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LINKS TO THE SERMONS |
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| “A Sermon for Men” One course that every seminary student is required to take is called Exegesis. The purpose of the course is, as the name implies, to teach the student how to exegete. Up until the time I entered seminary I was blissfully unaware of the fact that I needed to know how to exegete but the course was required so I took it. What it is about is the proper way to interpret scripture; sort of a scientific method for sermon preparation. The idea is to employ the exegetical method to discover what a scripture passage says, then write the sermon to convey that message to the congregation. The reason it’s important is because the temptation for preachers is to do it the other way around, to decide what it is you want to say, then go look for Bible lessons that support what you had already decided to say; it’s especially tempting since computers made it so easy to punch in a key word and the menu of proof texts fall out of cyber-space. Then you use the power to point flash those verses up on the screen while you’re preaching and the congregation thinks it is a biblically based sermon – but it’s not because you didn’t do your exegesis. I’m telling you all that because this is a sermon for men and men like to know how things work. All of us from childhood like to take things apart to see how they are built; so this is how a sermon is built – after the exegesis the sermon is constructed in three sections, introduction, body and conclusion. You tell them what you are going to tell them, then you tell them, then you tell them what you told them. Except I never do it that way. To tell the truth, sometimes I fudge on the exegeses. I tell you all that as a kind of confession because what I did today is even worse. I structured the whole sermon in such a way that I could use a joke I like. My homiletics professor is spinning in his grave – a sermon based on a joke? The problem is that our guest speaker last month told the joke. Actually he didn’t tell it very well and it was buried toward the end of a rather long and pedantic sermon; you may have all missed it. On the other hand, jokes have a longer shelf life than any other ingredient in a sermon. I once preached from the same text for four consecutive Sundays and no one noticed until the third week. You can recycle a whole sermon in a year and most won’t notice, but a joke, you have to wait at least three years and still someone will recite your punch line with you from memory. So I decided not to use the joke – oh, if you insist. Noah has been working one the ark for about 600 years and is almost finished. All that’s left is the coat of paint. But the wood is dry and it’s soaking up more paint than Noah had planned for. And, since clouds were building on the horizon, he decided, rather than going down to Home Depot for more paint, just to add some paint thinner. Then he saw that he was still going to run out so he added even more thinner. By the time he finished the paint was so thin that all the boards showed through and it looked pretty shoddy. Then the clouds parted and the voice of God was heard to say, “Noah, repaint and thin no more.” I thought our speaker from last month didn’t get a big laugh because he didn’t tell it well – but maybe not. Maybe the problem is that the play on words from which the humor derives involves words that are a bit obscure since they are not in common usage in our society. Nobody uses the words, “repent” or “sin” in everyday conversation. The only hope for their redemption is that the corporate world will pick them up like they did words like commitment, vision, mission statement, and lately even evangelist. I titled this sermon a sermon for men because I thought you would enjoy the peak into how sermons come about; men love to see how things are made. But, I must warn you that you are really not going to be comfortable with this next part, because I’m going to explain the meaning of the word, “repent.” I did my exegesis. It means to turn around and go the other way, to reverse directions. Men don’t do that. We know that from the time we are adolescents. It’s part of the coming of age ritual – passed on from father to son from generation to generation. My father never gave me the talk about the birds and bees. But, when I was thirteen he said it was time I learned to drive. As we walked to the car he spoke these words of wisdom, he said, “Son, before we get in the car there are three things you need to know.” I knew that this was a pivotal moment in my young life. He went on like a guru in a saffron robe, “Son, a real man never admits he is lost, a real man never asks for directions, and a real man never, never, doubles back. It’s a matter of maintaining the image of infallibility, of invincibility, of confident control. Someone asked Daniel Boone if he was ever lost and he said “No, but I was perturbed a couple of times.” That’s all the concession you’re ever going to get from a real man. Yet, the admonition is all through the New Testament –reverse your direction, admit you are lost and ask for help. It grinds on the very fabric of our manhood, but there it is. It’s a guy thing - like that business with Peter getting out of the boat; (see, you were wondering if I was ever going to get to the text) it wasn’t a show of faith, it was showing off. It’s a guy thing. If Jesus could do it, so could he. Robbie Knevil jumps his motorcycle over thirty trucks and other guys don’t sit back and admire the feat, they immediately begin to plot ways to get thirty-one – with a back flip. It’s a guy thing. Any accomplishment by someone else is not something to be admired and congratulated, it is a challenge. Jesus used the moment to teach Peter a lesson; sometimes you need to let someone else give you a hand up. I’ll bet the water was all the way up to Peter’s lower lip before he actually reached out to take the Lord’s extended hand. I’ll bet he considered drowning as more desirable than being embarrassed in front of his peers. Poor old Peter had to climb back in the boat, soaked from head to foot while the other disciples averted their eyes and muffled their snickers. It cost him plenty to reach out and take the hand of Jesus; it cost him everything he had ever been taught about what it means to be a real man. When I was a kid, my dad was invincible. There was no challenge he couldn’t respond too, no engine he couldn’t fix, no wrench he couldn’t pull, no load he couldn’t lift, no broken toy he couldn’t mend. He was as dependable as the Ford flat head V8 engines he loved to work on – and as one dimensional. He was a monolith. One day I came in from playing in the yard, I must have been six or seven, and through the crack in the kitchen door I saw my dad, weeping! My mother stood by the kitchen table where he sat, with her arm around his shoulder as he poured out the story. His car had broken down in Lawrence. My dad had a car breakdown and he couldn’t fix it with gum or bailing wire or what ever was at hand? He was like McIver; how could that be? He had asked some guys at a gas station for a ride. He actually admitted he needed help and asked a stranger for a hand! The guy told him to get in but when he went around to the door, the guy slammed the door and drove off laughing out the window. My dad was embarrassed, humiliated, the illusion of invincibility shattered. Just then my mother saw me looking through the crack in the door and quickly ushered me away from the scene. I was not to see my dad as vulnerable, wounded, a complete human being. It’s one of my strongest and favorite memories of my dad from my childhood. And it did not make him less a man in my opinion – it made him infinitely more. My dad could be wounded and frustrated by other people – still he was a solid rock for our family. There was no need that my brother and I would have that he would not provide. I knew that. I still knew it after that incident but I appreciated it all the more because I saw him as something more that an auto-matron. I saw that all that providing he did cost him something. He was a whole man with real feelings like mine and stayed strong for us because he loved us. I learned something that day – that letting our vulnerability be seen by people who love us is not a sign of weakness, it is one of great strength – the mark of a real man. Peter climbed back in the boat knowing that no matter how tough he was, he was dependent on the down-reached hand of Christ to lift him up from destruction. And the disciples who dragged him back in the boat didn’t snicker, they admired his faith and tenacity and he was still the dean of the disciple corps. The incident solidified his role as the acknowledged head of the apostles, not because they had forgotten that embarrassing incident but because they remembered the day he trusted his friends enough to risk vulnerability and acknowledged his desperate need of salvation at the hand of Jesus – the marks of a real man. I still remember the lessons learned before my dad handed me the car keys, but I now have a different model for manhood to which I cling – the Christ who wept for his dead friend, who loved the company of children, who did not hide his sadness or disappointment but leaned heavily on his friends and above all trusted God to be his deliverance and strength in all times. Then he said to those who would dare to follow him, to do so means to do some back tracking, to admit that you need some help and to ask for it. Do that, Jesus said, and you start to get some idea of what real manhood is like. When Peter tried to do it all with his own impressive
strength he found out that it wasn’t enough. But when he repented
and built some vulnerability into his image of manhood, he became
Peter the Rock – not because he sank like a rock but because
being anchored in Christ, he could not be moved, destabilized or
shattered. That’s the image of a real man, one who recognizes
when he has gone wrong and is not embarrassed to turn around, to
ask for help, to let his vulnerability show and to reach out his
hand to Jesus and cry out, “Lord, save me.” |
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