This is a poem for the ages, one to dwell on (even rememberize) over the next few weeks. The closer we come to Christmas the less that prose will do. We turn to poetry. As we draw near, poetry catches flame and becomes song. Slip into this poem’s meter and read it aloud. If I were leading a Christmas Eve worship gathering, I’d simply perform this poem for the message.

THE CHRISTMAS HOUSE (G.K. Chesterton)

There fared a mother driven forth
Out of an inn to roam;
In the place where she was homeless
All men are at home.
The crazy stable close at hand,
With shaking timber and shifting sand,
Grew a stronger thing to abide and stand
Than the square stones of Rome.

For men are homesick in their homes,
And strangers under the sun,
And they lay on their heads in a foreign land
Whenever the day is done.
Here we have battle and blazing eyes,
And chance and honour and high surprise,
But our homes are under miraculous skies
Where the yule tale was begun.

A Child in a foul stable,
Where the beasts feed and foam;
Only where He was homeless
Are you and I at home;
We have hands that fashion and heads that know,
But our hearts we lost – how long ago!
In a place no chart nor ship can show
Under the sky’s dome.

This world is wild as an old wives’ tale,
And strange the plain things are,
The earth is enough and the air is enough
For our wonder and our war;
But our rest is as far as the fire-drake swings
And our peace is put in impossible things
Where clashed and thundered unthinkable wings
Round an incredible star.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

I’ve often lamented here about the way most Christians these days separate the speaking from the “worship.” The music, of course, is considered the worship. The speaking is most often categorized as “the teaching.”

We can learn a lot from the African American Church on this front. Have you ever noticed in this tradition how a sermon is not something the preacher “delivers” to the people? The message is alive and belongs neither to the preacher nor the people but to both. They actively participate together in the ministry of Word and Spirit. Something genuinely new takes place that is not replicable. It’s a gift always readily available, but never repeatable.

People often want to isolate this kind of preaching as a “style” in a particular “tradition.” It excuses us from really exploring it as a possibility by claiming that it’s not “who we are.” And let’s be honest. There’s nothing worse than to hear a “white” preacher trying to preach like a black preacher. Here’s what I think. I think the African American Church’s practice of preaching transcends “style” and delves into the place of the true “essence” of what proclamation in the Kingdom of God looks and feels like. We must ask ourselves the question:  What would that “essence” look like if it were captured in my own native style of preaching?

Christian preaching is not a one-way information highway. Nor is it a two way conversation. True preaching is a Divine engagement with a human community in the holy milieu of Word and Spirit. Preaching is not an interesting, insightful and entertaining lecture. Preaching is a human encounter with a Divine Word in the power of the Holy Spirit. Preaching is a supernatural event that happens  in the space between speaker and hearer as we together learn to lean forward into the World of the Word of God and breathe deeply of the Spirit who inspired it.

The biggest revolution required to move into this approach:  the way we prepare. More on that to come.