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Introduction

Each and every Sunday in churches throughout the world, members of local congregations sit in their seats and listen to a message that has traditionally gone by the name ‘sermon.’1 Suffice it to say that this message is such a vital part of worship that many people evaluate the attractiveness of a particular church by the quality of the preaching one experiences within it. Throughout the course of my career as an ordained minister in both Protestant and Catholic churches,2 I have preached hundreds of times. On certain occasions and for particular reasons, I have moved away from the traditional approach wherein the preacher speaks and the congregation listens. Instead, I have delivered a message on that particular morning and provided time right after it for members of the congregation to respond with questions or comments if they decided to do so. It is from an extended period of time wherein I took such an approach that the idea behind this book was born.

Within the pages of what you are now reading, you will find eight sermons. That’s not all you will find here but they will form the centerpiece for each of the chapters you will read. These sermons were preached as part of a series in the summer of 2012 in the Congregational Church of Union, Connecticut, United Church of Christ, where I had served for over eleven years by the time this series started.

What is unique about this particular series is that each of my messages was a bit shorter than that which you might hear on most Sundays at my church. The reason for my relative brevity (and it is relative indeed!) is that at the end of each message, I ‘open up the floor’ and encourage members of the congregation to react back to the sermon-to, as mentioned above, ask questions, make comments, offer feedback, and possibly even critique something I either said or didn’t say!

It is important to know that I preach in the ‘traditional’ style over ninety percent of the time. Yet, over the course of my pastorate in that church, I sought to develop opportunities such as the one described here for two basic reasons, one highly theological, the other what we might call pastoral.

Let’s start with the theological: As Christian believers, we contend that the Word of God as contained within the Scriptures is ‘living and active’3 and that it has the power to touch the heart and to inspire each of us who read and hear it. In the long standing tradition of homiletics4 within the Christian church, we have also contended that it is the task of the preacher to ‘break open’ the Word of God so as to facilitate this process. In simpler terms, I like to think of preaching as structuring a message in such a way that in effect the preacher actually gets out of God’s way as both God and the hearer interact with one another during this time in the service in which the Word is so explicitly proclaimed.

As believers, we also affirm the reality of our shared ‘priesthood.’5 We recognize that God works in and through each of us and that we all have a message to share. In some traditions, such as my own, this recognition forms the basis for preaching by those who are not ordained on days such as designated Laity Sundays as well as other occasions.

Each time a preacher preaches, things are happening inside of the minds and the spirits of each person who is listening. Here is where what we might call a pastoral understanding enters into our discussion. What you and I hear in a sermon may be highly contingent upon where we happen to be in our life situations at the very moment this sermon is preached. As I write these words, I am preparing next Sunday’s message which centers on Jesus’ discussion with the Pharisees about marriage and divorce. How His words and mine are heard this coming Sunday morning and what they trigger in each hearer are greatly dependent upon the experiences with this topic each is reflecting upon at the particular time the sermon will be preached. One hearer may be worried about the possibility of divorce, another experiencing a custody battle, still another on the brink of committing to a new relationship, someone else coming off the high of one’s honeymoon and not even prepared to imagine how so blissful a relationship could ever actually rupture.

All of which brings us back to the underlying theological assumptions I make. If we contend that each Christian believer has a message to share, why should we not provide opportunity for him/her to share it within the context of the local church’s weekly gathering event, the service of worship? In using this approach over a period of several years, I have been deeply touched by what people have said when given the opportunity, by the questions my words led them to ponder and how the sharing of those questions made major contributions to the spiritual lives of THEIR hearers, including me!

This book is the result of something new for me. It is the first time I have used this preaching format in an extended sermon series. The sermons you read here were delivered over an eight week period during the months of July and August. In fact, this series itself is also the result of more than one new thing! In selecting the TOPICS for each of these shared messages, I opted to look at the kinds of QUESTIONS I have been asked in my life as a pastor and I tried to hone in on some of the recurring themes found therein. In this way, I felt I was preaching within the context of real life issues that had emerged within the lives of many of my listeners, several of whom articulated their questions to me.

Having done my doctoral work in the field of preaching, I was excited about this opportunity to put these beliefs I have expressed into practice over the period of several weeks. I also concluded early on that the process would be worth even more developed systematic reflection on my part. I was likewise hopeful that the result of this reflection would be of some value to others who are interested in both preaching and in the varied dynamics inherent in spiritual life wherever two, three or more are gathered. Hence, this book!

In each of the eight chapters that follow, you will find a similar format. I will begin by introducing some background to the question(s) about which I will be preaching. You will then have the opportunity to read my sermon as I wrote it. While I do speak aloud most of the words you will find printed, my written pulpit texts are not literal transcriptions of what I said from the pulpit on those summer mornings. On more than one occasion, I used the text as a springboard from which I gave examples that occurred to me at that moment. I find it important to say to you, the reader, that the sermon is different from the essay. The sermonic event is intended to be HEARD. It is not an essay to be read. Consequently, the preacher must craft it in such a way that it may make for clearer hearing. As a result, reading from these sermon notes is something that you may find to be quite difficult. So, as best you can, as you are reading these sermons, please try your very best to imagine them being delivered! In doing so, please recognize that these short phrases were delivered with the intention that the pacing of their delivery would be conducive to the hearer’s ability to absorb the words of the message. Simply put, each sermon is a message to be delivered through the unique means of communication that constitutes what we call a sermon. What might read more clearly in essay form might very well fail in a preaching context which is part of a service of worship!

At the end of each chapter, I also include discussion questions that I am hoping will be of value to you, the reader. Ideally, this book will be a resource for ongoing conversation and reflection upon the proclaimed Word expressed in these pages. In that way, what was a summer sermonic moment in Union, Connecticut continues to be living and active in the unfolding of the reader’s daily life, wherever she or he may be.

The questions selected for this sermon series represent real life human religious concerns as expressed to me a pastor over the course of several years, by people of different ages. In their selection, I recognized that I had identified a certain universality in the questions. These are issues that, while expressed by certain individuals, are hardly unique to those individuals alone and, in most cases, have been issues about which a considerable amount of theological and pastoral writing has been done over the years.

The series begins in Chapter One with the age old issue of why people suffer. Connected with this, Chapter Two explores how prayer fits into that question and what, in fact, the real purpose and effects of prayer might be. Chapter Three moves in a different direction as it considers the very future of faith in a pluralistic and changing world. Chapter Four delves more deeply into the very nature of who God is, which, of course, is connected to the matter of what, in fact, God does and has been doing for a very long time.

The occasion of a baptism in our congregation forms the basis for the sermon around which Chapter Five is centered. The fundamental question of where religion itself fits into human life and how so many religious approaches came to be is our matter for consideration in Chapter Six. Chapter Seven takes a different turn as I reflect upon the many questions I have been asked about what it’s like to be an ordained minister and move from those questions to a homiletic reflection on the priesthood of all believers. Chapter Eight contains the final sermon in the series, the one which deals with the ultimate question of what might possibly happen to us when these days of our earthly life are over, something we clergy are asked about quite often and which forms the basis for discussions within families as well as with our friends.

The reader should be aware that a funny thing happened on my way to the end of this series. Toward the end of the month of July, just prior to the preaching of the fourth sermon in this series, I received and accepted a call to be the pastor of a new church, thus positioning myself to leave this beloved congregation I had served for these nearly 11 ½ truly wonderful years. Consequently, this series took on a new tone. It became a series of shared reflections that played an integral role in this process of transition, both for me and the congregation. As it worked out, my final service in this congregation was delivered two weeks following the conclusion of this series.

You will notice that as we move toward the end of the series, some moments of poignancy clearly occur. What may be less apparent is the internal sense of urgency I felt as I drew closer to this moment of leaving. As I reread and reviewed these sermons I had written, I recalled this internal drive I was feeling, this deep desire to be clear about what I wanted to tell these people I loved so dearly, this need I felt to do the best I could to, yes, get out of God’s way and simply allow the Word to be alive in those who hear it.

A final note: If you are wondering about this title SO MUCH OLDER THEN and the epigraph you may have noticed before you started reading this Introduction, I am hoping that as you read the concluding chapter when you draw near the end of this book, that somehow the title might contribute to what you have discovered about yourself in these pages. I am also hopeful that, in your reading of these messages and your own reflection upon the conversations I describe, you will consider sharing your own thoughts with me as together we seek to both hear God’s word and to apply it to our very lives!6

1 In some traditions, e.g. Roman Catholicism, this is known by the title ‘homily.’

2 I was ordained a United Church of Christ clergyperson in 2002. I served as a Permanent Deacon in the Catholic Church from 1989-1998

3 Hebrews 4:12

4 The technical term for the study of preaching.

5 This is the concept of the ‘priesthood of all believers,’ a core concept of the Reformation. The Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church refers to a ‘priesthood of the faithful.’ The concept is based on 1 Peter 2:9

6 You may send a note to me by going to www.facebook.com/somucholderthen, by contacting the publisher, pubs@energion.com, by contacting me directly rpbksl@gmail.com, or by sending me a message through Twitter @REVDRBOBL