When is a sermon a sermon?

The Bank of England should have done more to prevent the banking crisis according to its Governor, Sir Mervyn King, speaking in the Today Programme Annual Lecture at the beginning of the month. But, he continued because banking regulation had been removed from its powers, the Bank of England was limited to ‘publishing reports and preaching sermons.’  ‘And we did preach sermons about the risks,’ he said, but the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street should have ‘shouted from the rooftops.’ The inference is clear: the preaching of sermons doesn’t change anything.

King gave his lecture a three-part structure: what went wrong? What are the lessons? What needs to change? The way forward he offered was similarly tripartite: regulation; resolution; restructuring – his 3Rs helpfully alliterative. Here’s a speaker who knows the value of mnemonic devises.

Early on in the talk there was a jokey aside addressed to a Today programme journalist – a nice human touch. Throughout there were simple pithy and memorable phrases: ‘take away the punchbpowl just as the next party is getting going;’ ‘a case of heads I win, tails you – the taxpayer – loses;’ ‘shouted from the rooftops.’ Here’s a speaker who can translate hard ideas into down-to-earth and catchy phrases.

And all this carefully illustrated not only by reference to recent events but also via appeal to historical characters: Montagu Norman, late 1930s Governor of the Bank of England and US President Roosevelt speaking in 1933.

Banking may not be the subject that immediately comes to mind as the topic for an engaging and memorable speech, but this certainly was. King’s presentation, in its delivery, content and structure was immensely listenable. In fact you could say it was a sermon, or at the least a lecture that employed many homiletic strategies. Perhaps preaching has more significance than even the users of its techniques appreciate.

Say it like Sarah Lund

I’m one of the millions of fans of Sarah Lund – the uncompromising, uncommunicative, and unsocial detective who leads in the hugely successful Danish TV show The Killing. Despite subtitles, plots elongated beyond any comparable crime drama, and the relentlessly gloomy weather of its settings, The Killing has found global success. In the UK audience appreciation figures have been phenomenal with the show often acknowledged as ‘the best thing on TV’; extraordinary for a show that on the face of it is far from easy, casual watching.

A recent BBC interview with Sofie Gråbøl, the actor who places Sarah Lund, gives some clues (!) to the show’s appeal. She says it isn’t a meal where all the dishes are served at once. Instead, things are served up in a slow and incremental way that demands the imaginative attention of the viewer. The audience isn’t allowed to be passive as this holding things back demands co-creation on the part of the viewer. Significant details emerge through time and have to be remembered. One crime is the focus; presented in 20 episodes where each is a day in the investigation. Famously, even the actors don’t know ‘whodunnit’ as the programmes are being filmed as scripts are written as the story unfolds.

There’s a lot here any preacher or speaker should think about. Perhaps it isn’t always necessary to serve up all the words at once, as it were. It’s just too easy for preachers to fall into the trap of making every sermon encompass ‘God, the universe, and everything.’ Important subjects can connect in a much more piecemeal way, if there’s an evident suspenseful and engaging development in what’s said. The audience will stay with it, even for very long periods (20 episodes), if imaginations are being stirred and mental concentration is provoked. In fact, people like to put this brain effort in – it’s enjoyable and satisfying. The blindingly obvious served up in a tedious stew of words neither satisfies nor encourages. Engaging the minds, imaginations and hearts of the audience is the clear priority. Surely that’s the aim of every preacher too? Let’s say it like Sarah Lund.

Authentic Flames

From Lands End on May 19th the Olympic flame will begin its journey around the United Kingdom – 8,000 miles or so, usually in the hand of one of 8,000 torchbearers. As the excitement grows, and there is more and more media comment, one question keeps on being asked, 'What happens if it goes out?' And no doubt the question weighs especially heavily in the minds of those chosen to be torchbearers. 

The answer given is reassuring: the torch has been rigorously tested beyond anything each bearer is likely to encounter, and, even if the worst did happen, there will always be a flame sourced from the mother flame lit by the sun's rays at the Temple of Hera in Olympia, Greece within a 30 second reach of the extinguished torch. To always have this backup flame from the original source available is in itself, alongside the actual torch relay, a remarkable organizational achievement. Why all this effort to guard one flame? 

No voices, however, are raised in objection. There is something profoundly befitting about this, and only this, flame being good enough. It has got to be the light lit at Olympia. It has got to be the outcome of the sun’s ray brought to a blazing focus on an ancient Greek site. Without going into the story of the theft of fire by Prometheus from the great god Zeus; without any defence of fire’s symbolism; and without any appeal to values expressed in a journey shared brought into focus when the cauldron in the Olympic stadium is lit – without all these and more possible justifications, the flame connects in people’s minds. Here’s an authentic sign that connects past Olympiads with the present. It is both ancient and modern. It is a self-authenticating sign; a sign that can be explained, but doesn’t have to be. It strikes as authentic in itself. 

Surely the flame of faith has to have the same authenticity about it? It is to be guarded as the genuine article, but it must not be curtailed and bounded by justifications that shade its light. It has to be seen as self-authenticating because it connects before the words are needed. It shines, and the shining makes sense – at least initially – by itself.

Signs of Forgetfulness

One of the great paradoxes of contemporary life is that the world as a whole is, in the words of the sociologist Peter Berger, as 'furiously religious as it has ever been,' yet when it comes to the things of inherited Christian faith, Europe seems increasingly forgetful.

Dawn at Lake Galilee

Two signs of forgetfulness noticed recently:
1)  In news reports the BBC has taken to describing the episcopal presence in the House of Lords as 'Church of England bishops' presumably so as not to be confused with all the other bishops in the legislature.

2)  Seen outside the branch of a very popular supermarket: a sign explaining why the store won't be open tomorrow, Sunday, as it is usually open on every other Sunday of the year. Apparently tomorrow is something called Easter that inconveniently happens on a Sunday and some ancient law linked to that day prohibits the store from opening. The incovenience to customers is deeply regretted, but the store will be open bright and early the day after.

Ah well, let's celebrate his bright and early rising anyway.

The Artist: a preacher's notes from a great movie.

The Artist simply looks great. Glitz, glamour, artistry, and spectacle are all there, yet the blockbuster techniques of zappy special effects and sounds aren't.  Or perhaps it's more accurate to say those things are there but hidden under the guise of 1929/30 equivalents.  Here is a fairly commonplace man and woman story that although told with pace and panache remains a simple tale.  And yet the movie holds your attention and provides an ending with a satisfying, even surprising, sense of completion. And there's certainly a lot to think about in terms of the speaker's art. That's a strange thing to say of a silent movie, but true nevertheless. Here, as a beginning, are four things that struck me:  

1. What we say or plan to say always has to work with audience expectations even before we open our mouths. The ticket seller warned everyone who asked for a ticket that the film was in black and white without speech. She told us, 'People don't understand what a silent film is, and we've had so many complaints, that I thought it best to be clear with people before they buy.' Likewise the narrative of the film has a direction to it which every viewer will instantly recognize. It's a love story that you know will end in love's triumph. Expectations are fulfilled, yet there is still surprise, satisfaction, and entertainment in the experience.

2.  What we say has to have a logic about it that the audience understands and can complete for itself. In The Artist questions asked in dialogues between characters are often displayed as texts for the audience to read. But just like the silent movies of old, the answering dialogue is usually not completed in text. The audience must 'read' the answer from what the actor does, supplying the words for themselves. Very soon you come to realise that this keeps the pace of the story going and you become unaware that the 'dialogue' is going on only in your own head and imagination. So often sermons and other speeches are rendered tediously slow and boring by the speaker completing everything and allowing no space for the hearer's imagination.

3.  What we say may be a story that is essentially simple but that doesn't stop it being riveting if it is well told. In this The Artist excels. From the beginning it's clear that the principal character is in for a fall. Likewise the young actress is clearly going to be fundamental to the outcome. A touching sequence early on, where the first filmed scene in which they act together has to be repeatedly re-filmed because he becomes distracted by dancing with her and can't concentrate on his necessary action, gives a clue to the whole story. And that clue gives shape to the evolving plot. In a sense the audience knows the outcome from that sequence onwards. The telling of the story becomes in itself the thing that engages. The shape of the story told shines through its telling - it doesn't matter that we know, or think we know the outcome. The preacher must have the same commitment to a telling that shapes and satisfies of itself. 

4.  What we say doesn't always have to follow the rules of what is assumed to be 'best practice' Peculiarly this silent film, which tells a story with nothing more than pictures and music, gives weight to the importance of words alone. The Artist reminds us forcefully that pictures can by themselves tell a tale. Pictures have about them a power of disclosure and engagement that goes way beyond illustration. That's a warning to any speaker. It's all too easy to fall into the trap of assuming that in 'a visual age' all words must be attached to seen images. The Artist warns us that doing so may tell a story quite different from the one being said in accompanying words. The pictures can easily obliterate the words. Casual 'illustration' of speech may in fact silence it; whatever words are said. If this is a televisual age in which images are all powerful in what they say, those who say things need to be much more savvy about what their hearers see, if those hearers are to hear anything.

Returning to a classic

'It is only in the imparting of an outward-turned Christianity that we have any hope of achieving Christianity.  ...  Christianity must be a force that moves outward, and a Christian community is basically in existence "for others".  That is the whole meaning of a Christian community.'

So wrote Vincent Donovan in his profoundly inspiring Christianity Rediscoverd: An Epistle from the Masai first published in 1978. Here he means 'force' in the sense of energy and dynamism. To be people of faith and mission we have to be people on the move, looking forward and outward, towards the rest of the world and the people we encounter. To be a static 'come to us' community is a corruption of the faith to which we are called.

I've thought of these words often over recent weeks whilst I've been working with different groups thinking about vocation and Christian action.  (Incidently time-consuming preparation and follow up to those groups is why there's been no blog for a while. You might like to take a look at some of work from one group at Soul Leadership.)  What struck me from all the groups was a recognition of a radical shift in the way faith can be communicated, or even heard, in contemporary society.  Out of that recognition there was also clear determination amongst everyone I worked with to find ways of speaking up and speaking out.  When it's all too easy to feel rather defensive about the life of faith, here were folks wholeheartedly striving for that outward-turned Christianity of which Donovan wrote.  Real inspiration.

Preaching In-carnation



Ecce Ancilla Domini 1850

Christmas troubles me as a preacher.  The incarnation is surely God doing a new thing, but it’s so hard to express the wonder and shock of it.  Often it feels as if it’s all been said.  And I certainly don’t want to go down the weary path of complaining about consumerism.  There’s a kind of ‘expected part of the show’ element to Christians whingeing about how Christmas in celebrated popularly that I think is counter-productive.  What I’m looking for is some way of telling afresh how stupendous this birth is.  I want to convey that amazing but often tearful joy of when ‘the penny dropped’ for the first time.

That might be the retelling of those ‘penny drop’ moments of my own past: standing in the gloom of an ancient abbey as part of the bass line of a school choir and suddenly realizing with dub-struck awe the significance of the words of O Come, O Come Emmanuel; seeing the light of something beyond words in the sparkling eyes of an Alzheimer’s sufferer’s rare smile at the pulling of a Christmas cracker; recognizing in the playful determination of a small dog in deep snow a thread of life-joy that mysteriously connects sensate beings; or finding a gaggle of excited young children suddenly still and quiet as the story simply told touches them.  Fortunately I could tell of many such instances, but their power, though real, is so hard to recreate as a third party retelling.  Where then should I look for inspiration?

As is so often the case, looking back might be a key.  Looking back at what the stream of tradition we inhabit might offer.  And that brings me to a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – Ecce Ancilla Domini (The Annunciation), painted 1849-50.  What Rossetti portrays is the frailty of a young woman, a slip of a girl; a simple shift clinging to her figure, her arms bare, suddenly awoken from sleep perhaps, her knees drawn up, she cowers against the wall of her sleeping room.  She is thin, troubled looking, and possibly feeling threatened.  She avoids looking directly at the presence that has invaded her room.  She certainly doesn't look as if she considers herself favoured - much perplexity sums it up.  As one scholar suggests, Mary's exclamation at the end of the encounter, "Let it be to me according to your word" is more a shrug of resignation faced with the inevitable within the world of the sexual politics of first century Palestine, than the triumphant consent we usually take it to be.  The painting is suggestive of that fearful acquiescence.

Rossetti's version of the story of the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary her pregnancy and its purpose has none of the studious contemplation and noble acceptance of traditional renderings so beloved of Renaissance artists.  This is a radical reinterpretation in which the humanity - the bodiliness if you like - of Mary is plain to see.  Her holiness is apparent by the halo, but the posture and the look make her clearly a woman not a superhuman saint.  The women figures of the pre-Raphaelite painters like Rossetti do have a romantic, otherworldliness about them - but those ethereal faces and forms all the more emphasise the feminine, passionate, mysterious and sensual nature of flesh, human flesh.

The picture is almost wholly restricted to white and the three primary colours - a curious goldness hangs around the angel’s feet, blue drapes signify heaven and the virgin, red hair brings to mind Christ's blood, and the whiteness of cloths and the lily mark purity.  The symbols that any earlier artist might have used are all there - yet the picture makes a new statement.  When it was exhibited in 1850 criticism rained down on Rossetti and he vowed never to show it again in public.

The Church sees fit to label this cowering girl the Blessed Virgin Mary – we should hear that not such much as a title but as a description of her body.  Virgin here can designate nothing else but a body.  Her swollen womb is just that, her carrying as tiring as any mother-to-be's carrying, her labour as painful and exhausting, her birthing as bloody and as emotional as any birthing.  God will be born a body of a body.  And we will carol the promise of long ago made new again in amniotic fluid spilt, a slimy form squealing and stretching in air for the first time, and breasts heavy with milk.

That's wonder; that's gospel.  God is born a body to make holy every body.  A place to begin .....

The sermon woven from this strand is here.