How Was the Sermon?

Since stepping down as senior pastor, I no longer have weekly preaching responsibilities. On some Sundays, I’ve been invited to fill in for friends on vacation or preach at churches while they’re looking for a pastor. When I preach at these different churches, Jeannie doesn't usually go with me. According to her, she has the choice of going to church with our grandchildren or hearing me preach a sermon she’s already heard. It’s not a close vote. 

When I get home, she’ll ask me how the sermon went and I’ll tell her, “Well, no one threw rocks so I guess it was OK.” I’m not being a smart aleck with my answer, but the truth is I don’t know how the sermon went. For all our emphasis on “good preaching,” we don’t have an instrument to measure whether or not any sermon accomplished its task. 

We have surveys that will tell us if the congregation remembered the main points of the sermon, but knowing the three main points of the sermon doesn’t mean the life of the congregation has been transformed. Knowing the points doesn’t mean the truth of those points is going to be lived out. 

We can test whether or not the church understood the theological truths being taught that morning. Again, understanding the truth is no guarantee those truths will be put into practice in the everyday lives of our people. 

A good sermon has to do something. How can a sermon be good if it doesn’t do anything in the life of the church. 

I’ve worked hard on certain sermons. I’ve polished the syntax and rehearsed the timing until the sermon glistened like a shiny new diamond. The sermon was perfect. The length, the style and the depth of the Scriptural truth were all things to be admired. Then, when I preached the sermon, nothing happened. While the congregation seemed to be appreciative of the skill required to produce such a work, no one talked about it. No one ever brought it up. Like an old camera flash bulb, there was a flash of light, maybe a little smoke and after the people blinked a few times, nothing. 

I’ve had other weeks when the pastoral care demands took up all of my time. I would have been at the hospital, someone’s home or the funeral home for days on end. I would have rushed to the emergency room and heard the doctor’s pronouncement. I would have made sure the grieving family got home and we would have planned a funeral. We would have taken care of the details of the service and eaten a community meal together – and we would have done this all in a few days. 

Then, I would be expected to preach the following Sunday. I tell pastors the congregation doesn’t really care what kind of week the pastor had, on Sunday morning they expect the pastor to have something to say.  I’ve stepped to the pulpit on some Sunday mornings tired, and sometimes grieving myself, with nothing really prepared to say, only to find somewhere within me was the sermon my people needed for that day. Where did the sermon come from? I really don’t know. 

I have learned this. Sermons have to be lived before they are preached. The truth people are looking for these days can’t be found in a book, but only in the lives of those who have lived it out. The truth may be written down in a book, but our world won’t understand or believe that truth until they see it lived out in the moments of a saint’s life.
There are so many things about the preaching moment the preacher doesn’t control. Who knows how the congregation is going to show up that morning? Some are so wrapped up so deeply in their own pain they couldn’t hear the sermon if you preached banging a big bass drum. Others have become so numb in the culmination of bad decisions Jesus Himself could show up and they wouldn’t know. Remember, a lot of people missed Jesus in His earthly ministry. A lot of others will never look up from their phones and only know the service is over when everyone around them gets up to leave. 

How are pastors to deal with this? The best way we can. We prepare to our best ability and we show up. We trust Jesus with the rest. 

The gospels tell the story of a little boy who showed up with a few fish and a couple loaves of bread. With that, Jesus fed 5,000 people. We don’t know what kind of fish the little boy brought. We can guess, but we don’t know. We don’t know what kind of bread he had. We only know what Jesus did with it. 

I’ve learned to show up on Sunday mornings like that little boy. I bring what I have. I show up. I trust Jesus with the rest. Then, I go home and relax. No one attending that moment will be talking about what I brought. I only pray they’re talking about what Jesus did with it.