TEACHES. What s the most fun you ve had learning something new? #BSFLJesus QUESTION #1 BIBLE STUDIES FOR LIFE 21

JESUS TEACHES. What s the most fun you ve had learning something new? #BSFLJesus QUESTION #1 BIBLE STUDIES FOR LIFE 21 2 JESUS TEACHES What s the most fun you ve had learning something new? QUESTION #1 #BSFLJesus BIBLE STUDIES FOR LIFE 21 THE POINT Obeying Jesus teachings leads to fruitful living. THE BIBLE MEETS LIFE