The Little Friar

Read part 2 here .

I hear often about what a "great" job I did preaching.  Knowing myself as well as I do, I'm always skeptical.   Good preaching , I think, is hard to be judged in the short term.  You probably won't know it when you've heard it.  Instead, you know good preaching when you see it Monday morning.  What gets said on Sunday are just the seeds.  The growth that comes in God's kingdom, that's when you know if it took hold and accomplished anything to call as good. In truth, I've sat down after preaching and wondered often whether I owe God an apology for having wasted his time or my breath.  So, I thought it might help parishioners to see a few of the rules I've developed and shared over the years with those who've learnt preaching with and from me.  Also, reminders like this can't hurt preachers, either.  1.  Don't assume you always speak for God.  It takes lots of humility to stand and preach.  And if you're cocky ...

If the elements of the Lord's Supper, bread and wine, represent -- symbolically (Protestants) or actually (Catholics) -- the body and blood of Jesus then we should note that the body and blood of Jesus was given and broken and poured out for us unconditionally , while we were yet sinners.  Isn't that, at root, what the Lord's Supper symbolizes? If so, to exclude "sinners" from the body and blood of Jesus -- his outpouring love -- and reserve it for the "saints" seems to set into motion a legalism that I worry about. The body and blood of Jesus was poured out on Calvary for the whole world as Jesus says "Father forgive them".  That is what is celebrated at the Lord's Supper -- the wild, wasteful love of God poured out upon an unrepentant, ignorant and violent humanity.  You don't put gatekeepers around that.  You don't put Keep Out signs around the sacred wounds of Jesus. Let us not worry about wasting the blood ...

When we eat food we take something from outside out body and incorporate it into our body.  What was once something distinct from our body becomes a part of it.  However, the Eucharist meal does something very weird and backwards. "Because there is one loaf, we, who are many, are one body, for we all share the one loaf" (1 Cor 10.17).  When Christians share in the Eucharist we eat bread and, of course, it becomes a part of our bodies.  But in the process, the bread -- the body of Christ -- also consumes us.  By partaking of the body of Christ we are united to that body and are constituted as part of it. That is, to say the least, very strange!

After having preached recently in my home town among my home congregation, I hear often about what a "great" job I did preaching.  Knowing myself as well as I do, I'm always skeptical.   Good preaching , I think, is hard to be judged in the short term.  You probably won't know it when you've heard it.  Instead, you know good preaching when you see it Monday morning.  What gets said on Sunday are just the seeds.  The growth that comes in God's kingdom, that's when you know if it took hold and accomplished anything to call as good.  In truth, I've sat down after preaching and wondered often whether I owe God an apology for having wasted his time or my breath.  So, I thought it might help parishioners to see a few of the rules I've developed and shared over the years with those who've learnt preaching with and from me.  Also, reminders like this can't hurt preachers, either.  1.  Don't assume you always speak for God.  It takes lo...