Not My Second to Last Sermon

I posted when I preached the second to last sermon of my seminary career, so I guess I should post after preaching my last.  Yesterday I spoke on the topic of 'the ache.'  The goal of the message was to affirm that intuition that there is something wrong with the world we live in.  The world is broken, and though many people have recognized this I wanted to use that intuition to point them toward Christ.

It was an 'apologetic' sermon.  I tried to avoid using Christian lingo in it, and I think I did alright on that front.  It was a fun sermon to write because I was able to work in literary and pop culture references and was not overly bound by the structure of the sermon.  I may post a revised version of the sermon on here sometime, but we'll have to see.

Right now, I just want to celebrate that this part of seminary is coming to a close.  I've fulfilled my preaching requirement, and I'm one step closer to graduation and an MFA program.  Now all I have to do finish seminary, take the GRE, and write a story or three that's good enough for a high quality MFA program to let me in.  

No problem, right....?

The Second to Last Sermon

Today was a monumental day . . . sort of.  I preached a sermon today in my Advanced Homiletics class, and I realized it's the second to last sermon I will preach in my seminary career.  It feels good.  I also felt good while I was preaching, which is unusual for me.  I got a number of compliments on the sermon and on my delivery.  One guy in the class actually said I was a 'natural.'  He wasn't marveling at my abilities or anything, but it was a much appreciated compliment.  The whole thing seemed odd at first, but I realized that I was comfortable preaching today because I'm not going to be a preacher.  The pressure is off, as they say.

But should that make a difference?  If my nerve problems were a result of a desire to perform, to be better than the other guys who were preaching, then it's certainly a good thing.  The scary idea is that maybe I'm not taking the task seriously.  Whether I'm going to be a pastor or not, the Word of God is still the Word of God.  It's still worth a serious treatment.

My usual posture is to assume the worst about myself.  I would naturally assume I'm not taking the Word seriously enough.  Against all odds, however, I am confident that my lack of nerves came from a lack of pretense.  I didn't want to cast the illusion that I'm going to be the next great preacher (not that anyone thought that).

I'm going to preach once more this semester, and I hope that I can have a similar experience.  But even if I don't, the Holy Spirit is powerful, and He determines the effect of the Word preached.  That, I think, is the key to preaching.