Last Week Sermon

What is the world’s most dangerous question? For a politician it might be: “How do I tell voters we need infrastructure maintenance?” An unglamorous, expensive question like that can cost you an election. If you are a cartoonist, it might be, “I wonder what Mohammed looked like?” That one can get you killed.

How Long?

For a preacher, one dangerous question is: “How long should a sermon be? What is the right length?”

Once every thousand years or so, people complain because a sermon is too short. I heard of a minister who gave a sermon entitled, “What God Wants Us To Do About Sin.” He got into the pulpit and said, “Don’t do it.” …Then he sat down. His congregation beat the Baptists to Wendy’s, but some people wished he’d fleshed things out a little bit more.

On the other hand, for most sermons (for most speeches of any kind) you are more likely to hear that a speaker went on too long. I was at a youth convention once where a preacher spoke for two hours and sixteen minutes. I know the time exactly because the next day they made buttons for the middle school kids who endured it. (This was when a popular antacid commercial had the tag line, “I Can’t Believe I Ate the Whole Thing.”) The buttons read: “I Can’t Believe I Heard the Whole Thing”; then, in small print: “I Survived a Two Hour and Sixteen Minute Sermon.”

Back when our denomination was getting started (almost 200 years ago), two hour sermons were the standard in most Protestant churches. Try it today; you’ll be mocked with a button.

So how long should a sermon last?

We could use the old sexist rule of thumb from the ‘60’s about the length of a woman's dress: “Keep it long enough to cover the subject, short enough to keep us interested.”

When I was a new preacher in Pittsboro, Indiana Dr. Malcolm Scamahorn came out of a service and said, "Good sermon, Dave. In fact, it was two, maybe three good sermons."

"Did I preach too long?" I asked.

He said, “Let's just say you missed two or three good stopping points.”

Well, I have cut down since then (I know some of you are itching to say, “Halleluiah!”). And it’s not just because standards have changed regarding how long a sermon should be. It’s also because I’m trying to follow Jesus’ example.

Jesus’ Parables: The Man at Midnight

Our Lord usually kept things short.

He didn’t always do it. At least once he preached so long to a crowd of 5,000 that he talked right into the dinner hour and had to feed them all.

But Jesus is ALSO known for his parables—those short, pithy stories he used to convey a large, large truth. In today's Gospel, Jesus tells one of those parables. It’s about a man who comes knocking on his neighbor’s door late at night. I can just hear him: (knock, knock, knock) “Let me in, it’s an emergency! An old army buddy of mine got stranded at the airport, his flight was delayed 24 hours; he’s got no place to go. I took him in. But he’s famished and we’re out of food. I need to borrow something for him to eat!”

The neighbor whispers down from an upstairs window. “Would you shut-up! I’ve got a colicky baby up here. We just got this kid to sleep – don’t you dare wake him up!”

But the man doesn’t give up. (Bam, bam, bam!) “I’ve got to feed this guy, he is my friend!”

The neighbor says, “Would you… You’re waking the… ah forget it.” He comes down and gives the man some food – not because he loves his neighbor, but because he wants him to shut up. And every parent who has spent hours trying to get a cranky baby to sleep knows why.

Jesus says: you respond to persistent requests not because you love each other, but because it’s convenient. How much more will God respond to persistence, because God’s love for you is not like your conditional love for the person next door. God’s love is like that of a perfect father, a father who knows his children’s needs even before they ask.

Prodigals, Samaritans, Widows, & More

Jesus' parables were like that, they were brief and vivid. A lot of times they also didn’t really end. In Matthew 13 Jesus tells the “Parable of the Sower” that our kids do each year in “Godspell.” When he’s done, his disciples come up and say, “What was that all about? ‘A sower goes to sow some seed. Some falls in the wrong place and doesn’t grow; some falls on good soil and does grow.’ What?! We know you’re not trying to give lessons in agriculture. But you don’t give us the point; you don’t give us an ending. What are you getting at?!?” (That’s my translation. According to the “Revised Standard Version” the disciples just say, “Why do you speak in parables?”)

It was not the only time his disciples would say, “What are you getting at? Tell us more, we don’t understand.”

They may have said that when Jesus told the story we call “The Prodigal Son.” That parable ends with the wayward son back in dad's house, but we aren't told if they live happily ever after. Maybe, after a good meal and a party the young man hits the road again. Or maybe his older brother never does come around and welcome him home. (Dad went out and asked him, but we’re never told if he does.)

In the story of the good Samaritan, we don't know if the man who was mugged ever recovered from his wounds, or if the Samaritan kept his promise to pay for all of his medical costs, or if the two became friends. Jesus ends the story, but he doesn’t really tie it up

Another one of his parables is much like the one we heard in our reading (it’s in Luke 18). It, too, has the context of a discussion about prayer. According to Luke, to show that we should always pray and not give up, Jesus says: "In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared about men. A widow in that town who kept coming to him (knock, knock, knock) 'Grant me justice against my adversary.' "For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, 'Even though I don't fear God or care about men, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, or she will wear me out!'

We aren't told if the judge follows through, and in Luke 18 Jesus doesn’t even bother to say the obvious: “If that’s how an unjust judge responds to persistence, how much more will God.”

Jesus just … leaves it hanging.

You KNOW the disciples were left scratching their heads: “What?”

Keep At It

My family and I recently went to see the movie “Inception.” It’s the poster child for a modern story that leaves you going, “What?” …Don’t get me wrong, we liked the movie, but a bunch of the time we found ourselves thinking, “Uh, run that by me again.” Take the last scene. I hope I’m not spoiling anything if I tell you it involves a spinning top, and it makes a HUGE difference if this top spins naturally and slowly wobbles to a stop. So what happens? Our hero spins that top and – boom – the movie ends. You never do find out if the top will act naturally. Instead you end up arguing about it over dinner, thinking about it for the rest of the week.

It’s like an old-time Saturday morning movie back in the ‘30’s. I’m told they often featured a "series" about a cowboy, or a spaceman like Buck Rogers. There would be a big fight scene, and just as the hero's fate was in doubt, the words "To Be Continued" would flash on the screen. The kids would let out a collective groan. You had to come back next Saturday if you wanted to know how the story would end. But of course, it didn’t end even then. There was always a "To Be Continued" to get you back next week.

Maybe THAT’S why it's hard to end a sermon. There is always more to be said: especially because the subject isn’t an ephemeral work of fiction, the subject is relationship with the one true God. We can’t finish it because God is bigger than we can grasp. Plus, God never stops working on us. Despite our infidelity, our waywardness: God keeps loving us, keeps speaking to us, keeps reaching out to us.

Think about this: the disciples ask Jesus to teach them to pray. He answers with a very short prayer (in fact, the version in Luke 11 that precedes our reading is several lines shorter than the one we’re used to over in Matthew 6). That makes it sound like Jesus is saying, “A short, profound prayer is perfect!” …But then he goes on with this parable about never giving up, never shutting up, keep hammering away all night.

What’s up with that?

It reminded me of something.

I thought about it all week and finally realized what it was: it reminded me of a wedding. I’ve attended a couple of hundred weddings by now and I’ve noticed that the sermon (my own or someone else’s) always includes this thought: the reason we are here is simple, it’s because you love each other. You can put it into words like that (snap).

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“Do you love him?”

“Yes.”

“Great, we’re done.” …Except, not quite. The reason we are here is complicated, it will take a lifetime to express, because a relationship is something you NEVER stop working on. It is eternally a work in progress.

Your experience of God obviously doesn't end with a sermon. It doesn’t end when you have a profoundly true thought about God. It doesn’t even end when you have one deep religious experience.

That’s why the best sermons never DO end. (Don’t get scared, we are only one sentence away from our hymn.)

I suggest it is the baptismally assigned job of ALL of us to continue the process – to keep the sermon going by working on the relationship; to agree or disagree with a particular preacher, but infinitely more important: to never stop loving the God who never stops loving us.

Amen.

Hymn

As we prepare for communion, would you join me in singing “The Lord’s Prayer,” using the version on page 310.