The preacher got it

Yesterday, perchance, I heard a preacher preaching whom I did not expect to hear preach and who did not expect me to turn up to hear him preaching. The self-confession of the preacher during the sermon is that he did not preach often (and it was a bit scary having a person listening, me, who made a full-time living out of preaching).

In a way it put a bit of acid on me: what would I say at the end of the sermon? With a set up like that, even saying nothing would be, so to speak, saying something. To have said nothing would be, I sensed, to have implied I did not think much of the sermon.

So I listened more intently than usual.

Fortunately for me, to say nothing of the preacher, the sermon was very good.

Why was it a good sermon? I thought it would give more substance to me saying 'That was a good sermon' if I could tell the preacher why I thought it was good. This is what I said:

1. There was a message and he stuck to it, kept coming back to it, and didn't lose track of it.

2. The opening of the sermon was touched on in the closing of the sermon.

3. The sermon connected with the passage of Scripture read before the sermon.

I have no reason to think the preacher ever reads this particular blog, but he could well have done, because the sermon, effectively, followed frequently repeated advice here.

The best Christmas sermon ever preached by an atheist?

Memorable lines in a sermon

From this morning's excellent (encouraging, inspiring, moving, pointing to God's power in our lives) sermon, I can just about report word for word these lines:

The rugby rules of life,

Always feed your backs,

Never go down the blindside on your own,

When in trouble, always kick for touch.

Worth thinking about why I can recall these so well. Here is my thinking:

- I am interested in rugby and could relate to each rule.

- A connection was made between 'rugby' and 'life' which made me listen intently ('what has the game to do with real life?' was the curiosity value in this part of the sermon).

- Just three rules (four and I might not remember them all!)

- The last rule has a lovely touch of humour: the rule applied on the rugby field is excellent; the rule applied to life is questionable as it sounds like being advised to run away from a problem, or to hand it over to someone else to deal with. The difference between the two contexts provides both subtle humour and food for thought: thinking about this rule meant ending this exercise in listening in the same frame of intensity as at the beginning.

I could over analyse this! But the point for preachers is straightforward: we can find words to say things in such a way that they are memorable and we can avoid doing that with the effect that our words are less effective.

Ten Steps To Better Preaching

Couldn't say this better than it is said here. So read it and do it!

The liturgy of Jesus

Prompted by an excellent post at Liturgy, itself stimulated by other posts on the internet, I have been thinking a little about worship and where we are going in our services as Anglicans, given that we do indeed want to achieve a lot from our liturgies: advance in mission, teaching the faith, mini-parish meetings (as sometimes our "notices" become), incorporating families (perhaps especially aiming at children, at youth, at young adults, at parents), evolving ourselves into deeper alignment with Anglicanism or (sub-)consciously moving away from that form of Christian life, as well as, lest we clergy forget, collecting the offertories to maintain stipend payments, dispensing pieces of paper, themselves sent by church and para-church officials with ambitions about what they will achieve from our congregations, building fellowship, offering hospitality. Quite a list! Oh, and had better mention the aim of worshipping God.

Rather than slate or promote this or these aims beside worshipping God, I think it useful to reflect a little on what a liturgy of Jesus might look like, i.e. if he were both the vicar and the chair of the worship committee.

We could think, for instance, of the way in which Jesus was at ease among groups and crowds of people, readily imbibed food and offered hospitality, never lost an opportunity to teach, often looked up to the Father to praise and to pray, quoted Scriptures frequently, often the Psalms, was regular at the synagogue, and at temple festivities.

Which makes me think whether one question about liturgy is wrongly framed: rather than ask whether we expect too much of liturgy, could we be expecting too little of ourselves as a fellowship of believers?

That is, make liturgy the reason primarily why we gather together, then tack various things on to the liturgy, then we may grumble that we are losing sight of what liturgy is primarily about.

What if we met together Sunday by Sunday (indeed more frequently than that) because we think meeting together is important in its own right. Then in the course of our meeting together we could talk, discuss, eat, drink, plan, prepare for other activities, and, yes, intentionally worship God through liturgy.

Bosco Peters' extraordinarily helpful e-NZPB page

Bosco Peters' is offering anyone who goes to this link the possibility of downloading important parts of NZPB electronically. The digital NZPB is slowly coming into being. It is grace on Bosco's part to offer this to the church; but the grace rests, in this instance, on a lot of work.

Deo gratia!

Who to vote for this coming election: a sermon

Just occasionally I will publish a sermon here which I have written and preached. On the two passages in this morning's readings, Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24; Matthew 25:31-46,  I used the following as my text. Some aspects of it will only make sense to Kiwis who have followed the news re our forthcoming election and our post-quake struggles in Christchurch.


From Ezekiel, let me re read a few words: v. 16 “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, and the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them in justice.”

And from Matthew I want to re read a few words: v. 35 “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me ... Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers you did it to me.”

What is at the heart of God’s message to us? What is God’s will for the world?

Justice, could be one word to sum it up. Justice and mercy, would be three words to put it in a phrase.

The gospel, the good message is that justice is possible. It can happen in life, not just in our dreams.

First, God shows mercy to us in Jesus Christ and forgives all our debts to God.

Secondly, God creates us to be a new people of justice.

Christians carry with them the story of God from Ezekiel: our God is merciful and works for justice.

Our hearts beat with the simple challenge of Jesus: someone is hungry, we feed them, thirsty we give them a drink, strange we welcome them, naked clothe them, sick we visit and in prison we go to them. The least significant is Christ in our midst.

Or that’s the way things should be.

Justice is a hot subject. Work for justice in the church and people are liable to look sideways at you; wonder if you are one of those left-wing types, or, these days, a greenie. Yet no one says we have no business with justice, that we should have nothing to do with works of mercy.

Mike Coleman is one of our priests. He is trying to give voice to the folk in the red zone. Their quest is for justice and for mercy from our government.

Jolyon White is one of our deacons. This week he has been in the news. Quite a few people, as far as I can tell, are mad with him.

His particular protest has been referred to the police by the Electoral Commission. Whatever we feel about what has happened, Jolyon’s heart beats for justice, his protest asks whether a brighter future for New Zealand is a just future or not.

In less than a week we vote in our election. It feels like a strange election to me.

A cup of tea seems to have dominated it.

Winston Peters might prove that resurrection can happen in this life.

But these are distractions.

Our votes are choices we make as Christians.

With today’s passages in mind dare we cast them in the interest of ourselves?

Dare we cast them in order to make sure our lives are better?

Of course not.

We can only vote for the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and those in prison.

We can only vote for those who will work with the grain of God’s shepherd heart

A heart which seeks the lost, the strayed, the injured and the weak.

Which party,

who is the prime minister,

what are the policies which will make our country strong in order to support the weak,

which will make our country healthy so we can bind up the injured,

which will make our country a safe haven for the lost?

That is our question this week.

If we are not ‘stirred up’ on this ‘stir up Sunday’ we should be stirred up.

Stirred up knowing that when Christ comes again he comes as judge,

yet right now he is in our midst

as the one who is hungry (200000 children below the poverty line),

who is thirsty (we have issues about the quality of our water),

who is alien (we have refugees struggling to settle here),

who is naked (well we had a naked rugby star in the news this week but what a lost young man he seems to be),

who is sick (we will know many).

and who is in prison (still many there though we can be thankful the numbers are falling).

This Saturday let’s vote for Christ!