Reflections on my first preaching experience...

I'm still processing my first experience with preaching, on many levels. I really enjoyed the preparation process and I really felt it was spiritually edifying to me to take the time to study a bit more in-depth about the scriptures and really sort of meditate on them throughout the week, letting my thoughts percolate about what I was going to say about them, and allowing the various events of my life to spur reflections on the scripture.

Then, when I actually delivered the sermon, I felt that it went well, and I got pretty much nothing but positive feedback from everyone (with a few comments that I could speak even more slowly or add in pauses to let the statements I was making really sink in). I was slightly nervous at the 8:00 service, but by the second time around at the 10:30 service, I was more completely relaxed and comfortable up there "preaching the Word."

On some level I was unprepared for the level of positive feedback I did get, with some pretty high compliments from several people (someone passed along a comment that someone had said it was the best sermon they'd ever heard! Yipes!!). Having not been trained formally in preaching nor public speaking, I wasn't expecting this kind of affirmation. And it felt good. It really did. Almost too good.

I have always been someone who has thrived upon and thirsted for the approval of others. I was always the good little student, straight As, who cried over her first B+ in third grade. And when I do get that approval, I tend to pride myself on it. I thought very highly of my stellar academic achievement, and did more than my share of patting myself on the back for my A papers, my magna cum laude graduation from college (only several tenths of a point away from a summa cum laude designation... something that bothered me a bit -- that I didn't get the HIGHEST level of awards). When I do well on a paper or a project or a presentation, I get a sense of deep satisfaction at knowing I've done a great job and enjoy basking in the glow of people telling me so. The only problem is, I think these behaviors have very little to do with worshipping God and giving glory to God.

It has always seemed a bit strange to me how in the mainline churches (like the Lutheran church in which I grew up), the tradition is to file out of the church after the service, greeting the pastor with a handshake and complimenting him (or her) on his (or her!) sermon. "Enjoyed your sermon," someone will say. "Great sermon," someone else will say. These kinds of compliments seem spiritually vacuous to me. It sounds and feels more like complimenting someone on their rhetorical skills than anything to do with any communication of the word of God. They may as well be saying, "Nice speech!" After someone delivers a graduation address, people say, "Good job!" After someone gives an enlightening or entertaining presentation, someone says, "I enjoyed your presentation." But "Good job, I enjoyed your SERMON??" I have always been uncomfortable with this language.

First of all, if people have ENJOYED your sermon, have you really communicated anything of significance to them? I guess I see the role of the preacher as spurring people to think more, of prodding them to action, even when those actions may be difficult to take. Of calling people to a higher standard of living and loving than what they are currently displaying. But if a preacher does this, people may not always ENJOY his or her sermons. Now, I'm not saying that preaching should be ALL ABOUT just calling people to behave differently or live their lives to a higher standard -- certainly there is also an equally important element of communicating assurance and hope in the promise of forgiveness and redemption that makes Christianity so very powerful.

Secondly, this kind of praise seems too focused on the person and not focused enough on God. Instead of saying, "God really spoke to me through your sermon," or "I really needed to hear that today," or "this really got me thinking," the praise and credit is given to the person and not to God. Especially for someone as used to basking in the praise of others as I am (especially in matters of writing), I feel like people praising ME for my sermons is a very dangerous thing. It would be all too easy for this praise to go to my head... indeed, for a few moments after the services last Sunday, I beamed and internally stroked my ego -- "Look at me, I gave a great sermon!" I said to myself. "Wow, you really did a good job here today."

What I was forgetting at the time was that any gifts I have for writing and speaking do not come from me, but from God alone. On some level, I have never really understood people's praise and admiration of my writing, since to me it doesn't seem difficult at all. Being an English major seemed an "easy" major choice to me, and I almost felt guilty for taking that choice over something more challenging and difficult like my science major friends. However, a biology major friend of mine once confessed to me her dread of writing English papers and how she thought my major was really more difficult than hers! I couldn't understand what she could mean about writing a paper being difficult for her. Writing has ALWAYS come easily to me; it has never been anything I have had to work for. This alone should be enough to convince me that it is a gift of God and not of me, and yet throughout my life I have prided myself on my writing abilities.

It is those things which come most naturally to us that I feel are most clearly of God and not of us. In essence, then, I am taking credit for something that I can lay no claim of ownership to, since there has been no effort exerted on my part to develop this skill -- and I feel like praise of my abilities in this area would only lead to an inflated ego on my part and a decreased ability to really hear the voice of God.

I feel like preaching should have very little to do with the preacher and everything to do with listening for the Word of God -- whether you're the one giving the sermon or the one sitting in the pews. I may have some knowledge of the historical background of the scriptures that I was able to "teach" to people in my sermon, but I was preaching to myself as much as I was preaching to the congregation when I talked about being joyful in proclaiming Christ as Lord and King and about holding on to the eschatological hope for the ultimate righting of all wrongs. I don't know that information on any kind of REAL level -- I don't feel it in my bones, I don't live my life as if I know it's true -- I needed to hear my own words as much as, if not more so, than many people in the congregation.

I think in the immediate "aftermath" of the sermon, I wasn't as aware of this as I've come to be over the past week or so of reflection, which is why I think I began to feel like somewhat of a fake later on in the week. When I wrote the sermon, I truly felt and believed everything that I said and proclaimed and felt joyful at sharing these truths with the congregation. Several days later, I was sitting in the undercroft watching the altar guild polish the silver for Advent and talk over the tiniest details of liturgics and suddenly feeling like, "What the heck are we DOING??? Sitting in this building and placing all these nice metal pieces in certain orders and dotting our i's and crossing our t's and whatnot and truly believing that somehow these things please God? What does ANY of this have to do with God???"

Suddenly it all felt like a farce to me. I stepped back and observed this seemingly absurd scene -- people parading around in robes, lifting certain pieces of silver at the opportune times, someone standing up and claiming to have some kind of authority to talk about "God's word" to the people -- and all of it within this isolated and insular community. Is this really what serving and worshipping God is about? Going into a building and talking ABOUT God a lot? Where is God in all this?

And then I thought about how just a few days earlier, I was standing there in my robes proclaiming something about joy and redemption and Christ being Lord and King of all, and today I felt like I couldn't be farther from knowing and embodying that truth. How could I ever call myself a preacher, as a deacon or a priest or even as a lay person, I wondered? I'm nothing but a fake! Do I even believe ANY of this stuff?

I think the enormity of the theology I was proclaiming on Sunday suddenly came crashing down on me on Wednesday. I had conflated myself with the words of my sermon and admonished myself when I didn't FEEL those words to be true constantly and without question at all times. I forgot that I was not claiming to speak for MYSELF in the sermon, but "in the name of Christ." That it was not Tracy Wells's ideas I was trying to communicate, but the Word of God as I best understand it through Scripture. And that since these were NOT my words that I was proclaiming, it was fairly natural that I would not feel at all times just hunky-dory about proclaiming them.

I came to realize that I did not preach my sermon, it preached me -- or rather, God preached through me. I needed to hear the words coming out of my mouth as much as everyone else did.

And this is why I would greatly appreciate it if people wouldn't compliment me on "my sermon" in such a way that gives glory to me rather than to God. If the focus is on me, then I'm just a pretty sorry fake and hypocrite, parroting words that I don't embody and that I'm not even sure I believe at times. But if the focus is on God, then I'm a broken, imperfect earthly vessel that the eternal God nevertheless sometimes chooses to use to express God's truths to God's people. The enormity of that fact is anything BUT arrogance-inducing. It is the greatest humbler I have ever known.