When I write a novel, I find that I know the story and all the events that go into it long before I really hear the voice of the main character. Sometimes I can go three quarters of the way through the story before finding that voice. And then, of course, I have to go back and rewrite everything. I'm expecting this to be much the same.
There is a certain voice that needs to be heard in this sermon. Its not my voice. Its not your voice. Its God's voice. When it comes down to it, my journey is about finding God and I must make it clear that it was God that was leading me the entire time (not that I was smart enough to always follow him - NO, WILL, YOUR OTHER LEFT! ;) I have now written the opening paragraph of my sermon about 100 times in my head in four days. None of these paragraphs worked. They were all well written. Any one of them could have been the beginning to my story. None of them, however, had the right voice. Indeed, the hardest part to writing anything is finding the right voice. But when its a novel, I'm just looking for a certain point of view, a certain manner of narration, that matches the story I'm writing. In a sermon, I'm looking for something infinitely more wonderful.
Hearing that voice is never easy. Can you imagine the author that was given the task to write something in the Bible? I mean Paul had it easy. He was just writing a letter to another church. That the letters turned out well can be seen in the fact that they're in the Bible. Can you imagine if someone were to approach you and say, "I need five pages that we're going to put in the Bible." I'm sorry, but that's just a little pressure there. Yet, whether its five pages for the Bible, a letter to the early church, or a ten minute sermon, the voice is always going to be the same. The hard part then is not the writing, but the listening.
God has a tendency of dropping subtle hints to me (probably because anything more abrupt would fry my precious neurons). I've at least finally learned to keep an open mind that things that don't make sense, or thoughts that seem bizarre to me, probably have a deeper meaning that I haven't yet considered. I store these thoughts and observations in the back of my mind, much the same way that plot threads and bits of character dialog tend to collect back there. The back of my mind is the attic of my brain. Eventually God will drop the big bombshell on me and suddenly, like a fresh ray of light into a darkened tomb, all of those little pieces that I've been storing back there will be illuminated and I'll finally figure out some new little piece of the puzzle.
So God has been challenging me lately with trying to come to terms with Jesus's divinity. And then I started having thoughts about how I was getting tired of reading all of those "notes" at the bottom of my Training Bible and was ready to just enjoy the Word without the expert commentary. And then a while later I thought that perhaps I'd finally reached a point where I was sick of "learning" about the Bible and that maybe I was ready to experience it. Then I had a vision of me walking in Kenya, which led me to realize that I was going to Kenya, which started to galvanize all these pieces together (I'm a lot slow on the uptake) which finally led to this invitation to deliver a sermon... and like the Get Behind Me Satan, Peter, I still stood there with a blank expression on my face and a look of incomprehension - "Who? Me?" until God finally delivered the message all non-challant like, "Maybe you could, I don't know, talk about your journey or something... wink... wink... wink!"
BOOYA! OH, NOW I GET IT!
I'm in good company when it comes to spiritual smarts. I figure St. Peter and I are definitely going to get some fishing done whenever I join them in Heaven (catch and release, of course ;) We'll probably drink a beer or two and talk about our love of the stooges. Of course, I'll be talking about the film stars, he'll be talking about the other apostles ;)
Anyway, I'm a little slow on hearing God's voice, but I've at least learned to be patient. He'll continue to drop pieces in my lap and let me sort through them at my own pace and eventually I should be able to do a reasonable facsimile of God's voice in my sermon. And then, when I deliver it, there will probably be a spiritual brother or sister out there who might hear it and have a tiny little thought implanted in the back of their brain, or even, God-willing, a big BOOYA moment of their own.
In the meantime, ears open, brain clear (as if that's hard) and I'm off to trying to hear God's word for me.
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