Sermons from July 2023

I got roped into being the church acolyte a lot as a child, we’re talking like three times a month for most of middle school. We did the “everyone come forward and kneel/stand around the altar rails and the pastor walks around passing bread out, and a communion assistant trails behind with the wine and juice” style of distribution. One of the acolyte’s jobs was to follow right next to the pastor and be ready. Because every time he got to a child who hadn’t had their first communion yet, he would, no warning, thrust the plate of bread in my general direction, and I had to grab it quickly because he’d just drop it, so I always was paying real close attention to this part. And what happened next would be exactly identical every time. He’d kneel in front of the child, grin and look them in the eyes and trace the sign of the cross on their forehead as he called them by name and then said “At your baptism, we marked you with the sign of the cross and that makes you a child of God forever, and no one can take that from you. I love you and I’m so glad you’re in church today.” His facial expression, pacing, cadence, volume, tone, pause, every single part would be exactly the same every single time. The only part that differed was the child’s name, and even that he’d keep as identical as possible every single week. And when there were two or three or five children all lined up in a row, each child would get the same message individually one after another…

My preaching professor would tell us over and over that the job of a preacher is to “say one true thing about God, and then sit down.” Sometimes you read a passage and think of two or three or twelve true things you could say about God, but pare it down, the reading will be back again within three years, you can use some of those other ideas then. One true thing about God and then sit down…

I know I know, I was really yell-y during the reading. But you know those days where you are just dealing with a lot and it feels like you can’t catch a break? Where you’ve got a bunch of really strong and conflicting feelings swirling around inside you, but for whatever reason you don’t have the ability to like step away for a moment and process all those feelings and re-center yourself? And then, because you’re frustrated by this whole situation…