My Career Under a Cloud

 

       My father, Rev. William Suk, died forty years ago. He was only 54. I’ve kept a few of his sermons as keepsakes. I read them over this week. English wasn’t his native language, and he was always a bit insecure about that. On the whole, though, the sermons are cogent and well-written. He worked hard to make them so. People appreciated his preaching.

 

        What struck me, though, was that I didn’t find anything in those sermons that interested me. They were all based on the Heidelberg Catechism—a mid-sixteenth century statement of the Calvinist faith. As a result, his sermons were doctrinaire and abstract—at least to my taste. I guess he wrote them in a different time for a different audience. In the end, I read through them as much for the bits of my dad’s self-disclosure as I did for any religious content or insight. On the whole, his sermons just didn’t speak to me.

 

       Which is interesting, because there is another, much larger group of sermons that rarely speak to me. These are the six hundred sermons I wrote and preached as an Evangelical minister in the Christian Reformed Church. What is more, the same goes for three hundred or so editorials and articles that I wrote over the ten years I was editor of my denominational magazine, The Banner. 

Me Doing My Thing

       Like my father, I spent a lot of time on each sermon or article. I always booked twenty hours for research, pacing the office, false starts, rewrites, practicing. I always tried (to mixed effect) to write in a way that would leave the audience wondering how I’d land the plane, in the end. Along the way many were published in journals or won awards in various forums. 

 

       Still, most of it—the vast majority of it—doesn’t speak to me anymore. I now think that the vast majority of what I wrote is either misinformed or just plain wrong. I pounded the pulpit for stuff I don’t believe in anymore. And so it was with much of the rest of my career—endless committee meetings, administration, catechism teaching, hand wringing over budgets and liturgies, and even much of the congregational visiting. All of this was in service of an institution whose core raison d’etre I no longer share, whose core story I admire, but no longer believe to be God’s word.

 

       So, now I look at all my sermons and think . . . what a waste. The vast majority of my professional life lies under a cloud of regret. I think about this a lot, and it saddens me. I might have been a paleontologist or archeologist—though as much as those careers appeal to me now, I suppose I’d more likely have become a mid-level white collar worker, given my naivete and immaturity as a twenty-some year old.

 

       Mind you, there are a few caveats, a few things that I think about as I try to justify my life as a preacher and editor.

 

• As I look at those sermons now, I see that I put a lot of energy into preaching love—of neighbors, social justice; love of immigrants, the marginalized, love of neighbors near and far; love of partners and children and art and more. And perhaps some of that preaching had an impact. If people love more, I don’t suppose their motivation for loving matters much. Love is love. 

 

• On many occasions parishioners felt my presence to be a support to them when they were sick, or troubled, or depressed, or mixed up, or whatever. To the degree that I lightened the load for some fellow travelers, I’m glad. 

 

• As an evangelical minister, I did other things—imperfectly. I preached a certain kind of morality—one that was more accepting and less rigid than was common among evangelicals. I worked, over time, for the full inclusion of gay people and women into the church’s life. I tried to encourage churches to be healthy communities where members could find friendship, support when needed, and kindness all about. I wrote often about the need to make churches safe places for children and women.

 

• My last caveat is the best. I spent my last nine years as a minister in a congregation that was okay with my being agnostic. I was overwhelmed by the freedom that gave me to explore new sources of meaning and new motivations to love neighbor. You will find the kernels of some of those sermons elsewhere in my blog.

 

       Still, I wish I had done something else with my life. True, I enjoyed myself, mostly. Along the way (less as I aged) I felt fulfilled. I climbed the ecclesiastical ladder with some success. My congregations were mostly happy places where I and my family were liked and appreciated. 

 

These days, though, looking back, much of my career seems like a long, wasted effort in the interest of a poor cause.  So how do I ultimately make peace with all that—leaving aside the caveats, above? 

 

Well, sometimes I think about my great grandfather Willem and his son, my grandfather Jan. Willem made a living selling groceries out of a dog cart. When that dried up, he went to work in a local cement factory. He died in his early forties of silicosis of the lungs. He didn’t have a choice. He did what he could to support his family—at least, until he couldn’t, anymore.

Dog Cart Grocery

As a result of his father’s death, my grandfather, Jan Suk, had to get a job with a farmer before finishing grade six. Of course he had to. There was no welfare in those days. His fatherless family was poverty stricken and survival was far from guaranteed. Years later, after immigrating to Canada, in the mid-fifties, his first job was loading beer trucks. Soon after and for the rest of his life he worked as a hospital janitor. 

 

Frederick Buechner famously defined “calling,” that is, what you should do, career-wise, as the intersection of two things: “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep need meet.” Well, that’s a very modern and privileged notion, one that became an option for many people only because of the years of amazing economic growth and resulting prosperity that defined the fifties and sixties. 

 

The truth is, for most of human history, until not long ago, when it came to one’s life work, there was little “deep gladness,” and far too much “deep need.” Until recently, the vast majority of people had no choice. They didn’t have careers, they had work—often physically punishing, at poverty wages, and with little opportunity to move up ladders. I have learned to think of my career through that lens. Whatever I may think about the value of my sermons, I have had it infinitely better than all my grands going as far back as I can document.

 

I did not live a life defined by poverty, intellectual want, and difficult labor. Unlike my ancestors, I had privileged choices with respect to what I would do with my life, and even if I made mistakes, I really gave it a whirl. I also found a perfect partner. Our family was mostly (and still is) very happy. These days, I’m working hard to recognize and appreciate all the good things in my life that my ancestors could hardly have imagined.

 

I get that this might not sound like much to people who live life according to the rubrics, visions, and teachings of their churches. There is no great overarching vision here for the meaning of life, and no myth to support a hope for heaven or the kingdom come. I just do not believe in those things anymore. All my many years of theological study, my mastery of “Reformed, Christian” perspectives on sex or politics or the environment, all my life promoting Christianity, and especially my sermons—it is mostly dust to me.

 

And, to be honest, I am sad about that. Very sad. Looking back on sermons that no longer speak to me isn’t much fun. When I write about this stuff, or go on my daily walks, or remember how it used to be—I get depressed.

 

But as a child of privilege, at least I was free to change my mind. My ancestors never could, and they made the best of that in spite of tragedy and drudgery and poverty. Now, I am trying to make the best of it too. And it shouldn’t be too hard, given that my life was full of more opportunity, choice and ease than my ancestors could ever have imagined.

 

The freedom and opportunity to change one’s mind. It’s something we can actually do, these days. It’s a great gift, if we could only stop to examine it for what it is. And embrace it.

 

The Social Gospel Nag

My wife and I have been searching for a new church in our new city for just over a year. We’ve settled on one, for now. But the search has been disconcerting. 

There are a hundred-and-one reasons. One is my own, slowly, dissolving faith. I keep hoping for a church that will run with my doubts, rather than try to assuage them, or deflect them, or (God forbid) covert me to some sort of orthodoxy.

Shub Niggurath is a fictional H.P. Lovecraft god.
One that can, apparently, inspire preachers to nag.

The search has also been disconcerting, if I’m totally honest, because many—by far the most—of the churches I’ve visited have been mostly made up of elderly people. They’ve been faithful for long lifetimes. They deserve an opportunity to rest from their labors, to enjoy the next generation take on leadership and choir seats. I remember when—in a different denomination—I preached to churches full of young people, young adults, and young marrieds. It made for better singing, better after-sermon coffee klatches, better bazaars and picnics and volunteers. It’s all gone now—if not in the denomination I used to serve as a minister in—at least it’s very rare in the churches I’ve checked out in my new city.

But among all the reasons (I could go on for a while) why mainline churches (and increasingly, Evangelical churches) are failing, the one that irks me the most is this—they are consumed by a form of works righteousness.
 
Works righteousness is the idea you have to do something to get in good with God. In Evangelical churches, it manifests itself in the preaching of moral codes, which if you keep (more or less, and as defined by your denomination or minister) you get heaven as a reward. The Trumpization of the Evangelical Church in the USA has put the lie to that. 
 
But in the UCC, we have our own unique kind of social gospel works righteousness. It’s the notion that unless we’re busy doing everything in our power to set the powers that be—government, institutions, systems—to right, we’re falling short. 
 
United Church works righteousness is a never-ending list of “to-do’s.” House the homeless. Challenge Israeli apartheid. Fight racism. Pursue peace. Be LGBTQ-friendly. Change the system. Save the planet. Change your habits. Call your MP. Donate. Plant a forest. Acknowledge our wrongs vis a vis First Nations. And on and on.
 
Ironically, there is not a single one of these “to-do’s” that I disagree with. I embrace every one, without qualification. I preached or have written about each one. I have been guilty of what I’m going to rail against in this post.
 
The problem is one of balance. You see, the only church that can effectively make a dent on these issues is a healthy church. Such churches are multi-generational. They play and are fun. They meet in and out of the sanctuary. They are full of laughter and full of informed care for those in the fellowship who need it. They are full of people who are focused on each other as the closest neighbours at hand, a practical training ground for all our other neighbours. 
 
But preachers who wave their finger, endlessly, at people, telling them what to do, how to do it, why to do it all—they are weighing church goers down and making staying church, or coming for the second or third time, very hard. 

The preacher nag inspires the same sort of negative reactions that mask mandates did. It isn't that the mask mandate was a dumb idea. It is that people don't want to be told, over and over. It infuriates most of us--or exhausts us before we begin.
 
The preacher nag, perhaps unintentionally, serves as a constant accusation that we have not measured up. It is imitative, in an odd way, of how newspapers—on TV or the web or even real paper—work. You put the murders first, the car crashes next, and finish with scandal. Op Ed pages are full of negative reads on each and every political decision and economic trend. Good news is either absent or buried. 
 
Our churches are similarly focused on all that’s wrong. We put the latest injustice first, then the worst looming ecological disaster next, and finish with what we better do or else last. Good news?
 
Look. Once again, I’m personally engaged in righting injustices, responding to disasters, and being politically involved. But as much as the church as a public institution and its members as citizens need to address many urgent matters, we should do so because the church has inspired us to gratitude and thanksgiving first. Too much nagging muddies our motivation and saps our energy.
 
Let’s preach dreams rooted in hope. I want to hear sermons that celebrate the good—and even the privilege—that so many of us experience; that celebrate starry nights, great music and art, real caring, an ancient tradition, forgiveness, sex, shared meals, and friendship. 
 
Let’s preach out of our gratitude rather than our civic and cultural problems and fears and injustices. Where is the light yoke promised by Jesus? Where is the community in love with each other—not just for Sunday coffee time—but communities that prioritize the knowing and sharing and mutual support that the New Testament so often speaks of? That’s the foundation of our love for all neighbours and strangers.
 
I long for the consolations of the gospel. I long for a spirituality that isn’t so much marching orders as it a magical spiritual mystery tour. I long to be inspired instead of commanded.
 
Look, the seventy- and eighty-year-olds who fill many United Church pews are true believers in the social gospel. Most of them don’t need to be convinced anymore. They’ve hung around when the UCC was among the first churches in Canada to truly welcome women to leadership. We lost a third or more of our membership making sure that LGBTQ people were not only welcomed, but celebrated, but they stuck with us. Our older members also hung around when we called for an end to apartheid and as we made steps to work out reconciliation with First Nations. The people who still come to our churches have fed the hungry, housed the homeless, donated to the United Church and its favorite causes, and on and on. They don’t need to be nagged to do more.
 
And younger people are looking for hope, for inspiration, for meaning amid so many crises—they don’t want to be nagged to do more and more and more either. They’re busy with families and two careers. They’re struggling to make mortgage or rent payments and to hang on to their temporary jobs in a gig economy. Even if we, here in Canada, are living through the materially best of times, most peaceful of times, many young people don’t experience it that way. What do we have to say to them besides “volunteer. Do more. Support. Vote. Go. Go. Go.”?
 

I’d love to see the United Church commit to some sort of reverse-sabbath pattern when it comes to pulpit nagging. That would be a commitment to limit our nagging to one Sunday in seven. A commitment in the rest of our preaching and lives together to focus on the old, old story (and some new ones!) because the way to change anyone’s heart is through the doorway of the imagination.  

 
I’m not lazy. I do my part. But I’m filled with spiritual yearning. I want meaning. Maybe I'm strange that way. I wake up wondering what it is all about. I feel vulnerable in a world more dangerous than we realize and I want to know whether there is hope. I want my church to have a psychic playground out back, where we can laugh and play together, feed each other and party. Where I can be rejuvenated. 
 
I get that other people might want wildly different things from church than what I want. But if we did a reverse Sabbath, we could use those other six Sundays to explore what other people are curious about when it comes to God and humanity and this planet. Bring it on.
 
But, oh. I’m so tired of being told what to do.
 
 

Preaching Matters. But . . .

I have always thought of myself—certainly with more than a little presumption—as a better than average preacher. Perhaps every preacher thinks so. 

But I’ve also studied preaching. I did it from a non-religious point of view, focussing on how preaching persuades, for my Ph.D. work. I’ve taught homiletics to aspiring preachers. And I’ve studied—again, mostly in non-religious settings—how contemporary media has changed both people’s ability to listen and read. 

         Along the way, as a minister, I’ve wondered long and hard about what attracts people to one church rather than another. Sometimes the reasons have little to do with “how good” a church is—however you define “good.” Lots of churches, for example, are tribal. People belong to them because “their people” belong. This is often true of immigrant churches and of ethnic churches in particular, though it may have to do with social standing and belonging to the right club. Sometimes—more often than you would think—people go to church out of long habit, and it is enough that there is one very close to them. That decides it. In my years as a minister, I’ve met people who go to one church or another because of architecture, because of a friend, because of the music, or because it has a great Sunday School for their children.

A few people choose their church for theological reasons. They want (for example) a really liberal church. Or a fire-breathing Primitive Baptist church that does revivals. Not many, but a few!

Put aside all these reasons for choosing a church, there are still two matters that count more than almost any other. First, people will make a judgement, upon visiting, about whether or not there is a community in that church that will fit them. A few weeks ago, for example, after attending my congregation a few times, a youngish millennial couple asked me how many other couples their age attended regularly. I gave an honest answer and have not seen them since. And, of course, people looking for community will stay if the community they find truly embraces them. 

Second, getting back to preaching, I realize more and more that over time people will make a judgement about where to go to church based on the preaching. If a church wants to maintain its size or grow it will need a preacher who connects on a very regular basis. The room for so-so preaching has shrunk, a lot. People want a preacher who will have them holding their breath to see how “it” turns out. Someone who can make them laugh at themselves. Someone who has something to say that is rooted in the heart of the gospel but that resonates with lived experience. Something more than self-help. Someone who is compelling but doesn’t nag. Someone who says the mystery in a way they feel it. Someone who connects with their fear and hopes.

So, though I like to think of myself as that preacher, as I enter my final season as a preacher, I have begun, in spite of what I’ve said so far, to question how much of a difference I can make as a preacher.

Let me explain the reasons why. Although they are informed by my studies, what I’m sharing now is my gut feeling about these things. I’m interested in what others may think.

First, it is harder to make an impression as a preacher because audiences don’t listen anymore with the same skill and attention that they used to. Once upon a time preachers created sermons in the image of the essay or book. This worked, because people tended to read a lot. They were deft at figuring out linear, rational, ordered arguments. 

But these sort of sermons work with a smaller and smaller demographic. Partly this is because attention spans are way shorter than they used to be. If you are not sure this is the case, check out the literature. It takes a lot more skill to gain the attention or your audience, keep it, and engage it than it used to.

Second, people also have a harder time attending to sermons because the most common model for sermons a generation ago was the book, but it isn’t anymore. Books—and good essays—are linear. They build their case cumulatively and rationally. They use reason and narrative. And when people used to listen to sermons, they listened with the ears of readers.

But people do not read as much as they used to. They find it difficult to attend to sustained narrative. The books they do read—just check out how many there are in any bookstore—are often self-help books that are long lists of “to do’s.” Books are far more fractured and less narratively sensible than they used to be. If narrative preaching is a partial answer to this reality, it has to be the sort of narrative that non-readers used to be able to listen to—legends, sagas, parables and so on. Walter Ong’s description of the psychodynamics of orality helps me here, but challenges me too. It’s hard.

Third, I’ve also become less sure of myself as a preacher because I’ve become acutely aware of my own uncertainties and waffling. I live with ambiguity when it comes to what and how to preach. I used to be able to count on people being interested in the truth of dogmas, for example, and spent time trying to get those dogmas across. But I’m done with dogma myself, so it doesn’t make for great preaching fodder anymore.

Fourth, I’ve become less sure of myself as a preacher because I know that my status—perhaps role is a better word—as preacher has changed over the years. I cannot rely, any longer, on being listened to because, well, I’m a preacher and I know. People don’t sit down convinced that they need to listen; they sit down to decide whether or not they will listen. People don't come to church believing that they are empty vessels that just need to be filled.

What to do about this? Well, I take longer to write than I used to. I pay more attention to how sagas and legends were told in an era before people read. I count on my current audience’s high level of literate education than I used to, so I can be forgiven a bit more. I try new things: preaching secular texts and songs, using drama, interactive exercises. But I’m an amateur at much of this, unsure of how to embrace it and make it work.

The bottom line? Preaching is harder than ever. There is no excuse for business as usual. We have to take risks. We have to speak to what people are really wondering about. And we have to keep on trying.

Preaching "The Lion King" Instead of Scripture

         This coming Sunday I’m preaching The Lion King. Although we’ll read scripture during the service, a single image from The Lion King will serve as the sermon text. It’s the scene where Simba is lectured by his father, King Mufasa, for putting himself and his friend Nala in danger by disobeying him and visiting the Elephant Graveyard. While there, three hyenas almost manage to eat Simba and Nala for lunch. King Mufasa saves them in the nick of time. But he is angry that his son Simba has disobeyed him.

         Now, as Simba walks toward his father to receive his punishment, he puts his tiny paw into a huge footprint made by his father’s much larger paw. And that image, the naughty child’s paw in the magisterial father’s paw—that image is the sermon text.

Will Simba ever measure up? Will my preaching?

         This freedom is new for me. In seminary, I was taught that all sermons had scriptural texts. Not only that, it was the preacher’s unique job—something that he or she trained many years for—to get the interpretation of that text exactly right. There was a whole long process for doing so—I used to teach it, in seminary, the “hermeneutic spiral.” You read the text in Hebrew or Greek to make sure you catch interesting nuances not available in translation. Then you read the text in its immediate context, trying to discern how it fit into the passage it was found in. Then you compared it to similar texts in the Bible, in order to discern how it fit into its larger message. Then you fit the text into the larger “redemptive-historical” story of the Bible, the one where Jesus dies for everyone’s sins and is raised on the third day. All along the way you pretend to be able to bracket your own prejudices, hopes, dreams, and ignorance. And finally, you figure out how to state your conclusions in a way that is relevant for people who live today.

         All along the assumption is that all of scripture is divinely inspired, that there are no mistakes in it, that it all fits together like a puzzle (even if at first it didn’t seem to), that every tense change and verbal mood fluctuation was intentional and important, and that all of this is authoritative for all of life and so on.

         You get the picture.

         But what happens when you don’t buy these assumptions anymore? When you don’t think it is all “God-breathed,” that it is all coherent? What happens when you recognize that scripture is full of inconsistencies, that you often can’t get into the mind of the original author, and that if you could you’d find that it was probably just as confused, inconsistent, stubborn as you are? How do you preach when you think that the Bible’s attitude towards gays is hateful, towards adulterers is far too harsh, that its attitude to slavery has been too long forgiven, its mythology of end times too fantastic and inconsistent, and overall its message about God is more confused and various and anthropomorphic and incredible than most conservative Christians are allowed to think?

         And how do you preach when in spite of all this, you still love scripture and are amazed by what you find in it?

         I’m feeling my way here. When I joined the United Church of Canada, four years ago, it was as if someone left the gate open. At first I galloped out of the coral and just reveled in the feeling of not being tied up anymore, not being restrained.

         But after awhile, once you’re free, you have to ask yourself, “what next?” and “Where to?” and “to what end?” That’s where I am now.

         So I’ve put together a couple of ideas that are (loosely) guiding me. They’re not a systematic theology of preaching or anything like that. I’m guessing that some will take strong issue with them, and others might be able to add helpful comments. So here are ten thoughts on preaching the Lion King instead of scripture.

1. I don’t believe that scripture has a divine authority that I carry with me into the pulpit. Such a belief is pure hubris. I’m too aware of my own prejudices and predispositions to believe in such authority. And given how many different versions of the truth are preached in many different pulpits each Sunday, the notion that there is some sort of divine authority that attends such confusion is just short of ridiculous.
2. But I do believe there are big themes in scripture that are worth sharing from the pulpit: shalom, justice, love of neighbor, mercy, grace, hope, forgiveness. These tend to be the big moral (not historical or theological) themes that churches have always theoretically agreed on (but often failed to live up to).
3. The problem with focusing on morality is that preaching can easily devolve into badgering. I try to remember that the big themes of scripture are not merely a list of “to-dos” but a panorama of insight, hope, mystery, longing, and inspirational history. Sill, I find “not badgering” is hard to do.
4. Most of scripture’s big themes have corollaries in other religions and philosophies, as well as in literature and popular culture. These other sources often illuminate scripture, confirm its wisdom—but at other times, improve on scripture. These other sources are benchmarks that help preachers avoid going off into left field.
5. But then, I don’t always need to go to scripture to find a great starting place for addressing these big themes. Sermons on musicals like Les Miz and cartoons like Lion King and books like Wizard of Oz or the epigraphs in Wade Davis’ marvelous The Wayfinders are fun, interesting, surprising, attention-grabbing places that I’ve started sermons lately.
6. I no longer parse texts to within an inch of their life believing that by doing so I can somehow better understand what God really meant to say or what the intent of the original author was. When preachers do this they’re (usually inadvertently) making a show of their training to insist on some doctrine they’ve been taught or a prejudice they hold. Many of these doctrines are debatable, and few of these doctrines are agreed upon by multiple denominations. If some great truth depends on parsing a single text correctly, it probably isn’t a great truth. Or even a minor one.
7. Which isn’t to say that preachers ought to ignore texts, or not love scripture. Scripture is the deep source of our tradition, our shared ancient memory, the galaxy in which we spin. But read it whole and don’t focus on its jots and tittles.
8. Writing a sermon isn’t a science. It involves weighing and sorting many strands of evidence, many factors, many possibilities. I think of my sermons as “spiritual op-eds” relevant for living life today.
9. Preaching is as much about the hopes and fears, the dreams and struggles that congregants face as it is about anything that might serve as a text for your sermon. In fact, these emotions and daily realities can be sermon texts.
10. Preaching is more about finding our way today than recovering the ancient past.

         I’m pretty sure I know what my friends in Evangelical circles will think of such musings. But I might be surprised. I’d like to hear more about what my new, theologically liberal friends think. What insight would you add?