I’ve written about my favorite week of the year in this space before. No, not family vacation or holidays of any sort. It is not the usual kinds of weeks that many of us look forward to. No, this one is strictly mine. Well, mine and almost two thousand others. It is the week of the Festival of Homiletics. A week full of preachers preaching and preaching teachers talking about preaching and sometimes teachers preaching and preachers teaching, with some music and liturgy thrown in just for good measure. It is as close to heaven as a preaching geek like me could ever hope for. I found it almost 20 years ago and have been going faithfully every year since. I even had to miss a birthday or two along the way, since it always falls around Maddie’s birthday. Which was Saturday, by the way, May 16th, she turned 25 this year. Not quite sure how that happened. Soon she’ll be older than me. Somehow. Anyway, the Festival falls between Maddie’s birthday and my anniversary. Well, our anniversary, since I am pretty sure La Donna was there too. Which is next Sunday, May 24th. Forty years this year, wow. Not quite sure how that happened either. Soon our marriage will be older than I am. Somehow.
I was all signed up, paid my fee, was supposed to be in Atlanta right now waiting for the event to start. But no, here I am, sitting at home, here in Nashville. Oh, sure, like so many other things, they aren’t canceling the Festival, it is just going to become virtual. Remember when virtual used to mean almost? Well, it sort of kinda does still. I know it means online these days. But it also kinda feels like almost. We’re almost going to have a Festival this year. Almost. I’ll hear some of the preachers, and I’ll be a part of the worship, from a distance. Almost. But because I’m here, in my virtual office, I’ll also have work things to do. Zoom calls and projects to complete, a podcast to record and a virtual meeting about a preaching teaching series I’m going to do. So it won’t be the same. I will get access, because I was already registered and paid, to the recorded sessions of the Festival, so even though I’ll have to miss some of it, I won’t miss any of it, almost.
But it won’t be the same. You see, while the heart and soul of the Festival for me has always been the words spoken, proclaimed really, and the opportunity to hear from some of the most incredible preachers in the mainline tradition and variety of cultures and approaches, all of which will be captured as best as possible through the virtual medium employed; that has never been the whole story. Or indeed what it is that brings me back year after year. There was something deeper, more profound going on in me and those who gathered year after year.
Ministry is hard. I won’t say harder than other jobs, because every job has struggles and difficulties along the way. But one of the things that makes ministry and preaching in particular difficult is that you often are told in a variety of ways that you are wasting your time. And worse, wasting their time, those who come to listen. That’s often why preachers want to come up with simple tips on how to live a good life. Do these three things, follow those five rules, observe these 7 traits and you’ll be right with God. You’ll be assured of your salvation. You’ll have your ticket to heaven, or a better life, or all the answers. If we just read the Bible right, we preachers think, we can decode the tips, the steps, the elements of the life that Jesus led. And by golly, we find them. And they work. Until they don’t. Until we find the next set of things. The next tips on living.
We do this, we tell ourselves, because it is what the people want. All the popular preachers do it. They make life, they make faith, they make following Jesus sound so easy. And fun! So, we all look for the five fun things that we can give to the people on a fill-in-the-blank bulletin insert and feel like we’ve done our job. Except that even while we do it, week after week, we have this nagging suspicion that it isn’t working. It isn’t what we’re supposed to do. It isn’t what is going to give people life. And we don’t know what to do.
Then sometimes, we are beaten down. Directly or indirectly, told by churches that we aren’t doing our job, we aren’t making them happy, we aren’t leading them in the directions they want to go. We’re told we’re failing because we haven’t found the magic program or worship style or seat cushions that will make our church grow like the mega-church on the edge of town. And we begin to investigate other career opportunities.
It was in one of those moments that I found the Festival. Those “beaten down, what are you doing with your life” moments. And I went, not expecting much, except for the chance to be away and not feel too guilty about being gone. What I found, however, was a reminder that the Word matters. It matters in the world because it gives us a sense of the presence of God. The Word, which at one time, put on flesh and walked around among us, with skin on, and eyes to see and spit that made mud and tears that flowed and hands that held and a mouth that spoke. It spoke, that Word on two legs. It spoke and it told stories and it called followers and it made riddles and shared history and it challenged and threatened and comforted and loved, but it never once explained everything. Even when the gospel writers said the Word with a mouth explained everything, to the followers, if you listen carefully you’ll realize nothing was explained. There is no road map, no virtual GPS that will get you through the tough times. There are no three steps or five or seven steps to an easy life, in fact the Word that talked said if your life is easy you’re doing it wrong.
On Great Performances this past week, PBS broadcast the 2019 Ravinia Festival’s production of Leonard Bernstein’s Mass. It was originally written for the opening of the Kennedy Center in Washington DC in 1971. It was controversial then and still is today. Some love it, and some hate it. I’ve always loved it. It is about faith and about doubt and about how they live side by side in an uneasy relationship. It doesn’t provide answers, it barely offers hope. Bernstein, of course, was Jewish, but he was writing in honor John F. Kennedy, the only Catholic President in our history. The central figure is a priest and his journey through this show is too complex to outline here. But he too, travels through faith and doubt and hope.
In the middle of the opera there is a song titled “The Word of the Lord.”
"For the Word, / for the Word was at the birth of the beginning, / it made the heavens and the earth and set them spinning. / And for several million years, / it withstood all our quorums and fine ideas. / It’s been rough, / it’s been rough but it appears to be winning.”
And
"For the Word, / for the Word created mud and got it going. / It filled our empty brains with blood and set it flowing. / And for thousands of regimes, / it endured all our follies and fancy schemes. / It’s been tough, / it’s been tough and yet it seems to be growing. // Oh you people of power, / oh you people of power, your power is now. / You may plan to go forever but you never do somehow. // So you wait in silent treason until reason is restored, / and we wait for the season of the Word of the Lord. We await the season of the Word of the Lord. / We wait, / we wait for the Word of the Lord.”
This song seems to be a pivot around which the whole show revolves. I’m not a music critic, I may be wrong. But I am a preacher and this seems to be the ground which holds us, even when things get shaky. We don’t have the answers, but we have the hope. We have the faith. We have confidence in the Word, even when we don’t understand it.
Romans 5:1-5 Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. 3 And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.
I am disappointed that I won’t be going to the Festival this year. But I know it is the right thing. And I have hope that the Word still matters. Even during a pandemic. Maybe especially so. I’ll share whatever insights I glean from the almost Festival this year, so watch for that. In the meantime, I am not disappointed by hope, while I wait for the Word of the Lord.
Shalom,
Derek
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