Church & Sermons & Sermons from Hell

[naomikritzer]

Q. How many points should a sermon have?
A. At least one.

My grandmother relocated here recently. A lifelong Baptist, she was been a member of an American Baptist congregation in Ohio. (American Baptists are the liberal kind.) American Baptist churches are thin on the ground in Minnesota (we have Lutherans and Methodists instead) and I've been taking her around to various kinds of churches to see if she can find one where she feels at home.

We visited a Southern Baptist church the first week. It was very close to where she lives, and while they seemed conservative, they didn't seem freakishly so, at least over the phone. On the plus side, the preacher gave a really excellent sermon (the best of the bunch so far, in fact). On the minus side, when Grammie mentioned while chatting with a lady from the church that she had grown up near Lynchburg, the woman smiled warmly and told her how much she loved Jerry Falwell. (My grandmother thinks he's a raving nutbar.) They are a "mission-oriented" church. In some churches, a "mission" is where you go build houses in Honduras or serve soup in a soup kitchen or in some way do something useful with yourself. Not so much with this church. Their missionaries are out to Share the Word of God (with the heathens of London, England, in at least one case) and any house-building or soup-stirring they do is pretty incidental. Anyway, Grammie thanked me for taking her but wanted to check out a different church the following week.

We spent two weeks going to a United Methodist church in Edina. This was kind of a fascinating experience, as -- well -- to be blunt, I've never seen a church with this much money before. They had beautiful, fully equipped classrooms for every age group. Just for their Sunday School -- they don't run a school there during the week or anything like that. They have a gymnasium. My friend malachitefer grew up Methodist and told me once that the basic Methodist worship service would involve getting together, singing a whole lot of hymns, and then having a potluck. Our second week, they rushed through a basic set of prayers and then presented a 45 minute concert, Vivaldi's Gloria. With a 100-person church choir plus a hired nine-piece string and wind ensemble.

Pretty cool, but Grammie wanted to see what else was around.

Last week, my mother took her to an American Baptist church in Minneapolis. It's not terribly close to her apartment, but my parents had some ideas for arranging rides if Grammie decided she really loved this church. Last week, she was very enthusiastic, and my mother remarked on how friendly the church was. So this week, I took her there again.

Heh.

Whoops.



It really does seem like a lovely church, honestly. They are so friendly. At most churches, if you make eye contact with someone, they'll smile and greet you. At this church, they'll smile, greet you, introduce themself, ask you where you're from, and strike up a conversation. Everyone does this. It's like they've been through training or something.

But, they had a guest pastor today to do their sermon. And she delivered a sermon about SEX.

If I had gone my whole life without having to hear the word "masturbation" while sitting next to my 82-year-old grandmother, that would have been okay. Ditto "pornography." Discussions of when masturbation and pornography are okay vs. not okay? I could've done without those, too. Comprehensive teen sex ed? Abortion rights? An explanation of how rape is wrong because it violates someone's "vulnerability"? NO THANK YOU. YOU SEE, I HAVE MY GRANDMOTHER WITH ME TODAY, AND SHE'S BOTHERED ENOUGH BY THE F-WORD. CAN'T WE HAVE A NICE SERMON ABOUT EPIPHANY INSTEAD?

It wasn't even a good sermon about sex. Let me extend Spurgeon's quote about how many points you need just a bit. Most sermons should have at least one point. If you're going to deliver a controversial sermon, or a sermon that will make a significant number of people present uncomfortable or angry, it should have exactly one point, forcefully and clearly delivered. Because otherwise, why bother? If you're going to piss people off, piss them off for a reason. Don't leave them saying to their spouse a few hours later, "Yeah, she talked about SEX IN CHURCH but I'm not sure why. Mostly the sermon was a tour of liberal positions on issues related to sex." As a liberal hearing the sermon, I wasn't offended by any of her views, but I wasn't enlightened, either; it wasn't thought-provoking, it didn't challenge me to reflect on anything. As a relative conservative hearing the sermon, my grandmother did not find it persuasive, merely upsetting. And it's not as if, with a dozen different sex-related topics, she really could make a coherent point beyond, "isn't it nice that we're all liberals?"

Oh, but she did tell us a limerick:

There was a young lady named Wilde
Who kept herself quite undefiled
By thinking of Jesus
and social diseases
And the fear of having a child.

Now, a useful sermon about sex might have focused on the issue of sexual ethics. (If you reject traditional moral teachings about sex, what ideas do you live by in order to ensure that you act ethically? Are there ideas in the Bible we can apply in a useful way? There's a lot of potential fodder here, stuff that might be thought-provoking rather than just a recognition and affirmation of everyone's progressivism.) She did touch on sexual ethics, but only briefly.

I'm honestly not sure how the rest of the congregation felt about the sermon -- whether some were shocked or whether this was just your average Sunday, as far as they were concerned. We might have gotten a sense at coffee hour, but Grammie didn't want to stay. I think she was offended by some of the opinions that the minister clearly thought everyone present would agree with (the minister's bashing of abstinence-only sex ed came across at times as anti-encouraging-abstinence-in-teens) but mostly I think she is just profoundly uncomfortable with open discussion of sex. It's the sort of thing she'll normally just avoid, but it's hard when you're ambushed somewhere you're really not expecting it. Who (other than Unitarians) expects a sex sermon at church? It's not that she thinks sex is dirty; it's more than she thinks it's private.

Grammie came back to my house for lunch, and Ed told her about the one time he heard a genuinely shocking sermon. In the fall of 1991, two of his friends got married. (I didn't know Ruth and Derek at the time, though both became good friends later.) The pastor -- of Ruth's childhood church, which was Missouri Synod Lutheran -- delivered a fire and brimstone sermon at the wedding. It started out -- everyone present can vouch for this -- with the words, "You are all going to die."

At least that one made for a really good story later.

Comments

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

I think your current shocking-sermon experience makes for a really good story now! Some people just don't understand that there is a *time* and a *place* for talking about sex within your parish, and that you tell people ahead of time that you're going to do it and maybe have a potluck dinner before hand to warm people up and make sure everyone who's there *wants* to be. Sheesh.

I'm so glad Episcopalians let you choose for yourself which parish you want to belong to, rather than saying "You live here, so you belong to this parish." We've belonged to St. Mary's Parish since before we were married and lived way out in Delran, because we really "clicked" with them, and later we moved to Burlington to be in the geographical area served by the parish because we wanted to strengthen our connection with them. Except for the hassle of flood insurance from living so close to the Delaware River, we couldn't be happier about the move as it brings us into a place with a true sense of community from a place that is a town in name only.

Best of luck to your Grammie in finding the right church for her, and thank goodness she's not a Unitarian!

[naomikritzer]

(I have nothing against Unitarians, just to clarify; vast numbers of close friends are Unitarian. But I know going in that UU and Grammie would not be a good fit for all kinds of reasons, the most important being that she's Christian and wants a church where they talk about Jesus a fair amount.)

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

Yes, I certainly don't mean to knock Unitarians, especially since I know so little about them, but I do get the sense from what I've read that they would not be a good fit for someone with a strong Christian bent; I guess I was imagining the disaster that would occur if someone from my own (Anglo-Catholic) parish attended a Unitarian service. Sorry if my comment came off as kind of snotty.

[naomikritzer]

Ed attended one of the local UU churches for a while. One week they actually had two readings from the Bible (one OT, one NT, IIRC) and they had to apologize the following week for the excessive Christianity, so yeah, I think you're pretty much dead on.

If she were already Unitarian, though, she'd presumably be used to that and would find it easy to find a church that was a good fit. If she'd come from Boston and had attended one of the small number of UU churches with a strong Christian bent, though, we'd be visiting UCC churches, I think. There aren't any UU groups here with a strong Christian bent that I know of.

[notthatedburke.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad Episcopalians let you choose for yourself which parish you want to belong to, rather than saying "You live here, so you belong to this parish."

As opposed to, um, who these days?

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

Good point.

[queenofstuff.livejournal.com]

"thank goodness she's not a Unitarian!"

Why? I'm not sure what you're referring to - is it Unitarianism's liberalness, or do you percieve Unitarian churches as more widely-ranging in style?

I was raised Unitarian, but I haven't attended many religious services outside my own childhood church. I find it curious what others think of Unitarianism because it so often doesn't fit my experience.

[jmartin2.livejournal.com]

I think, honestly, that I made a stupid and thoughtless comment there and I wish I could retract it. I guess what was going on in my mind is that -- and I know nothing about Unitarian churches for real, this is just my ignorant perception -- there must be a great variety in worship styles among those who attend Unitarian churches and that therefore it might be very difficult for Naomi's grandmother to find a good fit. I truly didn't mean to offend anybody and I am very sorry if I did.

[naomikritzer]

I don't think you offended anyone, so don't worry. :-)

The idea of my grandmother as UU made me snicker. She is politically semi-liberal, but she uses a kind of religious language that is pretty well anathema within the UU. I could expand on this at some point; it's one of the interesting cultural divisions within my family.

[stargoatpdx.livejournal.com]

I could expand on this at some point; it's one of the interesting cultural divisions within my family.

I'd be interested to read such an expansion. I have a moderate interest in how differences in wording and language can lead to alienation.

It took me years to figure out that when someone said, for example, "Alice has good energy", they weren't necessarily saying that Alice is generating some kind of supernatural waves or whatever, it might just be their way of saying that Alice is gracious or encouraging or fun to be around.

There's a good quote from this one Tai Chi instruction book that I need to go back and find, talking about how Eastern and Western medicine are fully compatible once you realize that when someone says you have an "influx of wind" (or whatever the example was), it might be just another way of conceptualizing the conditions that lead to having a runny nose (or whatever).

(Of course, in each of these cases it's also possible that the person did mean that Alice is generating supernatural waves or that the wind gods are angry or whatever...)

Not that I know whether this has anything to do with the "religious language that is pretty well anathema within the UU" that you mentioned.

[porphyrin.livejournal.com]

How is Grammie feeling about Lutheran churches?

We've been members at Bethlehem Lutheran in the uptown area (Lyndale & 41st) for a while, and we're pretty happy with it. They aren't Baptists, but it beats trying to find something a little less mega-complex in the Baptist arena (like, say, First Baptist or Wooddale, both of which I should email you about sometime. Brrr.)

[naomikritzer]

We may check out a Lutheran church next week. There are two Lutheran churches in Edina that send vans over to the assisted living complex where she lives, and that would make transportation very easy.

She worked at Wittenberg University in Springfield for 25 years, so she likes Lutherans.

[stargoatpdx.livejournal.com]

When did your grandmother work at Wittenberg? My parents were students there in the early fifties.

(I know, they probably wouldn't remember each other even if they did overlap. But it's one of those questions that begs to be asked...)

[naomikritzer]

I think (though I'm not 100% sure) that she would've started there in the early 1960s.

[naomikritzer]

Should you ever meet my grandmother, though, you should be sure to tell her that your parents were students at Wittenberg. She loves finding connections like that with people she meets.

[haddayr.livejournal.com]

If I had to sit next to any of my grandparents during a sermon like that, I'd skip dying and leap directly into hell to avoid it.

Sheesh and heart's out to you and all that. Lordalmighty.

[naomikritzer]

An advantage of a celibate clergy I'd never really considered before is that I think they're a hell of a lot less likely to be tempted to deliver sermons about SEX. (The fact that there are nearly always young children present at Mass also helps keep a lid on things.)

[lrcutter.livejournal.com]

My dad goes to a super friendly church. I can't comment on the minister there, as the old one retired and the interim one just finished and so they have a new one. But the church is very friendly. It's also a very interesting church in terms of membership -- there are either very old people there or very young people -- not many people in the middle who attend. They have a baseball team that everyone is very involved with. Here's the address:

Emerson Congregational United Church of Christ
7601 Girard Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55423
(612) 869-3221

[naomikritzer]

That is actually pretty close to her. I will think about taking her there next weekend. I may call first and ask the minister what the odds are that he or she will ever deliver a sermon where the words "masturbation" and "pornography" are used. (It NEVER OCCURRED TO ME to ask this question when I was calling churches before. I asked about programs for shut-ins and whether they had a coffee hour and how many people attended. Sex, not so much.)

[magentamn.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest UCC. Martin's dad was an American Baptist minister, and that's what he attended growing up. His dad switched to UCC some years ago, I'm not certain of all the factors. I'd recommend his church, but it's in Oshkosh.

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Have you tried Grace-Trinity Church? It's in Upton (a block west of the Kimdo restaurant on Henn. & 28th), and is the church I've joined. We've a smallish congregation, and a good sized building, plus it's the product of a merger of an American Baptist church & a Presbyterian about 10 or 15 years ago.

Not only that, but WE had an Epiphany service! (I'm planning on writing a LJ entry on it, 'cuz I've never been to one before.)

If you're interested the Sr. pastor is Scott Stapelton (sp?), and every Thursday at noon he has a "Lunch With The Rev." thingie. I don't have the phone number on hand, and I don't believe we've much of a web-site, but I can get it to you... Wait a second, it's on my phone. It's 612 8728266.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_contingent_/]

Just for contrast, I grew up United Methodist, and hour long church services usually included a 40 minute sermon. There were a couple hymns, one song from the choir, a couple bits of liturgical structure (readings, doxology, etc), and a brief children's lesson. But mostly sermon.

Frequent potlucks, I'll give you.

[naomikritzer]

Were the sermons at least good? With this latest round of church visiting, I've noticed something, which is that every single church will tell you that their sermons are really good, and nearly all of them are WRONG. (And it's not surprising, as writing a good sermon every week is going to be damn hard.)

[http://users.livejournal.com/_contingent_/]

It all depended on the pastor. We had one who gave good sermons pretty much every week, but he was an exceptional pastor in pretty much every regard. His sermons generally combined decent exegesis with real life stories to really try to bring the day to day value of a scriptural point home. I particularly remember his series on the lives of the prophets, delivered monthly, in costume, as a personal monologue from the relevant prophet. Sure, all the prophets had beards, walked with a stick, and spoke like old guys (unless they were killed young), but he could've done Jonah as stand-up, and his Job had real passion.

I've visited my family's current UMC a couple times, and it seems like a rough compromise between Fer's description and my childhood church. More music, and the sermons are medium length and medium boring.

[naomikritzer]

Wow, that pastor sounds really memorable. In a good way.

It's the custom at most American Jewish congregations (at least Reform and Conservative -- dunno about Orthodox) for the Rabbi to dress up in costume on Purim for the reading of the Book of Esther. My childhood Rabbi dressed up as a gorilla for one of these ("The Megillah Gorilla") which unfortunately terrified my younger brother. It was a pretty awesome costume, though. (His successor almost got fired after dressing up in Klan robes for Purim. He was portraying David Duke, with the idea being that he was dressed as a modern day Haman. You can probably imagine how this went over. Complete fucking lack of common sense knows no creed, clearly.)

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

Lots of singing and frequent potlucks? Gosh. Apparently I founded a church without telling myself. Because that's how I'd run things.

[yankee-in-texas.livejournal.com]

Oh my. If I were sitting next to Grammy at a sermon like that, I think I'd just about die. I certainly wouldn't make a move, in case I might accidentally make eye contact with her.

And thank you for bringing up the bizarre memory of that wedding sermon on death. What I most remember was the line, "the coffin lid coming DOWN, DOWN, DOWN" as the minister mimed nailing. It was surreal. (I was next to Ed. He can probably vouch for this.)

[naomikritzer]

Whoa. I'd only ever heard the first line. People usually say, "and then it went downhill from there" while leaving what that entailed to the imagination.

[dtm]

This was kind of a fascinating experience, as -- well -- to be blunt, I've never seen a church with this much money before.

I am reminded of the month I spent in Pittsburgh (summer program between 11th and 12th grades), and going to an Episcopal church within walking distance (well, a long walk) of Carnegie Mellon, where I was staying. I'm not sure that church had a gymnasium, but it clearly had money.

[naomikritzer]

It's a weird thing to see, isn't it? On the plus side -- they were doing a giving tree for Christmas. You'd take a tag and buy "girl, aged 5" what she'd asked for. You'd bring in the unwrapped toy and tape the tag to the top, so you could see what they'd asked for and what the person had bought them. People were clearly shopping for the giving tree kids exactly the way they'd shop for their own kids -- the five-year-old girl who'd asked for a doll got a beautiful baby doll that spoke phrases in English and Spanish and came with an array of clothes, all in the same box. The boy who'd asked for "pirate toys" got a very cool Pirates of the Carribean set. It made me feel warm and fuzzy to imagine these kids opening their gifts. (There are people out there, like the ones who got all offended at Toys for Tots rejecting the donation of hundreds of talking Jesus dolls, who clearly believe that poor kids shouldn't get fun toys for Christmas.)

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

If the American Baptist church was the University one, then you might try Judson Church, which is probably not as "advanced".

Tangent: My grandparents escaped religion and took up something more rational -- radical politics (two Communists, one Socialist, one anarchist.) Amazing how much like religion political ideologies can be.

[naomikritzer]

It was Judson. The speaker was the former pastor of University.