Preaching the Most Important Sermon of My Life…Again…

Photo from Unsplash.

When I was in my second year of seminary and doing my internship at my former church, I preached the Sunday after the 2016 election. Four years later, I am still processing how hard that was and how that experience affected me and my ministry. It was my first experience of “this is the hardest sermon you’ll ever preach.” I don’t actually remember if anyone said that to me directly, but it is part of the white noise that was surrounding me as I put together a sermon that week, between accompanying my BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ friends and dealing with my own fear and anxiety and grief. 

Thankfully, I had two wonderful pastors as my field education supervisors, and they walked with me through that week as we cried and raged and questioned and brainstormed. And on Sunday morning, when I walked into their offices to prepare for worship that day, they told me something I will never forget: “If we thought you couldn’t do it, we would have told you.” I am grateful that my mentor pastors also trusted that leading and would have accepted if I felt like I was not called to preach in that moment, or if they felt some hesitation, they would have talked to me about it. 

This was, to me, an Esther experience, a “for such a time as this” moment when I had to trust the leading of the Spirit. Part of my preaching process includes picturing congregants in my mind and considering their life situations and what they may need to hear, and holding that in mind as I sift through the political and social events of the current moment and match that with what the gospel stories about Jesus teach. And that process really worked that week, as my mid-sized progressive Baptist church needed words that validated their emotions and galvanized us to prepare to fight bigotry in this country’s highest office. To this day, I am very proud of that sermon. 

But that was only the start. Since then, I have preached the Sunday after Trump’s inauguration; during the period we thought the USA might go to war with Iran; after Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court; during the COVID pandemic; after the 2020 election (the results of which were decided only the day before) and after the insurrection on the Capitol. Add to that the complexities of pastoral responsibility and the constant doom-spiraling of heinous news coming from the White House during 45’s term in office and the continued pandemic of white supremacist violence against people of color. For each of these weeks, and more, I have seen Twitter and Facebook and Instagram and opinion columns blow up with “preachers, this is the most important/hardest sermon of your life.” I truly feel like I have been preaching “the most important sermon of my life” every time I’ve proclaimed!

And yet…

Isn’t that what I’m called to do? Preach the gospel, even (and especially!) when it is uncomfortable, when it challenges people in power, when it tells us things we don’t want to hear? Isn’t it my calling to walk that prophetic-pastoral line and “comfort the affiliated” and “afflict the comfortable”? Isn’t it the work of the preacher to preach the sermons that move us to be more engaged in the world, that remind us of our sacred task to co-create with God a beloved community characterized by peace through justice? 

This reframing doesn’t work for everyone, and that’s ok. And sure, there will be easier sermons and harder sermons, the ones that are done on Wednesday and you feel pretty good about them, and the ones that you are still working on early Sunday morning because you’re not sure if you’re about to have a “run you off the edge of a cliff” moment with your congregation. The process of preaching ebbs and flows, the words come easy and the words are hard to find, the sermon is also the one I need to hear and it’s the one I am afraid to hear. 

Photo from Steven Radford on Unsplash.

Then of course, there are always the posts on social media that say, “If your pastor doesn’t preach about ____________ this Sunday, then you need to find a new church.” And to a great extent, I absolutely get that sentiment. There are so many churches out there that treat the news as something that should not be brought into the sanctuary, that see politics as separate from gospel. And there are times when people need to hear these words “if your pastor doesn’t do _____” because that helps them leave a church they have been working up the courage to exit. That is valid. 

But also, it must be said that there are lots of reasons pastors address certain things at certain times. And, as my friend Rev. Cody Sanders said in a Facebook post, before people (particularly white people) leave churches because they don’t talk about X and Y, consider talking to the pastor, staff and other congregants to see if you can find out why they don’t address the issues that are important to you. And if they are amenable to it, offer to be a sounding board. Perhaps the pastor has been worried about their job security (which is a whole other topic) and needed the push from someone in the congregation to say “you’re not alone, I see this and want to talk about it, too.” Perhaps the pastor has been feeling imposter syndrome (who am I to preach and teach about X and Y topics? etc.) and they needed the assurance that the congregation would journey with them on their own path of self-education and improvement.

Of course, if the pastor and leadership are not open to conversations about justice and how to interpret current events in light of the gospel, perhaps then it is time to leave. But if you have the capacity (and again, especially if you are a person who carries more privileged identities) to reach out, to question, to challenge and to offer to accompany others (including your pastor) as they learn and grow, that may be worthwhile. 

And let me be clear: I’m not saying that the congregation should tell the pastor what to preach. I’m saying that if a congregant has a concern about the lack of justice-centered preaching in the church, it could be helpful to open a conversation with the pastor and other church leadership about it. And from a pastor’s perspective, it is much better to bring concerns to our attention than to mutter about it behind our backs and then leave without sharing your concerns and giving us a chance to respond and learn. Pastors are humans too, and we are (we must be) capable of growing and changing right along with our congregations. 

This is just me. This is my experience and my opinions and my thoughts today. I reserve the right to learn, to grow, to reconsider and to change my mind. I’d love to hear how you think about “the hardest” or “most important” sermons of your life, either as a preacher or as a congregant receiving the Word through your pastor.