Creating a Sermon

Writing about writing seems to be kind of stupid unless you teach that sort of thing, and I surely don't. I decided to create this post particularly because my sermon on 9/11 was so dicey. It's called "What We Remember" and can be found at the hypertext link. What made this one particularly difficult is that people have expectations about a sermon on the anniversary of a great national tragedy, even more so on its tenth anniversary.

But to make a long story short, worship is concerned first with the word of God and second with the community where the word is heard. This was one of those days when I wasn't so sure the word I was called to proclaim matched up with the community where it was proclaimed.

Preacher, go forth at your own peril.

So, going on at my own peril, I brought what I considered a word of God that was faithful to God and to the community. I knew not everyone would like it, but I prayed then and pray now the word was faithful.

Glory of glories--Someone who had a word to say about the sermon came to me and we talked about the sermon. Here I thank God, we may not agree on what I said, but we agree that Jesus is Lord and from there new life is possible.

I begin sermons with this paraphrase of a line from the Psalms:

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen

Amen.