Connect With God During Lent: 3 Steps for Contemplative Sermon Prep
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The glorious busyness of Lent is upon preachers around the world!
This is the most intensive season of the year for priests and pastors. Beginning with Ash Wednesday, the season is packed with extra Lenten educational and prayer services, plus complex worship to coordinate, lead, and preach for during Holy Week and Easter Sunday, while still attending to the already deep list of to-do’s.
Before you feel overwhelmed, though, let’s do a quick review to remind ourselves what will help your sermon prep—and all your preparations—to be holy, from your heart, and as efficient as possible.
Here are three reminders to foster a contemplative season of preaching.
1. Slow is fast
If we want to get a lot done in a hurry, the best thing we can do is slow down.
When we’re in a hurry, adrenaline makes our heart race and breathing quicken, we feel the pressure of the clock, and our to-do lists feel impossibly long to accomplish.
Paradoxically, when we slow down with mindful breathing, praying, relaxing our jaws and shoulders, and deliberately moving our bodies more slowly, we become more aware of God’s presence. We’re more available to be nudged by the Spirit.
For preaching, then, take your prep slowly. Do your prep deliberately with plenty of breathing space (literally). That will help you hear the Spirit more clearly–and efficiently.
You’ll accomplish more in less time.
Slow is fast.
2. Don’t search for your sermon message
The studies of creativity are consistent, and you probably know this to be true from experience:
Insights are found in the quiet margins.
Rather than “eureka” moments happening during intensive study, revelations are more often received in quiet moments and during mundane tasks: when waking in the morning, during a walk, or while washing the dishes.
It’s when we’re not asking “What should I say?” that we’re most likely to hear what the Spirit has to say!
Give yourself more “Blank space” than usual this Lent.
Turn off notifications. Go for a walk. Practice mindful breathing. And perhaps most importantly, make sleep one of your highest priorities.
It’s when you’re not searching for that pearl of great wisdom that it’ll be handed to you.
In other words, don’t seek—and it will be given unto you.
3. Remember the text is The best source for sermon inspiration
There are many great sources for sermon inspiration: commentaries, podcasts, books, and websites. We need these resources for our scripture study and to put the readings into context.
But there’s one source for sermon inspiration that dwarfs them all.
The text.
The text describes who God is and what God is doing.
The text contains God’s hopes for humanity.
The text reveals why we don’t believe or trust who God is or what God is doing.
The text has the blueprints for the reign of God to be built now, and here.
The text contains our sermon message.
If you’re wondering from whence your sermon is to come, look to the text.
[With] close, contemplative reading, the simple words on the page become clearer and more meaningful. It brings greater understanding and connection, something easily missed by a superficial, quick reading.
In the third Century, the Christian scholar Origen saw that if you read in the right spirit, you would find the meaning “hidden from most people.”
We will find God’s meaning when we not only go deep into the text, but most crucially, let the text go deep into us. The more you encounter the text, the more God abides inside.
Combining all of the above, with contemplative reading of the text, moving slowly, and creating plenty of “blank space,” we’ll be primed to hear the slightest whisper from the Spirit — and receive Good News for our own spirits as well.