The Preacher as Last Comic Standing?

July 1, 2010 By Alyce McKenzie 10 Comments

by Alyce McKenzie

Preachers hear lots of feedback after they preach.

“You could be a hypnotist; you have such a soothing voice.” (Is this really a good thing?)

“I like your new robe.” (If you can’t say anything good about the sermon, mention the robe)

“I couldn’t hear a word you said” (This is why we should have had the sound system replaced and not just “repaired” by a church member’s uncle’s son-in- law)

Another comment often heard by preachers is “You could be a stand-up comedian.”

What is the appropriate response to such a comment?

“Thank you, I think.” (Sounds insulting to the compliment giver)

“Not if my family wants to continue eating on a regular basis,” sounds like false modesty. (or maybe just realism)

“Thanks be to God!” sounds blasphemous.

I am a fan of the show Last Comic Standing.  I wouldn’t stand up in a pulpit and recommend to parents that they have their children watch it, because it is, of course, often profane and vulgar. But for me, stand-up comedy is a fascinating genre – both because of its delivery and its content. Preachers can learn some positive lessons, as well as some cautionary tales, from stand- up comedians.

Ways Preaching and Stand-up Comedy are Alike:

Both involve a strong sense of vocation willing to ignore sensible advice from others that maybe something else would be a more prudent pursuit (more lucrative, less stressful, etc.) We’re familiar with what people give up to pursue a preaching ministry. We may not be as familiar with the jobs, time and normal lives people give up to pursue the vocation of comedy.

Both preaching and stand-up comedy involve the reality of careful preparation and the appearance of spontaneity.

A comedian who forgets her next joke and pulls her iPhone or (God forbid, an index card) out of her pocket to look it up is dead on the stage.  It’s not so bad when you’re a preacher. You can consult the old school index card stuck in your Bible and continue your train of thought without the whole room getting off at the next stop. But for both comedians and preachers, it takes a tremendous amount of work to make one’s delivery look effortless.

This is why, when I’m the guest preacher for a week and preach every morning at 8:30 am, I can’t stay out till midnight eating pie (though, believe me, I would love to) or meet a conference attendee for an early breakfast. I’m internalizing my message and need alone time.  Content is not enough. Delivery is integral to the message.  Careful preparation maximizes the artist’s ability to connect with those to whom she or he is speaking.

Comedians and preachers both need to manage their insecurities and ego needs, or their addiction to affirmation will assassinate their art.

Both can get that needy light in their eyes like an American Idol contestant waiting to hear from Simon Cowell. It’s the look that says, “My whole life has been a lead-in to your opinion of me and my whole future rests upon your opinion of me. Please, oh, dear God, please, think I’m as wonderful as I’m afraid I’m not.”

Comedians who show their neediness are “trying too hard.” The secret to being funny is, of course, good material that connects with the experience of your particular audience. The deeper secrets are confidence and timing. By confidence, I mean not just the appearance of indifference to whether or not people laugh, but the real indifference to whether or not people laugh. If they don’t laugh, they are comedically challenged. You’re not. You continue to love them, but with a tinge of pity.  Under no circumstances do you doubt the essential ridiculousness of life, of which their not laughing at your carefully crafted remark is just another example.  Under no circumstances do you doubt your role as the reliable purveyor of the gift of comedy to them. Hold your head high as your witticism hangs like expelled gas in the air of the sanctuary.  The comedian who stands on the stage with the needy glint in his eye is on the verge of a slow and painful death in front of others. The preacher who preaches with that needy glint in his or her eyes, heads to the back, ostensibly to shake hands and greet worshipers, but actually to beg for biscuits like a pathetic little dog.

In both comedy and preaching, humor is a gift that potentially has healing properties. In the case of preaching there is heightened danger that it could also have hurtful properties.

Both preaching and stand-up comedy rely on what I call the “knack for noticing,” the habit of close attention to inward life and life around us. In stand-up comedy, the comedian derives her material from being on the lookout for the absurd and the ridiculous in life within and around her and then hyperbolizing it to the breaking point.

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A Trinity-Shaped Life

May 26, 2010 By Alyce McKenzie 283 Comments

A Trinity-Shaped Life: A Meditation for Trinity Sunday
Trinity Sunday, May 30, 2010

I wonder if, on Trinity Sunday, many people feel like the sermon is answering a question they aren’t asking. (What does the Trinity have to do with my daily life?) And many preachers may think to themselves, “Here is another occasion when my job is to try to convince people that an abstract concept they never give much thought to is foundational to their lives.”

The Trinity is “the centerpiece of Christian theology and sometimes considered the most subtle and abstruse of all doctrines.” (Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology, 45)

It’s the subtle and abstruse part that is the problem. All that detail about homoousious and hypostases and who proceeded from whom. The preacher can take a couple of different tacks. She can exhaustively explain the history and nuances of the doctrine of the Trinity, going into details about person and substance and procession until listeners are blurry eyed and eager for escape. Or she can opt for the overly simplistic approach and say “It’s a mystery. Just remember the number three. That’s all you really need to know for the test.”

A better approach is to paint the broad brushstrokes of the doctrine and ask, what’s at stake? So what? What’s at stake in claiming that there are three persons and one essence, not just God being called different things at different times? What’s at stake in claiming that there is one God, not three? What’s at stake in insisting that Jesus is of one substance with the Father and not just a really good guy who got a promotion?

Another way of asking this is to say: What kind of life does the Trinity shape? To jumpstart some homiletical reflection, I’m going to start with one theologian’s response to that question. I’ll follow that with what I call a “theological tune-up,” on the Trinity, a reminder of some details we once knew and probably still sort of remember… I’ll follow that with a few reflections on the lectionary texts for Trinity Sunday.

What kind of life does the Trinity shape?

Personal and Participatory
Eugene Peterson, in his book Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places: A Conversation in Spiritual Theology (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co, 2005) reminds us that “our Greek theological ancestors used the term perichoresis to describe the Trinity.” Perichoresis is the Greek word for dance. Peterson asks us to imagine a folk dance with three partners in each set. The music starts up and the partners holding hands begin moving in a circle. On signal from the caller, they release hands, change partners, and weave in and out, swinging first one and then another. The tempo increases, the partners move more swiftly with and between and among one another, swinging and twirling, embracing and releasing, holding on and letting go. There is no confusion, every movement is cleanly coordinated in precise rhythms, as each person maintains his or her own identity. To the onlooker the movements are so swift it is impossible at times to distinguish one person from another; the steps are so intricate that it is difficult to anticipate the actual configurations as they appear: Perichoresis (peri=around; choresis=dance)(45). Peterson concludes that this metaphor for the Trinity, a subtle and abstruse doctrine, can be observed by anyone in an American neighborhood barn dance or an Irish ceilidh.

“We are baptized in the name of the Trinity. Our Christian lives are an immersion in the triune God, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We are shaped by this triune life. “We are now participants in the company of the God who creates heaven and earth, who enters history and establishes salvation as its definitive action and who forms a community to worship and give witness to his words and work” (303).

What kind of life does the Trinity shape? Lives that are a personal response to a personal God that results in participation in community. It does make a difference that God is three persons and one substance. It means we can only know God by personal response that is a participation in the activity of our Triune God in community.

A personal response to a personal God: “God is nothing if not personal” (45) and can only be known by personal response. We cannot know God through impersonal abstractions or in solitary isolation (46). “The only way God reveals himself (sic) is personally. Never impersonally as a force or an influence, never abstractly as an idea or truth or principle” (304).

A participation in the Triune community of God: We cannot live as spectators of the dance of the Trinity.” A hand reaches out to pull us into the Trinitarian actions of holy creation, holy salvation and holy community…” (46) “There are no nonparticipants in a Trinity-revealed life… God is never a nonparticipant in what he does. He does not separate himself from his community by ranks of angel-secretaries through whom we have to arrange an audience.” (305)

We began by wondering if there was any relevance to our everyday lives in this abstract doctrine called the Trinity. It turns out the Trinity is a personal, participatory reality that threatens to bring God a little too close for comfort.

Theological Tune-Up
The belief in the Trinity is the theological cornerstone of Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy and traditions that have arisen from the Protestant Reformation. Among those rejecting the notion of the Trinity are Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and Unitarians. The doctrine of the Trinity was articulated in response to the beliefs of Arius in the 4th century who insisted that the Son was a created being and did not share the full divinity of the Father. Worked out at the Council of Nicea in 325, what has come to be known as the doctrine of the Trinity affirmed that God is three persons (hypostases) but one substance (or essence) (homoousion). God does not simply take different forms. Nor are there 3 Gods. There is one God in three persons. They are equal in power, eternity and wisdom.

In describing Jesus, the Nicene Creed says, “And we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father (the only-begotten; that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God), Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.” In the late sixth century (587), the Latin-speaking churches of Western Europe added the words “and the Son” (Filioque) to the description of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Eastern Churches have historically disagreed with that addition.

Some notes from the classic work A Manual of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof, 1933. God is one in His essential being, but in this one being there are three persons, called, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. These three persons are modes or forms in which the divine essence exists. The real mystery of the Trinity consists in this: that the three persons are one in their essential being. The divine essence is not divided into thirds. It is wholly present in each of the three persons. The persons are not subordinate to one another in their essential being.

The doctrine of the Trinity is not explicitly articulated in Scripture. But hints of all three occur in the O.T. For example, in Genesis 1:26 and 11:7 God speaks of himself in the plural. The angel of Jehovah is represented as a divine person (Gen 16:7-13; 18:1-21; 19:1-22) and the Spirit is spoken of as a distinct person in Isaiah 48:16 and 63:10. See Isaiah 42:16, 61:1, and 63:9, 10 for passages in which 3 persons are indicated. In the New Testament there are several passages in which the three person are expressly mentioned, as in connection with the baptism of Jesus (Luke 3:21-22), in the farewell discourses of Jesus (John 14-16), in the great commission (Matt 28:19), in the apostolic blessing (2 Cor 13:13), and in such passages as Luke 1:35, 1 Cor 12:4-6 and 1 Peter 1:2. (A Manual of Christian Doctrine, Louis Berkhof , 76-77)

The Distinctive Property of the Father
The Father generates the Son from all eternity.

The Distinctive Properties of the Son
1. His eternal generation; By means of this generation the Father does not call the essential nature of the Son into being, but becomes the cause of the personal subsistence of the Son, a second mode of existence, within the divine being. This generation of the Son should not be regarded as an act completed in the past, but as a necessary and eternal act of the Father. It is timeless, always continuing, and yet ever complete.
2. His divinity
3. His works – All things are out of the Father, but they are through the Son. The Father is the final cause of both creation and redemption. The Son is the mediating cause. All things are created and maintained through the Son. He is the light which lighteth every man (sic) coming into the world. The work of redemption is carried out by the Son in His incarnation, sufferings and death (Eph 1:3-14) (Berkhof, 79-80)

The Holy Spirit
The Holy Spirit is not just the influence of God or some abstract principle. The Spirit is designated as a person with personal attributes such as intelligence (John 14:26; 15:26; Rom 8:16), affections (Isa 63:10, Eph 4:30), and will (Acts 16:7; 1 Cor 12:11). The Spirit speaks, searches, testifies, commands, reveals, strives, and intercedes. (Gen 1:2; 6:3; Luke 12:12; Jn 14:26; 15:26; 16:8; Acts 8:29; 13:2; Ro 8:11; 1 Cor 2:10, 11).
The Spirit’s special task is to bring the work of God to completion both in creation and redemption. The Spirit inspires and qualifies people for special tasks in the O.T. (Ex 28:3; 31:2, 3, 6; 35:35; 1 Sam 11:6; 16:13, 14. In the N.T. the Spirit prepares and qualifies Christ for his redemptive work (Luke 1:35; 3:22). The Spirit inspires Scripture (1 Cor 2:13, 2 Peter 1:21), forms and augments the Church, and dwells in it as the principle of a new life (Eph 1:22, 23; 2:22; 1 Cor 3:16; 12:4ff). The Spirit teaches and guides the Church, leading it in all truth (John 14:26; 15:26; 16:13, 14; Acts 5:32; Heb 10:15; 1 John 2:27)… (Berkhof, 82)

The Father’s role is to create the world and generate the Son from all eternity (which is a continuous process) The Generator

The Son’s role is to be the one through whom all things come into being and to bring about the work of redemption through his incarnation, sufferings and death. The Redeemer

The Holy Spirit’s role is to inspire men and women for special tasks, to equip Jesus for his task, to inspire scripture, to unify and direct the church. The Spirit’s role is to bring the work of God to completion in creation and redemption. The Completer.

Writes ethicist Gabriel Fackre “The unique source of the unique Christian story is the one tri-personal God. Father, Son and Holy Spirit are Persons that indwell one another in such a manner that “They” are, in fact, a “Thou.” While other religions may profess that God is loving, the Scriptures of this faith declare God is Love, the triune Life Together. (Christology in Context: The Christian Story: A Pastoral Systematics, Grand Rapids, Michigan: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2006, 241).

Connection with Lectionary Texts for May 30, 2010
Romans 5:1-5 The “grace cycle,” in which suffering leads to endurance, which leads to character, which leads to hope because God’s love has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit which has been given to us.

John 16:12-15 Jesus promises the “Spirit of truth” who will lead us into all truth.

Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Woman Wisdom, a female metaphor for an aspect of God’s character, recounts her participation with God in Creation.
The theme of the Triune God as calling for a personal, participatory response certainly gleams through these texts in which, in one place and another, all three persons of the Trinity join in the dance.

What follows is a brief reflection on Woman Wisdom from Proverbs 8. She might be said to be an aspect of the character and work of all three persons of the Trinity. She deserves a whole sermon series of her own, but this short treatment will have to suffice for now.

Woman Wisdom, as a personification of God’s guidance of the community, arose in the tumultuous postexilic period when traditionally male bastions of authority had crumbled (king and court, priest and temple). The authority of parents, including mothers, in the home was more important than ever. The figure of personified Wisdom remained an important symbol as Judaism developed in the Hellenistic world, focusing on her Greek name, Sophia. Both Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon developed her portrait as acting at God’s command, ordering the cosmos and revealing God to Israel. Philo of Alexandria used Wisdom and Logos interchangeable as symbols of the working of God in the world, but insisting that the male Logos was superior to the female Wisdom, thus preparing the way for the substitution of Logos for Wisdom we find in the Prologue to the Gospel of John.

Paul, in 1 Corinthians, attributes to Christ the cosmological role in creation that had been held by Wisdom (1 Cor 8:6). He proclaims Christ crucified as “the power of God and the wisdom (Sophia) of God” (1 Cor 1:24) Most early church writers identified Wisdom with the Logos, and with the divine in Jesus Christ. Others, like Irenaeus of Lyons, identified her with the third person of the Trinity. The affirmation of Sophia of Proverbs 8:22-31 as fully divine and consubstantial with the Father was crucial for Athanasius’ claim that Jesus was begotten by God and not a creature who had a beginning in time. (Alyce M. McKenzie, Preaching Proverbs: Wisdom for the Pulpit, Westminster JohnKnox Press, 1996, 71-72)

In Proverbs 8, Wisdom’s teaching are said to yield reward more precious than worldly wealth (8:19-21). In verse 22 Woman Wisdom weights her words with the authority of her relationship with Yahweh. She asserts that she was created before anything else and points to this as a mark of the highest honor. She was with Yahweh, beside him, during the creation.

The word translated “master worker” (amon) may refer to a “crafts (wo)man” assisting in the work of creation or it could connote a child playing. Woman Wisdom is a heavenly being who wishes to form a relationship with disciples modeled on her relationship with Yahweh. She was daily his delight and she rejoices (plays) before God and the created world. She delights in the human race. She brings these joyous verses to a close by affirming her role as the one who summons human beings to blessedness and happiness (8:32-34) (Alyce M. McKenzie, Preaching Biblical Wisdom in a Self Help Society, Abingdon Press, 2004, 114)

Here we can’t help but think to ourselves: She reminds me of someone….

It is no coincidence that Jesus himself may well have viewed himself as an envoy of Wisdom (Luke 7:33-35; Matt 11:18-19).

In Proverbs, Woman Wisdom actively seeks out followers, standing at the city gates. She speaks to everyone, not just the simple. Her teachings are trustworthy and lead to great benefit. This trustworthiness is grounded in her relationship with Yahweh. She loves God, God’s creation and human beings. This is no pale, static love, but an active delight, a playful, sportive love. Wisdom seeks us out because she loves us. And she seeks us out because she loves God. There is some mysterious delight to the life of Wisdom that involves the love of God, humankind and Wisdom in a kind of circle dance. (115)

by Alyce M. McKenzie, Professor of Homiletics, Perkins School of Theology, Dallas, TX.  Visit Alyce McKenzie’s Website

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Pentecost Meditation: “The Inside Story”

May 17, 2010 By Alyce McKenzie 9 Comments

Pentecost Meditation — “Pentecost: The ‘Inside Story’”
2 Corinthians 3:12-18
May 23, 2010

We’re all familiar with the dramatic story of Pentecost recounted in Acts 2:2-12, complete with a rush of wind and tongues of fire. That’s a story we can imagine viewing from the sidelines, as spectators. This Pentecost I’m going to focus on the “inside story,” of Pentecost. My question is “what is the Pentecost that is going on in each of our inner lives that finds expression in our communal lives?

A few years ago I was in Sydney, Australia at a meeting of the World Methodist Council. I was appointed to a subcommittee to talk about theological education. There were about 12 of us, Methodists from different countries. Our task was to come up a list of common learning goals for pastors around the world based on our Wesleyan heritage.

Somebody said, “Well, it all boils down to Grace.” Someone else asked, “I hear people talk about Grace all the time. And I know from the hymn that it is Amazing. But what is it, anyway?” There was the kind of embarrassed silence you get when a question comes up that is so fundamental that no one has thought about it, or at least not lately. Then Richard Heitzenrader, Wesley scholar from The Divinity School of Duke University cleared his throat and said, “I’ve always defined it this way: Grace is what God, by the Presence and Power of the Holy Spirit, is doing in your inner life.”
Then the rest of us looked at each other like, “Well yeah, that’s what we were all about to say.”

One way to look at the purpose of preaching is that it is inviting people into a story with a better preface and a better ending than the stories we are each writing of our own lives. These days, many people don’t know the basics of the story of salvation. So a Pentecost meditation that takes the form of an invitation into an existing, saving story, seems like a good idea to me. It’s an invitation to a story that is superior to the small, smothering stories each of us is writing of our own lives in several respects.

The “inside story” of Pentecost is a story in progress.

It’s in progress right now in your inner life. Paul tells us to “turn to the Lord and the veil will be removed.” Direct your attention toward what God is doing in your inner life; behold the “inside story” capable of transforming your outside story.

If you came late to a play. The usher wouldn’t rush out and grab you and drag you up to the front, saying, “Where have you been? The actors and the musicians are waiting. The audience members have paid their money and they’re getting restless. No one can do anything without you. Get in here and write the play. And while you’re at it, write the score to the orchestral accompaniment, and sew those costumes!

No, the usher will escort you into the darkened theater where the play is in progress and show you to your seat with his mini flashlight. Because the “inside story” is a story in progress! It’s what God by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit is doing in your innermost life already. That’s why Paul in verse 18 uses the present tense “we are being transformed.” Not past. not future. Now.

On Sunday when we preachers stand in the pulpit, we are expected to “bring it.” Especially on important days like Pentecost. And the other six days of the week in ministry, we are expected to make things happen. And we do try our best to, as Oswald Chambers named his famous devotional work, give “our utmost for God’s highest.”

But the other side of the truth is that we don’t have to get in the pulpit this Sunday and make anything happen. Our calling is to point people toward what God, by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, is already making happen. When we walk down the long, antiseptic hallway and enter that hospital room we aren’t bringing the Grace of God to the people inside. It is already there. We are helping people to recognize the Spirit’s presence deep within their lives. We preachers are not charged with the responsibility to raise Jesus from the dead, save humankind from their sins, and energize their sanctification. We don’t have to write the musical score and sew the costumes, while writing the story. We are just to invite people into it.

The catch is that we need to stay in touch with what the Spirit is doing in our inward lives before we can guide others in discerning that gracious activity at the depths of their lives.

The “inside story” of Pentecost is a story with a more reliable Protagonist than the stories we’re writing in which we are the hero or heroine.
The “inside story” is a story with a more reliable Protagonist than the story we’re writing with ourselves at the center. The Protagonist of this sacred story is God. “Such is the confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God (2 Cor 3:4) It is by God’s mercy that you are engaged in this ministry (2 Cor 4:1); We have this treasure in clay jars so it may be clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and doesn’t come from us” (2 Cor 5:7). The Protagonist of the “inside story” of Pentecost is God.

I know a pastor in Pennsylvania whose name is Iva. Iva was in her mid thirties working as an office manager when the call to ministry took her by surprise. When she got her first church, she was fine with program planning, working with volunteers, even leading small groups. But preaching scared her to death. The whole idea of getting up and saying something that was from God that could change lives?? She hadn’t planned on doing that! She would be so nervous all week she could hardly function. She’d get up on Sunday and look out over the congregation. Everybody sitting in their section, like season ticket holders. The mature ladies Sunday School class section, the rowdy teenagers section, the young parents with children section. Iva thought of them as “the Crayola section,” because the kids all spent the worship hour drawing pictures on their children’s church bulletins. They would draw the soloist Mrs. Apgar’s beehive hairdo, the dove on the banner over the altar, whatever they saw they drew.
Iva was so nervous about preaching that she resorted to prayer. Everyday for 20 minutes she would do creative visualization prayer. She would picture herself preaching and Jesus standing next to her with his arm around her shoulder. Every day. She told me, “Alyce, it wasn’t a magic cure, but each week, preaching got a little more bearable and a little more bearable, degree by degree. Then one day it actually seemed kind of fun for a few seconds. I was making progress.”

One Sunday as I stood at the back of the church, a young mom came up with her daughter, Ashley. I knew Ashley. She was 7 and she was shy. Her mom said, “Pastor Iva, Ashley has something to show you.” Iva knelt to be at eye level and Ashley held out her chidlren’s bulletin. She said, softly, “Look at what I drew today. Here is you, Pastor Iva. And guess who this is.”

The “inside story” of Pentecost is a story in progress. It has a more reliable protagonist than our story.

The “inside story” of Pentecost has a better plot, featuring a much better ending than the one we are currently writing for ourselves.
It also has a better plot: the gradual transformation of the believer to conform to the character of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Paul uses the word metamorpheo (same word used to describe Jesus’ being transfigured by God’s presence on the Mountain).

What are your plans for this evening? I think I’ll try being transformed from one degree of glory closer to the image of Christ. What are your plans for this next week? I think I’ll try inviting my congregation into the “inside story” of Pentecost, a story in progress, with a reliable protagonist and a hopeful plot:

So that, “with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of God as though reflected in a mirror we can all be transformed into God’s image from one degree of glory to another.”

From fear to confidence
From old creation to new creation
From self-centered story to God-centered story
What a gift to have this story going on in our lives right now! What a joy to be the ones who get to invite others into the story!

Alyce M. McKenzie is Professor of Homiletics at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. She is the author of several books for both clergy and lay audiences and a frequently featured speaker at workshops and conferences. Her small group studies for laypeople include The Parables for Today (Westminster John Knox Press, 2007) and Matthew: The Interpretation Study Bible Series (WJKP 1998) Her most recent book for preachers is Novel Preaching: Tips from Top Writers on Crafting Creative Sermons, WJKP, 2010).

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