THE QUIET PREACHER. [W, 11-1-23]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter--THE QUIET PREACHER. [W, 11-1-23]

 

Garrison Keiller tells of an event planned by Pastor Ingqvist of Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church for the other Lutheran pastors of his District. It was basically a fellowship event. Pastor Ingqvist persuaded one of his parishioners to take the pastors out on the lake for a barbeque on his flat boat. But the grill got tipped over and the flat boat began to catch on fire. All the pastors went to the side of the boat away from the fire, which caused the boat to sink. The lake wasn’t very deep, so no one drowned. The pastors were up to their necks in the water, and they just stood there, because, being pastors, none of them knew how to shout for help.

I’m glad I wasn’t involved. I couldn’t have helped. I was never a shouter. Well, once in a while at ball games, but even that is shouting to help others, not to help yourself, unless you are shouting at the hot dog vendor. But I didn’t do that, either. If I wanted a dog, I went to the concession window. Or went without. There are a lot of work-arounds if you don’t want to shout.

As a kid, I learned that the stupid old meme about children was half-true. You know, the one about “children should be seen and not herd.” The half-true part was not being heard. It was also best if you weren’t seen. If you were neither seen nor heard, you were less likely to get into trouble. I would have been a good stealth plane pilot; I flew under the radar, as much as I could.

When our daughters were teens we’d often overhear them telling their friends that we had “yelled” at them about one thing or another. It was very annoying. We never yelled at them. We remonstrated with them, rationally, calmly. So much so that once they said, “Couldn’t you just beat us, instead of making us sit through a lecture, a sermon, and a multi-media presentation?”

But in the parlance of their teen community, any disagreement, any mild suggestion that they not drive 100 mph while drinking beer and snorting coke, was yelling at them. I couldn’t yell at them if I had wanted to; I just didn’t know how.

Since I never developed a shouting voice, an “outdoor” voice as we say to children now, I didn’t shout as a preacher. I was loud enough to be heard, but I preached in a conversational way. I enjoyed the old joke about the preacher who wrote into the margins of his sermon manuscript, “Shout here because the point is weak.” I was sure that I had no weak points because I did not shout.

George Buttrick was probably the best-known and most-lauded preacher of the mid-20^th century, while preaching at Madison Ave. Presbyterian Church in NYC, and editing the 12 volumes of The Interpreter’s Bible.

In retirement he was one of my preaching professors at Garrett Theological Seminary, at Northwestern U. When he preached in chapel, he paid no attention to the congregation. He gazed out the window. He looked at his shoes. He peered at the ceiling. But every word that he said was overflowing with meaning, and in exactly the right place. No histrionics, but totally full of meaning. People listened to him as if transfixed. I wanted to preach like that, but with eye contact.

I was inclined, as we always are, to say that non-shouting was the best way to preach, since it was the way most natural and comfortable to me. But I saw through that. I knew preachers who shouted, not for show, but with good effect. Preaching is not a “one style fits all” activity.

All this talk about preaching is just to get around to life, which is what preaching is all about anyway. Life, also, like preaching, is not “one way fits all.” So, however you went about your life, however you go about it now, loudly or quietly, it’s probably the best way.

John Robert McFarland