I gave my first sermon in the spring of 2003. I started working on it in January of that year. At the time, I was a senior in college; I was also working on my senior thesis, a poetry chapbook, and getting ready to apply to graduate school (not seminary – I had visions of becoming a professor). I wrote multiple drafts of my sermon, and when I thought I was getting close to a final draft, I would send it to my priest…who would send it back with multiple revisions. I’ve never spent more time writing a sermon than I did that first one.
We went to the ten o’clock service, and I arrived at church at nine, so I’d have plenty of time to prepare. The priest was just saying goodbye to the last of the eight o’clock crowd, and when he saw me, he threw up his hands and said, “Where were you?” He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t ask, but I was supposed to have preached at the eight o’clock service too…I was mortified, but he brushed it off and said that he was able to come up with something off the cuff, and that it all worked out.
I was nervous to the point of shaking, and I asked my priest how he was able to preach without being nervous. He is an amazing preacher and does so with incredible ease and passion. He said, “Jason, I am always nervous before I preach; heck, I’m nervous before the service starts. It’s not something to get rid of; it means you care. It’s when you’re not nervous that you need to worry. Just put all of that energy that is trying to destroy your stomach into your sermon. You’re going to do great.”
I preached on a fifth Sunday; on fifth Sundays, a lectern was moved to the middle of the aisle just in front of the congregation, and all the readings as well as the sermon were done from there. The music for fifth Sundays was led by piano, guitar, and other instruments that weren’t the organ, and it wasn’t unusual for there to be camp songs in the service. It’s just now, as I’m writing this, that I realize just how formative that first sermon was…preaching from the middle of the aisle, being close to the people as I did it.
And when I began preaching, for the first time in my life everything clicked. I’d spent time reading, studying, writing and rewriting my sermon, all things I love to do, and now I was speaking, teaching, acting, and telling people about Jesus. I was completely myself, which is to say, I was complete. My parents and siblings were in the congregation, along with my grandmother and cousin; people I’d known my whole time at church, who’d seen me as a bratty eleven-year-old and tolerated all my nonsense, were looking at me with admiration. People were listening to what I had to say, and it was amazing.
I don’t know if that would have happened at the early service. It was like an entirely different congregation. They were all my grandparents’ age, used the Rite I liturgy, and chanted…a lot. I opened my sermon by talking about a scene from Sesame Street where Bert and Ernie go fishing, and Ernie gets fish into the boat by calling out, “Here fishy, fishy, fishy!” I tied it to faith. The ten o’clock service knew it and loved it; it was a perfect way to break the ice. I don’t know how it would have been received by the early service.
I wrote the sermon for the ten o’clock service because I didn’t know I was supposed to do both. Had I known that, I would have done something completely different. What seemed like a mistake then – not knowing I was supposed to preach at both services – seems like a very intentional move by the Holy Spirit. I don’t know how things might have worked out if I had preached that sermon to both services, though my sense is that it would have fallen flat at eight o’clock, which would have seriously affected the way I gave the sermon at ten. I don’t know how it would have worked out; I know how it DID work out.
The Rev. Jason Shelby
Rector