Lexington, KY - A few weeks ago, I spoke with my old friend Wilson Willard in Cincinnati. When I was an editor for Forward Movement Publications, Wilson was archdeacon for the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio. Our offices were in the same building, and once a week both office staffs gathered for a service in the chapel. There was a sermon, usually short, and occasionally I took a turn giving it.
One of my sermons struck Wilson as just the right thing for an annual meeting of clergy in Dayton. Wilson asked if I would give the sermon at that event. I agreed, but I was having problems with my voice and was concerned about speaking in a space much larger than the chapel. Wilson agree to read the sermon in my place.
On the day of the meeting I rode with him to Dayton and sat among the clergy as the program began. Wilson gave me credit for the sermon and began reading. It was a good piece, if I do say so myself. It was about a man "with winter in his eyes," referring to a homeless man I had seen in Denver as snow began to fall in the mountains above the city. It contained this point: that as in C. S. Lewis's Narnia, for many such people it was "always winter, but never Christmas."
Wilson was reading well, obviously into the sermon, and he reached the climax and turned the page. There was a moment of silence and then he said, "The last page is missing. Bob, can you tell us what it said?" My mind went absolutely blank. "No," I said. Then Bishop Thompson stood and suggested that we must write our own endings.
I write my sermons. Many preachers do. I admire those who preach without manuscript or even notes. An acquaintance of mine used to boast that he prepared his sermon as he was walking into the church. I heard some of his sermons and he did well, except he never knew when to stop. There was a member of his congregation who took the responsibility of signaling when time was up.
Some preachers subscribe to services that provide illustrations and stories and ideas that help get the creative juices flowing as they prepare sermons. There are others who use already written sermons. Visiting a parish in a nearby town, my wife and I found the sermon sounded familiar. It was one of my own.
A seminary classmate of mine discovered a publisher in England that offered finished sermons that followed the Sundays of the church year. He subscribed and didn't bother even to read the material beforehand. One Sunday he was reading the sermon for the day and realized, after awhile, that the author of the piece was referring often to English places and customs and events, as an English preacher would. My friend realized the awkwardness of his situation and tried to cover up by saying, "You may have noticed I've referred to England a number of times. That's because my mother and I plan to visit there next year." And then he went on reading.
Maybe using somebody else's material isn't always a bad thing. The congregation may get a better sermon than they would if the borrower had created his own.
There's a difference between a good sermon and a poor one, but it has little or nothing to do with style, and not much to do with organization or wording. With a good sermon something passes between preacher and hearers and a holy thing happens.
A story goes that one evening at a party the host asked a famous actor to say the 23rd Psalm. He began, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," and continued reciting beautifully and when he finished all the people applauded.
Then someone asked an aged preacher in attendance to recite the psalm, and he did it a little haltingly, awkwardly, but when he finished there was silence and many moist eyes. The difference was that the actor knew the psalm, but the preacher knew the shepherd.
(If you've read this far I should tell you that the most important words on the missing sermon page were, "Take care of each other.")