Preachers out there, have you ever had the experience of putting the finishing touches on a sermon and realizing... hey! That's just what I need to hear!
Of course you have.
I have been feeling disconnected from the blogosphere for a number of reasons, and it parallels another kind of disconnection I've been feeling with my real world work. I am getting progressively more excited about my new call (I preach for the congregation and they vote on August 26). But I am still strangely absent from my own life, hiding out in some bad, bad habits from of old.
Then, in preparing my sermon from tomorrow ("The Gospel According to Harry Potter"), I wrote these words:
Harry’s task is, in many ways, the same as the task Paul gives to the Colossians, and it’s our task too: to be rooted and built up in the love that gave itself for us. To remember that love, and carry on in the light of it. To resist human-manufactured (or in Harry’s case, wizard- manufactured) philosophies which allow anything else to take that love’s place in our hearts. Love: a force so powerful it marks us forever.
And, as so often happens at these moments, I stand convicted by my own admonitions. Remember: remember the love that gave itself for me.
I looked back on the early months of this blog, and you know what? I was reading scripture every day, and talking about it here. Hmmm. Maybe a source of my disconnection? That I am no longer doing that?
I'm hoping and praying this day that this preacher can take her own sermon to heart. I am deciding, even as I type this, to reconnect myself with scripture... not only the passages I need to study when writing a sermon. But a daily diet, if you will, of the lectionary. I will try to blog it, but it is the diet that is more imporant.
My task: to remember love, a force so powerful it has marked me forever.
Image borrowed from DarkMark.com
6 comments:
Mags, as I see it, if you can't preach to yourself, how can you preach to others?
I'd say that was the beginning of wisdom for preachers. Of course, I could be wrong, not being a preacher myself - except in the most informal of ways, for I do babble on. ;o)
Mimi has wonderful words of wisdom. Maybe it's back to what John Wesley, founder of Methodism, was told--"Preach until you believe!"
On another note, I always find I need to learn what I teach about--so that's similar to preaching. Thanks for the message.
I've had the same experience myself. Great sermon words, too.
I think it is the height of arrogance to use a sermon to correct anybody except oneself.
Commenters all, I agree-- wholeheartedly.
Peace,
Mags
Mags I am thinking of you as you preach and entertain this call.
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