Preach!

When bad things happen in our local community, and in our national news, there is always some set of social media blasts that focus only on the outrage, and demand outrage from everyone around. "If you aren't preaching on this, it's time to retire" and "if you go to a church and they aren't preaching on this, get up and walk out" and "if you aren't angry, you aren't paying attention."

I want to say one thing about all of that: NO.

We can't live our lives angry. Afraid. At the end of our rope. I mean we do live in those places sometimes, but the goal is to not. These can't be our only emotions. We are heading into a time when many people will suffer. And, as my homeless friends reminded me after the 2016 election, we've always been in a time when people are suffering.

But our community gatherings, church especially, is a place where we engage all of who we are. We engage all of our emotions. We make space for the beauty, joy, and glory of this world God created, alongside space for the pain, oppression, and injustice we have created.

As preacher, we can't cover it all every week. Certainly any significant events affecting our local congregation must be mentioned in the announcements, in the prayers, or in our sermon. And events affecting our neighbors, our state, and our nation. And the systemic issues that we don't always see without help must come up frequently in our sermons, and our prayers.

At Worcester Fellowship, an outdoor church reaching homeless adults, we had a three week lectionary of topics--God loves you as you are, you find God in community, and God wants us to set-aside violence. (It fit pretty well with the Revised Common Lectionary.) For that congregation, two-thirds of our messages were meant to build up the members, and one third to call them to improved discipleship. At a wealthy white suburban congregation I served, three-quarters of the sermons were on discipleship, and one-quarter were interesting theological concepts. Context matters.

Systemic issues like racism, sexism, classism, and the like should regularly be the examples in our sermons, most weeks, and most stories, will have some of this mentioned, often indirectly. Care of immigrants and trans folk should be the direct point of some sermons, and again should be relevant to many of our sermons. Jesus came to let the oppressed be free.

Dealing with the crisis of the day we hopefully will never find that we've never addressed that issue before. That way, we can decide how and when it is best to address it in the specific context we are part of. For example, Black history month must not be the only time we sing spirituals and spirituals should not be the only form of "Black music" that we sing. Music, prayers, and poetry from Black, Latinx, Asian/Pacific Islander, and Indigenous peoples should be part of how we worship the whole of who God is. (Consider making a donation to an appropriate organization if you are a white church engaging the arts of other cultures.) 

All of the time, worship is about God. There are good sociological reasons to care for one another; during worship we are focusing on how God guides us to that caring. And sometimes we need worship that is simply about how we be with God. Even when the world is falling apart around us, especially when the world is falling apart, we sometimes need a worship space where all we do is breathe in the Holy Spirit and lift our crying hearts to God. 

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