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2^nd Sunday after Epiphany

January 15, 2012

“Fears of a Preacher”

Psalm 139:1-6, 13-18

 

            There I stood knees wobbling – in the pulpit of Columbia Theological Seminary on a Monday night of all weird times, a little more than 30 years ago.  Standing there to speechify my senior sermon, a milestone in my seminary experience. 

            There I stood terrified before my mother and my sister who had driven from Arkansas to Georgia for the occasion. 

            There I stood trembling before my wife of seven years, a woman who had actually encouraged me to go to seminary; well, she did not discourage me – she herself trembling too that night afraid that I would embarrass myself and her with grievous grammatical errors. 

            There I stood sweating before my classmates of two plus years and the brand new students who were required to critique a certain number of these senior sermons. 

            There I stood before the wise, august faculty of the seminary – omnipotent judges and jury, pen and paper in hand, there I assumed to note every flaw in my theology, my exegesis, my delivery. 

            There I stood in that seminary chapel on October 26, 1981, it was.  For most people present that night, my senior sermon was to serve as, with any luck at all, a brief prelude to Frank Gifford, Howard Cosell, and Dandy Don Meredith on Monday night football.             

            There I stood purportedly a man of God, with hopefully at least adequate seminary training, to preach the word of God. 

            There I stood bombarded by fears.  Irrational fears raced through my mind – what if I forget how to read?  What if I suddenly start speaking in some unintelligible language?  What if I faint?  What if I lose my voice?  A whole range of irrational fears beset me.  Plus I had a good set of more realistic fears – would my Old Testament professor berate me for my biblical work on the lesson?  Would my Theology professor fail me on my theology?  Would my Preaching professor cringe at my delivery, my logic?

            There I stood, my legs shaking as I spoke words of welcome and then led the responsive Call to Worship.  My heart pounding as the small congregation sang the last verse of “Spirit of God, Descend Upon My Heart.”  But if God’s Spirit had descended on my heart at that moment, it would have been bucked off by my heart’s wild, erratic beating.  After that hymn, the bulletin read (and I checked it, oh, about a dozen times) the bulletin read it was then time for me to read my chosen Scripture lesson – the same verses we just heard from Psalm 139 – the lectionary psalm for today; probably the reason for my re-living the memories from my senior sermon; probably the reason why my heart still races every time I hear or read Psalm 139.  After reading the Scripture lesson, the bulletin recorded for all to see that I was to deliver my senior sermon with its appropriately academic title, “The Quest for a Solvable God.” 

            There I stood, embodying the fears of a preacher.  A preacher’s fears incarnate, in the flesh, that night goose flesh.

             I recall the most frightening thing of all about the night of my senior sermon – all my professors sat in the congregation; it would clearly be the most learned congregation ever to hear me preach.  They could chew me up and spit me out; in comparison to them, I was an idiot.  Years later, a veteran preacher told me that he still had dreams of finishing a sermon and his old seminary professor shouting from a hidden back pew, “Where is your good news?”  So, my fear that night of being outclassed by the seminary professors in the pews is not unique to me.  Their presence was what was most frightening to me that night.

            No, what was most frightening of all that night was that my mother and my sister who knew me all my life, and my wife who had come to know me all too well over our ten years together, were present.  What was so frightening about their presence was exactly that fact.  They knew me all too well.  My brand new robe did not cover up the fact that underneath I was still just plain ole Grady - frail, full of foibles Grady standing before them that night.  To stand before family who knew me as anything but a preacher was the most frightening thing of all that night.

            No, what was most frightening of all that night was that God was present.  God who knows me even better than my family.  God who knows me all too well – the thoughts that I have never made known to anyone; the secret desires; the cruel musings;  God knew them all; God knows me at my worst.   

            It’s a fear not limited to preachers.  I had such fears long before I was a preacher.  There are times when all of us are like Adam and Eve in the garden – attempting to hide from God.   All of us have things in our lives that we would just as soon not have known by God.  I hear that fear of God knowing us all too well in the words of Psalm 139.  Do you hear it when the psalmist sings?:

           

            You have looked deep into my heart, Lord, and you know all about me.

            You know when I am resting or when I am working,

                        And from heaven you discover my thoughts.

            You notice everything I do and everywhere I go.

            Before I even speak a word, you know what I will say.[i]

 

            For the Greta Garbo in us, for those of us who “want to be left alone,” God’s omniscience, God knowing everything about us, when we sit down and when we rise up, what we are going to say before we say, that kind of knowledge is discomforting for us; and that’s not just a fear preachers have, is it?  Most every one of us has suffered the fear of being known too well by God, haven’t we? 

             The night of my senior sermon fears almost overwhelmed me.  I feared my seminary professors would harass me for my inadequate theological, biblical, and homiletical skills.  Exposing me as an academic fraud.

            I feared that my own family would not be fooled by the robe cloaking me, and that one of them would interrupt my sermon by pointing accusingly at me and hooting, “The emperor has no clothes!  The emperor has no clothes!”  Would my mother, my sister, my wife keep their mouths shut that night and go along with the ruse that I was a plausible preacher?  I feared they would not remain silent.

            I feared that God would strike me dumb because I was presenting myself as a preacher, albeit a student preacher.  Now really, think about it for minute, me, little ole Grady Perryman, from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, a preacher!?  Has anything good come from Pine Bluff, Arkansas?  With the psalmist I cringe, O Lord, you know me completely.  You hem me in, behind and before.[ii]

            Yes, what was most frightening of all that night of my senior sermon in seminary was that God was present.  God who knows me all too well, just as Psalm 139 tells us, that was, that still is, a great fear.

             Yet, realizing that God who knows me all too well is also very comforting.  In the midst of dark nights of the soul, times from which none of us is exempt, there is nothing better, nothing better, than being known so well by Almighty God.  The person who knows us best is the one who give us our favorite flower or prepares our favorite meal.  It’s the person who knows us best who speaks the very words that can lift our spirits. Only someone, only a God who knows us so well can bring us such comfort.  Only being known so well by such a God allows us to sigh with the psalmist:  I come to the end – I am still with You.”[iii]

            This God who knows everything about us is as the psalmist says, “too wonderful for me.  So high I cannot attain it.”[iv]  This is clearly a God beyond us – whose thoughts are not our thoughts, whose ways are not our ways[v].  A God who has every right to disown us because God knows us so well. 

            Still, this God who knows us too well, who could with complete justification distance his self from us, this God has chosen instead to be Emmanuel, God with us.  In Jesus Christ God has chosen not to be God beyond us, God above us, but God with us.  God with us!  God who knows us so well that God could opt to ignore us, chooses instead to come to us and be with us.  Wiping away all our tears, erasing all our fears.  Alleuia!

 

PRAYER:

            O Lord, you have searched me and known me.  You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. . .

Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it.[vi]

            Praise be to you, O God, Emmanuel, and to your Son, our Lord, our Savior, Jesus Christ.   Amen.

 

 

 

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