When I think of preaching, I think of
Dr. George Buttrick, my homiletics teacher in Divinity School. He had come from England to America and
occupied the pulpit of a large church in New York City. I heard him describe some of the things that
people say when they greet the minister after church, like, “Oh, Dr. Buttrick,
I just love your preaching; why every sermon is better than the next!” Or the woman whose husband was having mental
difficulties: “Dr. Buttrick, ever since my husband lost his mind we have just
lived on your sermons!”
Martin Luther King, Jr. had
been minister of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, for a little more than a year when Rosa
Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus to a white
man. It was December of 1955, and black
people in Alabama were accustomed to being humiliated on buses by drivers who
called them niggers and made them come in the front door to pay their fare and
then get out and go to the back door to board the bus, sometimes driving off
before they could get on. A meeting of
ministers was called to organize a
response to the arrest, and it was decided that Negroes in Montgomery should
boycott the buses and get around by walking, carpooling, or taking taxis. It was clear that they needed an
organization and a leader, and the minister of the leading Baptist Church,
Martin Luther King, Jr., was elected to
head the Montgomery Improvement Association.
He barely got home in time to tell his wife of what had happened, and
then he had twenty minutes to think about what he was going to say at the
community meeting that evening. As he
made his way to the church where the black community was gathering he could see
that there were hundreds of people gathering there, and he was still figuring
out how to balance the tension between urging them to take part in the boycott
and holding them to a standard of non-violent action. He wanted this to be a Christian boycott, and the balance he
achieved was to call for them to love their white neighbors while they refused
to participate any longer in their own degradation. What they were seeking was justice. He spoke with great passion.
It was only later that King realized
that this was the most important sermon of his life, for this began the
movement which had a ripple effect around the world. The people in his congregation that evening had lived with
segregation and humiliation for decades.
They were used to the ugly
routine of segregation and all that went with it. What King had to do was to paint the reality of their situation
in such a way that they would see it all over again and react to it
freshly. And he held out a non-violent
way of combating it, but a way that required unity within their whole community.
He knew that he had succeeded
the next morning when he and Coretta King saw three empty buses in a row go by
their house, buses that were usually crowded with black persons going to work. King and others knew it was just a beginning
of a long hard road, and he had to keep preaching to keep them committed. The boycott went on for over a year before
Montgomery capitulated to their simple demands, but by then the world was
watching and King’s voice was being heard far and wide.
It is an audacious way to begin my remarks to you this evening: to
remind you of a great sermon by a great preacher that changed the world. But then, it is a daring thing we do : to
join a minister to a congregation through this piece of furniture we call a
pulpit. The bond already being formed
here will be powerful, and it seems to me important for us to understand the
nature of that power.
That great Unitarian Universalist James Luther Adams often pointed out
that there are two ways to understand power: the active and the passive. The active power is what you expect Arvid to
exert from this pulpit. Active power is
the ability to influence events and persons, to make things happen. Dr. King and Nelson Mandela and Eleanor
Roosevelt and many others have had that kind of power. Ministers are expected to have some of that
power: to be able to communicate in such a way as to make things happen. And sometimes they use it in great causes:
human rights and peace and the relief of hunger and disease. More often they simply raise awareness in a
way that their listeners find healing, inspiring, and deeply moving. One definition of a sermon is that it is an
empty vessel into which the listeners pour their lives.
How will a minister do that?
He/she will listen, and read, and study, and ponder and struggle alone to find
the words, the incidents, the figures of speech and he/she will write them
down. Someone has said that writing is
not hard; all you do is stare at that blank paper—or blank computer
screen—until the drops of blood form on your forehead. And someone else has pointed out that the
only craft more abused than writing is cooking! Arvid will do it when he is inspired; he will do it when he feels
dry and empty; he will do it when he is fresh and rested and he will do it when
he is tired. And he will do it to that
weekly deadline. And he will do it
powerfully, because he knows how.
But what is it that he will be doing, and what will make it
powerful? I would maintain that above
all he will be describing reality, whether he is preaching about the war in
Iraq, or the meaning of love, or the relevance of Buddhism to our lives
today. He will be describing what it
feels like to be alive, and his goal will not be to persuade you to adopt his
point of view as much as to evoke a feeling that the experience rings
true. To articulate what we have lived
through but have not put into words ourselves may be the greatest gift the
preacher can give us.
Sometimes the words will be prophetic, in the Old Testament sense of
speaking truth to power, reminding us of the call to justice, compassion, and
concern for the poor, the sick, the widow, the vulnerable. Many of us who came into this ministry
decades ago started out with the high goal of having some impact on our
communities, even our world, in promoting justice, equality, and care for those
who most needed us. The prophetic
ministry is a difficult calling in our faith, partly because we pride ourselves
on our diversity and freedom of belief, and also because we are small in
numbers alongside many other religious groups.
We have made our greatest contributions, I would contend, as part of
larger movements, like the civil rights revolution, the feminist awakening, and
the present campaign for equality in civil marriage. A great deal of leadership in each of these causes has come from
our pulpits as ministers struggled to come to terms with and describe the new
reality. In that process they wrestle
with questions like what is a genuine moral issue and what is simply a
political preference. If fifty billion
dollars is being cut from Medicaid in the administration’s budget proposal, is
that a moral issue or a political difference?
As the evidence grows of torture as an accepted means of gaining
information in the “war on terror,” what
does the pulpit have to contribute in describing that reality?
I have spoken of the power of the pulpit in the active sense, in the
ability to influence thought or events.
That power is supported by a longstanding tradition of the freedom of
the pulpit in Unitarianism and Universalism, and it is quite well understood
among us, especially at a time like this when you are giving this pulpit to
your new minister. Its active power is
his. What is not so well understood is
that the passive understanding of power is just as crucial at this moment and
from now on. Power in this sense is the
ability to be influenced, to grow, to develop, to change. We have all seen individuals and groups who were so stuck in their thinking and
attitudes that they could not respond, could not be open, could not be part of
the dialogue with the pulpit which is necessary for its active power. A powerful minister must have a powerful
congregation. And I would maintain that
this power must be based in a grasp of reality which they fundamentally
share.
That leads us to the question of spirituality, for it is more and more
agreed in our churches that the service must be spiritual, must minister to the
spiritual needs of the religious community.
There are many understandings of the word spiritual, and I would propose
that we consider it that which nourishes the inner core of a person’s being and
self-understanding; for many it would also include nurturing the individual’s
relation to some idea of God or supreme being.
The question confronting the person in the pulpit is whether the words
and symbols used are truly deep and authentic, or are they what I call
California feel-good religion. To
develop a mutual understanding of what is truly spiritual is one of the tasks
that a minister and a congregation work at together, and a lot of that work is
centered in the pulpit. When it comes
to the spiritual life, what is reality anyway?
Let me venture that what is spiritual is whatever strikes to the core
of who we are as persons, the often unexpected glints of light or shadow
that illuminate life for a moment or a
day and give us some sense of the depth of our joy or grief, our turmoil or
serenity. We have to discover our own
tests for the authenticity of those times, but something within us knows what
is true. It may be connected to being
affirmed; it may be as ephemeral as a bit of music or a picture or words of
poetry. When I was young, some of the
most moving times came when I discovered that I did not have to believe
something that I had thought everybody had to believe. That is a liberation even now. It has been said that one of the hardest
parts of growing up is discovering that we cannot be as good as we thought we
had to be. Embracing that bit of
reality is surely a spiritual task.
Ministry often involves
helping people to come to terms with some of the hard parts of living. Last fall I was visiting the church I had
served for twenty years, coming out to the circular driveway, when a car drove
up and a small woman got out carrying a large bunch of flowers. It was Saturday morning, and Dorothy had
been part of the flower committee as far back as I could remember. We gave each other a hug and I introduced
the friend who was with me. Then she
announced with some pride, “Ken, I am ninety years old!”
I remembered the important lesson Dorothy had taught me many years
ago. She told me of the time when she
had three children and was expecting a fourth.
Then her husband left her, moved out and asked for a divorce. Dorothy had said, “That was the worst time
of my whole life. I never would have
gotten through it if it had not been for John Baker and this church.” I only knew John Baker, the first minister
of that church, slightly, but I could picture the sessions in that small
office, the tears and the words of reassurance and comfort to a person in such
a vulnerable place.
But a later conversation rearranged the picture, for Dorothy said, “Oh,
I never went to see him in his office; I just came to church!” That is the power of the pulpit, the power
of reality. It is telling what it feels
like to be alive; it is pointing to sources of courage and hope; it is telling
the people of Montgomery, Alabama, that they do not have to take part in their
own degradation any more; it is talking sense and being heard.
So, as my son might say to me, “hey, get real!”