HEALING RELATIONSHIPS This book is dedicated to the loving memory of my Mother, Oma Moseley, who taught me the power of words & my Daddy, Fred Moseley, who taught me how to play with words HEALING RELATIONSHIPS A Preaching Model DAN MOSELEY Copyright ©2009 by Dan Moseley. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse content, please contact Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, www.copyright.com. Bible quotations, unless otherwise noted, are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Those quotations marked RSV are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright 1952, [2nd edition, 1971] by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Cover image: FotoSearch Cover and interior design: Elizabeth Wright Visit Chalice Press on the World Wide Web at www.chalicepress.com 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 09 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Moseley, Dan. Healing relationships : a preaching model / by Dan Moseley. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-8272-1455-2 1. Preaching. 2. Interpersonal relations--Religious aspects—Christianity—Sermons. 3. Sermons, American. I. Title. BV4222.M67 2008 251—dc22 2008026811 Printed in United States of America Contents Prelude vii 1. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 1 Leaving Home (Ex. 3:1–12) 2. Where Pulpit and Life Meet 7 3. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 18 The Strangely Familiar (Jn. 20:11–18) 4. How Relationships Heal and Transform 24 5. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 52 The Familiar Strangers (Gen. 32:22–32) 6. The Contexts for Preaching Healing 57 7. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 71 Sounds of Silence (1 Kings 9:11–18) 8. Introducing People in the Beginning of the Sermon 77 9. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 96 Sacred Memory (Lk. 1:46–56) 10. Deepening Relationships in the Body 103 of the Sermon 11. The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon 121 Coming Home (Mk. 14:22–25) 12. Ending Relationships and Sermons 126 Postlude: Creating an Oral Cathedral 140 Notes 148 Prelude This book is written by a practitioner of preaching for practitioners of preaching. It is, therefore, structured the way practitioners work rather than the way academics work. Practitioners preach. That is our primary task. Those who preach in congregations center their lives on the relentless return of the Sabbath. Every seven days the preacher must speak a word and hope that within her words people will be able to sort out a Word from the divine. Every seven days the preacher takes a text and seeks to shed a glimmer of light on the life of the community to whom she speaks. After speaking words for a designated period of time, she walks out of the pulpit only to begin reflecting on what she will say in seven more days. Unlike the academic, whose work it is to reflect on the scripture that is the life and work of the preacher and then comment on it, the preacher’s life is designed to comment, reflect on life for seven days, and then comment again. The preacher’s life is spent in reading and reflecting on the lives of those around him. He spends some time reading and reflecting on scripture and on the thoughts of those who write books and articles, but most of his time is spent reading the life of the community he serves. On the day designated for community worship, the preacher then is charged with speaking words again. If she has been able to read the texts and read the life of her community well, she might speak in a way that sheds some insight into the life of the listeners. That is the goal. As this book is by a practitioner for practitioners, it will intersperse reflections on preaching with sermons. My hope is that the net result of the journey through this book will be a sense of how the life we live and reflections we have on that life form and shape the sermons that we preach. I originally preached the sermons reprinted in this book at the Chautauqua Institution in Chautauqua, New York. These oral vii viii Healing Relationships presentations were preached over a six-day period in an outdoor amphitheater and therefore flow less like literature and more like a conversation. Chautauqua was established 125 years ago for the purpose of training Methodist Sunday School Teachers and has developed into a summer event for thousands of people. By focusing through the lenses of education, recreation, religion and the arts, it helps people enrich their understanding and their lives. I have selected these particular sermons because they reflect what I believe about preaching. They are designed to facilitate a relationship between the characters within the sermon and the listeners in the pew. What I share in this book is not simply the compilation of my mind’s reflection. It is the result of preaching for over thirty years to several congregations. I am grateful to the First Christian Church in Roaring Springs, Kentucky; Emerson Park Christian Church in Kansas City, Kansas; First Christian Church in Midwest City, Oklahoma; and The Vine Street Christian Church in Nashville, Tennessee. The members and friends of these congregations listened patiently to me for years and helped me discover what I am sharing in this book. I am also grateful to the students, faculty, and administration at Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis, Indiana. This institution called me to a chair designed to be occupied by a long- term practitioner of the art of ministry. They have nurtured me with gentle and patient presence, with enough distance to allow me to live through pain and see what I could discover in it. They have encouraged me as I have come to a new way of being. My relationship with them has helped me produce this book. I am also grateful to the Cathedral College in Washington, D.C. for regular invitations to be a part of their faculty. They have allowed me to explore new ideas that were emerging in my life and have created a sacred place for the sharing of these ideas with interested preachers. I thank Ron Allen, my colleague in preaching at Christian Theological Seminary, for his patient and warm encouraging presence. Ron has believed in me and has created occasions for me to be with other professors of preaching as we reflected on what listeners of preaching have to teach us. Barbara Brown Taylor has also been an important friend in the Prelude ix shaping of my life as a teacher of preaching. She has offered concise and pointed words of encouragement as we shared our own journeys from the pulpit to the classroom. I am especially grateful to Callie Smith, a former student at Christian Theological Seminary, for her work on this manuscript. Callie has read and discussed it with me over months of writing and rewriting. Her honest questions and observations have improved this book’s chances of being helpful to others. I am also deeply grateful to my wife, Deborah, for her patient presence and words of encouragement. It is not always easy to live with someone whose tendency is to carry around strange ideas in his head all day. Sometimes she waits while I worked them through; other times she gently pushes through the forest of words to remind me that life is short and that we have a life to live together. This book is a collaboration of all those who shared my life and helped me come to realize that hope discovered is more life-giving than hope declared, that grace discovered is more healing than grace declared, that truth discovered is more liberating than truth declared. Because of these gifts of learning, I have found that our lives are more shaped by what we discover than by what we hear. I now believe that trans formational preaching requires creating space in which people might be in relationships with others and the Other and through these relationships discover hope, grace, and truth. I believe that when they discover these relationships within and around themselves, they will discover the strength to attend to life and change with the faith that opens them to new life. 1 The Reluctant Pilgrim Sermon Leaving Home Exodus 3:1–12 First a personal word of appreciation for Chautauqua: I was introduced to this institution at a time in my life when I was in transition. These past several years have been occasions for growing, learning, and healing. This institution has been a key part of that. I am grateful for all who have been here and have nurtured the structures and the institutions so that we might be here. I am also grateful for you, who persist in attempting to explain to others what Chautauqua is, especially my friends Dudley and Jim Seal who tried for years to get me here, and for my friends, Ed and Pat Cole, who accompanied me all these years. And I am grateful for my family for coming to join me this week. Thanks to Joan Brown Campbell, a person whom I have admired through the years, for the invitation to be with you. A word about this week: You can tell from reading the Chautauquan that this is a series of sermons on “The Reluctant Pilgrim.” There are many of you here today who will not be here the rest of the week.