This past week brought yet another wave of critique for tired preachers everywhere. Across my newsfeed was the imperative: If your pastor does not preach about these immigrant children, then you should leave your church.
Well, here’s a suggestion:
If your pastor does not preach the Gospel this week, then you should leave your church. But don’t leave until after the service is over. And then definitely come back the next week. Because I am going to assume that with all of the voices in this sin-sick, weary, demanding world, your preacher is doing his or her best. I am imagining that they are struggling each week with how to coalesce the Gospel with the trauma of the world.
Initially, it was just the internet-famous Christians suggesting that the faithful walk out of churches without the right kind of preaching. They tell their followers to leave churches—and then get loads of shares from those who attend church. Those people’s pastors then scroll through their social media feeds and have to start breathing into the paper bag marked, “Will my sermon be newsy enough this week?”
I’ve grown to expect this narrative from people who are not in a pulpit Sunday after Sunday. But I was astonished at how many fellow preachers who posted the law of Thou Shalt Preach This Issue, presumably directed at their colleagues. But post it they did.
Dear preachers, isn’t this job hard enough? Do we really have to bully each other? Are we perhaps anxious about how our own sermon will turn out that week? Are we worried how we will talk about the latest event that tells us the world is a broken place? But instead of opening up the Gospels to what Jesus has given us this week, we turn our ire on those who look like us.
In my faith tradition, the average service is one hour long. Which gives you about 15 minutes to preach a sermon. A quarter of an hour to share the Gospel. That’s like 1/16th of the Today Show. Or 1/4th of Morning Edition. It seems like a missed opportunity to use that time to add our voices to the unholy chorus of shoulds and have to’s we hear in the news cycle.
Here’s the thing: I actually did want every Christian in the country to have a heart for these parents and their separated children. I wanted us to remember Jesus’s specific love for the little and the lost. I wanted us to mourn and pray and act.
But it makes me sad that in so many of our pulpits, the “Good News” boils down to “Here’s what is wrong with the world and here is how you can fix it.” I grow tired of that imperative and stop listening. We have been giving each other that advice for a very long time, and it does not seem to be working.
We cannot preach the Gospel of moral wrongs every week and not also be crying wolf. We keep telling people to act less fallen, forgetting that falling is all we know how to do. We keep telling people that they are the superheroes of their own stories, when the damning truth is that we are super villains, at least in our thoughts, on our most holiest of days.
And who pays for all of this self-righteous “shoulding?” Everyone. Because the people who hear the word of constant activism will eventually tune it out. Do more, be more, serve more. Okay, but how? And with what to guide me? Also, the problems in our individual lives go entirely unaddressed. Who wants to talk about a life in shambles when we can skip our personal problems and talk about fixing the world?
(Raises hand.)
I’m convinced that the greatest sufferers in this kind of we-will-fix-the-world preaching are those children who have been separated from their parents. Because their story can become just one story (in a never-ending story) about people who need Christians to act. Because their tiny voices get lost in a sea of self-righteous, call-to-action noise. Because they are the flavor this week. But what about the next? Who will be the news we should preach next week?
In the weeks, months, and even years ahead, I pray that we will not forget these children and their suffering. They have been wounded beyond all knowing. I hope that Christians everywhere will ask God for healing and hope in the lives of those little ones and their distraught parents. But I suppose I’d be surprised if anything managed to hold our attention for that long, especially if the pulpit moves right along to the next imperative cause for us to “fix.”
Honestly, I sometimes wonder if preachers, and often hearers too, relish “newsworthy” sermons because it gives us a way to avoid the scandal of the Gospel. Which is a real bummer, since the Gospel gives us a way to respond that has nothing and everything to do with what is on the front page.
Pastor Steve Brown is one of my favorite preachers. He’s a gruff conservative Presbyterian minister and theologian with whom, at face value, I have little in common. Except that we both cling to the fact that Jesus loves us, the unlovable. He begins each of his sermons with a clear message to himself, “Lord, we pray for the one who preaches. For you know his sins are many.”
Now that’s an honest way to get out of bed in the morning.
Most days I need to hear about my specific brokenness and about how Jesus can heal it. Not how I can heal it. But Him. I need to hear that the love of God is boundless in mercy. And I need to hear about my unrelenting sin. Because me being some kind of a Jesus-like superhero is a bad joke—and one that we’ve all heard way too many times.
I need to hear about a Gospel that calls the ungodly righteous. I need to be called on to think of my enemies and how pissed I’ll be when I see them in heaven. I need real love spoken into my broken spoke of a heart.
I do not need to hear about what I should be doing, I need to hear about what has been done by the Doer on my behalf.
Call me callous and sinful (you would be right on both counts), but this is actually the only way I can give a damn about anyone else. We love children because He became a weak and vulnerable child on our behalf. We love mothers (and fathers) because we know that His own mother suffered at the foot of the cross. Our hearts break for others because He healed our hearts in the most broken way possible.
Everything else just makes me a self-righteous tired person.
We love because he first loved us.
COMMENTS
29 responses to “If Your Church Doesn’t Preach the Gospel”
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I can’t begin to say how much I love this. THANK YOU, Sarah.
This is a BRILLIANT and so needed contribution. Thank you, Sarah!
Might I just amplify my praise of Sarah’s reflection by describing the situation of a woman who came to us in Westchester County several years ago, who had stopped attending the main-line parish of which she had been a part for many years. She said she had become “exhausted, utterly exhausted” — those were her exact words — by the Sunday-after-Sunday(-after-Sunday) exhortations (to do good) that she would hear from the pulpit. She was a very well-educated and very well meaning person. But she dropped out. After 20 years of trying, in that parish, she dropped out.
Then her husband died, suddenly and tragically! She reached out to us simply because her teenaged daughter had spoken to her about our church. And in the midst of tragedy there was able to spring some hope. But her opening words, vindicating Sarah’s essay, stayed with M. and me forever after: “My church has utterly exhausted me.”
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Sarah, I enjoyed this; however, some of the vestry members and other long-termers would probably be tapping their watches at our church if you made it anywhere close to 15 minutes with a sermon????
Thank you for this. Thank you for this. Thank you for this…….
I love this, thank you Sarah!
Just what this preacher needed to hear today.
Preach on, Sister. The riches of the Gospel are inexhaustible! Thanks be to God…..for you.
I’ll add my ‘Thank You’ to the list, Sarah!
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I copied this to my notes in my phone so I can read it once a week and remind myself that among the sinners I get mad at everyday since our recent political tirades began is me. I need frequent reminders that no one but Jesus is perfect and I need to fix my eyes on Him and not on the behavior of others. This piece was truly Holy Spirit inspired.
Sarah, we love the weak and vulnerable unborn children because He fearfully and wonderfully created them.
Thank you!
Counterintuitive as it may seem, hearing that you are callous and sinful; falling is all we know how to do; we are super villans on our holiest days; these actually bring me comfort. I have always known, as Will Campbell once described Christianity, “We’re all bastards, but God loves us anyway”. We need, I think, often to hear about our rottenness and default position of rebellion and sinfulness. Honest Christians know how broken they are…….Dear God, give us churches where we can simply be that for each other instead of pretending that ourlives are wonderfully happy and well adjusted. Then maybe we can truly love the “other”. Thank you Sarah
Thank you Sarah. I think I’ll be o.k. now today.
I am completely with you.
I think that so many of us are still broken inside, and we need God’s love spoken into our lives every Sunday, for a long time, until we are able to believe it ourselves with our whole hearts, before a call to “do more, be more, serve more” can actually be fruitful.
We went from focusing on the desperate children and their traumatized families to the poor pastors who feel stressed out over how to preach about suffering in the world in a space of less than one week. How self-absorbed can we be? Are put-upon pastors the real victims here?
Ok, pastors: you have a hard job. I feel for you and hope you are doing ok. Now get to work.
Manna to the hungry soul, and to the weary rest. Thanks for writing.
“I need real love spoken into my broken spoke of a heart”… and Sarah, thank you, because that’s what this supersized sinner needs. Your words were the cold water and hot bread I needed this very day!
Amen.
So good to hear this from clergy in the Episcopal Church–rare indeed.
Just adding my voice to the chorus of praise here. This is like a fresh brook on a hot summer day for this DC politician.
Thank you so much for posting this, Sarah, and all who support her at MockingBird. I am a recent MDiv graduate of Fuller Seminary extremely aware of the gap between church culture(s) and the realities of everyday life. I am a first time reader and I like what I see here. We Fuller students love connecting on Facebook about issues. Sadly I have seen a lot of this “shoulding” and felt disrespected by it yet gotten skewered by people when I speak against it. There are so many gospel messages that are great why put pressure to share this one, especially when it puts so much pressure on us we can’t bear it, as evident by suicide rates. A writer myself I was going to write about this “shoulding” we do, as part of a ways to prevent suicide piece, talking about this “shoulding” as something to be avoided. But I didn’t want to shame people for doing it. Affirmed by this article I will make sure to mention it now while also being compassionate, as you have here. I personally go to church to be reminded of the love of God and the hope he brings despite the ugliness of our world. We have so little love and hope and see so much ugliness. I am glad you wrote about this “shoulding” and with such compassion for the situation. Thank you!
Amazing. Thank you!
Now. This. Is. The. Gospel. Thanks a bunch, Sarah!
Came across this while surfing through Mockingbird and found a treasure in a field. I’m a relative newcomer to Mockingbird through my wonderful parish of Calvary-St. George’s in NYC. Thank you so much!
Read it gain. Still manna to the hungry soul, and to the weary rest. Thank you.
I also stumbled upon Mockingbird, and love many of your topics. I’m from St. Anthony of Padua parish in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.
Our pastor’s sermon is fantastic that our pews are always filled to the brim. You’re welcome to visit:
https://stanthonyvan.com/