One of the most important aspects of my education, in my estimation, is learning how to communicate complicated bible-speak to “real people” in an accessible way. That is why I eventually want to be a teacher and a mentor for college students. That’s what I’m trying to do with this blog to some extent. Delivering the occasional sermon, I imagine, will be part of my communicative journey as well. I haven’t delivered many sermons in my time. I did a few sermons and sermon-like moments as the Junior Class chaplain in college and in my pastoral internship at the Grantham Church. My first “real sermon” in a church setting came on this past December 31st at Pasadena Mennonite Church (PMC). The other night, the pastoral team and two interns (including myself) talked about the intern sermons over soup and bread. It was a helpful sermon conversation and I thought it might be appropriate to share some of the lessons learned along with excerpts of the sermon.

First, I should tell you what the sermon was about. For Advent, PMC was using the lectionary and I was preaching on the story of boy Jesus in the temple (Luke 2:41-52). It’s a hard story to preach on. When I read the text for myself, I usually feel like Jesus is kind of like a spoiled brat. Here are his parents looking all over the place for him and when they find him, all angst filled, Jesus seemingly blows them off: “Why were you worried? You should have known where I’d be.” So this passage, for me, has been included in those passages that I label: “Did Jesus really say that?”

It’s not a historical Jesus thing, it’s a “what would it be like to be around Jesus?” thing. I used to joke with my college roommates about how frustrating it would be to be one of Jesus’ disciples. Ask him if he wants to grab some lunch, he spouts off something about being the bread of life. But the problem here is in our cultural desire to imagine Jesus as our buddy. In my sermon, I suggested that trying to think of Jesus as our pal misses the point. The Jesus of the Gospels is challenging us as we read the text. The boy Jesus may seem like a spoiled brat (even though he doesn’t seem all that bad when compared to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas or, for that matter, my own childhood), but it is not about that. Jesus is showing that being in his “Father’s house” is the most important priority. Obedience to the divine Parent demands our first loyalty, above family. The passage is also part of a kind of genre of what I called “growing up in God” stories. And I offered that this text is about how we are all growing up in God, trying to figure out how to be dedicated and obedient to God in our own personal situations and cultural contexts.

Now for the feedback. I did get many of the generic “nice sermon” comments, which for my first time preaching in a church setting helps me realize that I didn’t just totally botch things up. But they don’t really make me feel good about the sermon; I’d like to know how the message was received. To that effect, I did hear from a few people that many families visiting the church were personally affected. Since my sermon was about our loyalty to God being more important than loyalty to our families, some parents appreciated the message, while it made some other parents squirm in their pew. I think a successful sermon makes people squirm uncomfortably . . . well, because they’re challenged personally, not because the sermon is really awful.

[ . . . continued in following post]