A Sermon About Sermons
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A SERMON ABOUT SERMONS
The Rev. J. Donald Waring
Grace Church in New York
The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
January 26, 2025
Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen.” (Nehemiah 8:6)
The title of the sermon that follows is this: “A Sermon About Sermons.” One of the most memorable sermons I’ve ever heard was preached from this very pulpit on October 10, 2004. I was the brand-new Rector of Grace Church at the time, and not the preacher that day, so don’t think I am about to toot my own horn. The preacher was the Rt. Rev. E. Don Taylor, one of the Assistant Bishops of the diocese who was here for Confirmation. Bishop Taylor was a saintly man with a big heart. He had a warm sense of humor and a quick wit. At an earlier time in his life he had been a radio announcer, so he knew has to apply his voice toward pulpit eloquence. It was pleasing to hear him. Also, he had many stories to tell. Double underscore the word many.
In the congregation that day was a young couple named Melanie and Mike. Melanie was a sponsor of a Confirmation candidate, so Mike had charge of their five-month old baby girl during the service. Soon into Bishop Taylor’s sermon, the baby did what babies are inclined to do: she blew her diaper. It was a terrible mess. Mike had to retreat to the reception room to make the change. One problem: he discovered he had no spare diaper. Mike reasoned that since they lived only a few blocks away, he could dash home, change the diaper and the baby’s outfit, and be back in time for coffee hour. Maybe even Communion. Off to the races he went.
When Mike returned with the baby about thirty minutes later, he saw that he had not missed coffee hour. He had not missed Communion. He had not even missed Confirmation. Bishop Taylor was still holding forth in the pulpit, telling one story after another. Honestly, he could have said “Amen” after any one of them, but he did not. I heard the whole thing, and all I can tell you today is that the sermon was about two things. It was about God, and it was about forty-five minutes. It was memorable not for its content, but its duration. Among a select few, it became known affectionately as “The Two Diaper Sermon.”
The second sermon to consider today is the one we heard about in the Old Testament reading from Nehemiah. The preacher was Ezra the priest. The date was the first day of the seventh month – the month of the autumn harvest festival. The year was approximately 440 BC. The Jews had recently returned to Jerusalem. Their long ordeal in Babylonian exile had ended. They were home. Their first task would be to rebuild the walls around the city, and then the Temple in the midst of it. In the Book of Nehemiah, we read how the renewal of life in Jerusalem inspired the Jews to renew their covenant relationship with the living God. It was time to give thanks to the Lord who, centuries before had brought them out of their bondage in Egypt, and now home from their exile in Babylon. So the people gathered in the city square before the Water Gate. Ezra the priest stood on a makeshift wooden platform that they had put up for the occasion. All eyes were upon Ezra, including the governor, Nehemiah. What did Ezra say? Did he speak truth to power? Did religion and politics clash in the moment? Apparently not. Ezra and Nehemiah were on the same page concerning the renewal of Israel. So Ezra opened the Law of Moses. He began reading and interpreting in the early morning and continued until midday – about six hours in all.
At one point in the sermon the people lifted up their hands and cried “Amen, Amen.” Without exception Biblical commentators find great reverence in how the people reacted to Ezra’s sermon. Indeed, they conclude that the shouts of Amen were signs of approval, even a desire to hear more. But I wonder: could it be that the cries of “Amen, Amen” – at least among some of them – meant “Stop, Stop. Enough already. We get it.” Was Ezra deaf to the signal? Apparently so, because he kept right on going, until finally picking up on the not-so polite, non-verbal cues: all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Ezra finally pronounced the Amen by saying, Go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared. Ezra’s sermon was remarkable for its duration as much as its content. But Ezra eventually wrapped it up with a cheerful bow: Go forth into the city, he said. Live your life and be God’s faithful people. Enjoy the blessings of the land and share them with the less fortunate. Amen.
The third sermon before us today occurred nearly five-hundred years after Ezra. We’ve heard in the Gospel of Luke (4:14-21) how Jesus, on a preaching tour through Galilee, stopped in his hometown of Nazareth and went to the synagogue. It was the Sabbath, and Jesus was to be the guest preacher. He unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, and began to read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” The passage from Isaiah would have been well known to the Jews of Jesus’ day. They would have understood it as a prophecy foretelling the coming of the Messiah. The key word, “anointed,” would have rung a bell in their minds. They would have thought, “Ah, this is about the coming king God has promised us. This is about the One whom God will send to fulfill the dreams of Ezra and Nehemiah and all of us faithful Jews since those ancient times.”
When Jesus finished reading he sat down to teach, and all eyes were upon him just as they were fixed on Ezra centuries ago. What would the hometown boy say? How long would he go? He began the sermon with these words: “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” And with that he finished the sermon. It was a one-liner. Jesus served up what has to go down on record as one of the shortest sermons ever preached. Why? It’s not that he was a practitioner of today’s prevailing pulpit etiquette. The latest thinking goes that our postmodern brains have been so molded by the internet that anything beyond ten minutes will exceed the bandwidth of our attention span. Do you agree with the current trend? Apparently I don’t, since I’m told that I frequently pass the ten-minute mark twice in the same sermon. In other words, you’d best bring a spare diaper when I’m preaching – not because of content, mind you, but duration. Whether or not you agree with the new pulpit guidelines, they don’t explain the brevity of Jesus’ one-line homily. Indeed, on other occasions he went on all day, and would have given even old Ezra a run for the money.
Why then at Nazareth did Jesus speak only nine words? Actually, the case could be made that his sermon, at nine words long, was nine-times longer than it needed to be. You see, what he was doing by saying, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing,” was claiming to be the Messiah. He was declaring that he himself was the living fulfillment of all the hopes and dreams of the Jewish people. The great sermon that God was preaching to the world through the particular history of Israel was reaching its climax in Jesus. His mere presence was all that needed to be said. Jesus read the text about the Messiah, then sat down and essentially said, “Here I am.” The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. He came to his own, yet his own received him not. If you read beyond today’s Gospel, you’ll see that Jesus’ few words infuriated the people of Nazareth. I suppose that’s the risk you run when you go into a house of worship: you may hear a word from the Lord that you don’t like. But that’s another sermon for another day.
Suffice it to say, Jesus lived into his nine-word sermon by stretching out his arms upon the hard wood of the cross. There he said, “It is finished.” There he spoke the great cosmic Amen to God’s work of salvation. God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. Henceforward, all sermons would be footnotes to Jesus. Allow me to anticipate an objection. You may be thinking that if indeed Jesus were the Messiah, and through him God spoke the ultimate Amen of salvation, why then is the world in the mess that it is? It would seem that a good bit of the sermon still needs to be preached. Well, the sermon does still need to be preached. Far too much of the world has not heard or has failed to believe that the victory of life is won. What God requires, then, from those who call themselves people of faith is justice, kindness, and humility. What does the Lord require of you, asked the prophet Micah (6:8)? It is to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with God. It is to be merciful. Think of it this way: your life may be the only sermon someone else ever hears.
Of course, this bring us to the fourth sermon that we need to mention today. It was just last Tuesday in the National Cathedral when the Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Rt. Rev. Mariann Budde, preached at the Inaugural Prayer Service. Since then the sermon and its ripple effects have received widespread media coverage. If you haven’t already done so, I encourage you to go online and watch it, or read it. The bishop’s words are remarkable not for their duration, but their content. In just fourteen minutes she challenged everyone listening – especially the President – to have mercy. Imagine that: have mercy. She didn’t shout. She didn’t scold. She spoke truth to power in a way that was respectful, reasonable, and reverent. She dared to preach that other sermon on that other day. Have mercy, is what she said. Be merciful to one another, as God is merciful to us. When we show mercy to one another we demonstrate trust in God. We give thanks to God. We participate in God’s ongoing work, and say Amen to all that God has done for us in Jesus.
In today’s reading from 1 Corinthians (12:12-31), we’ve heard Paul the Apostle put it this way: Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. Just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. God works in the world by merging his Spirit with our spirits. God merges his Spirit with our spirits through the Word and Sacraments, through prayer and worship, through the fellowship of the church. God merges his Spirit with our spirits and we become the Body of Christ. We become the eyes, ears, hands, and feet of Jesus connected with his great work of salvation. If Christ is the ultimate Amen, then each one of us is a significant Amen. Regardless of your calling – and a calling from God everyone has – you can be part of it. Your life can be part of the great ongoing chorus that sings Amen to the victory that God has already won. People are fond of quoting St. Francis of Assisi, who said, “Preach the gospel at all times. If necessary, use words.”
In just a few weeks we will have a guest preacher in the pulpit. The Rev. Roderick Leece is the Rector of our companion parish in London, St. George’s, Hanover Square. St. George’s most illustrious parishioner was non other than George Frideric Handel, the composer of one of the world’s greatest musical works, Messiah. Handel’s Messiah is like a long sermon set to music, pointing to Jesus. In fact, it might be the fifth sermon we call attention to today. The conclusion of it all ends with the same word that wraps up most sermons – you guessed it: Amen. Whenever church bulletins, concert programs, or album notes print out the texts of musical pieces, the final chorus of Messiah always looks a bit odd. Just one word. How long could it take? Well, the one-word chorus is nearly four minutes of unfolding, overlapping, intermingling, harmonious Amens, sung by individual sopranos, altos, tenors, and bases, who each form a section and then finally a single choir. The work is done, the prayer is said, the sermon is preached. But the Amen goes on and on.
So it is with us. The great body of God’s people in the world is like the Amen of Handel’s final chorus in Messiah. We overlap and intermingle with an ongoing choir, even angels, archangels, and all the company of heaven. We are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it. As people of Christian faith, we are the choristers singing Amen to the composition of God’s salvation in Jesus.
So let the Amen sound from God’s people again, who gladly, forever adore him. Let the Amen sound from me, too, because now that I have preached a sermon about sermons, it is time to bless the Lord, the great God, and say, “Amen, Amen.”