This article is printed in the August Tidings.
Later this month, I reach a professional milestone as I deliver my 1000th sermon. If you count the homilies I prepared as a seminary student, or my message as a high school senior on Youth Sunday or even the very first sermon I gave to my family in our living room when I was about seven years old (the topic was “Jonah and the Whale”), the total is closer to 1025 lifetime messages. Still, I am using my ordination date as the starting point for this official count.
That kind of event got me thinking and led me to pull out my calculator. If you assume each of those sermons averaged 15 minutes (and some have certainly been shorter or longer), that means I have spoken for 15,000 minutes as a minister of Word and Sacrament which results in 250 hours or nearly 10 and one-half days of talking non-stop. The total is actually higher still for 681 of the sermons were delivered twice on the same day or night, 37 offered three times on the same date, and one Christmas Eve when I was the only pastor at DPC, I preached the same sermon four times. By my tally, that means I have sought to share insights from God’s Word on 1796 occasions. However you measure it, that’s a lot of talking!
I also looked at the book where I record every sermon of mine by date, title, Scripture lesson, and location to see what kinds of patterns emerged. 593 of my sermons have been based upon a New Testament text alone, 284 on an Old Testament passage and 123 drawn from lessons found in both portions of the Bible. The most frequent source for a sermon is Luke’s gospel which has served as the basis for 147 messages with Matthew a close second at 138. Among Old Testament books, Genesis has provided a sermon text 48 times with Exodus next at 32. I have preached from 56 different books of the Bible which means that ten books have never been the source of a sermon for me so don’t be surprised if one Sunday in the coming months you arrive in church and hear me preaching from Song of Solomon or Lamentations, Obadiah or Philemon.
The settings for my sermons have varied, too as I have preached in twelve different congregations representing five denominations, seven retirement communities, one synagogue, one lakeside setting and one outdoor park. The vast majority of my sermons have been delivered as part of Sunday worship, but there have been 28 that occurred as part of an afternoon vespers service, eight at a community service such as Thanksgiving Eve, Easter sunrise, or Labor Day, two at Presbytery events and two more at the installation of a new pastor. As I look back on those numbers, I am guessing one member of DPC has heard about 950 of those messages and some of them more than once. Truly I am blessed with such a patient partner in life and ministry!
Even with that sermon total, you should know I continue to count it a privilege to stand in a pulpit and share a word with you that God might use. I continue to be amazed by the ways God can take the thoughts and stories and dialect of this former North Carolinian and bring the written Word to life in ways that others can hear it. And I continue to be humbled by those occasions when the Spirit’s work through me allows others to experience the grace, love and power found in those holy pages as persons hear and take away a message I often did not know they needed.
While there are no favorite texts above all the Scripture lessons I have interpreted in a sermon, there is one passage which speaks to my ongoing conviction about the source for all preaching. It comes toward the end of his second letter to a young man in ministry when Paul writes these words: “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, so that everyone who belongs to God may be proficient, equipped for every good work.” (1Timothy 3:16-17) Words that not only describe my trust in God’s living Word, but suggest I better start pondering sermon number 1001, too!
--John
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