Every preacher has lived through the week when the sermon seems to write itself — which, of course, is always a lie. It never writes itself. What actually happens is that one sits down with noble intent and a full mug of coffee, opens a blank document, and watches in quiet despair as the cursor blinks — mockingly — for forty-five minutes.
Then, suddenly, something happens. An idea appears, like manna from heaven or a rogue pigeon through an open window. A verse leaps from the lectionary; a story springs to mind; the first paragraph seems to flow. You feel as though you’ve been divinely inspired, or at least moderately caffeinated.
But beware, dear reader, of the sermon that “writes itself.” It is the homiletic equivalent of a runaway horse. It starts out beautifully — wind in your hair, theological insight shimmering in the morning sun — and before long you are galloping toward a fence you didn’t see coming, clutching the reins and shouting, “Lord, make it stop!”
In my experience, these sermons tend to begin with the lofty sweep of Genesis — perhaps with a cool Old Testament story like the one of Baalam’s jackass giving him a better prophetic message that Baalam himself seemed able to deliver — and end somewhere in Revelation — having, along the way, taken unauthorized detours through Romans, a passing reference to the church roof fund, and one touching but irrelevant story about my Aunt Mabel’s cat. The Holy Spirit, I suspect, enjoys a good chuckle during these creative outbursts.
The trouble with the “self-writing sermon” is that it rarely listens to its own advice. It tells the congregation to slow down and rest in God’s timing, while I’ve been typing furiously at 11:47 p.m., eating dry cereal from the box, and muttering, “Just one more paragraph, Lord.”
And yet, sometimes, in spite of all the chaos, God still uses the sermon that galloped off without permission. Someone will say afterward, “That really spoke to me,” and I’ll smile graciously while inwardly thinking, Which part? The one about Aunt Mabel, or the story of Baalam’s talking jackass?
Here’s the quiet truth: the best sermons — the ones that reach beyond words — are never truly ours. Whether they arrive in tidy drafts or in holy disarray, they are vessels for something greater. God has this uncanny habit of slipping grace through our most tangled sentences, our roughest outlines, our most desperate Saturday night desperate efforts.
So the next time a sermon “writes itself,” I’ll try to remember to hold on loosely. To laugh a little. To thank God for the mystery that makes sense only after the pastoral blessing.
After all, if grace can work through a donkey in the Old Testament, surely it can work through a sermon that refuses to stay on topic