Brief and to the point

(From my column in Presbytery's e-letter on November 18, 2013)

150 years ago tomorrow, a nationally renowned public speaker named Edward Everett delivered a speech that was some two hours long at the dedication ceremony for the cemetery at the site of the Battle of Gettysburg.  Everett apparently was prepared for everything, even having a tent erected near the podium so that, in the course of his speech, he could take a bathroom break if nature called!  His speech was 13,607 words long.  By contrast, my sermon manuscripts have run somewhere between 1500-1800 words.

However, even my usual-length sermons are overly verbose compared with the speaker that followed Everett onto that podium that bright November day in Pennsylvania.   President Lincoln almost wasn't invited to speak, since the sponsors of the event weren't convinced that his plain-spoken, home-spun words would sufficiently honor the somber ceremony.  However, Lincoln delivered his "few, brief remarks" that day... 10 sentences, using 272 words, that have been firmly etched in our national psyche.

It gives me pause as one who has been delivering sermons for 36+ years to think  of the impact of that two minute speech.  I've been amused at the Facebook "challenge" that's been making the rounds, asking preachers to think about limiting a sermon to 272 words!  If anyone you know has tried it, I'd love to hear from them.

Author and theologian, the late Henri Nouwen, wrote about how we can utter words  that are filled with power and meaning... words that build love and community.   He said that the words we speak should come from a place rooted in prayerful silence.  He wrote: "A word with power is a word that comes out of (prayerful) silence.  A word that bears fruit is a word that emerges from the silence and returns to it... A word that is not rooted in silence is a weak, powerless word that sounds like a "clashing cymbal or a booming gong." (1 Cor. 13:1)." (From Nouwen's book, The Way of the Heart, p. 56)

No matter how long or short a sermon might be, and no matter how long or short any conversation is that we might have with someone else, are our words just so much fluff and hot air, just blah, blah, blah?  Or do our words carry authenticity,  convey love, spark dialogue, engender community, call for justice, build peace? May all of our words come from that place deep within us where we commune with God, so that the Word Incarnate, Jesus Christ, might be manifest in the words we utter.

Blessings and peace, Steve