THE UNBROKEN PREACHER [Su, 9-26-21]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

It’s Sunday morning, and I’m thinking about preaching as I go through files of old worship bulletins, recycling those that are no longer important to me, and will not be meaningful to my children when they go through them after I die. Might as well save them some time.

Some of those bulletins/programs are disturbing, for there are a lot of events—commencements, conferences, etc.—where I am listed as the preacher or speaker that I don’t even remember. Have I gone past the first sin of remembrance [simple forgetfulness] on to number 7 already? [Don’t ask; I don’t remember.] [1]

There is also a whole file about when I applied, sort of, to be professor of preaching at a seminary. “Sort of” means that, unlike the events in the paragraph just above, I sort of remember it, now that the file has reminded me, and also, judging from the correspondence, I was only “sort of” interested.

That’s strange, because in my memory, I always wanted to be a seminary preaching professor and never got to, not even as close as applying. In this file, though, is a letter from a seminary dean, a theologian, telling me how much my narrative theology had changed his own theological approach, and saying that they have a preaching professor position open, and asking me to apply.

So I began to remember more. When your brain doesn’t remember, your emotions do.

I wasn’t at all sure that I should apply. It was not a good time to move my children, and I had just started in a new congregation.

Nonetheless, I applied, including asking various folks for recommendations. One of those was a woman I’ll call Mirjana, because it’s her real name, and it’s too intriguing a name to obscure it with some lawsuit-safe pseudonym. She was the editor of Selected Sermons, published by The Episcopal Church’s Seabury Press.

That was a weekly series, tied to the Episcopal church calendar and lectionary of Bible readings, designed for Episcopal lay readers, folks filling in where the priest was absent, or in a church that did not have a priest, to take into the pulpit and read just as they were, word for word.

Mirjana had read my sermons in other periodicals and thought I could be a good contributor to Selected Sermons, so she called and asked me to write for them. It was a long and fruitful relationship, until Seabury Press was sold, and Selected Sermons was no more. I don’t know what the lay readers have been doing since.

Selected Sermons had certain necessary restrictions, since lay readers would use them exactly as they were. For one, the writer couldn’t use any first-person illustrations, which was hard for a personal story-teller like I. Nonetheless, I learned how to produce what was useful.

In fact, Mirjana told the seminary in her recommendation letter that of the 100 sermon writers they used for Selected Sermons, I was at least in the top 5. She added that they never had to do any editing on my sermons, which is probably why she rated me so highly; editors don’t like to work anymore than other people. Then, however, she added a caveat. “At first,” she said, “he was too fond of cutesy plays on words, but we broke him of that.”

Well, Mirjana, as much as I like you, for your nice name and your nice words about me, you’re wrong. I still love that cutesy stuff. If I get to preach your funeral, I’ll title it something, like “The Grim Reaper & Selected Editors.” I cannot be broken!

John Robert McFarland

1] Daniel L. Schachter, The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers