Confession of a part-time preacher

I am going to personalize this so no preacher thinks I’m taking pot shots at them.
That said - part-time preacher that I am, I have become disillusioned with almost every word I have ever preached.
I’ve been preaching to make Jesus look good so that people might admire him even more than they do...so they pray more, so their faith might be lifted.
I have said lots about Jesus being the way to God, but next to nothing about Jesus the way God expects us to behave.
I have said lots about our having a saving faith in Jesus but little about how faith working by our love saves our neighbour.
I have said lots about how Christ has brought ‘healing and salvation to the world through his woundedness, suffering and death’ but nothing about our bringing ‘healing and salvation through our woundedness, suffering and death.’
I’ve said lots about Jesus having walked among us, but next to nothing about Jesus walking in our shoes having crucified our ambitions and self-interests so he can bust out of our shell to love those on the street.

You can see my homiletical shortcoming - I have majored in belief as it pertains to Jesus but not in belief as it pertains to the way we live. I have detached belief from behaviour killing any possibility of Jesus being seen in us.
From now on, I am going to preach about the church’s being a counter-cultural, enemy loving, anti-greed, power refuting, total social re-make.
As a part-time preacher I should be able to get away with it. I am in a position where I can offend. It’s not my job that’s on the line.
Sometimes I think that when a full-time preacher gives up his pulpit for a week, it should be to someone who has had rocks thrown at him like Jesus or Paul.

It takes a pulpit to craft a people.
Which means what’s coming from the pulpit has to change.
Forgive me for decrying the preaching. But what a misshapen self-absorbed people we have become and there is more than just one part-time preacher to blame.
As congregations we’ve got the Jesus died in our place part of the gospel. What we’re missing is the part about our dying for Jesus; a threat to the existing ‘powers and principalities’ the same way he was. We have forgotten that part of his invitation to come and die with him, to carry our cross as he carried his, to be worthy of such a cross because we are as contrary as he is to the way things are.

The upside is that most preachers get it. For them, looking through old sermons is like wading through pablum. Their congregation should be overflowing with teachers but instead there are infants warring in the pews. Their congregation should be stirring the pot but instead they are leaving the pot be. Their congregation should be making inroads among peoples of differing faith, cultural and socio-economic groups, but instead they vigorously keep to themselves.
Time to move from pablum to chili. The kind of spiritual food that when it passes through the body is likely to offend, even as it inspires the kind of action whose signature is courage, creativity and love.
April 14, 2009