Proclamation and Grace

Today, Rob Shearer, one of our clergy, writing from a tent at Naramata centre, riffs off of our summer series and shares some thoughts on proclamation (and more specifically, preaching) from his journey across various Christian traditions.

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One important and beautiful part of my sojourn through the various traditions of Christianity was with the Roman Catholic Church.  At the time, I can remember saying to a United Church of Canada minister friend of mine -  I really love the ritual and tradition and the colours and the love of the sensory and the depth of theology and the beauty and mystery of the eucharist in Catholicism - but I'm stumped...  Most of the time, the sermons really do suck.

That minister looked at me and said, wisely, I believe: Rob, you grew up Pentecostal and have been part of the United Church.  The 'centre' of worship in both of those traditions, at least classically, is the proclamation and explanation of the word -  the sermon.  Most Roman Catholics [and some Anglicans, I'd add] are just there to endure the homily (ie 'short sermon') in order to get to the 'meat' of why they're really there - the Eucharist.

The penny dropped for me that day why so much preaching in some more liturgical or catholic traditions can taste like pablum.  I can remember numerous 8-12 minute sermons that felt like they really contained little more than a mediocre joke and a vague feel-good theraputic moral or political lesson (which might be left or right leaning, depending on the politics of the preacher) and perhaps a brief reference to the scripture which had just been read - if it was mentioned at all.  

I'd been socialised in my younger years to believe that the proclamation of the Good News, the release of the poor and oppressed, the telling of the ongoing Story of God's redemption of all things was precisely why we gathered -  but in these more 'catholic' expressions of Jesus' church, the homily, indeed, seemed to be something to get through in order to get to the 'real presence' of Jesus in the bread and wine.    

But my younger years weren't nearly perfect either. In my Pentecostal childhood, we had another kind of liturgy (praise music - sermon - more praise music - leave), and perhaps there the pendulum swung too far in the other direction.  Sermons were often sprawling, sweat drenched, shouting 40+ minute affairs - cinematic in their arcs and manipulative intensities. Yes, they were often more accessible to our day-to-day struggles (that is, if you're into baseball analogies) - but also too often rooted in the 'feelings' or, worse, the political leanings of the preacher - and focused around his (it was almost always a 'him') favourite texts and favorite theological emphases which too often pieced together disparate stories and texts to prove a point, be it correct or not.

I'm proud, today, to be a minister in The United Church of Canada and I do love how the preaching in that tradition emphasizes radical welcome, justice and inclusivity. However, it's been pointed out to me that a lot of preaching in our more 'liberal' Protestant traditions of church have a shadow side in how they can end up being more about our own agency, rather than God's. With that, there's an all-too-often an implicit or explicit guilt that we're not doing enough, not woke enough, or not inclusive enough (a mere flipside of the conservative holiness of other conservative Christian traditions).  Put another way, it become more about our own holiness then what God is doing in our lives and in the community and the wider world. And at worst it can feel like a really long announcement about the latest cause we happen to be into.

In seminary, I was taught to ask some simple questions to address in preparing a sermon:   What does this text / story reveal about the nature of the living God? and Where is the grace of God in the sacred texts we've just heard? 

Years later, I still love how these questions re-centre me on the work of God, rather than our /my own capacity to get things right or wrong. That's liberating.  I think they're important to ask to counter the subjectivities of modernist preaching - be that liberal or conservative.

These days, I've most drawn to and shaped by preaching from outside of the experience of the middle class, 'white' dominant church .  It was the justice-drenched cries to 'stop the repression' from St. Oscar Romero or more recently, the soaring poetics of preachers like Otis Moss III that have filled my soul with hope - and where I must say that I most often hear the gospel most loudly and clearly and prophetically and, yes, uncomfortably, in a way that is deeply rooted in Jesus, rooted in our sacred texts, speaks with authority - and addresses the desperate cries of the weary and broken world.  

But I'm also aware that when we proclaim the word in community it doesn't always have to be 'The Rev. Dr. Orator' up front in some raised pulpit.  In fact, it doesn't even need to be a single 'professional'.  Some recent movements around proclaimation have critiqued the idea of the expert in the pulpit - calling for more 'dialogical' preaching, which lifts up the wisdom of the whole community rather than a single expositor. 

As the church shifts and changes from it's Christendom ways of worship - I wonder if we won't get closer and closer to our roots in living rooms where people sat in a circle and proclaimed the Good News - working out their redemption in fear and trembling in conversations.  Perhaps we need more of that.

At AbbeyChurch, we most often try to hear the scriptures in concert with the wider church through a submssion to engaging not just our favourite texts or themes, but in 'the lectionary'; a 3-year cycle of readings shared by many churches (such as moar Anglican, United, Presbyterian, Roman Catholic, Lutheran, some Baptist, etc.). And, on any given sunday, we hear scripture, preach, have prayers - including gratitude and confession, and then engage in the beautiful mystery of holy communion.  It can be a lot to fit in.  Sometimes it works. Sometimes something gets muddled or lost in trying too hard to do too much.

Still, I like it that we seek to give creedence to both the importance of the proclamation of the word in a robust way - and in how that shapes us to receive the grace of God in the bread and wine, body and blood.  I adore that it's both word and sacrament most weeks that we gather.  I like that we ask the questions about grace and the nature of God rather than just focusing on what we did or didn't do right or wrong.  I like that we seek to not be so subjective in that we align ourselves with the wider church in the texts we're proclaiming rather than the flights and fancies of the preacher any given week.

Like all the places I've journeyed thus far that I've just critiqued (somewhat hyperbolically), I confess we at AbbeyChurch don't get it anywhere near right - but somehow, even that doesn't matter - because the grace really comes out in the brokenness, in knowing that we'll get it wrong. 

I belive that it's in the stumbling out of our own agendas and techniques in our proclaiming of the Good News and coming to the end of those - and landing deep in the gracious arms of Jesus.  It it Jesus Christ, the One who is one in the Triune God who we proclaim.  Ultimately, it is Jesus - the One whom we proclaim as 'crucified and risen, our judge and our hope' (UCC Creed) Who we proclaim - so that we can truly begin to hear and even experience and live into the very Word of God proclaimed among us. 

image: This CartoonChurch.com cartoon by Dave Walker originally appeared in the Church Times.