Just spent the last 24 hours writing a sermon about family values. Now I need a vacation.
Seriously though...
Part of the experience of writing that sermon included a memory/flashback to the 6th grade. It was 1992 and that whole Dan Quayle/Murphy Brown mess was all up in the news. My pastor, Rev. Dr. Homer "Butch" Henderson preached a sermon about "family values" that changed my life forever. I don't use that phrase lightly. Literally: changed my thinking about family, about values, about the Bible, about being a Christian. That sermon is responsible, in large ways, for the beginnings of my feminism and queerness and my introduction to progressive Christianity, biblical hermeneutics, and theology. Can I even quantify or qualify my life without those things? Would I be a pastor today without that sermon? Would I have the family I have fought to incarnate without that sermon? How is it that a preacher can have that much power? 21 years later and I still remember that sermon. I was eleven years old dude. Eleven.
Dear God: may I never ever forget the life-transforming potential of preaching. May I always be responsible and faithful to you first and foremost, and then, carefully, tenderly, powerfully willing to give the best of what I have (from you) to the flock who so surely deserves it. Amen.
1 comment:
I feel your faithfulness. The wise souls who guide you are channeled to your flock. Feel our essence as we hold and lift you.
Post a Comment