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![]() Fleming Rutledge is a preacher and teacher known throughout the US, Canada, and parts of the UK. She is the author of eight books, all from Eerdmans Publishing. Her most recent book, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, is the product of the work of a lifetime and is being described as a new classic on the subject. One of the first women to be ordained to the priesthood of the Episcopal Church, she served for fourteen years on the clergy staff at Grace Church on Lower Broadway at Tenth Street, New York City. Fleming and her husband celebrated their 50th anniversary in 2009 and have two daughters and two grandchildren. She is a native of Franklin, Virginia.
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Ruminations: The truthtellers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High SchoolWednesday, February 21, 2018The truthtellers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
This blog is for preachers. It’s the first blog I’ve written
in about eight months, having found Twitter a lot less taxing (there’s a lesson
there, not entirely a good one!).
I am in a Starbucks by the side of the road. I have pulled
off because I have been on my car radio listening to an hour and a half of
speeches by the teenagers who survived the MSD school shooting and have gone to
Tallahassee to confront their legislators. As I listened to their electrifying
presentations, I kept thinking over and over about how much we preachers of the
gospel have to learn from them.
(I will refer to them as “young people” rather than
“children” out of respect for them, although they very strikingly refer to
themselves as “children” to call attention to what they see as the failure of
the “adults” to protect them.)
Not every speech was equally noteworthy. Two or three of the
young women would benefit from voice lessons to lower their registers. I am
writing about the most impressive of the speeches, which propelled me out of my
car. What was particularly striking about them? What can preachers learn from
them?
First and foremost
was their urgency. It was not to be
denied. They are infuriated by being patronized, by being told by legislators
how wonderful and brave and powerful they are. They are not interested in being
praised. They want to get something done. Like it or not, it cannot be denied that prophets have
arisen in Israel. The time will soon come when recalcitrant lawmakers will
begin to dread the appearance of young people in their offices and in the
hallways, just as King Ahab dreaded the appearance of Elijah.
I have heard a great many sermons in a variety of churches
all over this country and abroad. The majority of them lack urgency and
passion. They lack courage and commitment. It seems that teachers these days
must actually be prepared to take a bullet while protecting their students, but how
many preachers give the impression that their message is a matter of life and
death? I forget which one of the great preachers of history it was (Whitefield?
Wesley?) who said that every sermon should be delivered as if it were the
preacher’s last.
It is true that young people with a cause tend to be reckless
in their certainty. It is a classic characteristic of youth. But were the
apostles any less committed to preaching the gospel in circumstances that might
well result in their imprisonment or death? Is maturity an excuse for pallid
sermons?
Second and almost
equally notable was the young speakers’ renunciation
of all clichés, all platitudes, all used-to-death phrases continually
trotted out by politicians and other public figures. With the exception of
“never again,” which has had its day and probably should be permanently
retired, these young people explicitly
renounced standard phrases, telling the legislators that they were tired of
hearing about “thoughts and prayers,” tired of being told “this is not the time
for that conversation,” tired of hearing about how “our hearts are broken,” tired
of “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” We have heard all this before,
they said, and we are sick of it. We are sick of empty talk.
Note that they are not rejecting speech per se. They are making speeches. What they are rejecting is empty, shallow
speech without any heart in it, let alone truth. It was instructive to go back
and forth between listening to them and changing channels to hear the
concurrent speech at NASA by Vice-President Pence. His speech compared to
theirs was robotic, predictable, flat. He talked about how our national heart
was broken about the school shooting, but he sounded as it was simply an item
to be checked off his list. It sounded inauthentic.
So third, the
students’ speeches were authentic. It
is shocking and preposterous that the Twittersphere is ricocheting with viral
accusations that their speeches were written for them, that they are “crisis
actors.” No one except the most hardened skeptic listening to them could
mistake the immediacy of their recounting of their experiences hiding in
closets, texting their last words to parents, hearing the shots killing their
friends. Over time as they are asked to repeat their testimonies, the freshness
will fade, but the immediate impact cannot be taken away. Preachers can
learn from this, also. No story borrowed from a homiletical website can
substitute for the preacher’s own personal investment in what she is saying.
Over time, congregations learn to spot the difference between what is the preacher’s
own, won through struggle, and what is second hand.
Fourth, the young
peoples’ speeches for the most part were very artfully constructed. One young woman spoke about her determination
to demonstrate that no adult had written her speech for her. She hardly
needed to say this because the gut-wrenching nature of her testimony was far
too honest and immediate to be parroted. Given this, it was quite breathtaking
the way she and others put their speeches together. What they lacked in
Churchillian eloquence was compensated for by their skillful use of repetition
and crescendo reminiscent of African-American preaching. They did not allow
their speeches to flag in energy or forward movement. So many sermons that I
hear tail off at the end, as if the preacher lacked the energy and conviction
to make the sale, so to speak. The preacher preparing the sermon should always
allow time to craft the ending. No matter how much effort is put into setting
the stage, if the sermon loses strength at the end, the effort is lost and the
opportunity for a breakthrough dribbles away.
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Now, clearly, these young people are fired up because of
what has just happened to them. It may be that they cannot muster up this level
of passion month after month, which is what they will be required to do in
order to overcome the timidity of the legislators. Preachers, similarly, will
protest that they cannot produce high drama Sunday after Sunday, year after
year. But as the doctrine of the Word of God attests (see Karl Barth), every authentic proclamation of the Word is in itself a high drama. Every time the preacher
goes into the pulpit, the Powers of Sin and Death are lurking nearby to
undermine the power of the voice of God. The Word of God—as William
Stringfellow, for one, tirelessly proclaimed—is the weapon of Truth against
falsehood. Over a preaching lifetime, a preacher should be able to attest that
he or she has faithfully grappled with the Enemy so as to make room, Sunday by
Sunday, for the Word to speak.
Permanent Link for this Post: http://ruminations.generousorthodoxy.org/2018/02/the-truthtellers-of-marjory-stoneman.html |
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