Dr. William A. Ritter
First United Methodist Church
Birmingham, Michigan
Scripture: John 1:1-14
December 4, 2003
If you watch commercial television at all, you are well on your way to believing that everything that currently ails the world can be cured by better cell phone reception. Day after day we see vignettes of businesses in trouble, families in trouble, marriages in trouble, when suddenly this guy shows up with a cell phone and says: “Here, try this.” Immediately, things improve. People improve. Differences disappear. Faces smile. And for those of us still puzzling over how such a miracle could happen so quickly, this angelic-like intruder identifies “static interference” as the problem and offers his product as the solution. Message being: Only when people hear clearly can they play together nicely.
Which interests me, given that words are my stock in trade. Upon entering the ministry 39 years ago, I was handed a toolbox. And when I opened it, words were the only things in it. Not screwdrivers. Not scalpels. Not software packages. Not slide rules. Just words.
But that’s how creation started, at least according to one account. God spoke. And what came out was not a sermon, so much as a world. You remember the story. God said “light,” and suddenly things lit up like Times Square at midnight. Whereupon God said “vegetation,” and lo and behold, the earth was covered with dandelions (or were they rosebushes?). Then God said “animals,” and darned if there wasn’t the cutest golden retriever ever the eye did see. Except there was no eye to see the dog, and no hands to feed the dog, until God spoke again and said “male and female”….thereby creating two people who could spend the rest of their lives arguing whose turn it was to walk the dog.
Then, after six days of speech, God took the day off, so that we preachers, who (as everybody knows) do nothing from Monday to Saturday, could substitute for God’s siesta by filling the world with words.
Which is easy, some days. Harder, others. Gardner Taylor, the great African American prince of the pulpit in Brooklyn, New York, is supposed to have claimed that there were times he would have gladly switched places with those who picked up the trash. Anything to avoid having to come up with another word for Sunday. Or, as my Baptist colleague Mike Graves points out: “Those Sundays keep coming at you like telephone poles on the highway, at a time in our ministry when we are already traveling at the speed of light.”
So what’s a preacher to do? Especially in that season of the year….or in that season of his life….when there is nothing new to do? Carl Price and I were talking about this the other day. And Carl said: “You know, staying in one place like I did in Midland for 25 years, I now have 75 sermons having to do with Christmas. I tried not to repeat myself. But how much is there to say?”
When it comes to Christmas carols, congregations cry out for the “oldies, but goodies.” But when it comes to Christmas sermons, those same congregations are less forgiving. A new twist on an old word would be nice. But an entirely new word would be better. Maybe.
Not long ago I stumbled upon the plot line from Peggy Payne’s novel, Revelation. It’s the incredible story of a Presbyterian minister named Swain Hammond. And wouldn’t you know it, he received his divinity degree from Yale. Bright, articulate and polished, he lives with his wife in Chapel Hill, North Carolina (I mean, it doesn’t get much better than that) where he is the pastor of Westside Presbyterian Church.
His wife, Julie, is a medical librarian….successful and supportive. They have no children, so they have lots of time to enjoy each other’s company. You know the life….movies and meals out, coupled with lots of grilling in the back yard. Which is where this particular story begins….in their back yard, I mean. They are grilling shish-ka-bobs of pork and green peppers on a barefoot day in June. Swain wanders to the edge of their property (where the woods begin) to look at a flower in bloom, when suddenly he hears the voice of God….the very voice of God. It sounds to him like a PA system has been suddenly switched on. “Know that there is truth. Know this,” the voice says.
Did you ever see Field of Dreams? That’s the scene. Only what the voice does audibly, it also does bodily. In that instant, Swain feels “the murmuring of each of a million cells” in him. He feels the line where his two lips touch and is aware of the spears of wet grass against his feet. His own bone marrow hums inside him like a colony of bees. And then it’s gone.
Julie doesn’t hear the voice. Not a sound. Nor does she hear it the second time, either, when all God says is: “Son.” Just one word. God calls Swain “son.” She never hears the voice but, at every step of the way, believes and supports her husband. Swain tells her how, when he was a kid, he always hoped for something like this….a vision from God….a word….something…. anything….a moment when even the asphalt breathes with the presence of God. He remembers little epiphanies, but not the kind that could get you into trouble.
The only problem is, he’s a minister now. And ministers aren’t supposed to hear God speak. At least not audibly. Seminaries keep people out for such things. Presbyteries ease people out of the ministry for things less problematic than this. The days go by and Swain thinks about his Sunday sermon. He looks at the blank yellow pad on his desk and wonders what to do. If he denies the voice, is he denying God? But if he speaks of the voice, will they lock him up and throw away the key?
Come Sunday morning, the choir sings the anthem. Swain then steps into the pulpit, clears his throat, and announces: “Friends, I have heard the voice of God.” And no one is alarmed. Ministers everywhere say the same thing, week in and week out, in one fashion or another. They’re Presbyterians. They know he doesn’t mean it the way the televangelists do. But he presses on: “I mean, I really have heard the voice of God. Just the other day, Julie and I were grilling in the back yard when….” Now people sit up. They cock their heads and squint their eyes. They look for a smile on his face, even a hidden one. They hope for a parable or a metaphor. But none comes. They become concerned. What has happened to their beloved minister? Some of them look like they’ve just eaten the bitter part of a pecan.
The comments at the door are typical, except for the unusually high number who avoid him. The following Tuesday, a meeting of the Session is called to discuss the matter. A vote is taken. By a slim margin, he is allowed to stay on, but only if he receives professional help. Leaving him to wonder what has happened to him. He wonders how it is that people want him to bring a word from God every week, but no one expects him to hear from God directly. So when the Session gives him the news, he says: “I see. It’s okay to believe in God, but only if God is distant.”
Swain eventually resigns his position. It’s not just the pressure or the divisions in the church. Rather, it has to do with a realization about preaching the Word. In his letter of resignation, he writes: “I give my notice as your minister for this reason. I have come to believe that the experience of God is not something one person can tell another about. It is an experience that no one can truly communicate to anyone else.”
I suppose one of the things that makes people nervous about teaching Sunday school (at least in the upper elementary grades) is that fifth and sixth graders are smart enough to ask questions teachers can’t answer. And one of the things that puzzles kids….especially after reading passage after passage in the Old Testament (where God holds conversations, some of them quite extensive, with anybody and everybody)….is why God doesn’t talk the same way to us today. And when the teacher says, “Why, Johnny, God talks to people all the time,” Johnny asks: “You mean out loud, so they can really hear him?”
In the hymn that is so quintessentially Methodist that we place it first in our hymnal, we sing:
He speaks, and listening to his voice,
new life the dead receive.
The mournful, broken hearts rejoice,
the humble poor, believe.
And in a hymn that is also locatable in that musical bushel basket we use to carry old Methodist chestnuts, we sing:
O let me hear thee speaking in accents clear and still,
above the storms of passion, the murmurs of self will,
O speak to reassure me, to hasten or control,
O speak and make me listen, thou guardian of my soul.
But do we really mean it?
There have been days when I have craved the audible speech of God. And days I crave it still. Have I ever heard it with auditory clarity? No. And would I tell you if I had? I honestly don’t know. For a few of you, that day would be the beginning of my real ministry. But for more than a few of you, that day might be the ending of my ministry.
Not that I haven’t tried, with professional persistence and personal attentiveness, to
read God’s word on the page,
research God’s word in the church,
discern God’s word in my life,
and translate God’s word as I see it working in your lives.
I have sought it, studied it, trusted it, honored it and done my level best to obey it.
On three (maybe four) occasions, I have spoken with folks to whom God did speak out loud. In actual words. Words that were as audible as they were unmistakable. And I believed them. Which surprised them. For in each case, they approached me reluctantly, having previously told nobody, out of fear that others might suspect something wrong with them….or (even worse) that there might be something wrong with them. Think about it. You have to be buzzed in to see people who speak with God out loud, given that many reside on locked wards.
There are, of course, preachers who will say that the problem is ours….that we don’t make the effort to listen….that we don’t take the time to listen….and that we don’t cultivate the spiritual postures and practices necessary to listen.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells about the day W. H. Auden read some of his poetry at Princeton. The hall was packed with hundreds of students and faculty. They had come to hear “the great one.” But when Auden (then an old man) began to read, his voice was so soft that even the microphone couldn’t pick him up. So people began whispering to their neighbor: “What did he say?” And those who thought they had heard a part of what he’d said, whispered back the part they’d heard….or what they remembered from a prior reading of Auden, triggered (in that moment) by what they thought they’d heard. While others, not quite hearing….and not quite knowing…. guessed at what he was saying. And pretty soon, the whispers drowned out the poet.
Which, if you ask me, is what sometimes happens in our churches, else why would there be so much interest in the word of God, yet so little clarity about the word of God? Unless, of course, we all whisper better than we listen.
Sometimes I wish God would scream. Or shout. At least raise his voice. Getting in my face, as it were. As to why God doesn’t, I have no answer. I wish I did.
What I do know is what I just read. That God came to the world (with the barest hint of a whisper) in the form of a child. A speechless child.
You heard how John put it: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” Everything the Word was, the child was. And if you say, “Ritter, that’s Greek,” you’re right. It is. Greek, I mean. It was written in Greek. And it bears the imprint of Greek philosophy. What John is saying goes something like this. The creating Word….the controlling Word….the always was, presently is, and forever will be Word (which was a wonderful Greek way of saying “that indefinable something which purposefully threads itself through everything”)….that Word is now here.
But that Word did not speak itself.
That Word became itself.
So much so, that it even showed up at weddings, turning ordinary water into fine wine….coming so close that old Nicodemus could knock on an actual door of an actual house somewhere in Palestine and have God’s eternal Word reach for the knob….coming so close that it sat down by a woman shunned by her peers and offered her a drink….coming so close that the blind could feel its very thumbs on their eyes, only to look at its face moments later….coming so close (God’s eternal Word, I mean) that it could shout down a hole and be answered by a dead man stumbling up the stairs….coming so close that it still shows up at weddings, funerals, baby showers and soccer games….and coming so close that you can feel it twined around your heart the way this Advent stole is twined around my neck.
So what’s a preacher to do? Maybe nothing more than this.
To a world clamoring for God to speak up,
that preacher could tell the world that God showed up.
And then, he should shut up.
Note: I confess that I have not read Peggy Payne’s novel, Revelation (published in 1988). But Mike Graves read it and did a brilliant job describing it. Mike teaches at Central Baptist Seminary in Kansas City. I also stole some of Mike’s phraseology in the last full paragraph of the sermon. Mike’s essay can be found in the 2003 Advent issue of The Journal for Preachers.
As for Barbara Brown Taylor, she now teaches at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia. But her reminiscence of W. H. Auden at Princeton was first shared in her Lyman Beecher lectures on preaching at Yale University.
As for the two hymns quoted within the body of the sermon, the first is “O For a Thousand Tongues to Sing,” the second, “O Jesus, I Have Promised.”
