How Do I Do That?

I don't know how I do what I do, and that bothers me.

This may be the final polish on the plaque that declares that I am a nerd, but I want to understand things. I especially want to understand how it is that stuff works. And it seems even more important to me to know how it is that I am doing what I do.

The mystery in question is preaching.

I know why I am preaching, or at least I have palatable answers for me and for others when the question arises.

Why do I preach? In no particular order:

1. They pay me to, and after all it is a big part of my job.
2. I enjoy it. For someone who hated to do homework, I love having study and an oral presentation each week.
3. As Walter Brueggemann says much better than I do, we are a narrative people, and we live by stories. (See here for Brueggemann's description of how this works.) These stories (Torah, Gospel, Law and Prophets, the stories of faith in ordinary lives) are far better than the stories of Rome, or Washington, DC, or any other empire on earth.
4. As the Rev. Dr. Dow Egerton used to say to us in preaching class, "I love to tell the story for those who know it best seem hungering and thirsting to hear it like the rest..."

But how does it work?

I read the scriptures in the lectionary for the week, and sometimes an idea hits me then.

1. Sometimes I have two or three false starts.
2. Some weeks I realize I am writing several different sermons and need to pick only one to preach.
3. Some sermons start as a spark from something I read or heard or overheard or watched.
4. Some come all at once and my fingers and the keyboard have trouble keeping up, and some are like building a small model where you have to leave it alone time and again for the glue or paint to dry, only to come back later, add a few pieces and leave it again.
5. Some get typed up fairly quickly, and then sit to ferment for a few days, so I can come back and distill what is good out of the mix.

It is a strange and unruly thing to do something week after week, and to be told I do it fairly well, and still have no clue how it is done.