“Old Sermons”

This story begins shortly after my retirement. After 45 pretty busy years in parish ministry, it surprised me to realize that I was beginning to actually miss writing sermons and weekly articles. I didn’t always miss the seemingly endless pizzas at youth group overnights or the annual re-building of the wheel at the Every Member Canvass, but there was still an empty spot, some “thing” I truly did miss.

For several years the weekly, Homeboy Reports, my Friday morning blogs about nothing-in-particular and everything-in-general filled that emptiness. Afterwards there was a fascinating and challenging four years in law school, learning that the Law was in many ways the glue that holds society together and that not all lawyers wore vests.  

“The Great Itinerant” Preacher

Then, I thought, my most brilliant idea of all: to write a book. Not just any book, but a collection of my sermons. After all, over the course of those 45 years I’d come up with quite a number of them, and had them all carefully indexed and filed. (Yes, preachers do have a “barrel”, but it never works to preach out of it!) I could look them over, pick out maybe 15 or 20 of of the better ones, subject them to a more careful editorial and theological scrutiny, and have them printed, bound, and cast out to an unsuspecting world. I already had a title: “Old Sermons.” Short and sweet. Great idea.  

To help prepare myself, I looked at several sermonic collections and actually read three or four of them, and what an eye-opener: they bored me to sleep. They were tedious, bland, overly long, pretentious. And these were from the accepted masters of the craft, people whose names you’d instantly recognize, the giants of sermonizing.  They weren’t bad, just boring.  

And then I read some of my own homiletical efforts.

(Timeout: I once used the word “homiletical” in a parish article and was soon accosted by a reader who thought I was talking about some new sexual deviation. I’m not sure he was ever totally satisfied with my explanation that it was the technical term referring to sermons.)

Photo courtesy of http://www.cartoonchurch.com/

They weren’t bad, just boring. My own sermons put me to sleep. What had I actually inflicted these on people? Had congregants been patronizing when they told me how much they were appreciated? There was no way in the world that I was going to inflict the tedium of “Old Sermons” for a second time.

So down the tubes when the brilliant idea for a book, but it wasn’t time wasted for me. I did learn something important, something I heard long ago but had forgotten. One of the truly great men of the Episcopal Church nailed it. Walter Russell Bowie defined preaching as, “the Gospel communicated through personality.”

Exactly. All those words on paper had no personality, no “oomph”, they were dead in the water. But when the preacher slowly climbs the pulpit steps, takes a sip of water, switches on the reading light, and begins…then the Gospel becomes alive. It has a face, a voice, a personality. And if we listen carefully there will be the Good News proclaimed once again.

Here in St. James there are many things for which I’m thankful, of course, but one of the unsuspected gifts is the wonderful homiletical variety we are given Sunday by Sunday. All our regular proclaimers, preachers – Ron, Jay, James, Kitty, Reid – all have the same Good News expressed through their own God-given personalities. That’s the amazing thing about sermons, old or not. Through the sermonic words written and proclaimed, no matter who writes them or who speaks them, through those words the Word is presented.
Every sermon, I was told long ago in homiletical class, can be boiled down to one simple declarative sentence. Now that I’m in the pew rather than the pulpit, I dutifully listen for that sentence. Sometimes I get it, sometimes I don’t. But it really doesn’t depend on me, does it? The Word will be there, whether I “get it” or not.

A great storyteller and preacher, the Rev. Bob Cook is the Rector Emeritus of St. James Episcopal Church. He graduated from VTS in ’61 and served 12 years in two WV parishes before being called to St. James in 1972. He retired after 20 wonderful and productive years at St. James and then served as priest-in-charge of St Mary’s, Burgaw for 12 years until re-retiring and came back “home” as the Rector Emeritus in 2005. Ann and Bob have “logged 55+ years of marriage, and are inordinately proud of three children, nine grands, and three great grands.”