Ambivalence

April 7, 2019

The problem with ambivalence is how hard it makes it to make up your mind. I’ve written about the weight of responsibility that lifted off my shoulders when I retired. Until it was gone, I hadn’t even realized I had been carrying it, but having laid it down five years ago and then two years ago picking it back up, I know when I’m carrying it. 

Most of the time it’s OK, but occasionally it gets to me like it used to. I’ve often said that I can’t eat breakfast before preaching; I used to get so nervous that I would literally be sick to my stomach. I’ve progressed to the point where I can have an English muffin and coffee, but that’s about it. This morning however, it was back with such a vengeance that I actually threw up. “Why is it,” you ask? Well, I understand the seriousness of handling the Word of God. It is my responsibility to proclaim clearly and logically the Scriptures so people are confronted with the claims of the Gospel and taught the whole counsel of God. I’ve known too many preachers whose haphazard, sloppy, and lackadaisical approach to the job is a disgrace to God and a disservice to the people. I am never certain that I’ve prepared or prayed enough; in fact, most of the time, I would say I haven’t. It’s only the grace of God that has enabled me to do this for as long as I’ve done it.

St. Paul said, “We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7). He knew he wasn’t fit to do the job he had been called to do. Like John the Baptist who said he wasn’t worthy to even untie Jesus’ sandals, those of us who understand the calling know we aren’t capable of doing it justice. We must depend on Christ’s Holy Spirit, but we are always conscious of the human element which is never adequate. Imagine a surgeon or mechanic who faces each new patient or customer knowing he doesn’t have the skill to do the job. That’s what preaching is like. Frankly, it scares me, and I don’t understand preachers whose preparation and delivery is hit and miss; mostly miss.

That being said, I resonate with the preacher who declared that most of us preach to save our own souls. I think he is right. Absent the discipline sermon preparation requires, I’m not sure I would have any discipline at all. I preach to the congregation, but I preach for me. I need to hear the Word of God speaking to my own soul before I can present it to others, and the only way that happens is when I carve out the time to dig as deeply as I can, which never comes easily. Thus the ambivalence. I don’t like the weight of responsibility, but I fear the lightness of freedom from it. I am thankful for the ambivalence even when it makes it hard to make up my mind. It means I’m not done yet. Tomorrow is a new day, and even if I do so reluctantly, I will rise in the power of the Holy Spirit, the love of the Father, and the heavy grace of the Lord Jesus Christ to begin a new week’s preparation yoked to the Scriptures and God’s claim on me.