Sermon:  "Preaching the Word, 1,500 Times"
Date:   September 18, 2011
Minister:  The Rev. Charles Ensley

Lesson: 2 Timothy 4:1-5

I preached my first sermon on July 2, 1972 at McLean Community Church in the rural hamlet of McLean, population 400, in upstate New York.  I had driven across country alone in February to complete some chaplaincy training at Philadelphia State Hospital.  Before returning to Berkeley to finish my last year of seminary, the New York conference minister placed me in that little church as a seminary intern to fill-in during the summer after their pastor left.  I began that first sermon, “This Nation Under God” on July 2, 1972, about the glory and beauty of our country, the people I had met and the kindnesses shown to me. 

Near the end of the summer, I was entirely unprepared when the chair of their pastoral search committee told me they wanted me as their pastor.  “But I have a year of seminary left,” I explained with surprise.  “We’ll wait,” was his reply.  So I ended my summer internship a week after Labor Day with the first of a two part sermon, entitled:  “The Past:  What Do We Do With It?”  I continued the sermon back there ten months later on July 1, 1973 with my first sermon as an ordained minister, entitled:  “The Future:  Where Do We Go?” 

That little rural white clapboard church was a great beginning to my ministry, and my five years there were an excellent learning experience.  The congregation had many farmers—all of whom I found, to my surprise, had gone to Cornell University, as well as assembly line workers at local plants, educators, some retirees, and a Cornell professor.  It also included my future wife and the couple who would become my in-laws.  I was married in that church, and our first daughter Emily was baptized there.

I preached my 500th sermon eleven years later on September 9, 1984, at First Congregational United Church of Christ, Corning, New York.  It was entitled:  “500 Down:  Where to Go?”  It came six years into my eight-and-a-half year pastorate of that church of 250 members, including blue-collar workers, educators, lots of children, retirees, and a goodly number of upper level Corning Glass executives and research scientists.  Our second daughter Amy was born and baptized while I served the Corning church.

I preached my 1,000th sermon here at Bay Shore Church on October 19, 1997, ten years into my pastorate here.  It was entitled:  “A Thousand Sermons:  What Have I Said?”  (So far, every 500 sermon titles end with a question mark!)  Those of you present here 14 years ago might remember I put all the sermons from my filing cabinet on a cart from the kitchen and rolled it out in front of the pulpit, just to show you what 1,000 sermons—cataloged by quarters in file folders—looked like.

Since that time, I wondered if I would reach 1,500 sermons before I retired.  (You can tell I’m a numbers kind of guy!)  It looks like I reached that milestone.  Nothing to roll out on a cart today.  The last six years of sermons are all posted on the church website, with a number of them available on podcast.

I thought I would take this occasion after preaching 1,500 sermons to look at some of the themes of those sermons over those 38 years, what my general purpose in preaching is, how I write a sermon, and some of the memorable occasions that come to my mind.

I have preached repeatedly in three differnet churches on themes related to all the major liturgical seasons:  Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Pentecost.  I have preached about religious special days such as the Transfiguration, Palm Sunday, Good Shepherd Sunday, the Ascension, Trinity Sunday, All Saints Day, Reformation Sunday.  I have preached about the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, and nearly every year on that annual fall topic of stewardship.  I have preached about our national days of observance:  New Year’s, Mother’s Day, Memorial Day, Father’s Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving. 

Over the 25 years I have been here at Bay Shore I’ve  preached on topics that the congregation requested and ones that are in the news, among them:  teen sexuality, domestic violence, homosexuality, counter-culturalism, race relations, divorce, riots, AIDS, abortion, euthanasia.

Yet the vast majority of my sermons are built around a theme I adopted long ago.  In October 1976, three years into ordained ministry, Peggy and I attended a week-long conference with Norman Vincent Peale, which culminated with Sunday worship at Marble Collegiate Church in New York City.  The theme of the conference, on this plaque which has hung since in each of my church offices, was “Sharing the Faith that helps people meet the daily problems of Life.”

Listeners to my sermons in three quite different congregations have often remarked that the sermons make the Biblical lessons applicable to everyday life.  I think that reaction is a result of that conference which has so influenced my ministry.

As the years went on, I also felt my mission—somewhat parallel to ‘sharing the faith’ theme—is to try to make Jesus and his teachings come alive for people.  I heard a third-person comment directed to me many years ago which said, “He sure talks about Jesus a lot.”  Well…I am a Christian minister.  Maybe whoever that person was would be more comfortable in a Unitarian Universalist fellowship.  They’re fine people.

I also heard said of my sermons—again a third-person anonymous comment—“He doesn’t preach from the Bible very much.”  To that end, about ten years ago I started putting in the worship bulletin under the sermon title the key verses of the text I was preaching on.  For I was taught by my homiletics professor—that’s the art of preaching—40 years ago that the preacher doesn’t start with what he or she wants to talk about, and then find a scripture to match.  You take the scripture and develop the theme from that.  So, I was trained to preach from the Bible.

That’s what I did this week.  Today’s key verses under the sermon title in the bulletin are slightly different from the words Amy read from the New Revised Standard Version in the pews.  I took words from the older Revised Standard Version I used in seminary.  In the apostle’s letter to his younger colleague Timothy, set out like me as a novice in that rural parish in the early ‘70s, he wrote:  “…preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season…be unfailing in patience and in teaching.”  (2 Timothy 4:2)  (The “patience” part is sometimes a challenge in ministry!)

Many times over the years people have asked questions like, “How long does it take you to write a sermon.”  That is almost impossible for me to answer.  But here’s the usual pattern.  It is one I had to adopt immediately after coming to Bay Shore Church, for we have a weekly newsletter, published on Tuesday.  So when I come into the office after my day off on Monday, I have to know the scripture lesson, theme and title of the next Sunday’s sermon so it can be printed in Tuesday’s Carillon.

I do my homework—literally at home—on Monday afternoon or evening.  I sit on the couch, for that gives me lots of room to spread out my materials.  Much of the time Rev. Susie and I preach from the Revised Common Lectionary, a compendium of texts developed by an ecumenical team that takes you through all the major themes of the Bible in a three-year cycle.  Several years ago a team published these annual planbooks for pastors and musicians that list the four texts for the day—Old Testament, Psalm, Gospel and Epistle—along with suggested hymns and anthems.  Susie, Julie, Alicia and I all have one.

I first look through the texts to see which one jumps out at me.  (See, I really do preach from the Bible, even though a spiral planbook doesn’t look like one!)  I use the term “jumps out” literally, for I look for some theme to grab me, such as today’s “preach the word, be urgent in season and out of season.”

Once I select the lesson, I have to think of a sermon title, long before the sermon is written.  Dr. Peale said to us at that conference, “Pick a sermon title that if someone was going down Fifth Avenue on the bus and saw your title outside, they would want to get off and come in to hear your sermon.”  Every week I can hear his echo from 1976.  I also look at the suggested hymns to see if any will work with my theme.  Sometimes yes; sometimes no.

Then the thinking part begins.  Starting Monday, over the next several days, things will pop into my consciousness that I might use in the sermon.  It is surprising that when I know the theme, related articles in the newspaper, a journal or magazine will “jump out” at me.

The actual composition at the computer usually begins on Friday and ends on Saturday afternoon.  Sometimes I sit down and write it straight through.  Sometimes I leave church on Friday afternoon at a stopping point, then on Saturday morning come back to review what I’ve written so far, and develop where I want to go from there.

Last Sunday’s was a little different.  I knew for months that I would address the tenth anniversary of 9/11.  I was thinking about it, especially after visiting Ground Zero in July, and into early September.  Nothing was coming to me.  Then, on the Monday afternoon of Labor Day, I took a pad of paper and with pencil wrote out a one page outline, including references to the quotations I wanted to include.  Over that Friday and Saturday I put the sermon together, following that outline.

The computer has been an unbelievable blessing to sermon preparation.  In the old days back in New York, I wrote out each sermon in pencil on a yellow legal pad, then came into my office on Saturday to type it on a typewriter.  When I reviewed the sermon on Sunday morning before preaching, as I still do, if I wanted to change the order of the paragraphs, I had to literally “cut and paste,” with scissors and Scotch tape.  Nowadays, I can easily substitute words, change the structure of sentences, move paragraphs, all before printing the copy for preaching. 

I have always preached from a manuscript for two reasons:  First, I think I can put my thoughts into a more organized, more intelligent, more logical order than if I just stood up here with thoughts in my mind, trying to put them into a meaningful message with a beginning, a middle and an ending—or as Bob Laubacher likes to say, “bringing the train back into the station!”  Second, there’s enough of the student left in me that when I’m finished, I like to have something to show for it.  Besides, if hard copies are being made available and it’s posted on the website, you have to have something to print.

Finally, a few memorable sermons that come to mind of those 1,500 sermons over 38 years:

On Father’s Day, 1977 in the McLean church, my sermon was entitled, “Who Cares About Fathers Anyway?”  I ended the sermon by saying I did, for I was going to become a father with the arrival of our first daughter Emily.  I used that same title and theme on Father’s Day here this year, when I ended the sermon by saying our son-in-law David was going to become a father, because our daughter Amy is pregnant. 

On the Saturday a week before Christmas 1989, we had a sanctuary fire here.  There were lots of members around in the aftermath, for it was the day we were delivering gifts, clothing, furniture and food to our dozen “adopted” Christmas families.  Others spent the day setting up the Concert Hall as a worship space which we would use until the next May.  My sermon was almost completed, but I remember being here until nearly midnight rewriting it to fit the situation we faced as a congregation.  The previously printed title in the bulletin was, “Christmas:  When All You Ever Wanted Wasn’t Enough.”  Boy, was that an appropriate theme to work off of after a sanctuary fire seven days before Christmas Eve.

9/11 2001 occurred on a Tuesday morning, so I had time to prepare for the next Sunday’s sermon when a packed sanctuary was awaiting some word of sanity, understanding, comfort and peace in the face of the unexplainable.  My sermon, based on Psalm 46, was entitled “God Is Our Refuge,” and was reprinted in the next week’s Grunion Gazette.

On June 25, 2006, the phone rang in our darkened bedroom at 4:10 a.m.  I knew what it was before I answered the phone; it was expected.  My brother-in-law told me my mother had stopped breathing.  Did we want to come?  We hurriedly dressed and drove to Quaker Gardens, where she lived during her decline from Alzheimer’s disease.  After we said a prayer and our good-bye to her for the last time, we came home.  We were standing in the kitchen and I was making a cup of tea when I heard a strange buzzing.  “What’s that?” I said.  I realized it was my alarm clock back in the bedroom telling me it was 6 o’clock on Sunday morning; time to get up for church.  So I showered and dressed and came here and preached the sermon I had already prepared.  At the end of the service I announced that my mother had died that morning and I would be off the rest of the week.  Without looking in my files, I cannot remember anything about that sermon, and I doubt most of the congregation did after my announcement.

I never know how a sermon is going to be received, interpreted, or remembered.  I sometimes write a sermon based upon a situation a certain person is facing.  When I deliver it, they’re either not here or they glide by me at the door afterwards and merely shake my hand.  Two or four others will say, “You were writing that for me.  I needed to hear that today.”  Other times someone will randomly say to me, “I always remember you said in a sermon thus and so.”  I have no recollection of saying it, but it sounds reasonable and like something I might have said.

The last instruction the apostle wrote to Timothy before his farewell was this:  “As for you, always be sober, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully.” (2 Timothy 4:5)  I pray that I have been faithful to that charge each time I prepare for and step into the pulpit to preach the Word.