It Really is Good News
Preaching in the Midst of Our Inadequacy
I preached the following sermon at a meeting of the Board of Ordained Ministry of The Virginia Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. The text was Romans 10:9-17.
I have a strict rule in my ministry: when the caller ID shows Glen Allen, VA, I send the call to voicemail. So, three years ago, when Tammy called and asked me to join the board, my defenses were unprepared for a 757 area code.
“Teer, will you serve on the Board of Ordained Ministry?”
I do not remember what I said, probably something like, “It would be an honor,” but in my mind, I know I was thinking, “Me? Really?” I had just been ordained. My feedback forms are still fresh in my mind. I knew what my deficiencies (we are supposed to call them areas of improvement) were. So, I kept asking myself, “Why me?”
Fast forward to December when Tammy asked if I would preach today, and the question from three years ago persisted, “Me? Really?” “Sure, Tammy, it’d be an honor,” I wrote back to her. Then, yesterday morning, Camille stood and read from Romans. I thought, “Wow, that sounds familiar. Did I recently hear a sermon from this text?” As Camille continued, panic overtook me. I quickly checked an email I’d sent Lyn a few days ago.
66 books in the bible with over 31,000 verses, and me and Camille, independent of one another, chose the same book, the chapter, and pretty much the same verses. I could have thought, “Wow, the Lord works in mysterious ways,” but instead, the weight on my chest felt heavy and led me to ask, “Me? Really?”
Gallup’s StrengthsFinder tells me I am self-assured and confident. Yet, I have felt a sense of inadequacy whenever I step into the pulpit. We hear it in sermon after sermon here at Roslyn when a colleague gets up to preach. Still, if we are honest, that feeling is often present in us, even in the pulpits we are most familiar with. But here’s the thing: that feeling of “Me? Really?” does not go away. And maybe it’s not supposed to.
This preaching gig is tough. There is always a feeling of insufficiency that comes with proclaiming the word of God. There is always the temptation to be new and original, to preach trendy sermons (and Jesus names this temptation as idolatry).
Paul tells us that faith, the source of our justification, comes from hearing the word of God proclaimed.[i] For the heart to believe, the mouth must confess.[ii]
Paul’s words remind us that salvation isn’t something we achieve—it’s something we receive. And we receive it through hearing. That’s why the proclamation matters. That’s why we preach. Because if we don’t say it, how will they hear?
To have one’s heart believe that God’s grace is sufficient requires someone to make the proclamation.
To believe that God’s grace promises to never leave you just as you are requires the declaration of this grace.
For the world to know that God is making every corner of creation new requires someone to proclaim it.
Whether you wear a robe and a stole or sit quietly in the back pew, we are all called to proclaim. Maybe not from a pulpit, but in conversations, in relationships, in the way we embody the gospel.
The Good News of the gospel is not merely good advice or self-help but the proclamation of what Jesus has already done and is doing. Someone has to tell the good news because, try as we might, that news cannot be found apart from Christ.
When we feel, when I feel, unworthy or inadequate to the task to which I have been called, that is precisely when I need to lean into my calling because that proclamation is not about my, not about your, eloquence or creativity but about Christ’s all-encompassing sufficiency.
It is not us who makes the gospel powerful – Jesus does.
It is not us who makes the heart believe – the Holy Spirit does.
Whether you are a preacher or someone sitting in the cheap seats, the calling of the Church is to lean into this proclamation even when feelings of inadequacy tell us otherwise. Our ability to speak a word of God’s hope is not contingent upon the preacher's effectiveness but rather upon the One who equips and sends servants into the world to be a means of God’s amazing grace.
Ten years ago, when I finally responded to my call to ministry, I had these same feelings of inadequacy and, “Me, really?” I found myself reading How to be Here by Rob Bell. I have had the following taped on the inside of my hymnal ever since:
“You have a list of all the things you aren’t, the things you can’t do, the things you’ve tried that didn’t go well. Regrets, mistakes that haunt you, moments when you crawled home in humiliation. For many of us, this list is the source of a number of head games, usually involving the words,
Not _______ enough.
Not smart enough,
Not talented enough,
Not disciplined enough,
Not educated enough,
Not beautiful, thin, popular, or hardworking enough
Here’s the truth about those messages:
They aren’t interesting.
What you haven’t done,
where you didn’t go to school, what you haven’t accomplished,
who you don’t know and what you are scared of
simply aren’t interesting.”[iii]
My inadequacies, your inadequacies, our feelings of doubt, the things we think we cannot do are not interesting to the One who overcomes what we say holds us back.
So, I guess this is a sermon to myself and to all of us who feel inadequate for the task before us.
Preach when you don’t feel like it.
Preach when you don’t have something “new” to say.”
Preach because someone needs to hear, and faith comes from hearing.
Christ is enough, and that really is Good News.
[i] Romans 10:17
[ii] Romans 10:10
[iii] Bell, Rob. How to Be Here. Harper One. 2016. Page 42.
Thank you