FAITH OF MY FATHER
A Widow Bit – June 20, 2010
By Mary Koch

            I find a delicious irony in the fact that I, a preacher’s kid, am spending Father’s Day at a workshop on homiletics – the art and craft of preaching.

            Every month or two I am invited to preach for the small Episcopal church where I attend. When this preaching workshop appeared on the diocesan schedule, I decided it might help me figure out what it is I think I’m doing in those sermons.

            Pretty much all I know about preaching I learned from my dad, a Lutheran minister. His congregations loved him both for his compassion as a pastor and his clarity as a preacher. His sermons – concise and thoughtful – were laced with his gentle humor. We have no copies of his sermons. He never wrote them out, preaching from notes precisely outlined on a typed, half-sheet of paper.

            Homiletics was Dad’s favorite class in seminary. He was taught that a good sermon has three points, and he subscribed to that paradigm his entire preaching career. His catechism students (including all three of his own children) were required to take sermon notes, identify those three points and turn the notes in to Dad after church services each Sunday. Only recently has it occurred to me how discouraging it might have been for him to read through those notes. Only recently have I given much thought to how much work Dad must have put into his preaching. He made it appear simple.

            Dad often said his life’s ambition was to preach an unforgettable sermon. “But you already have!” a parishioner once objected.

            “What was it?” Dad asked.

            “I don’t remember precisely, but … “

            That became one of Dad’s favorite jokes on himself.

            I don’t remember any of Dad’s sermons specifically, but I recall with clarity his two major themes. First, stewardship is not how much money you give to a church but how you live your life and care for all you’ve been given. Secondly, good works do not get you into heaven – you get there only through God’s grace. Grace is freely given; all you have to do is accept.

            Dad – and our mother – planted deep spiritual roots for their children. I, like anyone raised in a religious tradition, have struggled with those roots through the years. But as the Buddhist priest Thich Nhat Hahn teaches, you cannot escape your roots. Cut yourself off from them, and you risk spiritual death.

            So I continue to struggle with the institutional church, especially its male-dominated authoritarianism. I struggle to live with it, because I can’t live without it. Yes, things are changing, but we’re still a long ways from fully hearing the sacred voice of the female in the universal church.

            I recall listening to a retired bishop rail at the shortcomings of his beloved institution. I finally asked, “Then why must we have a church?” He paused, looked directly at me, and said simply, “To tell the story.” The inference being, there’s but one story.

            And so many ways of telling it.