One of the most important lessons that I have ever learned about the craft of sermon writing came to me, not surprisingly, while I was in Divinity School… but it didn’t happen, as one might expect, during my Homiletics (or sermon writing) class.
It was late in the afternoon on a Sunday, and I was hanging out with my dear friends Jordan and Kevin – who are now married with two lovely children. Since it was Sunday, the topic of the morning’s worship service came up, and since at the time, all three of us were seeking ordination, we had a kind of professional interest in how the services went. As it turned out, Jordan and Kevin were not that pleased with the church service they attended that day. I asked them why.
“Well…” Jordan said, “there was the sermon … let’s just say it left a lot to be desired!”
“What was wrong with it?” I asked.
“The problem” she said, “was that the pastor went on and on about fixing his lawnmower! It might have been OK, but when I thought about the sermon later I realized that the only thing that stuck with me was a few tips on how to fix a lawnmower!”
I laughed. “It’s not about the lawnmower!” I said.
This may not sound like much of a revelation, but it has been a surprisingly helpful mantra for me over the years. Nary a week goes by when, as I write my sermon, I do not stop and say to myself: “Now now Mark… It’s not about the lawnmower!”
I may preach about stacking cord wood, visiting a patient in the hospital, cracking ice on the sidewalk, or driving my widowed mother to the pharmacy… but if my sermon is about stacking wood, visiting a patient in the hospital, cracking ice on the sidewalk, or driving my widowed mother to the pharmacy, I have failed.
These stories are not an end in themselves. They are means to an end.
And what is the end?
The end – the purpose – since we are in church, is to worship God.
But what does worshiping God mean? This is also something that I am opinionated about.
I don’t think our worship, on Sunday mornings, should be a habit. I bet most of the unchurched folks out there assume that this is what you and I are doing – acting out an age old script for no other reason than to maintain that age old script.
Again… worship is not about that age old script. It’s not about the ways that we worship. We do have meaningful traditions, but our traditions also point beyond themselves to something else.
To what?
To God of course.
But, as it turns out I am opinionated about that word too!
I don’t know about you, but I have not dedicated my life to the project of appeasing a temperamental father-figure in the sky. If that is what God is – some kind of bearded medieval King wearing a white robe and smiting people with bolts of lightning – then I will go ahead and quit right now.
Worshiping that God is not worth my time or effort.
I’m only a couple minutes into my sermon, and I’ve already thrown around a multitude of “nots” –
not a lawnmower,
not a story about stacking cordwood,
not about maintaining tradition
not a King in the sky…
Do I have anything positive to say?
If worshiping God is not all of those things, then what is it?
Here is my answer to that question:
To me, worshiping God is the act of paying careful attention to the most important things – the things that cannot… that must not be ignored.
When I say “the most important things” I intentionally use the plural. I’m not saying that there are many Gods. I am saying that when you find the essential part of something, you have found God.
So this God of which I speak, has many faces. As many faces as there are living things.
God has many meanings.
God can be a noun; God can be a verb.
To turn away from God is to ignore that which is crucial and essential about our humanity.
To worship God – to pay careful attention to this God– is to nurture and grow the seeds that are planted in the heart of our humanity.
**
When I read the passage from Isaiah in the lectionary this week, I knew immediately that I wanted to preach about it. The first sentence called out to me:
Hear, everyone who thirsts; come to the waters;
I find this line of scripture moving.
I am moved by God’s urgency.
Remember that, in the ancient tradition of Jewish prophecy, when the prophet speaks, he speaks not only for himself, but for God. This is especially true when the verb “Hear!” is used in this way.
It’s not “Please listen” or “consider this…”
It’s a command, free of any compromising adjectives or conditions. God uses the imperative form of the verb – an emphatic utterance that stands solidly on its own:
“Hear!”
God is saying “Listen up!”
Ignore me at your own peril.
I am moved by the universal human need expressed by the phrase “everyone who thirsts.”
When you think about it, the phrase “everyone who thirsts” is another way of saying “Everyone who is alive” … right?
It’s like saying: “Everyone who has a heartbeat”, or “Everyone who breathes.”
If you are alive you have a heartbeat. If you are alive you breathe. If you are alive, you experience thirst – and you need water.
I am moved by God’s response to the need – the thirst.
God’s universal call to everyone who thirsts is followed immediately by a God who beckons. A God who offers compassion. A God who gives life. A God who makes a simple, and beautiful gesture of grace:
“come to the waters.”
**
Yesterday afternoon, I attended an event at the Peterborough Public Library that was presented by the Congolese Community of New Hampshire. The talk was intended to shed light on the desperate situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
They succeeded.
I did not know, no doubt because of journalistic silence in the West, that in the decades since its independence from Belgian colonialism in 1960, the Democratic Republic of Congo has been in a constant state of conflict. F. Noel Sagna, the gentleman I heard speak yesterday, claimed that, since its independence, 18 million Congolese have perished in war.
This is a staggering number.
If it is true, we are talking about three times the number of people that Hitler killed during the Holocaust.
If we think of this in the terms I spoke of earlier, we are talking about 18 million faces of God.
The instability in the region was difficult to fully grasp in a two hour presentation. American interests were, inevitably, involved. In fact the whole cycle of violence was in motion when the CIA orchestrated a coup that deposed and killed the first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba.
There are innumerable rebel groups and militias that take hold of different areas of the country at different times. Surrounding countries like Rwanda and Uganda are also involved in land grabs.
But what is spurring all this fighting?
As is almost always the case with war, vast sums of money are at stake. You see, even though the Democratic Republic of Congo is one of the poorest nations in the world, it is sitting on the greatest mineral wealth available almost anywhere on the globe… and everyone wants a piece of the action.
The hard fact is that the interminable war that has claimed many millions of lives, and keeps seventy percent of the Congolese population in abject poverty began, and continues, for our benefit. Multinational corporations, like Apple, buy the minerals that fuel the conflict, which they use to manufacture their hardware.
The laptop that I am using to write this sermon, is made with the minerals that cause this war. The laptop that I am using to write this sermon is made from minerals extracted from mines through the forced labor of Congolese people – many of them children.
And to make matters worse, even though the Congo River – the largest freshwater source in Sub-Saharan Africa – bisects the Democratic Republic of Congo – 60 years of conflict has so wrecked the country’s infrastructure that it now suffers from an acute drinking water supply crisis. The number of people who have died of waterborne illnesses like malaria, diarrhea, and malnutrition, rivals the number of people killed in the violence – this according to the International Rescue Committee.
Minerals create greed, greed causes war, war destroys infrastructure, which leads to loss of water supply and… more death.
Why is this so?
How can we be so wasteful of human life?
It can only be because we have turned away from the faces of God that we might find among the Congolese people.
God says “come to the waters.”
But we have poisoned the water.
**
I see that I have written a depressing sermon.
But I hope you know that I do not write depressing sermons because I love to make you depressed.
I want to say this…
If our role, as people of faith, is to worship God – then let us do that. Let us pay careful attention to the God that is in each person. Let us live into this purpose of finding what is most essential about something or someone, and dedicate ourselves to honoring it.
Water, for example.
God says “come to the water.”
Why?
Because water has an essential divine quality…
Water gives life.
We may forget this, because water is so convenient for us. It comes right out of the tap. But people who walk miles to fill a container of water – like the woman on the cover of this morning’s bulletin – their aching muscles speak eloquently of the life-giving nature of water.
We have the luxury of being able to forget that if we – you or I – were to go more than three days without water, our organs would start to fail.
When God says “come to the waters” God is offering us something that is urgently necessary. Something that is core to our very existence.
Worshiping God is urgent.
When we worship God we say: “come to the waters.”
Amen.