GIVING UP OMISSIONS [R, 3-21-24]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter—GIVING UP OMISSIONS [R, 3-21-24]

 

It’s a bit late to decide to give up something for Lent, but I have decided to give up omissions. If that sounds oxymoronic, well, maybe it is, but…

About 35 years ago, I preached the memorial service at the annual conference of The Central IL Conference of the UMC, honoring the preachers and spouses who had died in the previous year. Present were about a thousand people—preachers and lay members of the conference and family members and friends of those we honored. Each time I have remembered that sermon, for lo, those many years, my heart has sunk a little.

Not that it was a bad sermon. In fact, it was pretty good. When I went to the audio desk to buy a copy, the company that was recording the various services told me, “Oh, you get a free copy. We’ve sold more copies of your sermon than everything else put together.” That pleased me, but, still I remembered… my omissions. [1]

I preached about how the mission of the church is to tell the story of God, put simply, the story “…of Jesus and his love.”

That is a line from “I Love to Tell the Story,” by Katherine Hankey. [2]

We ended the service by singing it. I thought its last verse was the perfect capstone for a sermon/service honoring those who had spent their lives telling the story and had now gone on to their reward: “I love to tell the story, for those who know it best, seem hungering and thirsting, to hear it like the rest. And when in scenes of glory, I sing the new, new song, ‘twill be the old, old story, that I have loved so long.”

I told stories in that sermon, of course, of how the church tells that story “of Jesus and his love.” By that time, I had been preaching for almost 30 years. I was no longer using a manuscript or outline to preach. I had never written a manuscript for a sermon, except in the days of Civil Rights and Viet Nam, when I wanted to prove to people who wanted to misquote me exactly what I had said. And you don’t need a written outline if you have a narrative outline in your head. A narrative outline flows naturally from one part of the story to the next. And it is valuable to see the faces of those in the congregation. You get feedback, know when they are getting it and when they aren’t. You can’t do that if you’re looking down at a manuscript or outline.

So all I had on the pulpit was the bulletin for that service. Early in the sermon, my eye fell on the bulletin and I saw there the list of the names of those we were honoring. We were honoring them because they had told the story. So after each of my stories of how the church tells the story, I picked out a couple of the names and said, “That is what Tom Brown and Clarence Young did, told the story.”

The problem was, it was spontaneous. I was picking out names at random, names I recognized. I lost my place. I had not started soon enough, had not called out enough names at each segue in the sermon. It was over, and I had omitted some of the names.

No one assumed that the honorees had to be named in the sermon, of course. In fact, I think in the 40 years I listened to memorial sermons at annual conference, I was the only preacher who included the names of the deceased in the sermon itself. They were honored earlier in the service when each name was called and a single bell note was sounded for each. It’s a solemn and moving moment. But I had omitted some who deserved as much as those I included…

I know that I am probably the only person left who even remembers that. So I am giving it up for Lent, along with the other omissions I have committed [can you commit an omission?] through the years.

The important point is that I did honor my fellow tellers of the story in that sermon. I honored them all by preaching as best I could. That’s my Lenten discipline—to remember and appreciate the ways I have included my fellow tellers and livers of the story, rather than the ways I have omitted them

John Robert McFarland

[1] This was before Apple. Cassettes were still the cutting edge of recording.]

2] Music by Wm. G. Fischer