This past Sunday I preached. People have been encouraging me to preach without a manuscript, but I couldn’t quite do it. Prep time. Confidence in what I was saying. Overall enthusiasm. Yeah…I needed the manuscript.
I realized there’s something that happens when I preach to a congregation of faces that I know, that’s different than when I preach to people I don’t know. This weekend I didn’t know a lot of people sitting in the pews. And it was different. As I was talking, I didn’t have names and stories to go with faces. When I know people, I find myself thinking in the back of my head, “I hope you hear the hope in this,” or “I pray this connects with you in that area we were talking about the other day.” It was harder for me to gauge whether or not people were connected to what I was saying because I felt less connected to them.
Which was sort of the point of what I was talking about. Using the story of the Transfiguration, I was wrestling with what that looks like today…where that ‘holy’ shows up in the midst of daily life today.
And my conclusion? Through relationships. Through people.
If we could encounter the holy in one another, college students wouldn’t get killed over a parking spot dispute.
If we could encounter the holy in one another, I wouldn’t say great things about someone in one breath and then be snarky about them in another.
If we could encounter the holy in one another, we would share resources and conserve our environment.
If we could encounter the holy in one another, what we do together in ‘worship’ would indeed be a holy experience…and we would not be fighting about things like the color of candle oil or what style of music we use.
If we could encounter the holy in one another…
I didn’t know a lot of the names and stories to go along with the faces on Sunday. But in spite of my need for a manuscript…in spite of my uncertainty about my message…in spite of a sermon that’s long for Lutherans (about 17 minutes)…I do believe I encountered the holy.