Pastoral Message October 13, 2022

Pastoral Message

Week of the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

October 13, 2022

Dear People of God at Faith/La Fe!

Here are some reflections on the ministry of preaching – a ministry which we share, by the way. A sermon is not merely the solo work of a pastor.

Preaching is a two-way street, a dialogue between the one proclaiming the gospel and those who are listening. Thus, preaching is not a spectator sport reserved only for passive listeners. The conversational reality of preaching invites your active participation! For it takes the whole assembly of God’s people to proclaim the good news of Christ. A preacher does not stand alone in an empty room with no people holding forth about God’s word. That’s why it was so bizarre to offer my “sermons” as video recordings during the acute phase of the pandemic when we were not gathering in person. I could not really preach to the glowing dot of a camera lens on my laptop. This wasn’t true preaching in the fullest sense.

I explore such dialogical realities in greater depth in a book I wrote several years ago, Holy Conversation: Spirituality for Worship (Fortress Press, 2010). In this work, I explore in some depth how all of worship involves conversation, explicit or implied, dialogue among God’s people and with God who continues to speak in the Spirit through the word and sacramental and liturgical actions. The sermon is but one aspect of this whole holy conversation that worship entails, though it’s the part of the Sunday liturgy that usually takes up the most time.

So, I invite you to consider your role as listeners to the sermons I am privileged to preach. How might you make the most of the dialogue? In what ways can you enter into the conversation? How best can you nurture your active engagement as a listener?

First off, pay attention to what a particular Sunday sermon may be calling to mind in you. Something I say may remind you of a life experience, a person, an event, and more. Sometimes I explicitly invite you to consider such things. But the inner dialogue is happening all the time whether you’re aware of it or not. The opportunity before you is to really pay attention to what you bring to the occasion, and what is being called forth in the moments of holy listening. The meaningfulness for you of a sermon rests in significant measure on the intersections between your life stories and the stories I am expounding on and exploring from the scriptures. It’s in the dynamics of such holy conversation where the Spirit is active in leading you to the deeper places to stir you, challenge, edify, inspire you, and to renew you in faith.  

According to Martin Luther, preaching, proclaiming the gospel, is one of the means that the Holy Spirit uses to generate and regenerate, strengthen, and deepen our faith, our trust in God’s grace and mercy for our salvation and for the healing of the nations. Such sparking of faith renewal is a principal purpose of preaching for Luther. Thus, I invite to you pay attention to how the divine energies of the Spirit stir you. For that’s what and who the Holy Spirit is, the dynamic energy emanating from God in Christ active in the biblical and liturgical word and in the sacramental life of the church. Listen for the stirrings of the Spirit during sermons – and the Spirit may be active in ways you don’t necessarily expect. What words, ideas, memories, thoughts, feelings evoke energy in you? Such may be the Spirit’s work in you.

Another feature of the dialogical qualities of preaching is that it is contextual. Which is to say, in my preparations and sermon writing, I have you in particular in mind, Faith/La Fe, as a congregation, an assembly of God’s children who are unique as individuals and unique as a collective. What and how I preach here is different from the ways I’ve preached in other settings and contexts with different assemblies of people. So, the holy conversation begins early in the new week – often on Sunday after the morning services when I begin to conceptualize the sermon for the next Sunday with you in mind. This dialogue also includes the week’s news stories! For the 20th Century theologian, Karl Barth, once said that we undertake the work of the gospel with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other.

This preparatory holy dialogue that leads to the Sunday sermon also occurs on Wednesdays when a goodly remnant of you gathers for bible study in the morning and in the evening. Your participation in these bible studies is an occasion for you to have a say in and some influence on what and how I preach on the given Sunday lectionary readings. These bible studies enable your active participation in the conversation that bears the fruit of the proclamation of the gospel.

Here's another feature of the conversational dimensions of preaching. You don’t need to sit there in the pew quietly. In fact, I welcome your audible responses to my sermons. That’s one of the great features of preaching in black, African-descent congregations. They talk back to their preachers with spontaneous words of acclamation. Don’t be shy to offer utterances if you are so moved! In fact, sometimes I will invite just that.

And sermons are never quite finished even when the preacher sits down. You’ll note that there is a brief time of silence for reflection following the sermon. This silent time is not an empty void, but is full of the echoes and reverberations of God’s word stirring in us. It’s a gift to dwell in quiet with those holy energies to let it all soak in more deeply, that the word may take root in us, that we might become that word offered for the sake of the world.

Then there’s the Hymn of the Day, another feature of holy dialogue. The instruction in Evangelical Lutheran Worship, our current, principal book of worship from which much of our Sunday liturgy and hymns are drawn, says this about the hymn following the sermon: “the assembly stands to proclaim the word of God in song.” These hymns are carefully chosen to reinforce the biblical and preached word. This is your chance to stand up and let your voice be heard as the gospel is musically proclaimed with our communal voice.

Extending these thoughts even further, gospel proclamation continues even after the liturgy is over. For there’s more occasion for holy dialogue when we greet each other at the door or when we’re in conversation at coffee hour. I would love to hear more from you, your thoughts, your experiences, concerning gospel proclamation – and this beyond “I enjoyed your sermon today.” Give me some indication of your rich and deep engagement! Don’t be shy. I covet such continuing holy conversation, for this is a way through which we deepen our relationships in Christian community as we support each other in the work that God has entrusted to us.

Then the echoes of Sunday continue into a new week. It may be that some will be drawn to returning to features of the Sunday sermon. For this reason, and because I preach using a full manuscript (which provides me the occasion and discipline to be careful about what I say and how I say it), starting this week, the text of each of my Sunday sermons will be posted on the congregation website on a new pastor’s page. So, these sermons will always be there for you to read – and perhaps to share with other family members and friends and others as you do the work of an evangelist in spreading God’s good word.

In short, and to conclude, there are many and various ways in which the two-way street dimensions of preaching are manifest at Faith/La Fe. With all of these musings on preaching in mind, I invite your still more active engagement in the holy conversation of gospel proclamation!

It’s a joy for me to preach the good news in your midst.

With ongoing appreciation in Christ for the opportunity to lead and to serve at Faith/La Fe,

Pastor Jonathan Linman

Pastor’s Office Phone Number: 602-265-5860

Email: pastor@faithalive.com