An Aside on the Nitty Gritty of Sermonizing

I’m asked how I write sermons week after week. Twenty years now, and counting…

Well, as Red Smith said of writing, but it works for sermonizing, “You simply sit down at the typewriter, open your veins, and bleed.”

Well, sort of…

The deal is to be as open as possible, bleed your heart, but in fact not to bleed all over the listener.

Reveal the nitty gritty, bon’t obscure the message.

If the call is to share some good news, and yes, we religious liberals have good news. Real good news. We are precious, each and every one of us. And we are bound together into a web of relationships that cannot be undone. Know this. Know yourself. Know your family. And from that place do something…

Good news indeed.

Want to share it. And share it again…

And so it needs to be grounded in our actual lived lives.

There’s the blood of it.

There’s the life of it.

There’s the nitty gritty…