Panel Discussion: "Preaching in a Time of Pandemic" with Cressman, Gunn, Jefferson, and Wells
Last week I had the honor to sit on a panel with theologian-preachers Scott Gunn, Mark Jefferson, and Sam Wells. It was hosted by Bexley-Seabury Seminary, The Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes, and the Anglican Theological Review, and moderated by Micah Jackson.
Each of the panelists approached this task differently but agreed on the fundamentals: we don’t preach a “topic” or “an issue,” even one as overwhelming as this pandemic.
Rather, we preach Christ crucified and how Christ redeems something even as overwhelming as this pandemic.
My remarks are below; above is the recording of the full panel discussion.
Let me know how this conversation strikes you.
How do you approach our preaching task right now?
Our eldest son used to be an architect, and he was really good at it. His buildings were solid and his designs ingenious . His signature detail was open living space that hid a secret room behind the bookcases.
Rarely satisfied however, he couldn’t stop tinkering with his creations. He would remove a room carefully and slowly so as not to risk collapsing the roofline, then reattach the room—just a few feet over. On another building he would chip at and slide out a few bricks, doing his best not to instigate a Jenga-like cascade of crashing beams, just so he could replace those bricks with others of the exact shade he envisioned. Even though he kept tinkering with his creations, he loved them.
However, there was one exception.
There was one building, one of the first he built, that he couldn’t get right, and the accumulation of patches, remodels and additions had turned it into a bloated labyrinthine hodgepodge. Even though it was an unwieldy mess, he couldn’t give up on it. Even though it need to be a tear down and start over, he just couldn’t bring himself to do it—until one day the decision was made for him.
Returning home after a long day toiling in the salt mines of the second grade, he walked into his bedroom to see the family cat happily tossing and pouncing on a red Lego brick. You might imagine how upset he was to see his beloved creation shattered—with blue, green, black, yellow, and red bricks strewn across the floor from the side of his desk to the far side of the room. He wondered—even for a cat—how someone could so casually and quickly wreck what had taken him months to build?
Truth has been exposed by this pandemic, as swiftly and completely as the shattering of a Lego building casually swatted to the floor. This is a truth that we are willing to give lip service to, but none wishes to know for sure. That truth is, nothing lasts forever. Not the job security we thought we had ensured through our careful selection of career choice; not the trumpets, choir, and fragrance of lilies surrounding the altar on Easter morning; and not our carefully constructed myth of American can-do-ism.
This pandemic has exposed the truth about the buildings we have tinkered with and rearranged even when we knew the only real hope was tearing the building down and rebuilding it from the ground up. These are the buildings—or more accurately, the monuments—to inequity: inequity between white people and people of color as we see disparities in infection and survival rates; inequities in our education systems as we see who has the equipment, skills, and support suddenly to access online learning; inequities of social constructs and classism as we discover who in our society is truly essential, and find it was the grocery store baggers and gas station attendants we looked down upon all along; and inequity in social safety nets as we watch the undocumented fall with nothing to soften the blow.
There are other truths this pandemic has not yet exposed, however, truths hidden in secret rooms whose contents will only spill into the light over many years. These are the rooms hiding alcohol and drug abuse; the rooms hiding child, spouse, and elder abuse; the rooms filled with uncertainty, grief, fear, and physical hunger where emotions and desperation lash out on whomever happens to be convenient.
In addition, though, this pandemic has also exposed that individualism has its limits; people are craving contact and demonstrating their willingness to adapt to new ways to receive it. In thus the communion of saints is fulfilling its mission in innovative and probably lasting ways. The disruption that left preachers reeling just weeks ago is the very thing bringing new life to the church. Parishioners are attending Sunday services in greater numbers. People who have not been to church in years, and those who, as far as the clergy know, have never been inside a church building, are showing up in Zoom rooms, typing “Amen” on Facebook Live, and leaving comments of gratitude during streamed YouTube sermons. Online coffee hour between services has become an intimate affair as one person shares at a time, bonding the 8:00’ers with the 10:00’ers more effectively than any summer consolidated service has ever done. I even predict that any moment clergy will hear parishioners object to a switch from one online platform to another because “we’ve always done it that way.”
This pandemic has exposed us. It has exposed that our carefully constructed structures that took years, decades, even centuries to build, structures that have allowed us to take our days, jobs, educations, vacations, families, privilege, and worship for granted, were unthinkably fragile. So fragile, in fact, they have been unfeelingly burst apart in a matter of months by a scrap of protein about one-tenth the width of the torn edge of a piece of toilet paper. This virus has exposed our worst, most selfish tendencies to sacrifice the expendable poor to keep our economy afloat, with our greatest capacities to be infected by the Holy Spirit’s kindness, creativity, and willingness for self-sacrifice.
We preach into this extreme vulnerability of our exposure. We must preach about our grief—both for the good that’s lost and for the ugliness that has been revealed. We must preach our lament, confession, and amendment of life. Our sermons must hold up to the light of Christ and for examination by the faithful, one strewn brick at a time, holding up that which needs to be redeemed and that which has been astonishingly blessed. And now that the structures have been torn down for us, we must preach this once-in-a-millennia chance to build the reign of God that actually reflects holy parity, dignity, and community.
MENTORSHIP 2020-2021:
Applications Open June 1
Discover why 100% of participants recommend the Mentorship to other preachers.
“The program has completely transformed my experience of preaching. I don’t spend that much time during the week preparing—it’s about an hour a day. And that is also an hour of my own spiritual formation, so that by the end of the week I’m not resentful but I’m very much loving the word and feeling much closer to the message that I’m preaching…I feel like I’m more consistent, like I understand what makes a good sermon, and [it] very much has made me a more confident and more relaxed preacher.”
—Shay Craig, 2019-2020 Mentorship participant