By Jeff Dye
I love to preach. I love the opportunity to take a passage of scripture, dive into it, and share what I believe God is saying to us today through its words. From where I stand, preaching involves four vital components: text, Spirit, preacher, and congregation. The text is set; the other three are harder to pin down.
And so, a preacher should come to Scripture with some trepidation; as a very flawed human being, I am trying to bring eternal truths to bear on a specific people, in a specific time, and a specific place. All while listening to the Spirit whose work may be very different than what I am expecting.
When it comes to sharing God’s truth, I’m grateful for writers who have served as trusty guides. Some are pastor-theologians (e.g., Eugene Peterson, N.T. Wright, Henri Nouwen), where they do the heavy work of theological reflection and I open my hands and receive. Every preacher needs big thinkers upon which to launch the homiletical craft.
But every preacher also needs writers and thinkers who aren’t Biblical scholars or preachers; folks who look at life creatively, often through the arts (e.g., literature, poetry, art, and letters).
In the past several years, I have come to appreciate the art of letter writing; a pastime that is now mostly past. In the age of the tweet and the text, who has the time (or the paper) to sit down and physically write a letter?
But there is so much to be learned from those who did, and the few who still do. I’m fairly new to the riches of others’ letters, but some I have enjoyed include authors known for their other writings: C.S. Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and E.B. White.
And then there’s Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964). Primarily a novelist and writer of short stories, she only lived 39 years, due to lupus. And even though everything she published came through pain and severe limitations, her unique style offered a glimpse of grace in the midst of the grotesque world we inhabit. She was not afraid to face squarely the awfulness of humanity, and the awe-fulness of a world infused with grace. As she wrote in a letter to a friend in 1958 (all quotes from The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor):
It seems to me that all good stories are about conversion, about a character’s changing. …All my stories are about the action of grace on a character who is not very willing to support it, but most people think of these stories as hard, hopeless, brutal, etc.
A few years earlier, she said it this way: “I am making up a good case for distortion, as I am coming to believe it is the only way to make people see” (letter to Ben Griffith, 1955).
In a world awash in ads and useless information, how does one break through the noise with real news? This is what O’Connor was writing to do (and did!). And what is true for the writer, is also true for the preacher. Grace must break through in a world, and in lives, that are often hard and hopeless. Preaching and teaching must intersect such a world.
Writing and preaching begin with the mundane discipline of sitting down to the task – when one feels inspired, and when one doesn’t. For most of my ministry, I have been an occasional preacher, but for four years, I preached most every week. And it’s true what they say: Sunday comes every seven days. Without fail. So, habits are essential. As FOC wrote to fellow writer Cecil Dawkins (1957):
I write only two hours every day because that’s all the energy I have, but I don’t let anything interfere with those two hours, at the same time and the same place. This doesn’t mean I produce much out of the two hours. Sometimes I work for months and have to throw everything away, but I don’t think any of that was time wasted. Something goes on that makes it easier when it does come well. And the fact is if you don’t sit there every day, the day it would come well, you won’t be sitting there.
There is no replacing the importance of doing the work. A preacher, a writer, a teacher, a parent will have many times when the muse doesn’t seem to be calling, and it would be easier phoning it in. But it’s the regular commitment to do the work – when you feel like it and when you don’t – that sharpens the gift and has something to offer the world. There is simply no replacing devoting oneself to the task at hand, day-by-day.
What O’Connor says about the novel applies equally to the sermon (or any work of love we offer to God and the world):
When you write a novel, if you have been honest about it and if your conscience is clear, then it seems to me that you have to leave the rest in God’s hands. When the book leaves your hands, it belongs to God. He may use it to save a few souls or to try a few others, but I think that for the writer to worry about this is to take over God’s business (letter to Eileen Hall, 1956).
In a letter from 1960, FOC addresses the same theme to another writer-friend:
In you, the talent is there and you are expected to use it. Whether the work itself is completely successful, or whether you ever get any worldly success out of it, is a matter of no concern to you. …You do not write the best you can for the sake of art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit. …It means you leave the outcome out of your personal considerations. It is the most concern coupled with the least concern.
Yes! All we are called to do is offer our gifts and work to God. We are responsible for cultivating and using what we’ve been given; God is responsible for the result. This can be both frustrating and freeing. I want to be successful, impactful. I want to make a big difference. But that’s not what I’m called to do; I’m simply invited to live faithfully in the context I’ve been given, speaking and sharing with the ones in front of me.
O’Connor also addresses the rumors that the novel is a dying art. Her response is spot-on: “I haven’t spent much time worrying about whether the novel is dead or not but only about whether the one I’m working on is dead” (letter to Granville Hicks, 1957; emphasis mine).
In an age of image and entertainment, the sermon also has been declared moribund, comatose, and outright dead. But when I get up to preach, I can’t worry about any of that. I can only do the prayerful work to ensure mine isn’t dead – seeking to offer what is life-giving for these people, in this time and place.
Where does God’s calling and your life intersect? Whether it be preaching, or teaching, or parenting, or lawyering, or plumbing, practice your craft prayerfully, faithfully, and humbly. Whether it is for pay or not; whether you have a title or not; God has gifted you and called you to speak and serve in the name of Jesus, right where you are. So do the work – and leave the rest to God.
Jeff Dye serves as engagement minister at Westport Road Church of Christ in Louisville, KY, and writes at jeffdye.substack.com.
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