My first sermon, at age fifteen featured "the message to Laodicea. I berated my audience (the congregation I had grown up in), scolding them for their wickedly wimpy commitment to holiness. I had lived with them. I had a teenager's scorn for the compromises they had made with life.
Afterward they offered me kind words, honoring my zeal for God and glossing over my accusations.
My view of preaching has changed. I figure most people come to church painfully aware of their failing. They sit there hoping for hope, thirsting for help.
I could scold the people I preach to. I know them--the husbands and dads with anger problems, the kids and adults who are "using," the women inordinately concerned about decor and decorum, the spendthrifts drowning in frivolously-acquired debt, the fornicators, the pious snobs, unbalanced apocalyticists, the theological nut cases, the blamers and scolds, the doctrinaire Republicans, the chronic users of welfare. I could view their church-going as mere hypocrisy. But when I listen to their stories what I hear is a profound thirst for transformation. They wish they were better. They come to church looking for hope and help.
Maybe they've heard the verse in Isaiah, "You who are thirsty, come." Beating them instead of watering them would be wicked.
So I put my stick away. Plug the holes in my canteen as well as I can, fill it up and step onto the stage to offer hope and help. It's what I would want, if I could sit through a sermon.
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