The Best and the Worse
Rev. Thomas B. Cundiff
Is not
this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin?
Then your light shall break forth like the dawn,
and your healing shall spring up quickly;
your vindicator shall go before you,
the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard.
Then you shall call, and the Lord will answer;
you shall cry for help, and he will say, Here I am.
Luke 4: 16-21
When
he came to Nazareth
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’
I.
We gather
for worship. We reach that point in the
service when scripture is read. I have
an opportunity most Sundays to speak and preach in expounding on what God offers
us for guidance and inspiration. It is
my obligation to prayerfully discern what God, through my eyes, may be saying
to us in the context of where we are in living our lives. More than anything else I do, I have been
ordained to preach and administer the sacraments.
Looking at Isaiah,
I am called to today to expand on a powerful, memorable text that was a
favorite of Jesus’ – his call to preach ….
“……good news to the
poor; release to captives and recovery
of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free. To preach of the Lord’s favor!”
and this words with hands raised to the
heavens:
“HERE I AM”!
For as much as I am called to preach God
also calls you to participate in discovering what it is God would have us do in
living our lives faithful to Jesus Christ.
In the end God calls us to all raise our hands to the heavens in
proclaiming:
LORD! HERE I AM!
II.
Sermon
preparation is a straight-forward process.
What you may not know: sermons
are not supposed to be le lectures or speeches or moral or political exposés on pop culture. Admittedly, there are times I fall short in
falling in the trap of sounding more like a teacher than a preacher. That is one of the challenges every preacher
faces!
Truly in
the end, a sermon is that which I pray will be an intelligent exposition of
scripture delivered in the context in which we live in helping us all grow
closer, spiritually, with God.
From the Presbyterian
Directory for Worship:
“Preaching requires diligence and
discernment in the study of Scripture, the discipline of daily prayer,
cultivated sensitivity to events and issues affecting the lives of the people,
and a consistent and personal obedience to Jesus Christ.” (From W-2.2007)
In doing
this work on a weekly basis, I break my sermon writing into several blocks of
time that can span days and months.
I invest
one or more major blocks of time each week in long-range planning for worship and
preaching. This is when I look to
develop what I hope is a flow to worship with some continuity between
scriptural texts and themes and activities of the church. For example, I am already studying and
reflecting on texts to be used in putting together a series of sermons in
September. I am also spending some time
working on another series of sermons for the Stewardship season.
In fact, I recently delivered to
Melissa in the office the worship worksheets through August that have identified
texts and themes you have given me that reflect your requests.
This phase of planning for worship includes
selecting hymns, preparing liturgies, and focusing on the whole worship experience
of which the sermon is a major component.
Did you know that I select hymns twelve to fifteen weeks in
advance….that adds up to between 35 and 454 hymns……and I try to never use a
hymn more than once every four to six weeks.
Only twice, between now and the end of August, will you sing a hymn more
than once.
Just a little tidbit in my planning.
These are the types of things I think
about when preparing worship. I not only
try to find thematic hymns that fit the texts and subject for the day, but also
hymns that are on your “favorite hymn” list we developed a few years ago.
And yes, I am what is called a
THEMATIC PREACHER. I don’t often use the
prescribed texts in the LECTIONARY. When
I preach from the lectionary it is too easy for me to get off the track in
giving you “Bible Study Lessons” that I am not sure are always relevant.
Each week I invest one or more blocks of time in reading and
doing research or simply reflecting on texts and themes. With enough lead time I can do internet
searches on topics. I usually plan far
enough in advance that I can order or get my hands on books to help in my
preparations – in digesting a lot of information that I then need to whittle
down to a fifteen or twenty minute sermon.
Today as an example.
I started my work on this sermon back in April. Once a year I try to “Preach on Preaching”. To be
perfectly honest with you, the sermon you are getting today isn’t at all what I
imagined preaching several months ago.
My original plan: I thought I would lighten things up in asking: Are there any particular sermons you recall my
preaching that have stood out over the years?
Better still what sermons were
total bombs? I thought this
would be fun until I asked Nancy
In this dialogue I
realized something important: Preaching
isn’t about what is remembered or forgotten, the best or worse sermons – but
rather what it says on the particular day it is preached! That’s ALL that is required
of me. To give you a weekly message that can help us connect with God in getting
through another day and week.
What I want to give you today: Instead of thinking about the BEST or the
WORSE sermons, I would like to talk about some of the themes that have emerged
from my preaching that I hope have helped shape our understanding of God and
God’s relationship with us?
The question now becomes:
What basic biblical concepts have required my attention from this pulpit
to help us all grow in our relationship with God?
Some of
these concepts::
The Golden Rule: Do unto others a we would have them do unto
us…..Matthew 7:12
The Great Commandment to lovd God in
heart and mind and our neighbors as ourselves, from Matthew 22:37.
One of the neat things that occurs
when putting texts together – for example we can take the ten commandments from
Exodus and discover Moses is saying the same thing as Matthew! The
first four commandments are all about our love for God. The last six commandments are all about our
love for neighbor. This is one of those
neat things emerging from scripture I enjoy passing on to you. We can discover from week to week: Our relationship with God and neighbor is
a major theme running through stories throughout both the Old and New
Testaments.
One cannot preach and not talk about
eternal life. This is one of the most
important lessons to teach and preach: God wants us to know through Jesus’ life
and death and resurrection, we can be assured life with God will never end. All of this, of course, is related to our
having a close and personal relationship with Jesus our Lord—the living Christ.
What does it mean we never die? “In Life and Death we Belong to God” is an ongoing theme that emerges from the contemporary Brief
Statement of Faith adopted by our church just a few years ago.
What about our personal relationship
with Christ? Another concept: What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean when Paul says to the
Ephesians 2:8 and to each of us that be grace we have been saved through faith?
Or in Hebrews 11:1 that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for and the conviction
of things not seen.” What is our relationship with Christ? Do we have faith in Christ to hold and care
for us?
A theme worth repeating almost every
week: Christ is the living Christ in our
midst. God is always with us, never to
abandon us.
That leads to our being called as stewards
of all God has entrusted our care….through life and death, we are not our own
but God’s. A child is born and
baptized. We don’t own our children. We
are caretakers of our children. We are caretakers of life.
Many themes we can apply to our day-to-day lives! And this short list is but the tip of the
iceberg of all the concepts and themes found in scripture that can be applied and
used in helping us grow with God. And
this short list doesn’t begin to address the seasonal themes, Advent,
Christmas, Lent, Easter and Pentecost;
or themes important to us as a reformed church, a Presbyterian church, a
connectional and confessional church – preaching the importance of our not only
being connected with each other internally…but also with others in churches, ecumenically,
both near and far.
Well you
get my idea. Preaching is not about the
best or worse sermons. With scripture in hand, in what ways does God open doors
in our nurturing a closer relationship with God, through faith in Jesus
Christ?
IV.
Wellness
There are
two more themes I wish to address that have been and are the heart of my ministry.
First, what
does it mean to be healthy and whole in our relationship with God? To quote a Presbyterian pastor from a church
in Houston Texas
“The most critical issues facing
today’s church are remarkably similar to those confronting the early church. …..
core problems have remained the same for 2,000 years. We were created to be in
a close relationship with God and in healthy association with each other. The
Lord directs the New Testament church to address this brokenness by sharing the
good news of Jesus Christ, warmly supporting each other in Christian fellowship
and service, undergirded by sound Christian doctrine. We must endeavor, as the
community of God’s people, to witness about Jesus, by boldly proclaiming the
good news, and, even more important, to live as witnesses of Jesus’ healing
power in our lives, by encouraging each other to live the way powerfully taught
and perfectly modeled by our Lord.”
That’s
it. I have come to the conclusion with
my forty plus years of study of scripture that our wellbeing as children of God
in modeling our Lord is perhaps our highest calling.
What does
God want but for us to be healthy and whole and well…...connected and living in
harmony with those around us in this world and with God – God who wants nothing
more for us than to be complete, centered, and happy in our relationship with
God!
That leads
to the second most important theme in my ministry: Joy in serving our Lord! Are we having fun? Does serving our Lord fill us and satisfy us
and make us feel at one with God – happy to be with God? For the catechism asks as the first
question: What is the chief end of humankind? The answer is to “glorify God and enjoy God
forever”?
I have
truly come to believe we are called to give glory to God. We are called to have a joy-filled
relationship with the one who created us and breathed into us life. While Jesus helps us deal with some of the
sad things that happen in life….Jesus had a tough life….the end is in our
enjoying life and our relationship with God.
The ancient
catechism says – “we are to enjoy God forever.”
Finally, HERE
I AM! Called to be your pastor. Called to be your preacher. Here I am to raise my hands to the heavens in
asking for God to help so we can all be happy and well! Here I am, Lord, searching for the happiness
and joy only you can give—that I can pass on to others to be passed on to
others…..
Glory be to
you, God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ….now and forever……
Amen
[1] Did not get specific reference for this
quote. Likely a sermon I was reading
from the First Presbyterian Church of Houston.
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