Who would be a preacher?

I was preaching up the coast yesterday morning and arrived in Peterhead early. A Macdonald's cappuccino to go, and then the short drive down to the harbour view. So. Cappuccino in hand, the sun still early rising, listening to Sarah Brightman singing Ave Maria and hitting impossibly high notes, being watched by a row of man-eating seagulls perched along the rail in front of the car, I was left wondering about the oddness of it all.

At 9.37 I guess a lot of the good Peterhead folk would sensibly be in their beds. But here I was, 40 miles from home, admiring the view, drinking from a disposable carton with a plastic lid with a hole in it, sunglasses on to deal with the glare, listening to a Schubert sacred composition sung by the first lead part in the Phantom of the Opera, and being reminded of how Alfred Hitchcock used the unblinking malice and blaring alarm call of seagulls to spook those first time audiences who thought birds were harmless!

But that's preaching for you. Sometimes you go out of your way to be with folk so you can share from your own heart, open up some of your thinking and feeling, with considered and determined humility hold on to a text long enough to touch on the miracle of how Scripture becomes once again to each of us, a word from God. Preaching isn't something done; it's more an expression of who you are. Not words, an event, not so much spoken as happening. Less a gift you happen to have, more a calling you can't refuse. Never a playing after power, always a willingness to be played, and be a player, in the orchestra of God.

So as I sat there listing the incongruities, I became aware that the greater incongruity is to have such treaure as the the Gosepl of Jesus in earthen vessels like those who are called to preach. The Apostle Paul with his usual diplomacy laced with pragmatism, said to the Christians in the Roman house churches, "For I long to bring you some spiritual gift....that is that we might mutually encourage one another." Preaching is never the mere, sole, private gift of the preacher. To preach is to be trusted by those who hear. And the best of sermons depends on the responsiveness in the hearts of the people, and the intellectual welcome that is a mind open to new truth, humble about being reminded of old truth, honest enough to receive truth hard to take, and yet with enough faith to let those truth carrying words, in all their inadequate articulation, be transformative, subversive, comforting, reconciling, reconfiguring and ultimately life changing. 

And it works. But only, note this, only, because, as Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote:

...the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.

All this from sitting enjoying a cappuccino and wondering at the joyous oddity of God's Grace, the well practised foolishness of human preaching, and the ridiculously generous privilege enjoyed by the preacher.

The painting is a cartoon by Raphael, Paul Preaching at Athens.

Comments

[John]

Great post, Jim!

i particuarly appreciated this section, "Less a gift you happen to have, more a calling you can't refuse. Never a playing after power, always a willingness to be played, and be a player, in the orchestra of God."

J