A Plea For All Us To Be Convicted - NoMo PoMo Preaching

image from  Buddha's Ghost

I am a quant geek - I really, really like the patterns that numbers indicate.  A few years ago, as I sat in my pew, I ran the numbers and discovered I had listened to at least 2,000 sermons in my adult life.  This does not include any of the street preachers that I have walked past.  This is at least 2,000 sermons from "professionals",  folks who spent the majority of the week preceding that sermon doing what is called in the business "sermon prep" or the more clinical term "exegesis".  Not only have I somehow survived these 2,000 sermons, homilies & messages - I've actually taken a class from a wonderful set of instructors on the art of homiletics.

It was a long, long sermon - it meandered thru the New Yorker & Girard and the inner child - so I had plenty of time to reflect on this mathematical fact.  I was sad to realize this simple reality:

listening to these sermons no more made me a Jesus follower than sitting in a garage for a long time made me a car

I had outsourced meaning-making to someone else during these sermons, treating these gifted, messed-up fellow travellers on the Jesus journey as some sort of concierge, some oracle, some expert in the wizardry of life.  These women & men are just like me and you, but somehow I had asked them to stand on a platform and make meaning for me, like the idea of Tang - instant, just stirred and - BAM - it's just like orange juice.

My seminary experience was brutal for me - it was like the reality of TANG, all gritty & quasi-fake and ultimately far too unlike juice from a real orange (or any other fruit).  During seminary, I flailed and spewed and bullied - I wanted to learn of this wizardry.  Instead of Harry Potter-like lessons at some theological Hogwarts, I saw my own wizard's tent empty, the curtains pulled back to show me and all others as creatures of God depending on grace just to see another sunrise, no shamans or miracle workers who could conjure meaning in 12 minutes or 30 minutes riffs.

It's taken me a few years to even consider what takes the place of this wizardy, this oracle - what to put in the place of the pedestal.  In the midst of a recent sermon, I realize something.  I think that I do not need meaning, resolution or even explanation nowadays.  What I hunger for, from the depths of my shattered, shattering and living soul is conviction.  Let me be clear here - not certainty, not tidy arguments, certainly not a case for Christ. 

Nope - I am looking to listen to folks who believe what they are saying.  If they doubt, be convicted in talking about that - if she wants to talk about complicated things like "male headship" or sexuality, be convicted - if he wants to talk about the oppression that the yoke of ministry can carry with it, be convicted.  If that tele-evangelist has figured out atonement, be convicted.  If that Catholic bishop wants to explains transubstaniation, be convicted.  If we want to talk about the Empire or about social justice issues like abortion or climate change or immigration, let's be convicted.  Even if we have nothing to say, if we want to leave the pulpit empty, let's just be convicted in it.

Taylor Mali is a slam poet - from his first words in this piece:

In case you have not realized, it has somehow become uncool to know what you are talking about

to his final plea that

contrary to the bumper sticker, it is not enough to QUESTION AUTHORITY, you've got to speak with it

he captures why I know I feel - and I sense a lot of others folks in & out of pews feel. 

We are what Jay Rosen called the people formerly as the known as the audience.  We know that the reality of being a human being is much greater than the myth of the wizard, the preacher or the sage on stage.  You are just like us - we are just like you (excdept we do not have the student loan from seminary).  If you choose to step in that pulpit, hold that mic (or wear that Madona mike) if you exegete and hang in your pastor's study, a simple request:

when you open your mouth, nomo pomo preaching

please be convicted

Comments

[bob carlton]

pastoralice

silence has a ton of meaning, particularly when held in a large space that does not usually hold it

[pastoralice]

Bob--meaty stuff! I fear I do indeed fall into the pomo/unsure/questioning category. I certainly fall into journeyingrick's comment about not having anything to say. There are days when what can you say? And yet I get up and say it anyway. Much to think on.

[cathi]

hell yes brother! that realization is worth the whole kitty of college loans.
i LOVED the TANG reference.
xocathi

[journeyingrick]

yes, yes, yes ... i agree.
hey, preacher men and women:
be real about what you're saying - and if you don't have anything to say that day, then that's okay too. we don't need a canned product. we're no longer the audience.
just be who you are, and don't feed us anything that will make us feel happy or make us think you're smart or make us swallow something that will fix it. just tell us what is burning in your bones.