why preachers need to listen to writers

Over the past few years I have tried to find ways, as a preacher, to listen to communicators who are not preachers: Ira Glass, the host of This American Life; Lauren Winner, author of the memoir Girl Meets God; Garrison Keillor, on more than one occasion in person but also on the radio; Toni Morrison, author of Beloved; Tim Tyson, author of Blood Done Sign My Name; and the poets Billy Collins and Scott Cairns. When I am in Nashville, which is once or twice a year, I also try to spend an evening at either the Bluebird Cafe or the Douglas Corner Cafe, where songwriters perform for groups as small as fifteen and as large as seventy-five. None of these are preachers, and yet their work, and their reflections upon that work bears directly upon the task of preaching.

Today I attended a reading by Ron Rash, a professor at Western Carolina University and the author of a number of novels, most recently "Serena". I had read one of his previous works, "Saints At The River", and had read notices about "Serena". It is a compelling novel, chiefly due to the presence of a very powerful female character who personifies evil. It is also set in Haywood County, North Carolina, where we have a small cabin (near Lake Junaluska).

Whenever I hear a writer in a context such as this, I am reminded as a preacher about the importance of the creative process. It is easy, over time, to continue to pull sermons "out of the barrel" (old sermons). This is almost always a bad idea: they have likely become stale, times change, contexts in differing locales are not the same. It is also tempting, over time, to fall into a rut, preaching the same message, in essence, over and over again: the theme could be the acceptance of God, or our need to get along with each other, or to make the world a better place, or to try harder to be virtuous. All good sentiments, but ones that have been spoken and heard before.

In the presence of someone who is creative, one senses the importance of speaking and writing in such a way that all of this will find a hearing, in a fresh way. In part this is exploring themes that are not original; for example, "Serena" is about two women, and how each makes a choice between power and love. Of course power and love are at the heart of the gospel (see John 13), and yet most preachers (myself included) do not spend enough time bringing this struggle to life, or portraying it in a way that it is relational....and yet this is precisely where most of us live. The task is to dig more deeply into the recurring themes in search of the new life to be discovered, or the fresh relevance that awaits us (for example, Serena focuses on timber mining in the 1920's, and is a warning against the practice in our time of mountaintop removal).

Ron Rash is clearly a novelist who has reflected deeply upon his family heritage (his parents worked in the textile mills of piedmont North Carolina) and the landscape of the region (the mountains). He spoke of the temperament that shaped his family life and the geographical and environmental qualities that bear upon the lives of the folks in this region: at times this is a kind of fatalism, and at others there is a literal absence of light (shielded by the terrain). He also paid homage to Shakespeare and Flannery O' Connor, and commented on the care he takes with structure (the repeating greek choruses) and the choice of the names of characters.

The artist who works with words can be an important conversation partner with the preacher. We have an audience, but one that we can take for granted. Characterization, choice of words, variance of structure, attention to communal worldview and geographical landscape: all of these issues can help in the shaping of sermons, and the end result can be a narrative that is compelling and even transformational.

in search of reading material

It is a quiet Saturday afternoon. My wife is doing some design work at a home across town. Our younger daughter is shopping with a friend, although, due to modern technology, I know the balance of her bank account, so I have little worry. Call it a social activity. The three of us had lunch at Azteca, our favorite Mexican restaurant in Charlotte (it is located on Independence; order the homemade Guacamole; as my friend Bob Tuttle would say, I just did you a favor). I then stopped by to visit friends who are in the latter stages of a chronic illness.

My Saturday morning tasks had been to 1) complete the sermon 2) catch up on a week's worth of e-mail and 3) go through the mail and voice mail. It is obvious that the volume of email (358 messages) is swamping the mail (one personal letter, two form letters, three publications) and voicemail (four phone calls, two of whom had tracked me down later on the cell phone). The sermon is mostly there. It is basically finished, but needs a deletion here and an expansion there. I also wanted to stop by to see one of our associate pastors and her husband; she gave birth to a baby this week, and Pam and I peeked in. It was a good visit. Ours are now 23 and 20. It seems a blur.

Then to Azteca. We are at the stage where a meal with more than the two of us is rare, so it is a treat. And then, after another visit, home.

One of my mental "to-do" items was to go through our older daughter's book collection, in search of something to read during the latter part of July. I have been on something of a fiction binge lately: Cormac McCarthy's All The Pretty Horses, Ron Rash's Serena, Clyde Edgerton's The Bible Salesman. I cannot quite bring myself to take on the next volume in McCarthy's Border Trilogy, and IOur daughter Liz was a voracious reader in high school; she had read all of Faulkner prior to graduation, and she also got me into reading Murakami, the Japanese novelist. Sure enough, I found all of these works. Sadly, I am reaching the place in life where our family book collection is more substantial than that of most bookstores; I am not exaggerating, and, before you express the thought, I have given thousands of books away (to younger seminarians, to the libraries of Huntingdon College and Hood Theological Seminary, to our church library, and to friends). I am not attempting to magnify any kind of altruism, simply confessing publically our inability to restrain ourselves in the purchase of books.

So many books, and yet, what to read? I will settle on something, maybe the short stories of Alice Munro, and Robertson Davies' The Cunning Man, which I have not completed, and perhaps Wallace Stegner's The Spectator Bird, which I also began years ago, and need to return to.

a vacation from technology?

We often take a part of our summer vacation at Lake Junaluska, which is in the mountains of western North Carolina, about 30 minutes west of Asheville and 2.5 hours north of Atlanta. We have a small cabin here, and for better or worse we have fallen into the routine of coming here at this time of year. A part of the appeal is the elevation (about 3000 feet above sea level), and the cooler temperatures, at least in contrast to the city. Another is the simplicity. And another is the change to re-connect with friends in the area.

The gradual omnipresence of electronic media has forced me to make decisions about which ones I will take part in, on vacation, and which ones I will avoid. I have not arrived at a perfect solution, but for now this is the practice: on vacation I do not read e-mail. I know I miss some personal correspondence, but the implication of participating in e-mail is that I am in the flow of administrative work. When I am in Charlotte, I usually read email before 7:30 in the morning (but always after a Psalm, Facebook and coffee), and I generally look at email as late as 9:00 in the evening. In that time I am rarely away from email for more than an hour during the day. So it is quite a detachment to set aside email on vacation.

This summer we are involved in a "Psalms in The Summer" project (see recent posts on this blog, or follow us at twitter/summerpsalms. I generally distill a Psalm in the morning and evening into 140 characters, and at the moment over 250 folks are following this. I also receive these into my cell phone, along with a few other posts: from Andrew Conard, Amy Forbus, Jay Voorhees, Peter Wallace, The Wesley Report, NPR Politics, Nicholas Kristof and a couple from friends in the church. I must also confess that I receive posts from Shaq.

I got into Facebook via our daughters, and I will also admit that the first thing I look for is a post from them. I think, as a parent, there is something wonderful about seeing their faces, especially given that one is in China and one in Atlanta. I do not spend a lot of time on Facebook, and don't participate in the tests or games, which are quite fine, but I am interested in what my friends are doing. Like most experiences in our culture, it seems to be a media that the baby boomers have entered into and overwhelmed---like contemporary worship services designed initially for young adults.

My participation on Facebook and Twitter is very similar on vacation and in daily life, which is to say, minimal: a few minutes (or even moments) in the morning, a few at mid-day, a few in the evening.

Inevitably, a vacation from technology (or at least significant participation in it) leaves more time for reading longer works, which is of course the critique of the web. I generally put aside reading material that I want to get to in the summer, and work my way through it. I have just finished Robert Benton's The Echo Within and Ron Rash' Serena, and have been dabbling in Beldon Lane's The Solace of Fierce Landscapes, the latter a very serious reflection on deserts, mountains and wilderness that requires close attention. I also recently met Gary Shockley at a stewardship event, picked up his The Meandering Way, and read it, marveling at how closely many of our experiences parallel each other (a new church, education in discernment, times in life when we were overextended). Some of the reading will find its way into sermons in the fall and winter, but this is more by-product than intention.

I should finally say that I do have a system for responding to pastoral and personal calls. I am available, although others during these days are more present to these needs. I have often returned home early for a memorial service, and have spoken to friends in our church, in the middle of vacation, about marital difficulty or the suicide of a family member. I quickly add that this is not a burden. I find that there persons continue to be a part of my prayer life, even as I am away.

The fact that I am writing this on a personal computer and posting it on my blog and on Facebook is an indication that I am somewhat wired, even on vacation, and this is by choice. But the engagement is different: it is mostly selective attention to friends and family, and finds its expression as reflection on the day's experience. When I return, the remainder of it will be waiting for me, finally released from the purgatory of cyberspace, awaiting some kind of response.

a junaluska fourth of july

So we have been at Junaluska for the weekend of the 4th. The day began as I went with two friends to erect our tent near the lake, so we could have a place to watch the fireworks. More about that later. Then we came home and prepared to go to the parade, which began at 11. It is a quirky, somewhat campy parade, one part Americana, one part civil religion, one part mountain culture. Throw in a splash of Methodism, another of Duke, and another of free enterprise. The floats passed by, they waved at us, some threw candy at (to) us, and then it was over. I don't know which float won, but a friend in our party suggested it should be whoever threw chocolate.

We then followed the end of the parade down Lakeshore Drive, where we encounted Bishop Goodpaster and his family, and some other friends. We made our way to the Nanci Weldon gymnasium, an outdoor structure which houses part two of the July 4th extravaganza: bluegrass and barbecue. Since we had dined last night at "Butts on The Creek" in Maggie Valley (yes this is the name of a real restaurant, and my younger daughter texted saying she wanted a t-shirt), we had reached our saturation level of bbq. But we mingled, saw some old friends, resisted the urge to purchase craft items, and listened to the music. Then we walked back to our car, and returned to the cabin for lunch and then a nap. A long nap. The weather has been absolutely amazing today.

Today I can truthfully say I have not watched a minute of the television coverage of Michael Jackson, Sarah Palin or Mark Sanford...a group that certainly achieves a strong measure of diversity (race, gender,orientation and ideology), but nevertheless are not that interesting, after a time.

The day has one more agenda item, and that is fireworks by the lake. Bill, Gary and I set up the new Coleman tent this morning. Pam, Jacquie and Margaret have the food together; Eddie may well have helped in this area too. We will take our places beside the lake, and, if the past is any indication, we will enjoy a multi-sensory experience---taste, smell, sight, sound, as darkness comes to the day.

when icons are destroyed

If you are a preacher, the culture has flooded your reservoir with illustration upon illustration this week. The death of Ed McMahan, then Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson; the separation and impending divorce of Jon and Kate; the political and personal disintegration of John Ensign and Mark Sanford. The abuse of drugs and alcohol, a presenting issue in the case of each celebrity; the personal journey as continual facial reconstruction; the abandoned angel as heroine, the dutiful sidekick cast aside by a series of wives, and depleted by a mountain of alimony payments. The accident waiting to happen, a passive/aggressive and immature male meets a hyper-organized and somewhat dominant female---this can work, perhaps with one or two children, but not eight, but the economic benefits hold it together, at least for a time. And the false persona of two politicians who would judge others and find themselves sliced by the same knives they had wielded.

This has been a bad week for American popular and political culture. The struggle with money, sex and power overtakes the advantaged and the venerated. If these are icons, they are windows into the darker reality: the wealthy entertainer who spends the night unsupervised with the children of other families, the sexual goddess who experiences a painful and public death, the entertainer who runs through the assets before the end of his life. A happy and even religious couple separates before our eyes. Two public officials, standing on the front lines of the culture wars, now find themselves asking for the same compassion they have been so unwilling to extend to others.

"Do not be conformed to the world", the scripture teaches, "but be transformed by the renewing of your minds." Christians participate in the popular and political culture, shaping it to some extent (see the excellent recent work of Andy Crouch), and yet at times we have a bit of unease about it all. And yet a week like the one that has just passed brings us face to face with the reality of self-destruction, and with the corresponding need for redemption, or at least sanity.

lindsey parr goes to the dominican republic

One of the four areas of ministry focus for the United Methodist Church over these four years (08-12) is to develop principled Christian leaders for the church and the world. I am blessed to serve a congregation that embraces this mandate: we had the experience of celebrating the graduations of three of our members from theological schools in May: Jamie and Holle Wollin, from Asbury Theological Seminary, and Stephanie Wilhoit, from Duke Divinity School. In addition, a mission team traveled to Haiti in May, our third team there since January, and of the twenty persons (who were involved in a school, an orphanage, a clinic, a microcredit and a local church), eleven were between the ages of twenty and thirty, and thirteen were younger than 35!

I want you to know about Lindsey Parr, another of our members, who will be served in the next year in the Dominican Republic with the DREAM project. You can learn more about her here. Lindsey is a recent graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill and has sensed a call to serve children in the Dominican Republic (she has served previously there and in Haiti). I hope you will keep up with her experience at her blog, and include her in your prayers. I am convinced that she is on the way to becoming a principled Christian leader for the church and for the world.

psalm 23

A young man was trying to sort out what to do with his life. He did have a sense that God was calling him to do something, and this call had led him from New York City to rural Kentucky, where he found himself living in a monastery. Being in a monastery did not always help him to feel more spiritual, or give him any clarity about his direction in life. The monastery did put in touch with the Psalms, which were read every two weeks. This young man, Thomas Merton, wrote a prayer that expressed something of his search at that time:

“O Lord God, I have not idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire to please you. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore I will trust you always though I may seem lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear. And you will never leave me to make my journey alone.”

Merton’s prayer has within it echoes of the 23^rd Psalm, which begins with the words the Lord is my shepherd. It is an act of trust: who is going to be our guide? It begins as a call to obedience. Whose voice are we going to listen to? The psalm calls for a response in the words of the gospel hymn, to “trust and obey”. And in that trusting and obedience, there is a realization: “I shall not want”. Israel wandered in the wilderness for 40 years, and God provided each day, enough for that day.

To say “I shall not want”, is to say “I have everything I need”, I have “enough”. This is an important word for us, given the experience of our community, our country, our world over the past year. We are prone to hear a different voice, saying “You do not have all that you need”, “there is not enough”. From a human point of view, there is never enough. From a human point of view, we live in perpetual scarcity. But from the psalmist’s perspective, there is perhaps not abundance, but there is enough, it is sufficient, “I shall not want”.

This is a psalm about the basics of life. The images that follow next, about green pastures and still waters, were really about survival, what was necessary: food and drink. The shepherd would supply the need. Years ago the psychologist Abraham Maslow talked about a hierarchy of needs, and the most basic needs were physiological: food, water, breathing, sleeping. In his pyramid, the next need was safety, then belonging, then self-esteem, then what he called actualization: morality, purpose, creativity. But at the foundation was the question: will I survive?

When we know this, we have the confidence to move more deeply into the psalm. We have focused on the external---what we have or do not have---now we move to the internal---and we can begin to hear the psalm in a different way. He makes me lie down in green pastures (rest), he leads me beside still waters (recreation), he restores my soul.

This is the great work of God, the personal and spiritual renewal of his children, and as we trust and obey we are guided forward in the journey: he leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. A better translation is that he leads us to walk in the right path. To be led down the wrong path is the road to destruction. For a sheep, to take the wrong path was to be separated from the shepherd, to be in danger of predators, and this could be a matter of life or death.

A word here, about this image of the shepherd. The shepherd is one who leads. In the gospel, Jesus is the good shepherd. The sheep hear his voice and they know and follow him.

I love being a pastor, and one of the images, across the centuries, of being a pastor is a shepherd. This week I will attend Annual Conference at Lake Junaluska, along with a number of our staff members and lay delegates. I always attend the ordination service and it is an opportunity for me to reflect again on what I started out to do, what I felt God was calling me to do, as a young man, and what I find myself doing now.

Over the last 26 years the church has become a much more complex institution, serving an infinitely greater variety of needs, having increasingly demanding expectations placed upon it. It helps me to go back to this basic image. The role of the pastors, and I would include all of our clergy and someone like Adam Ward in this definition, is to lead us to sources that not only sustain life but to help life to flourish: biblical teaching that is like solid food and not junk food; great music that inspires; Christian community where forgiveness and growth occur; outreach to others that meets the most basic needs of life: food, shelter, protection, education, faith.

And now we come to our focus for this morning: though I walk in the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. There is the recognition that we are sometimes in the valley of the shadow of death. These are the dark times, the confusing dilemmas, the despairing moments. The mystics call this the dark night of the soul. The whole biblical tradition had wrestled with the valley of the shadow of death: Abraham, called to sacrifice Isaac, Jacob struggling all night with someone, maybe an angel, maybe God. Jesus agonizing in the Garden of Gethsemane and later on the cross.

In the dark times, this psalm is helpful. Time and time again I will be leading in a memorial service, and we have entered the sanctuary and offered words of greeting and prayed and sang a hymn, and then we have read this Psalm, and when those gathered begin to say these words, “though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me”, something happens.

The effect of these words is calming, healing, almost tranquilizing. They are a response to a powerful reality. The psalmist is correct to name the elephant in the room, and that is fear. We live in a culture of fear. In part this is based on marketing. Marketers know about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, they know about fear. And so we really need a certain product because of the fear of….our own personal safety, or a catastrophic health incident, or, having sufficient financial resources. Politicians play upon our fears: if the other side gets in office, you will be unsafe, you will be out of work, you will you’re your life and liberties. And religion has made use of fear as well. When I was a little boy, many of the largest churches in our community preached, in essence, a gospel of fear. If you do not change your life, you will burn in hell. I remember those messages even now.

The problem with fear is that it does not motivate us. Over time, it paralyzes us. And in more subtle forms, fear can grip us, fear of death, fear of the unknown, fear of losing something that is important to us, our work changes, our children grow up, our health declines. We are sometimes stuck in the valley of the shadow of death, and paralyzed by a fear that we cannot get beyond. The psalm helps. I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. The psalm does not deny that threats that surround us; the psalm simply affirms that we are not alone. God is with us.

This is a brief psalm, only six verses, and for that reason many can recite it from memory. In verse five the imagery shifts, from shepherd and sheep to guest and host, but again, the teaching is simply reinforced: a table with food and drink, the anointing of protection. The host protects the guest, provides for the guest, even in the presence of the threat of enemies.

The psalm concludes with a promise. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. The Message actually translates the literal meaning of the Hebrew more accurately: Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. God is not passively keeping a distance from us. God is actively pursuing us, for our good.

The sixth and last verse: I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. To dwell in the house of the Lord is to inhabit a different world. The house of the Lord was the temple, of course, and for the Christian this is heaven, but it is also this life, speaking practically for our congregation it is the sanctuary and the atrium, it is wherever God’s people are, wherever the community gathers, it is a confirmation that we are not alone.

We have moved, in the course of the psalm, from the valley of the shadow of death to the house of the Lord. And this is a journey that many of us have made: from an initial crisis, a threat, a fear, a paralysis, to the knowledge that we are not alone, to the reminder that God, and at times through his people, provides for us, to the presence of God, who is our refuge and strength, and his people, who are his dwelling place.

This morning we hear this psalm in the context of a meal, a feast that has been prepared for us. As we receive the bread and cup, we remember that God provides for us, at a most basic level: I shall not want.

As we receive the bread and the cup, we know that we are strengthened not only physically but also spiritually: he restores my soul.

As we walk toward the altar, and then as we walk away from the altar, we are reminded that life is a gift of grace that we receive in order to give. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

As we kneel or stand to receive the bread and the cup, we know that a table has been prepared for us, and even as we become more conscious of our enemies, those with whom we have conflict, we also count our blessings: we know that our cup runneth over.

As we sit in the pew after receiving, we might reflect on the comings and goings of our lives, the straight paths and the wandering diversions, times of nearness to God and others times when God seemed far away, and yet it is true that God has always been following after us, even chasing us: goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.

And just to be together, for a moment, to stand at the end of the service, knowing that through the bread and the wine God dwells in us, and that we shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

These are the gifts of God for us, a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, a favorite psalm. They sustain us with the basic necessities, they protect us from danger, they guide us in the path. The 23^rd Psalm is about everyday life---the necessities---but it is also about crisis, and perhaps then we hear the voice of the good shepherd most clearly and compellingly, when we worry about the basics, when life is threatened, when we are not sure if we are lost, or headed in the right direction. In those moments to pray the 23^rd psalm is enough.

Sources: Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude. Scott Bayer-Saye, Following Jesus in a Culture of Fear. Clint McCann, Great Psalms of The Bible.