“It’s a writer’s job to tell the truth,” John Updike once said in an interview.

I think one might say the same thing about preaching.  I have been spending a good deal of time and energy recently learning how to preach.  My experiences in the pulpit, as well as in a homiletics class I recently completed at the Aquinas Institute, have encouraged me to see preaching as more than something I do.  Instead, I am learning to see it as part of who I am.  I suppose it’s similar to the distinction between a career and a vocation.  And in the process I’m coming to believe that the most important part of preaching is witness–that is, telling the truth as I have experienced it.

There is an interesting tension in preaching circles around the subject of witness.  Some experts find it indispensable, the very heart of what preaching is.  Others believe it is distracting, for instance, to speak in the first person during a sermon, and advise against anything that draws too much attention to the preacher.  Many experts warn–very wisely, I think–against saying anything from the pulpit that smacks of confession or therapy.  But given the centuries of commentators and scholars who have come before us, those of us who are called to proclaim the Gospel to our community sometimes just have to stop and ask: what do we really have to offer besides our own experience, joys, and struggles?  In other words, what more can we give than our selves?  And do we dare give anything less?

The paradox in writing and preaching is that sometimes the more concrete and even personal we are in our choice of stories and examples the more broadly our work resonates.  When people are offered specifics and details, even ones that seem a little idiosyncratic, some mysterious alchemy allows the listeners or readers to relate their own life, their own story, to what they’re hearing.  Eloquence isn’t really the issue: authenticity is.  So, for example, when I wanted a recent sermon to convey the importance of letting go and relinquishing the illusion of control as a necessary part of faith, I told a story about a child learning how to swim–an event I actually witnessed and that was deeply moving to me.  I received in response a number of comments along the lines of “I know exactly how that feels!”  And when someone said to me later, “It’s so hard to let go of the edge of the pool,” we both knew that we were talking about more than swimming.

It’s tricky, though.  I don’t want my writing or my preaching to become myopic or self-obsessed, but conversely when I use examples involving other people I have to be awfully careful not to reveal too much, not to violate any confidences or trespass upon friendship and intimacy.  When I make myself the object of ethical scrutiny or humorous self-disparagement, at least I know that nobody else will feel exposed.

Updike spoke of the “impersonal egoism” a writer needs in order to write autobiographically, whether in fiction, poetry, or memoir.  It takes a certain ego, in the popular sense of the word, to focus on one’s self as a subject.  But the “impersonal” part is just as important–one has to stand outside one’s self a bit, to be able to have perspective, in order for autobiographical writing to be accessible and inviting to others.  Egoism, then, but not egocentricity.

In terms of preaching, I like to play with Updike’s phrase and ponder the idea of “personal transparency” or selflessness.  A friend of mine who is a Eucharistic minister says that when she gives people communion she feels invisible, but it is a wonderful kind of invisibility that allows the person receiving communion to focus on God, not on her.  She becomes a conduit, I suppose you could say, or a vessel.  Oddly, she has to become very present, very engaged, in order for this to occur.  Preaching can be like that, too.  The more faithfully I risk sharing both my own vulnerability, weakness, or brokenness and the tremendous gift of God’s presence in my life, the less the sermon is about me.  And that’s how it should be.

In his recent visit to Concordia Seminary here in St. Louis, Walter Wangerin spoke encouraging words to the preachers and preaching students in his audience.  He is a magnicently gifted storyteller and preacher himself, and embodies the way the two arts are ideally combined.  He reminded those gathered that the story of the Gospels is a means of interpreting our own lives, not the other way around.  And he sounded this call for all who would hear it: “Ride the wave of human experience; be the chronicler of your congregation!  You are the poet who writes their epic.”  What an awesome responsibility and privilege.