Advertisement Standing somewhere in Galilee, with a large crowd gathered to listen, Jesus spoke.
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven” began the Beatitudes, and then Jesus went on to teach about being light, loving enemies and
trusting God.
We know that teaching today as the Sermon on the Mount.
Not confined to a pulpit on a Sabbath, Jesus gave his most famous sermon in open air.
That’s helpful to keep in mind for those of us who generally imagine a sermon as something spoken in a church, because sermons are being spoken all the time everywhere.
The sermon on the front porch
I recently heard a sermon on a front porch.
An African-American woman stood there chiding three young African-American teenagers who sat on their bicycles below.
Someone had scraped the paint on the front porch railing, and this woman was using the moment to correct, but also to inspire.
While reproaching the young men for not taking care of their surroundings, she touched on everything from slavery to the civil rights movement. She talked about the unity of humanity after inviting me, a white man, into the conversation, and ended the sermon on the front porch by telling the youngsters she knew they had dreams they were going to fulfill.
On the sidewalk
A friend once shared with me the sidewalk sermon.
It’s a simple teaching.
An elderly man and woman were standing on a sidewalk in downtown
La Crosse, and as my friend approached, the woman’s eyes lit up and she proclaimed, “It is good! It is good!”
In the jail
Another friend once preached to me the sermon in the jail.
He talked from behind glass and told a story about a caterpillar who was twisting its way out of a cocoon.
Seeing the caterpillar’s struggle, an old man reached down to help open the cocoon, but the caterpillar had not been fully developed. Instead of transforming into a butterfly, the creature emerged half-formed.
To fly, it needed to struggle, my friend explained, and we wondered if the jail, perhaps, could be a kind of cocoon.
Non-verbal sermons
Sermons can be wordless, too.
Walking down the sidewalk in the Bronx some years ago, a man stopped me as I approached, looked deep into my eyes and then reached out his hand covered in dirt and grime for me to shake.
The gesture held power, like the bonsai tree, the spider web and the lilies of the field hold power. If you gaze at these long enough, they preach sermons, too, conveying something similar to the woman on the sidewalk.
None of this is to say that sermons at pulpits are not as powerful as sermons elsewhere.
The Rev. J. David Bersagel, pastor of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in West Salem, Wis., said the goal of a sermon is to evoke faith, to transform people’s perceptions of themselves and God.
It’s an act he walks into humbly, said the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America pastor.
“The very best sermons are a complete surprise to me,” he said over the phone, while his 4-year-old grandson chattered in the background.
“We like to say each of our lives are a sermon, that we preach non-verbally by who we are and what we do.”
Joe Orso works part time for the La Crosse Tribune and the Franciscan Spirituality Center. Opinions in this column are his own. He can be reached at jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
