“Preaching & Listening” with Will Willimon
Show Notes:
Chris and Eddie are joined again by Reverend Dr. Will Willimon, Professor of the Practice of Christian Ministry at Duke Divinity School and former Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. This time around, Rev. Willimon is here to talk about preaching--but not as a preacher. In his most recent book, Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon, Rev. Willimon helps listeners get more out of a sermon (and helps preachers listen to their listeners) because “to be a Christian is to be a listener of God.”
With five decades of preaching and teaching experience, Rev. Willimon has great respect for the listeners of God’s Word. Listening to sermons is one of the main ways that God reaches God’s people, so how do you listen well? How do you open yourself to a sermon that might not be about you or for you and come away with a change in your perspective? And how do preachers step aside and let the conversation happen between God and God’s people freely? Rev. Willimon has a few ideas.
Resources:
Follow Will Willimon on the web:
Listeners Dare: Hearing God in the Sermon
Check out Will Willimon’s other books and publications here:
https://willwillimon.com/writing/
Follow Will Willimon on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/WillWillimon
https://twitter.com/willimontweets
Transcript:
Chris McAlilly 00:00 I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester 00:02
And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.
Chris McAlilly 00:04
Today we're talking to a friend of the podcast, Will Willimon. Will was the Dean of Duke Chapel back in the day, a wonderful preacher. He was a bishop in the Methodist Church. And he's written a lot of books. But the most recent book that he is putting out is called "Listeners Dare."
Eddie Rester 00:26
And it's a book really about the preaching moment. And so there's some good word in the book to preachers, but really, it's about the other side of the equation. How do we as a people engage the moment of preaching in a way that really can give us hope, can transform us, can lead us into the life that Christ has for us? And I think it's maybe the first book that I've ever encountered about that side of it. Most books about preaching are simply about preachers need to preach better, but this is about how do we listen better. And I think that's a helpful and hopeful word. What did you hear in the conversation today, Chris?
Chris McAlilly 01:07
We talked about, you know, why people give up on preaching. We talked about different
C
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rhetorical forms in the culture that people are attracted to. We talked about comedy. And we talked about theater and the experience of just being in the event and moment and performance of a concert and the ways in which those other kinds of cultural and artistic forms are analogous to what preaching is. I mean, he talks a lot about preaching as an event. It's something that you put together in the moment, a fragile art with the congregation, with a group of people who are listening.
Eddie Rester 01:42
And you trust the Holy Spirit, that the Holy Spirit is going to actually take the sermon, rip it up, reconstitute it, and people are going to receive something unexpected. And one of the things I thought was interesting is he said, and sometimes when you listen to a sermon, you don't get anything out of it. And that's okay, because the person beside you in the pew did. You know, every sermon is not for me. And I think that's helpful to hear. We treat, sometimes, going to worship as a one-off event, but it's really the event of a lifetime that we are constantly seeking to hear God speak to us. And it happens over the course of a lifetime. And some of that happens in music and preaching. And some of that happens in a lot of other ways.
Chris McAlilly 02:30
I think one of the convictions that I have about the podcast that we're doing is that we want to invite people into a conversation. I think what's interesting about the way Will presents preaching is that it's a conversation ongoing between God, people, the preacher, and that ongoing, you know, hearing, listening, responding is what it's all about. And the more you do it, the more you kind of learn the story by heart and are able to engage it together with a group of people in a way that would be you know, deeply rich, meaningful, and life-giving. Not unlike, as I talk about in the podcast, a Mean Girls show.
Eddie Rester 03:13
A Mean Girls show. Yeah. Well, whether you are a preacher or a hearer of the Word, I think Will's gonna have something for you today. It's always just a joy just to get to have conversation with him. So I think you'll enjoy it.
Chris McAlilly 03:30
He's funny. He's funnier than Eddie, so that's good.
Eddie Rester 03:35
Yeah, that's good. He's had more practice. When I'm his age, I plan to be very funny.
Chris McAlilly 03:40
You're very funny, Eddie. We all think that you're funny. I think you're funny.
Eddie Rester 03:46
I know you laugh at me. It's okay. Well, share it. Make sure you share the podcast. Like it. Leave us review. Help us get the word out about these conversations. We'd love to hear from you sometime. If you have a word for us, we'd love to hear it.
Eddie Rester 04:01
[INTRO] Life can be heavy. We carry around with us the weight of our doubt, our pain, our suffering, our mental health, our family system, our politics. This is a podcast to create space for all of that.
Chris McAlilly 04:14
We want to talk about these things with humility, charity, and intellectual honesty. But more than that, we want to listen. It's time to open up our echo chamber. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]
Chris McAlilly 04:30
We're here today with our good friend and Bishop Will Willimon. Will, thanks for taking the time to be with us today.
Will Willimon 04:37
Hey, it's great to be back on The Weight!
Eddie Rester 04:40
It's always good to have you back with us.
Will Willimon 04:43 Thanks, Eddie.
Eddie Rester 04:43
To hear, just get to talk with you a little bit, and we know you've got a book. We want to get to that. But I always like Chris, anything that you need to clear up with Will or ask him before we dive into that?
Chris McAlilly 04:53
I don't think so. I think that, I can't remember the last time... I guess, how did you feel about the end of Coach K's era, there at Duke, in this last season.?
Will Willimon 05:04
Well, we had a year of funerals and all, but I was with Coach K at a lacrosse game, my grandson's lacrosse game, last week. And he looked great. He and Mickie both just looked like they were enjoying their new life. So I'm happy about that.
Chris McAlilly 05:23
Are you feeling positive about the prospects for Duke basketball moving forward?
Will Willimon 05:28
Yeah, yeah. I'm very fond of our new coach. And he's, yeah. And so looks good. And yeah, but the only trouble with Coach K retiring, he and I are the same age. So it meant that the Dean kept saying, "Well, if Krzyzewski can leave, can't you leave also?" And so I'm feeling some additional pressure. When I told Mike that I was feeling a little pressure because of his retirement, he said, "Oh, well, that's all right. You've ever worked as hard as I did." So I said, "Yeah. Well, thank you, Mike." So.
Eddie Rester 06:07
You only worked one day a week at most.
Will Willimon 06:09 Yeah, that's right. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 06:10
When you were a bishop, even less.
Will Willimon 06:12
Yeah, that's exactly, exactly right. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 06:15
So the book is about preaching. And you know, you are a preacher, and you've written a lot about preaching, but this one kind of takes a different angle and approaches the sermon from the listener's side. Tell us about that project. How did you decide to go with that kind of angle?
Will Willimon 06:33
Well, I've spent a lifetime reflecting on the challenges of being a preacher and they are many. In the book, I know, frequently, lay people said, "Why isn't there more great preaching?" And I said, Well, I can explain that to you. It's hard. There's a lot that goes into a quote, good sermon. But I became fascinated with there's a lot that goes into good listening, too, and listening to a sermon requires a whole complex of understandings, expectations, skills, practice, just like preaching does.
Will Willimon 07:18
And also, when I got to studying it, I found out listening, hearing is a huge category in Scripture. The Jew begins each day with the Shema, "Hear O Israel," which I got a rabbi friends saying, "Isn't that wonderful? God doesn't expect any more of us than, like, hearing. The rest is optional." And also you got Jesus, you know, "Hear, then, a parable," or listen up. And Paul making the wild statement, "Where does faith come? Faith comes from hearing something." So to be a Christian is to be a listener to God. And that's what I want to explore in the book.
Eddie Rester 08:11
It seems when people sit down in the pew, their chair, for worship, though they don't, at least even when I go to church, and I'm not preaching, I'm listening. I'm there to listen. We still weight the entire event toward the preacher and not toward the act of listening. Why do you think that is? How did we get there?
Will Willimon 08:33
I think there's that natural human tendency, I guess, to try to take responsibility off my shoulders, put it on your shoulders. And I'm impressed that when it comes to preaching, the listener bears some responsibility for what's produced. Tom Long says, you know, the preacher is up there trying to lay the egg in the nest, while the congregation is out there busy making omelets. And when Jesus says, "listen," "hear," "akouo," well, it's implied that he's also saying, "obey," "respond." In fact, Jesus says on a couple of occasions, you know, "it's not who simply hears the Word of God, it's the one who does it."
Will Willimon 09:41
Well, listening to a sermon is kind of involved in that dynamic. And I think listeners are often surprised by how dependent we preachers are on good listening and I've sometimes been known to say to lay people, you know, a lot of you are getting the preaching you deserve. Because when's the last time you've ever said to your preacher, "Wow, that must have been hard to preach that," or "I really appreciate you preparing. It might have been good if you'd prepared maybe a little longer, but still, I can tell you actually premeditated this a little bit." Listeners... Often the question, I'm thinking back in my own ministry. I can repeat to you questions, comments, observations by listeners, that really changed me as a preacher. And so I'm really begging for listeners to step up and help us in the preaching task.
Will Willimon 10:52
In the book, I define preaching as, you know, the preacher stands up in the middle of a conversation between God and God's people. And then the preacher contributes to the conversation in the sermon. And then, in your average church, the preacher joins in the conversation the rest of the week, in the parish, listening and speaking. One might think of the Bible as just this long record of divine human conversation with a God that loves to talk, loves to communicate, to make contact, that not only wants to be God, but wants to tell everybody about it, and us. And sometimes we've listened well, sometimes we've stormed out of the conversation. Sometimes we've tried to hide from divine/human dialogue, defending ourselves against it. But at other times, we realized at how dependent we are on a God who continues to say, in many and diverse ways, including sermon, "Hey, let's talk."
Chris McAlilly 12:11
I think that one of the things, as I hear you kind of describing the preaching moment, is I think about all the folks who've given up on preaching. You know, they've given up on the conversation, in which the three of us are involved most Sundays, most of your life and ministry, most of mine revolves around the preaching moment. But a lot of people have given up on preaching. I do think one of the places where folks still find truth-telling and seek it out is in comedy. One of the things I've always admired about you as a preacher, Will, and I admire this, I'll venture a word of affirmation to Eddie as well, you guys are both funny in preaching. I wonder kind of how do y'all think about humor in preaching? And why do you think it is that people who've given up on preaching find comedy a place where they can hear the truth?
Will Willimon 13:06 Eddie?
Eddie Rester 13:10
I think for me, there's vulnerability in laughter. And so typically, when I offer something funny, it's self directed, or pointing out something that really is ridiculous. So it's kind of this vulnerable moment where we can all join together. So it's almost like we've all been coming from different roads, and all of a sudden, we've arrived at one place together, and then maybe there's possibility for us to at least journey on a little bit further together. So I think that's for me, part of the power of humor.
Chris McAlilly 13:49 What about you, Will?
Will Willimon 13:51
Yeah, I think humor is a complex phenomenon. It is, as Eddie reminded me in his statement, it's related to humility, to humanity, to humaneness. It establishes a kind of bond with people because it is a kind of humbling... I guess I also... My teacher, as an undergraduate, my old testament professor wrote his dissertation on humor in the Old Testament. And I just find a lot of humor in Scripture, because I find a lot of irony in Scripture, particularly in the Gospel of John. And irony sort of trades in the gap between us and God, or our good intentions and how we end up screwing up. And therefore preachers can find in humor, you know, rich ground.
Will Willimon 14:58
I think humor is also an important defense mechanism. Humor often is better than tragedy. Humor gives us a little room to wander around to laugh rather than cry. And as I think it's Reinhold Niebhur said let's all hope God has a very good sense of humor, when evaluating our discipleship.
Eddie Rester 15:28
I think a couple more things that come to my mind is that the world is heavy. Man, the world is heavy. And I think any place that we can receive some levity in life is helpful, and it's hopeful. I said a couple of things that I have no idea what the second thing I was going to say was. So we'll just say levity. People need that sense of levity. I think
Chris McAlilly 15:54
So why do you think people who've given up on preaching and who've given up on the conversation within the context of the church find comedy a place for truth telling? Do you think... Just extend that a little bit. What do you think's going on there?
Will Willimon 16:07
Well, I mean, we have forsaken the evening news for Stephen Colbert, because Colbert's humor for us gets a little closer to the truth than even the evening news sometimes. And also, we're just in a time when it's life giving to be able to insert some irony or satire into the news. So like in preaching, I know I love, in going to Chicago, I always want to go to a comedy club. And for me, going to a comedy club, it helps me to restore the wonder of preaching in the sense that this kid comes out on stage. I've never heard of him. I'm in a room with a bunch of strangers. He just starts talking. He's got no props, scenery, he just starts talking. All he's got words. I mean, like me on Sunday morning. And next thing I know, there's this traveling salesman sitting next to me from Des Moines, and he's got his arm around me laughing and tears are streaming down his face. And he's saying, "It is just like that, isn't it? That's, that's exactly what happens, right?" And I'm saying, "Hey, could you just take a few inches back from me? Okay, I don't even know you."
Will Willimon 17:30
Well, it's almost like what you wish church could be on Sunday morning, and all through words. So when I'm participate with comedians, I kind of think I'm working with my siblings. And so that's part of it. But your comment about giving up on preaching, I could just think of numerous reasons to give up on preaching, and some of them having to do with preachers, that we preachers can be so dull. Preaching can seem so disconnected from us. And Anne Lamott talks about when she wandered in, there was a little Presbyterian Church near her before her dramatic conversion experience, and she listened to the preacher preach. He was, like, talking about people on Mars. It was craziest thing she'd ever heard. Well, yeah, I can understand that.
Will Willimon 18:38
But I also want to say to my disaffected listeners, remember, there's a possibility you're avoiding the conversation, because it's painful, because preaching talks about things you'd rather not talk about, that you'd like to forget, such as your mortality or your finitude, your sin, whatever. And also preaching... So I'm saying some people avoid preaching for sort of good reasons. Preaching at its best is about the truth. It's about Jesus Christ. And we live in a culture that would rather rally around lies than truth, so it's unsurprising that people would find preaching odd or even off putting. And another thing, one of the points I make in the book is that preaching is a demanding, complex form of communication, requiring the listener to ask appropriate questions, to have appropriate expectations of the medium. So.
Chris McAlilly 19:58
Yeah, I think that's interesting. I do think that I learn a lot, I find myself learning a lot about what preaching is or what it could be in other settings--in a theater or in a concert or at a Broadway show. Recently, my wife told me, we were going to this Broadway show at the Orpheum in Memphis, called Mean Girls. It was written by Tina Fey, so keeping the comedy thread rolling. I knew nothing about this. Apparently, there was a movie called Mean Girls, Will, I don't expect you would know anything about this.
Will Willimon 19:59
Yes. No, I do know that movie.
Eddie Rester 20:32 Where have you been, Chris?
Chris McAlilly 20:37
It's a whole cultural phenomenon that I've completely missed. It's not the only one. I've missed several. But yeah, so I found myself surrounded by people wearing pink. And it was a whole thing that I had no awareness of, you know, this is 20 years on. And so you have all these people who know the script, inside and out, are anticipating every line and taking complete delight in seeing a story that they know the ending of play itself out in real time. And I thought this is it. This is what I'm trying to do every Sunday. You know.
Chris McAlilly 21:15
It's a story that everybody knows, inside and out. But, you know, how do you make that story come alive again? And the other, kind of a second story along those lines, I went to an Indigo Girls concert. I did know who the Indigo Girls were, but I wasn't a fan. My wife was a fan. It was the first concert...
Will Willimon 21:15 Yes!
Eddie Rester 21:36 My wife is a fan. Yeah.
Chris McAlilly 21:37
Yeah, we were actually there together with our wives, Will, and I was blown away, because all these people knew every lyric to every song. And there was this give and take, and back and forth between the audience and those performing. And it just, I don't know. I could tell that they had not been in that environment post COVID, all that much. And so there was a freshness to it. Because all of us were back in the moment again. And I do think, you know, those kinds of experiences are what I wish preaching could be, you know, on Sundays. and sometimes you do get those moments.
Will Willimon 22:19
Sometimes it is, yeah. Those reports of concerts and all, in a way, suggest to me that maybe I'm onto something when I say that one reason to avoid preaching is that it talks about Jesus Christ. And that can be off putting too many people for various reasons. And that student who says to me, "Preaching is dead. I don't get anything out of it," and on, I say, "You're lying." You're the person who just told me that Luke Bretherton's lecture last week, you have yet to get over. That he named what you had been feeling for a long time and didn't know how to say and that you came out of his one hour lecture a different person. Okay. I don't guess he was preaching, but he was doing something very close to it. So I've said to preachers, sometimes you fail at preaching not because you haven't put enough into it, but you failed because of Jesus, in the sense that not only does a sermon require Jesus to make it work, but also Jesus can be difficult subject matter for North American people. And maybe we preachers out to give ourselves some credit about that.
Eddie Rester 24:12
One of the things as I was reading through the book that just came to mind, and you might have said it at some point in the book, but just that the preaching moment is a rarity in our world, that most of the time when we go to hear someone speak or sing or we go to a concert or we go to, you know, Chris goes dresses up pink from head to toe to watch Mean Girls, you know, we have this moment where in some respect we expect what's going to happen and maybe some of the difficulty of hearing preaching is because it comes at us unexpectedly.
Will Willimon 24:49 Good point.
Eddie Rester 24:50
Preachers, when we preach sometimes, have to say things that don't fit into what we thought we were going to say, or what the folks on the other side of the exchange, other started the conversation, didn't expect to come out. Sometimes it can be jarring. And I think that sometimes in our, you know, echo chambered world where people get mad at their preachers or mad at their church because it wasn't what they went in to hear. It wasn't the same thing.
Will Willimon 25:22 Absolutely. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 25:22
Maybe maybe part of the difficulty in preaching and receiving preaching these days is we need to go in willing to hear what Jesus may say, as a part of that ongoing conversation that day that we didn't expect to hear.
Will Willimon 25:40
Well said. I think that Jesus refuses to let us be in control of the communication. And he is sovereign and free to say what he wants to say to us. And though we are well defended against his speech, his revelation, most of us can testify those moments when he's found a way to get through to us, and bore into our souls and the rest is us. And that sometimes, people will come out and they'll say, "I've never heard anything like this before. Where did you get all this?" Usually it's an assumption that they're mistaken in thinking that being a Christian is synonymous with being a thinking, caring, sensitive American, and that the kingdom of God and USA are synonymous. But, you know, I don't go into that with them. But I say, "where would you have heard this before?" Watching TV? Surfing the web? I don't think so. I think you got to get dressed and come down at inconvenient hour of time to hear this. Because there are powerful forces keeping this kind of speech from being uttered in public, okay. You gotta have church to risk this speech and every prayer.
Will Willimon 27:13
As you were talking, I was thinking, you know, one of the challenges of being a preacher, at least for me, and maybe this commentary on my personality, but one of the challenges was that being out of control of communication. Every preacher has had the experience of getting ready to preach on the Holy Spirit next Sunday, and every preacher has had the experience of some yokel's coming out after the sermon and saying, "That was your greatest sermon you've ever preached. I just thought that that was so good." And I'm thinking--I don't say this, but I'm thinking--you idiot. That was not my best sermon. I can do much better than that if I had more time. And, "That was the best sermon on abortion I've ever heard," and I said, "Wait a minute. I never mentioned abortion. That was not in my sermon!" Well, the Holy Spirit just loves to grab my manuscript and rip it out of my hands and say, "Hey, step aside. I'm gonna preach now."
Will Willimon 27:18
And you can almost, when you're preaching, see the risen Christ roaming among these people, which Bonhoeffer defined as preaching, but the risen Christ walking among his people, putting the finger on them, speaking to people, from which I don't interrupt sermon, but often say, "Lord, put her down. She would only disappoint you. She said she wanted to be Chair of the Finance Committee. She didn't show up at first two meetings. Lord, you're setting yourself up for failure in summoning her," you know, and then Jesus says, "Well, look, how did you get here?" So preaching, if one is willing to relinquish control, and to allow the conversation to be free between God and God's people, some amazing things can happen.
Eddie Rester 29:19
So let's kind of lean in a little bit on the listening side. What are some things that you would offer up for, you know, I think the majority of our audience is probably lay people, what would you offer them, to say, "This is a way that you could dare to listen to a sermon in a new way, maybe engage in a different way." What are some things they can actively do or think about in order to prepare to hear?
Will Willimon 29:51
Some things come to mind. I'd say to them, just be warned, for reasons known only to God, God has chosen to self reveal through preaching. I know that seems unlikely to you, considering your preacher, but hey, that that's the way it happens. Jesus Christ loves to preach, and he will preach sometimes even through me. So just be prepared. I think also to say, you know, try to be as unprejudiced a listener as you can, but also an expectant listener. That we have a God who is unwilling to be God without making contact with you, so that could happen in the sermon.
Will Willimon 30:53
Also be prepared for, and in a sense, I think this is important in the present moment, that I am afraid we've malformed a lot of our listeners to expect that the sermon is about them. Be prepared that the sermon might not seem at all relevant to you. It will not fold out into a bed. You cannot dice and make fries with it. It will not make you a better person. It is the truth. That's all it claims to be. And so not sure if you can use this in your daily life, because one problem is Jesus is probably not that happy with your daily life and maybe wants to disrupt it. So just be prepared. I say in the book, you know, sometimes "love your neighbor" means sitting through a sermon that is totally irrelevant to you. But it's just the sermon the person sitting next to you in the pew needs to hear.
Will Willimon 31:55
And how many times in church, you've been in church, somebody turns around and says, "Wasn't that wonderful?" And you're thinking, gee, we must not heard the same sermon. Well, yeah, that's true. You didn't hear the same sermon. The Holy Spirit used a sermon to get through to your neighbor in a way that the Holy Spirit chooses not to get through to you on that Sunday. So I think of those things.
Will Willimon 32:23
I think it's fair to say that sermons should be about Scripture. They should be about God first of all, and secondarily, maybe derivatively about us. I do think they ought to be entertaining, engaging, as we know how, and I love to see all the stuff in a preacher's toolkit, whereby we preachers, despite all odds, get a hearing, after the Mother Emanuel massacre in Charleston, the Holy Spirit prompted me to write about a dozen of my former students who were serving Methodist churches in South Carolina. And I asked them, "what did you say after that event? Send me your sermon from that Sunday, please." And they did. And I'm proud to say that all of them found in wildly diverse ways, they took an opportunity to talk about what people, most people in their congregation, probably didn't want them to talk about. And others in the congregation were desperate for them to talk about, but didn't know how. And I thought that's preachers at our best. We find a way to get a hearing, and God promises if we'll just have the guts to stand up and talk in God's name, that God will do the rest.
Eddie Rester 34:00
I think for me, sometimes that's the hardest thing to let go of, is trusting God to do the rest even though I know it because, you know, it's, as you say, sometimes the sermon that is, truly is the worst thing I think I've ever put on paper is the one that causes the most conversation and vice versa. One of the things that I think when you talk about entertaining I remember Richard Lischer, I mean, this is dating me now, but back when I was at Duke, he talked about sermons being entertaining and somebody pushed back.
Will Willimon 34:40 Yeah.
Eddie Rester 34:41
On that idea. And he said think of entertaining not as, you know, somebody on the stage but think of entertaining as what your parents do when they invite someone to their home. A sermon should...
Will Willimon 34:55 That's nice. Yeah.
Eddie Rester 34:57
Yeah. Richard Lischer was smart. You should read some of his books sometime.
Will Willimon 35:01
I had breakfast with him last Wednesday.
Eddie Rester 35:03
Well, tell him he got quoted.
Will Willimon 35:06
I'll tell him that before the preacher quoted him, he said, "This was going to date me, but Lischer said..." I'll tell him that. I gotta tell him that. But that's nice. And, you know, when I was reprimanded once by the President of Duke, for a comment I made in a sermon.
Will Willimon 35:30
It was really an in defense... Yeah. The President was not interested in what went on chapel anyway. But the, you know, he said, "Why do you say things like that in the sermon?" I said, Well, they said a lot of nasty things about Jesus, but nobody ever accused him of being dull. And I just think dullness is an offense against the Holy Spirit, to which the President said, "Well, that doesn't make any sense," and walked off. But I still think it's great when it's entertaining. I had an experience in Duke Chapel two weeks ago, where we had a guest preacher whom I knew as a student at Duke, an African American Baptist, serving a large church in Virginia. And he came down and preached, and he just... The energy, the enthusiasm, his affection for the congregation, and we had a large percentage of African Americans in the congregation. But it was like the congregation was just desperate for a word that they could resonate with. And we all afterwards, people were out front, you know, doing what academic people often do, trying to analyze why was that so wonderful. And we found it difficult except to say that it was just a God-given moment where the preacher performed the Word in such a way that just lured us into it in a way that people standing up and shouting. And this buttoned-up little man next to me jumped up and said, "Go ahead! Go ahead, say it. Say it!" And I thought, Wow. Thank you, Lord, for letting me be here.
Chris McAlilly 35:30 Once?!
Will Willimon 37:34
So I think, years ago, was with a bunch of preachers in Massachusetts, and one of them said, you know, preaching his dad and dated and all and I said, "Well, that could be true. But, you know, we're getting ready to elect a man president who's been a community organizer is his only work. And I think we're gonna like him on the basis that he talks real good. He just is able to." Or I've said... You know, there was there's a guy from the Bronx or Brooklyn is going to be a doctor. And I think that's all he ever wanted to be was a doctor. And yet in the middle of the pandemic, here we are, Patsy will say to me, "I think Dr. Fauci is going to be on television tonight. I think he's going to be on the news. Let's hear, Dr. Fauci." And he gets and sometimes he scolds us. Sometimes he just gives us information. And other times he praises us, and says, he's just real proud of us, and how wonderful we are. And I said look at that man. He didn't want to be a preacher. But the moment demanded. We had to have a preacher. And so we preachers ought to take heart in that.
Eddie Rester 38:52
Wwords are not dead. One of the things in the early part of the book is you talk about preaching as a dialogue, not just a one-way, one-direction piece. And I love that. I think that there are opportunities for congregations and preachers to take advantage of that. I'm thinking about Chris McAlilly recently telling the story of the three little pigs and invited the children in the congregation to respond, as they knew the story and to tell parts of the story. And it was another...
Will Willimon 39:26 That's good.
Eddie Rester 39:26
enlivening moment for for the congregation, and an engaging moment. Then the kids kept
yelling "pig out" for the rest of the sermon, but..
Chris McAlilly 39:36
I was trying to just, in my defense, I wasn't just telling the kids' story. I was trying.
Eddie Rester 39:41 It was great.
Chris McAlilly 39:41
I was trying to say like, you know, I was preaching on James and, you know, Martin Luther calls the epistle, the epistle of straw. It's like, you guys know straw. You don't want to build your house in straw. And the kids went crazy with it.
Eddie Rester 39:59 They loved it.
Chris McAlilly 40:00
It was hilarious. And but then it was, you know, we have a pretty staid, you know, middle class white church. Not a lot of amens. I wish we had a few more amens from time to time. But it was as much call and response as I've had in any sermon since I've been here. It was fantastic. So I may try it again. That may be a rhetorical strategy. I may have to do that again.
Will Willimon 40:25
Patsy's daddy was a Methodist minister for five decades in South Carolina and he remembered in a sermon, winding up the sermon, you know, "Why is this? Why do we struggle like this? Why?" And boy screamed out, "I give up! You tell us, Preacher." He said it destroyed the sermon and he said "I deserved every bit of it."
Eddie Rester 40:53
I would almost say that it might have made the sermon.
Will Willimon 40:57
I'm sure it did make sermon, for a lot of them.
Eddie Rester 41:01
Somebody recently asked me. "Do you ever get tired of preaching week after week after week, knowing that we're not going to remember the sermons?" I'd love to hear your response to that, Will, if someone had said that to you. Do you ever get tired of preaching week after knowing that we're probably not going to remember the sermons?
Will Willimon 41:24 That's a wonderful question.
Eddie Rester 41:26 It really was.
Will Willimon 41:27
I think it's also... I hear it as a commentary on on the art of preaching. I think preaching is a fragile art. I think I'm making the book a statement that you really can't read a sermon, even though I've done so, all the time. You really can't write down a sermon, because a sermon is a Holy Spirit produced moment. Karl Barth kept saying that, you know, it's an event. It happens, and then it can't be contained or sustained. It's got to happen again. Well, I think that's kind of the nature of the Christian life in one sense, but it does mean that we're giving our lives as preachers to a very fragile undertaking, which makes it sometimes more joyful when you're there.
Will Willimon 42:25
I mean, I've gone to concerts. And, you know, at the concert, I knew I was present at a once-in- a-lifetime, an unrepeatable moment. And when somebody said to you afterwards, "Well, how was the concert?" And I said it was wonderful. "Well, what was wonderful about it?" and I said, I'm sorry. You just would have had to be there. I can't, it can't be reproduced for you. So that's kind of beautiful. But I think that also, frankly, most of pastoral work has that kind of fragility about it, that I go out and I try to say a word that'll be helpful for somebody, but it also takes God blessing it and it also means that the person will need to hear that word again. And maybe the person realizes that it's a word does not exclusively self derived.
Will Willimon 43:29
They can't say, "My preacher is the most eloquent preacher. But let me tell you how he said what he said last week. Let me repeat it for you." No, I think maybe people sense no, fine, you said it well. But Richard Lischer said, at one point, preaching invariably says more than preachers are able to say. Well, that gives a kind of fragility about it.
Will Willimon 44:02
So I kind of like the fact that that listener realized that we are, you know, giving ourselves to a difficult, artistic moment. But that also means when preachers talk about preaching is dead or unimportant or archaic communication, I say check that out with lay people. You're kind of saying to lay people, "you're idiots for showing up week after week for dead, archaic, one-way communication." But I think we show up again and again, because the fire has been lit before, and we're thinking who knows? It could be lit again.
Will Willimon 44:52
I had talked to a young person into coming to church with us a couple weeks ago to Duke Chapel. And the person said, "I'm not too much into that. I don't know. I don't like all that formal, stilted worship." Well, the person came out of the chapel after that sermon, which was a group product, after that sermon and just turned around and said, "Could I just say before you saying anything? Thank God I got to be here." And I said, "Enough said. I agree."
Chris McAlilly 45:30
Is there is there anyone you love to hear preach? Who is someone you just, I mean, through the
years you've really enjoyed listening to on a regular basis?
Will Willimon 45:41
You know, they're mostly in my age cohort, older, but you know, preachers. Barbara Brown Taylor, I can name you sermons she preached in Duke Chapel that I was in awe of, and elsewhere. Walter Brueggemann, who just dedicated his last book to me, I just found out, which was amazing. But I love Walt. The last sermon I heard him preach at Duke Chapel, he started out his sermon saying, "There is a message with which I have been entrusted by God. I am going to do my best to deliver it to you." Golly, whoa, man.
Will Willimon 46:36
But I gotta say, I had a student who was shown to me. I didn't have him for a class, but he was shown to me. He's young African American. And he preached, he sends me videos of his sermons. And I don't know just to see him lure an unsuspecting congregation into the Gospel, to move it from there, and it was in a kind of Baptist Pentecostal kind of setting. And the congregation just took the sermon and ran with it. And two women started dancing around him as he preached, and slapping him on the back, encouragin him to keep preaching. I just thought, wow, I wish I could do that. But I'm too old to do that. It could be life endangering for me
Chris McAlilly 47:31 [LAUGHTER]
Will Willimon 47:33
But I loved it. And so I do tell preachers, when I started preaching, I was just desperate to hear somebody else preach. And the best I could do was a Protestant hour on Sunday mornings at 7am with my little cassette recorder trying to record it off the radio. Now on YouTube, one morning, I listened to four different sermons on John 3, Jesus and Nicodemus, from all over the nation, from all over the world. I got a preacher in Switzerland I listen to regularly who preaches auf Deutsch. So I think it's kind of part... This could be preaching's greatest age, in the sense of preachers are just spread out all over everywhere. And during the pandemic, this woman told me that she sat and listened to four sermons every Sunday. And she reeled off all the churches she was listening to sermons from and I thought that poor layperson. You haven't heard that preaching is stupid have you? I'm sorry. I don't know when y'all are going to get that word.
Eddie Rester 48:56
Well, I want to thank you for your time with us today, Will.
Will Willimon 49:00
Always enjoy being with you guys.
Eddie Rester 49:03
It's always a pleasure. But I just appreciate you helping us think through. I'm gonna go back to something you said at the beginning of today's episode is that there's this conversation going on between God and folks in the congregation. And the preaching moment is just a moment of that larger conversation. I think that's what I'm going to take away from today's conversation.
Will Willimon 49:27 Wonderful!
Eddie Rester 49:27 So thank you for that.
Will Willimon 49:33
Always with you, too. Thank you for what you're doing for the church at this moment. And yeah,
enjoy being with you. Thank you.
Chris McAlilly 49:44 You, too, brother.
Eddie Rester 49:45 Absolutely.
Chris McAlilly 49:46
Talk to you soon. We'll catch back up soon.
Will Willimon 49:49 Okay, bye!
Eddie Rester 49:50
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly 49:59
If you'd like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]