Soon after the Eaton fire, Jill and I visited the ruins of our former neighborhood. Jill directed my eye to one prominent object still standing upright amid all the destruction. It was a sculpture by our neighbor, the artist Christopher “Kit” Davis. Every house surrounding it had been reduced to ash. How striking it was to see a hand-crafted work of art that endured.
As a preacher, I have long admired the sculptor’s craft. They take raw materials like clay or stone, and after molding that material by hand or chiseling it with a hammer, a finished piece emerges. If the sculptor has done their work well, their art will have a poignant story to tell the world. Sermon preparation is like that. We preachers take the raw material of words and texts. And from them, we endeavor each week to craft a finished piece. If we have done our job faithfully – and the Holy Spirit has been at work on our minds and hearts – a story of truth and beauty emerges. The good news of Jesus Christ is proclaimed.
However, I confess to some envy when I compare my task to that of sculptors like Kit Davis or Chris Slatoff. The words I prepare each Sunday evaporate into space the moment after I speak them. The stories Kit and Chris tell in clay and stone have a quality of endurance to them. The sculptor’s art can be touched by the hand and seen with the eye years after it was crafted. Their work can even survive a wildfire to emerge on the other side: upright and defiant.
And yet the things about which I preach do endure – even if my words do not. God’s glorious work continues through fire and flood: renewing all things, redeeming them through Jesus Christ, and filling the earth with the Holy Spirit. As the prophet Isaiah put it (40:8), “Grass withers and flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever.” The book of 1 Peter notes that for the Christian church, this “word” Isaiah spoke about is nothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the story of how “By God’s great Mercy, God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.”
And yet the things about which I preach do endure – even if my words do not. God’s glorious work continues through fire and flood: renewing all things, redeeming them through Jesus Christ, and filling the earth with the Holy Spirit. As the prophet Isaiah put it (40:8), “Grass withers and flowers fade, but the word of our God endures forever.” The book of 1 Peter notes that for the Christian church, this “word” Isaiah spoke about is nothing less than the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the story of how “By God’s great Mercy, God has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading.”