The Point of Worship

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
This week, someone asked me for the Bible reference to the “quiver of arrows” I mentioned in last Sunday’s sermon. He remembered this verse as likening “the children of one’s youth” to a bountiful supply of arrows. The verse he was searching for is Psalm 127:4-5. The only problem was--if indeed, it was a problem--I made no such reference in my sermon.

This sort of thing happens to me a lot. People hear all sorts of things in sermons I don’t remember saying. In some cases, they are simply mistaken; in others, I surely am. But there is another reason people often hear things in sermons I didn’t actually say: maybe I’m not the one doing the talking. We gather in worship to hear the Word of God, after all.

In fairness to my friend searching for the quiver of arrows, I did use the expression “wild quiver of joy” in my sermon. Apparently at that point, his mind skipped a track and he went merrily on his way chasing a holy rabbit. At least he was thinking about the Bible!

Some preachers and worshipers find such holy rabbit chasing deeply troubling. The preacher’s job, they seem to believe, is to make sure everyone hangs on the preacher’s every word. Toward that end, some pastors expect people to take notes on the sermon or at the very least, doggedly follow the PowerPoint presentation.

But what if the point of worship and preaching is not to get every word in the preacher’s head into the head of every worshiper with as few transmission errors as possible? What if the point of preaching and worship is instead to create a context for hearing what God has to say to you, second person singular? What if a sort of sanctified mind-wandering if one of the primary ways God’s word speaks to us where we need it most?

In a recent issue of Discover magazine, researchers report that even when concentrating, the mind spends as much as 50 percent of its time not focused on the task at hand. And the mind does some of its most important work while “wandering,” a sort of waking dream, in which the mind searches for solutions not immediately evident to the conscious brain.

We might as well be honest: that’s the way most people hear a sermon. Hopefully, the hearer is snagged by a point, phrase, or image that fires the imagination. Then he or she checks out of the sermon long enough to probe the feeling or idea evoked by the preacher’s words. Sometimes the listener spends a few seconds, or a few minutes, wrestling with him or herself in the presence of God’s people and God’s Word. And often, it is during those private moments of reflection that the sword of God’s truth finds its mark and the Holy Spirit exclaims, “Gotcha!”

I don’t take offense when minds wander during my sermons. In fact, I rather expect it, indeed, I count on it. For it’s when the defenses are down that God’s Spirit is mostly likely to scale the walls of an unwitting worshiper’s heart.

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Wading Through Quicksand

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
This column has been slow in coming. Grief does that. It slows time down. Sometimes ploughing through the “valley of the shadow” is like wading through quicksand. Movement is difficult and exhausting when pushing against the suction of tears.

My dad died a year ago this June 27th after a long and debilitating illness. He spent his last year mostly bedfast and in perpetual pain and discomfort. In many ways, his death was a blessed release, not only for him, but for those who knew and loved him. As a believer, I know he is in a “better place.” Most days, I am in a “better place.” But sometimes, the unfinished grief sneaks up and taps me on the shoulder.

It happened this week when I saw an ad touting Father’s Day gifts. The pang of remembrance tugged at my soul as I realized I wouldn’t be buying a Father’s Day gift this year. In some ways, that’s a relief. My father was impossible to buy for, a “don’t worry about me” kind of dad. Eventually, I learned to ship him a box of chocolates from a world-class candy company in California. That was a hit. But what pleased him most on gift-giving occasions was a donation in his honor to the Salvation Army.

What I miss most about my dad was his plainspoken, take-no-prisoners honesty and commonsense. He kept me grounded. He kept me from taking myself too seriously. Once years ago, I signed something I had written, “Bob Setzer.” He didn’t like that at all. “You’re not Bob Setzer,” he told me sternly. “I’m Bob Setzer. You’re Bob Setzer, Junior.” Never again did I sign my name in such a way as to usurp his place in the world. These days, I sign Bob Setzer, Jr., proudly. The “Jr.” reminds me of where I came from and the unpaid debts I owe.

One morning this week, I discovered I was out of powdered creamer for my coffee. I looked in the fridge for a substitute, but 2% milk is not much of a creamer. Then my eyes lit upon a pint of whipping cream. “Now that would be an unhealthy, decadent delight,” I thought. Normally, I would push the whipping cream aside but for some reason--that particular morning--I used it to turn my coffee into a enticing milky white concoction. My coffee never tasted better. As the aroma filled my nostrils and the whipped cream bathed my tongue, a memory of my father slipped unbidden into my mind: He always put whipped cream in his coffee.

Yes, most days I am in a “better place,” as is my dad, but grief still demands its due. I don’t run from its tap or recoil at its touch. Mostly, I welcome grief as I might embrace an old friend who reminds me of good times, now past. We share a few laughs, maybe a few tears, and then part to live into God’s future where someday, I will see my dad again. He will nod in recognition, give me a hug, and say, “Welcome home, Junior.”

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E-Etiquette and Jesus-Free Zones

by Bob Setzer, Jr.
Email etiquette. First, don’t believe everything that comes in your email. Just because someone has written it in cyber-script does not mean the report or allegation is true. Sometimes it seems otherwise smart, sophisticated adults suspend their critical faculties when reading--and forwarding--emails. Just for the record, Madeline Murray O’Hair (long deceased) is not circulating a petition to ban all religious programming and President Obama is not the love child of an alien from a planet of Muslims living in a parallel universe.

Second, email forwards. Please don’t send them en masse, at least not to me. Chances are sixteen other people have already sent whatever email ditty is currently making the rounds. Instead, tell me why this particular anecdote or inspirational offering touched you. Tell me why it matters to you and then it will matter to me. But making folks one of a thousand on somebody’s “blanket email” list is not a way to win friends and influence people.

Third, when angry or annoyed with someone, email is a very poor medium for communicating that frustration. For some reason, people feel free to be curt and rude in emails in ways they would never be in person. Further, while electrons reportedly move at the speed of light, email does not provide for instantaneous communication. Email allows for an instantaneous monologue or rant, but real communication requires a face-to-face or at the very least, a phone-to-phone, encounter between two people. Remember, when Paul wrote “don’t let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26), he lived in a world where people still talked with one another instead of firing a snippy email to a co-worker two cubicles over.

I sometimes wonder if email is a net gain or loss for me in my work as a pastor. On the one hand, I spend about an hour a day processing email, a task that didn’t exist when I started in the ministry. On the other hand, email allows for effective collaboration on projects that without it, would require a lot more paper and meetings. But on the whole, I am working to spend less time on email--and other forms of cyber-communication--not more. So it’s nothing personal, but a Facebook “friend” I’m not and as for “Twitter,” don’t even ask!

Feel free to send an email telling me what you like most and least about email. Just keep it short, keep it personal, and keep it nice. Because for Christians, there are no “Jesus free” zones of communication and conduct. Even in using email, the ordinary rules of courtesy, Christian grace, and civility still apply.

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Divine Comedy

by Bob Setzer, Jr
Since I’m not much of a television fan, I have no idea how Conan O’Brien will fare as the new host of The Tonight Show. Personally, I prefer Jay Leno, but if the studio execs are to be trusted--and generally speaking, they’re not!--that says more about my aging tastes than the relative merits of these two comics. But there is one way in which I readily identify with Mr. O’Brien, and that is in his acknowledgment it is far easier to actually do a show than wait for it to start.

In a Parade Magazine interview regarding the start of his new show, Conan O’Brien likened himself to a thoroughbred aching to start the race: “I’m a little bit like a horse—you know, when they load those horses into the gates to run the race. I am being loaded in, and I am kicking and tossing the jockey off and smashing into the sides, and they’re saying, ‘You can run . . . June 1st.’ I’d like to go. The doing of it is how you find it.”

For me, preaching is like that. The preparation is the hard part: the study, the mulling over of the text, the pastoral conversations that shape what I listen for and hear in the Scripture, the search for imaginative material that gives the sermon tenterhooks. But even when the sermon is done, or mostly done (it’s never really done until it’s preached), there is still the tense countdown to the actual preaching of it. Let’s just say I’m not good for much on Saturday nights. Saturday nights are devoted to the preacher’s nervous wondering, “How will this go? How will I do? Any chance the congregation might actually hear a word from God through all this feeble chattering?”

Sunday mornings aren’t much better. Butterflies start doing aerial acrobatics inside my stomach. I work at memorizing the essence of my remarks, while my weary brain rolls its eyes and says, “Enough already!” I watch the hands of the clock slowly but relentlessly ticking toward the high and holy hour.

But most Sundays, when I step into the pulpit to preach, a refreshing wind starts to blow. The Holy Spirit shows up and meets me in the act of preaching. Very shortly, the worrying and fretting is gone and in its place, a calm and joy that comes from God.

It’s a little like two friends agreeing to meet at a favorite old haunt. Maybe they haven’t seen each other for a while, but when they meet, it’s like they never parted. They are at home in each other’s presence.

Jesus promised, “I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you” (John 14:18). On the wings of the Spirit, he comes to vanquish the loneliness and fear of life without him. And he does that not just for Preachers in their hour of need, but for all who count on him to help them do what they would not dare attempt without him.

I don’t know how Conan O’Brien does what he does, but that’s how I do what I do.

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