Everybody's Favorite Sermon

Everybody’s favorite sermon is short. After all, it's important to get to the best brunch places before the Presbyterians and the Methodists.

Everybody’s favorite sermon is long, at least a half hour. After all, we want content and intellectual stimulation.
Everybody’s favorite sermon is light and humorous. Life is too full of problems to hear more about woe and agony in church.

Everybody’s favorite sermon is serious, full of gravity and realism. After all, everything we see on TV or read in the papers is dumbed down. We don’t want that on Sunday morning.

Everybody’s favorite sermon is enriched with the minister’s personal stories. After all, self-disclosure is a sure sign that our preacher is authentic, a caring and vulnerable human being.

Everybody’s favorite sermon avoids too much self-disclosure. After all, we don’t need to hear about the minister’s problems; we have enough of our own. Besides, it's embarrassing.

Everybody’s favorite sermon is grounded in scripture. After all, we don’t want to hear just one person’s opinion. Tell us what the ancient sages had to say. Remind us of our heritage, our roots.

Everybody’s favorite sermon avoids quoting scripture. After all, we want something fresh, not those old ‘thees’ and ‘thous.’

Everybody’s favorite sermon speaks to the issues of the day and includes a ringing call to action. After all, we need to hear our minister tell us that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, that it looks like thousands gave their lives so that an Islamic fundamentalist government run by Ayatollahs could bring new repression to the country, and that the whole thing really was about oil after all.

Everybody’s favorite sermon avoids being too political. The minister should realize that we don’t agree on many issues. We would rather hear about spiritual and religious matters.

Everybody’s favorite sermon touches all those who come to church on a given Sunday, no matter whether they have just suffered the loss of a loved one, or have just fallen in love for the first time. It touches equally the depressed and the elated, the angry and the joyful.

No wonder then, that when I started preaching twenty years ago, I was terrified.

How could I speak to so many who were so different and whose expectations seemed so high?

When I say I was terrified, I am not exaggerating. Since I was in my twenties, when called on to speak in public, I have suffered panic attacks. (I believe this counts as the sort of self- disclosure that is or is not in everyone’s favorite sermon. So here it is. I’ve never before admitted it from the pulpit. You are the first to know.)

In high school and college, I studied public speaking for five years. Because I excelled, I took advanced, private courses in public speaking.

Then one day, when I was in my late twenties, for no apparent reason, speaking to a convention of vocational educators—not a tough crowd—I froze. Could not get another word out.

Since that time, I have frozen in terror on live broadcasts, in seminary classes, and in small and friendly groups.

But never yet in the pulpit.

And slowly, I have learned to control, nearly eliminate the panic attacks. I realized that they came most dramatically when I was speaking out of anger or impatience, so I try not to do that.

I realized that the attacks came most frequently when I had not composed myself, not thought through what I wanted to say, so I try to do that.

And I realized that the best way to get over the fear of public speaking was to keep doing it, and churches like this one have graciously afforded me that opportunity.

Nearly one thousand times now, I have stood in the pulpit and attempted to say something that would be worth speaking, and worth hearing. Something that might strike a chord and change a life.

Nearly one thousand times now, I have confronted the knowledge that I would be challenged to somehow bring some comfort to people who are suffering, usually in silence, from loneliness, loss, rejection, terminal illness, anxiety, depression, setbacks of all sorts, confusion of all magnitudes.

That I have been allowed to try to live up to this challenge sometimes amazes me. It amazes me that I have been given such a chance to, as Reinhold Niebuhr put it, comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable.

There are times when I think that I am not up to the challenge. There are times when I know I am not being attentive enough in visiting those who are sick; not diligent enough in attending countless committee meetings; and most certainly not skillful and eloquent and authentic enough in constructing and delivering these little spoken events we call sermons.

There are times when I want to chuck it all, to call it quits, to walk away from the impossible task of ever preaching anyone’s favorite sermon let alone everyone’s favorite sermon.

When that happens, when I am ready to give up, there are a number of resources on which I draw for refreshment. One is the recalling of a favorite story as told by Church of the Larger Fellowship minister Jane Rzepka.

A woman is riding on the subway in New York City, comes to her stop, and gets off. As the doors start to close behind her, she notices one of her new, very expensive gloves left on the seat she has just vacated. Quickly, before the doors can completely close, the woman throws the other glove back into the subway train, where it lands with its mate as the train pulls away.

It is a little bit that way with me and the church. Perhaps this is true of you also. I have left too much of myself here not to care about those who ride the train after me. I have left too much of myself here, and in churches like this one—and been given too much of myself—to simply walk away, leaving only one glove for whoever comes next.

Two old sayings come to mind: “In for a dime, in for a dollar.”
And: “In this world, you must be a bit too kind in order to be kind enough.”

In churches like this one, I have been given so many opportunities to learn kindness. To learn to speak without terror. To share myself, my life, and my money.

I don’t want the train to pull away with half of what I really want to give. I’m pledging ten percent of my income this year to the church, this one and the next one I will serve. If I get a job, I estimate that I’ll make about $70,000. So my pledge to you, to the First Unitarian Church of Rochester, is three thousand five hundred dollars.

I hope that is not a boast or a brag. There would be no reason for that. No justification.

I have put something of myself into this church. But it feels a few inches or yards short of where I want to be. My pledge will close that gap.

So many of you have put so much of yourselves into this church. But are you perhaps a few inches or yards short of where you would like to be?

The doors are closing. The train is pulling away. Toss the other glove!