Sunday All the Time

 Introduction to Just Tell the Truth

The chapters in this collection originated in several ways. Most were sermons preached in churches or chapels, the names of which I remember with pleasure and list at the end of this introduction. The sermons were accompanied by singing and prayers and in most cases followed by the movement of people toward the altar for communion. In other words, most of the messages in this collection were not isolated from the assembly of worshipers, the responses of attentive listeners, and the fidgeting and fussing of children. A few of the sermons I reformatted as essays for publication in books and journals. Others began as meditations—briefer, less developed commentary for smaller groups. Still others began as essays, then were reconceived as sermons and found their way into the oral-aural milieu of churches. For more than three decades my home base has been a divinity school and therefore a few of the sermons have a student and faculty congregation in mind. The only criteria I observed in selecting any and all of them was their echoing relevance to the Christian gospel and their usefulness to a new reading audience.

The sermons come with memories of the ministry from which they emerged and of the people in the pews (or on folding chairs) who with great patience did the hard work of engaging with the spoken word of God. Implicit in each chapter are the stories of confessions and conflicts, friendships and everyday love—most of them necessarily untold—because it’s impossible to fit the hidden dramas of an entire congregation into a twenty-minute talk.  

Some years ago the literary critic John Ciardi wrote an influential book called How Does a Poem Mean? It may be time to ask, ‘How does a sermon mean?’ Especially sermons that are now cut loose from their original environment. The word sermon means conversation, but in their new form the conversation changes and they become quieter and more reflective.

The chapters of this book draw on three fields of meaning. 

The first belongs to the preacher or author who in the process of interpretation has developed an insight into the meaning of the text and a plan for getting it across. What do I think is most important about this text or occasion? In what ways will the message reflect the theme, mood, and style of its source in scripture? How shall I translate the grace of God into grace-filled speech for others?  

The second field of meaning (or maybe the first) belongs to the hearer. A hearer or a reader harbors certain expectations—a need, a hope, a question, a way of looking at things—that he or she brings to the message. You might think of the sermon as a picnic to which the preacher brings the basket and the listener brings the sandwiches. When the need is great enough, we may even say that the listener “makes” the sermon. If that’s true, and, without overstating the case I think it is, there will be a lot of sermons bouncing off the walls in one church service! 

In between the speaker’s meaning and the listener’s experience lies a vast and complex field that for lack of a more original term we may call the context of the message. It is social, political, communal, and cultural. It is “the way things are” at any given moment. No one communicates from some airless, context-free environment, because there is no such thing, and we should never pretend there is.  Those who try to preach (or write) in a timeless manner are doomed. This middle-field provides a sort of frame both for the speaker’s message and the hearer’s understanding. 

“Only connect,” E.M. Forester said about writing. Sorting through the fields of meaning may be the most difficult thing about preaching or writing. The hermeneutical gyroscope is always spinning—in a hospital, watching a ball game, bedtime reading, at lunch with friends—the work never lets you alone. As the fictional preacher John Ames says in Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, “When you do this sort of work, it seems to be Sunday all the time, or Saturday night. You just finish preparing for one week and it’s already the next week.” 

In selecting these messages, two contexts stood out to me. The first is political and cultural. I’m referring to the growing disregard for any standard of truth that permeates our social discourse. The climate of falsity is everywhere both in politics and media: language without rules, which is like baseball without an umpire. A few years ago Webster’s chose “post-truth” as its new word of the year. The dribble of misinformation we have learned to tolerate has morphed into something like a raging virus that corrupts everyone and everything it touches. It breeds cynicism and distrust at all levels. Even if you don’t believe the lies, it’s hard not to be exhausted and depressed by them.  One hundred years ago William Butler Yeats wrote the poem of the twentieth century, “The Second Coming.” He could have been describing the empty talk of our age: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst/ Are full of passionate intensity.” That sentence alone is enough to place Yeats among the prophets.

The title of this book, Just Tell the Truth, does not refer to politics, science, history, or media. Of course, politicians, scientists, historians, and pundits must tell the truth according to the standards of their respective professions. And so must Christians. For us, telling the truth begins with an accurate and passionate account of what the Book of Acts calls “the facts about Jesus”—who he is, what he did, what he demands, and the sort of people he empowers us to be. I can’t think of a more modest proposal than the one I am making: that Christians of all parties and in all walks of life simply tell the truth about what it really means to be a follower of the Way.  

The second field of meaning came late, as I was in the final stages of preparing the manuscript. COVID-19 created a universal field of suffering and anxiety to such an extent that it was impossible to think or write about anything else. As I write, it is everyone’s context. While some are hunkered down and learning to appreciate the simpler existence that COVID requires, others are being ruined by it, many losing their livelihoods, others their very lives. 

Several of the late sermons in this volume reflect the terrible context of the novel coronavirus and the new meaning it has imposed on our collective existence. One chapter, in particular, a meditation for Holy Saturday, addresses the pandemic directly. Preparing a manuscript a full year in advance of its publication, in a time when the death toll in some cities is doubling every three days, is nothing short of an act of faith on the part of my publisher and my editor. For me personally, writing in a time of plague makes of this book a prayer. “Save your people and bless your inheritance; be their shepherd and carry them forever.” Unavoidably, I now read the section “Waiting in Hope” through a very different lens. I believe you will too. 

I am grateful to two former students and now colleagues in ministry, Dr. Jennifer Copeland and Rev. Andrew Jacob Tucker, who, several years apart, offered to sift through and edit decades-worth of my sermons. Though flattered by their offers, I stalled, knowing that the necessary editing couldn’t be done by anyone but me and would never repay the tremendous effort they were willing to give. So, impulsively, I plowed through them myself and became my own editor, arranger, and worst critic. But it’s doubtful I would have done any of it were it not for their suggestions and enthusiasm.

Scriptural quotations in this book are not limited to one translation of the Bible. More often than not, I follow the New Revised Standard Version, but in some of the sermons I draw instinctively from translations that are more beautiful, more accurate, or more precious to me, usually taken from the Revised Standard Version or the King James Version of the Bible. 

With gratitude to the following congregations in which these sermons were preached: 

Prince of Peace Lutheran Church, Virginia Beach, Virginia
Duke University Chapel, Durham, North Carolina 
York Chapel, Duke Divinity School
Goodson Chapel, Duke Divinity School
St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Durham, North Carolina
Grace Lutheran Church, Durham, North Carolina 
Memorial Church, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Second Presbyterian Church, Roanoke, Virginia 
First Presbyterian Church, Durham, North Carolina
Trinity Church, Boston, Massachusetts 
The Gathering Church, Durham, North Carolina 
Mary and Martha Lutheran Church, Durham, North Carolina
Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, Illinois
Lake Junaluska Conference and Retreat Center, Lake Junaluska, North Carolina
Montreat Conference Center, Montreat, North Carolina
First United Methodist Church, Birmingham, Michigan