Saturday Sermon Writing

I tried to work earlier this week, but I'm not much further than I was Wednesday when I wrote out some sermon seeds. Still getting used to the rhythm of preaching every week. Didn't completely honor the "no working on your sermon on your sabbath" rule that I'm trying to implement yesterday. I was close, but in the evening a friend called who's got a search committee coming to hear them preach this Sunday, and we talked about the readings. You'd think that might have gotten me farther, but not really. :P

I think I trip myself up because I take preaching seriously and want to do a good job, which isn't a bad thing, but I think I end up trying to figure out the perfect idea and examples, etc. Maybe I wouldn't be as blocked if I remind myself it doesn't have to be perfect. Just be faithful, preach the gospel, let God handle the rest. I do pray over them. Ask God for guidance. What do people need to hear, ask for inspiration. I think that's a good start.

I've got to have something before I go to bed tonight, so that I can make it to the parish much earlier this week. The last couple weeks I have not been getting there way ahead of the service, as I have wanted to do. It has left me feeling awful, and like a loser, and what was I thinking taking this call and attempting to be a rector? Feeling frustrated at seeming to be bumping into my ADD (but I did finally get my medication refilled this week and I hope that will help). I had a "patriarch" mention something about my not arriving perhaps as early as I should mid-week as well, so I need to figure out a way to make some changes. Don't want to make a patriach sorry that they called you to serve at their parish. Doh! Maybe I'm paranoid, but I feel like he doesn't like me, or at least like he's watching me like a hawk and is kind of critical. I could be wrong. Time may tell.

So I need to find a way to break through the mental block, the writer's block that comes, that sometimes doesn't lift until early Sunday. I find myself rushing now that something seems to have finally clicked into placet, trying to figure out how to tie it all together and get it down on paper so I can preach the thing, and also get showered and dressed, and to the parish.

I guess what I do is even if something doesn't feel like it's the perfect idea to me today, that I just work with what I have, pick a direction and come up with something to say. May not be brilliant. May not be my best sermon ever. But hey, it will be done and I'll get sleep and not have to rush around in the morning. Being an intuitive person (myers briggs) I wonder if this is at work in my desire for that feeling of an "ah ha" a "click" a "this feels like the right direction to go" a waiting for energy that points the direction to a particular theme.

Someone at the Festival of Homiletics when talking about the writing process talked about the fact that some people envision themselves as writers, hope to be writers, but often they don't write because they think they can only write when they feel like it, or when inspiration hits. They were saying, that's nice and all, but you have to just write. Maybe in the writing of something that I'm not all that excited about, or don't know where it's going to go, I'll break through the block, or find something I am more excited about. But I think the point is to be trying to write out something (my sermon seeds the other day were a start), either by hand or typed, preferably both, before it's 10 or 11pm or midnight.

Also, do I sit here and stress and beat my head against a wall, staying put til I have something? Or, do I review a commentary or two and then walk down to the Art Show they're having at a nearby park today, that is supposed to be kind of "big" in these parts? Something tells me to go to the park. Being in the community, learning the culture, meeting folks is as worthy of my time as working on my sermon. Who knows, maybe I'll discover a story or illustration out of it?