Writing the Latest Sermon

This post started as my standard Roblog entry of my latest sermon, but much like the sermon itself, it has become something else.

I was talking with our pastor, Micah, and elder, Matthew on Sunday, September 26th, about our upcoming plans. It came to my attention that in two weeks Micah was planning to have the week off, and there was no plan for the sermon that week. Since I was in the middle of vacation, I offered to fill that gap. My last sermon was in March, and I felt overdue to go through the labor of creating a sermon. Whether that labor is more of a production job or the act of giving birth, I am still not sure.

I was not sure at that time what I would be preaching on. Micah was working through 2 Thessalonians, and wasn't sure whether he would finish that week or the week before. I had been talking with Rick about his preaching, which was working through some significant points in the Old Testament. He had mentioned the possibility of preaching on the Jubilee, from Leviticus, and that sparked something in me. I have been fascinated with the idea of the Jubilee for a long time, and this felt like the time to tackle it. I pitched it to Pastor Micah that Tuesday, and he told me to go for it. That left me with 12 days to assemble my sermon, much less time than my usual 3 or 4 weeks. I started re-reading chapters 25 and 26 of Leviticus, and a sermon in a book of sermons by Walter Brueggemann that I borrowed from Rick far too long ago and which he has not bothered me at all about returning. The sermon was about how dangerous this idea of Jubilee is to a world that worships at the altar of capitalism.

And I was on fire for this sermon! I was looking forward to dragging our congregation into the Torah and showing them where you could find the tools to take apart society and rebuild it into God's Kingdom! I spent Friday that week, nine days before the sermon was due, at Rick's office, researching the Jubilee.

I found that to really grasp the idea of Jubilee, it would help to have an understanding of the seven-year-Sabbath: a year in which the land was to rest, and the people were to have faith that God would not let them starve. And that only really made sense in the light of the weekly Sabbath, which Jewish people still celebrate every week and we do ourselves a disservice by not more closely observing. And the Sabbath really comes into focus when you realize that it is just one of the times that God appointed in Leviticus for Israel to stop and focus on their relationship with God. And those appointed times make much more sense when you realize that they are part of a larger structure of social interactions and laws that govern how God's people get along with each other. These rules clearly stem from the boundaries of holiness that are clearly defined in Leviticus, from how priests should behave in their daily life and their job, to how all of the various kinds of sacrifices should be made, and how the priests were to approach God. 

I decided that I could cover all that in a couple of minutes.

Spoiler alert: I couldn't.

I spent the next week assembling an outline. On the Friday two days before the sermon I started fleshing out my outline, connecting the pieces to help me figure out what was missing. In that process, I came up with "an idea to bracket Leviticus," to set that portion of the sermon apart from the parts about Jubilee. It was beautifully symmetrical, and painted a clear picture of Leviticus that I had never before held in my mind. The problem was that this two minute introduction had grown to more than ten minutes of a sermon which I had intended to last 20 minutes (knowing full well that it would likely be 25, but not at all likely to pass 30).

In addition, my end bracket for Leviticus felt like the end of the sermon. Except that I had my Jubilee ending as well, so I was stuck with a sermon that effectively had two tails. I thought and prayed about it, and came to the conclusion that I had two sermons on my hands. I asked Micah and Matthew what to do, and they agreed that I should run with the more complete sermon of the two, so I started hacking. 

I had to remove some of my favorite parts, because this was no longer a sermon about the Jubilee. I left hints and allusions to them, and a couple of their themes as they fit into the larger structure, but withheld the smackdown that Jubilee brings to the world at large. This was not really painful, because I had already made up my mind that Jubilee still needed, and would get, its own sermon. It's in the works, and will likely show up sometime around November. (It ended up being September 27th.)

So I spent the Friday before it was to be delivered doing surgery on my sermon. I have had to do a lot of writing on sermons later than that, but it was late enough that it should have felt panicky. It didn't, though. It felt like the right move, and it felt blessed. I went to bed late Friday night fairly happy with it. Saturday I went through it a couple of times, reworded a few parts, tweaked here and there, but no major changes. Horyon had it early in the day to translate, but she had a busy day, so she finished after I had gone to bed Saturday night.

I had been working on a theme involving circles, which I illustrated by carrying a kind of shofar with me. Mine is made from the horn of (I believe) a longhorn steer. The shofar was also used to announce the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which is mentioned in the sermon. I held it through the sermon, and gestured towards it a few times. Even mentioned how one like this would be blown for Yom Kippur. But I did not actually blow it until the end, and in fact used it to end the sermon. I believe to good effect.

I have a Korean friend who is the pastor of a little home church. He gives a couple of sermons on Sunday, and another for Wednesday services (which are standard for Korean churches). He preaches through three different books at a time. Doesn't leave much room for procrastination. He recently told me that preparing a sermon can be painful, like giving birth.* I find that most creative efforts are like this. If a deadline is not imposed on me, I will often delay, just to avoid that pain. 

*I realize that comparing the birthing of an idea to the birthing of a child is problematic, in that I have only witnessed the latter, and am missing some key anatomical features involved. But I struggle to come up with a better metaphor, and just can't. So please bear with me if you have actually borne a child.

This Roblog post is an example. The writing itself was no more difficult than usual, but the self-examination in these past few paragraphs gave me an excuse to stall. So I did. And I didn't feel like I could post the sermon until I had this ready to go, so that didn't happen either.

And waiting for these two posts is the latest sermon, this one actually on the Jubilee. The sermon itself was last week, but I couldn't post it without getting this one done, so...

There is also part 2 of my faith journey. It is also suffering birthing pains. It is almost fully formed, but refuses to come into the light.

Enough. This is going up, and the sermon it's about will go up shortly thereafter.

I Gotta P

Prequel:  In 2006, not long after starting the Roblog, I wrote a post about why I started blogging.  It has some good points, but it meanders a lot.  Thank goodness I don't do that anymore.

Ooh!  Look!  Something shiny!

Anyway, I am adding a new Purpose to the Roblog.  No, wait, that sounds funny.

Roblog now has an addendum to her mission.  Ugh.

Roblog is here to kick ass and chew gum, and it's all out of gum and doesn't have legs.  Never mind.

Priorities: I want to improve my writing skills.  About a year ago Horyon and I were at a marriage seminar playing a version of The Dating Game.  The question came up: What is the husband's dream job?  She wrote "Math Teacher".  I've tried it.  I might actually enjoy it under certain circumstances.  (Sorry, Kansas, you are not the circumstances I am looking for.)  I knew instantly that she would not know my answer, but I wrote it anyway.  I want to be a writer.

I've been told that I am good at it.  I like words, and putting them together.  Properties:  I like that they can be squishy and tell lies.  It's the opposite of the way I like numbers, and how they are mostly solid, blocky, and resistant to being messed with.

I love reading.  My friend Mike Colvin turned me on to the Discworld series, by Terry Pratchett.  The setting (after which the series is named) is this:

So why is it called Discworld again?

Cool, but not cool enough to drag me into an ongoing series with 40 books so far.  What did it, in fact, was that he gave me the first three books of the series.  I read one while we were in the states, then I got distracted and wrote a very long paragraph or three about something only tangentially related to the topic at hand.  When I came back, I pointed out that I love Pratchett's writing.  It reminds me of the late Douglas Adams' work, except that Pratchett managed to be consistently Productive.

I, too, want to be Productive.

I want to write things that people enjoy reading.  So far in my life writing has been lost in the triangle formed between hobby, pastime, and communication.  I would like to raise the bar for myself, with the goal of converting these warm, squishy words to cold, hard cash.  I want to join the ranks of productive society, if towers of verbiage count as produce.  I want to move my teaching from rooms full of students to larger venues, with more leg room and fewer grades.

I want to be Published.

Or perhaps gainfully emPloyed as a writer.

Pipe Dream?  Perhaps.  I have rarely demonstrated the kind of resolve that leads to major changes in the past.  But one good thing about the past is that it's all behind you.  It can be overwhelming if you spend all of your time looking back at it, but if you can turn your back on it and start again, the cliches will rise up to meet your feet and at the end of the tunnel you will reach the mountain top.

Whew.  What was in that pipe?

I have not worked out the steps that will take me to my goal, but one is surely required:

Practice.

And so Roblog is going to be my vehicle for practice.  I am going to Post within a week of the previous post.  Every post will be an attempt on my part to polish my craft. [craft me some word sammiches./ sling some words around./  experiment with words.]  I expect that sometimes I will agonize, and sometimes I will just ramble.  There will be posts with pictures of my kids, to keep their grandparents and Uncle Bob happy, but I will also season them with words.

It will very likely get messy at times.  There may be fragmentary stuff, bits that feel like they fell out of a book that doesn't exist, ideas that you like, or hate, or both.  I'm going to try to tag my posts so that you can tell by looking whether I am attempting to communicate the current state of the Korean Sack Family or exploring the undercurrents of my mind.

I would really appreciate your help.  If you are still reading this, there is very likely something in the Roblog that you enjoy.  And while we have had conversations about it, they have not gone beyond the small talk.  "I enjoyed your post."  "Thanks for writing!"  "More pictures of your kids!"

Now it's time for me to say Please.  Give me a little more of your critical thinking.  I'm not necessarily looking for proof-reading, though I really want to know if I am using a word incorrectly.*  I am hoping that you can help me home in on what I'm doing right and what I'm doing wrong.  When you comment (please comment!) here or on FaceBook, copy and paste anything that you really liked.  My friend Josh replied to my post, The Goodbye, using my sentence:

Every day I saw five years old and 71 years old connect in the way that only happens when each calls the other "Grand."

I wrote that!  I labored over it, but by the time I published it was just part of the post.  When Josh pointed it out, I looked back on it in a new light.  Every sentence I write is a little sculpture.  There are so many of them, and they are all covered with my fingerprints, so they kind of look the same to me.  But some of them are Pretty!  I want to make more diamonds!

Snagged from Batman Online, fun article about Superman III.

But I'm not sure how, because I'm often not aware that I've made them.  When you Point out a diamond to me, I can look at it more closely, and try to do it again.  It doesn't have to be a sentence, and it doesn't have to be perfect.  If you think a little cut will make it sparkle more, let me know!  

On the other hand, I need to know when I've done this:

Did I mention that I also want a career in photoshopping stuff?

Because the most delicious ice cream sundae in the world takes a pretty big drop in value when it's garnished with a dog Poo.  When I am reading an offering from a new author, my poo tolerance is extremely low.  If I am constantly stumbling over the editing, I will give up.  If I see words used incorrectly, I sometimes literally speak out loud to the offending book, startling the people around me who think that "literally" means "figuratively."  And if I find myself rewriting and cutting too much, I stop reading.  

I need you to be more Patient with me than I am when I read.  But don't be afraid of hurting my feelings.  If I'm going to ask people to pay me for me words, I need to get used to hearing criticism.  

So hit me with it.  I can't promise to agree with you**, and I will probably not be revising my posts.  But if you help me out here, I'll try to get your name listed in the credits, some day.  For now, all I can say is Thank You.

The last thing I need to ask is for you to Propagate the Roblog.   Share it with people who you think will enjoy it, even if they don't know me.  I know, it would be easier to do that if it had a more cohesive structure or description.  But you know what we call people who like things that are hard to describe?

No.  Not Packrats.  Not Padawans, Pencil-Necked-Geeks, Paleontologists, or Paranormal investigators.  Not Prudent, Precious or Pensive.  

They are Perfect.



*For example, when I was writing home from Nepal, I told my parents about going to the local bizarre, a weekly farmers' market.  It took three weeks for me to get the feedback that while she was sure it was bizarre in many ways, the word I wanted was bazaar.

**Not even you, Mom.