Dispatch #5
Friday, August 23
Green Bay, Wisconsin

Early morning. Six o'clock. The weather slightly overcast, the air both humid and cool. I'll cycle from Green Bay to Appleton and, except for sharing a supper with our host in Appleton, have no other specific responsibilities than that: to get there.

The rally last night took place in Grace Lutheran Church, downtown Green Bay. Folks came here from as far away as 100 miles in the Upper Peninsula. Pleasantly the sanctuary filled up with people who had known my voice if not my face....

The "Sunshine Band" sang last night at the beginning of our rally. A score of children aged 4 to 8, African American of the Gospel tradition. Their director (himself I estimate at 8 years, roundish and completely sober) first demanded the choir to quote Bible verses. He cried out chapter and verse; they answered by shouting again chapter and verse, then the passage, then again the chapter and verse, ending with the word: "Sir!"

They shouted: "Train up a child in the way that he should go and he will not depart from it." At the word "child" the kids paused, swiveled their heads, peering at their partners on the left and on the right, then shouted the rest of the verse. "Sir!"

"Child" they said, and I thought they had shouted "cat." Train up a cat, etc. I was prepared, when the children craned their necks at one another, to hear one of them cry out, "Not cat! Child!"

In fact they had said ch-aa-ld, and they were not joking. It had been my ear, not their intent.

But difficulty in the externals did not mean we had difficulty in the internals. I knew these children. I knew their parents, all sitting in a mostly white, Lutheran audience. For they swept me back to my long ministry at another Grace Church, this one in Evansville, Indiana, an African American congregation and the family of my family for so many years. The accent, the gestures, the natural motion and behaviors all were deeply familiar, causing in me a sense of homecoming.

Little Briana (which perhaps is not the correct spelling of her name, though I've gotten the sound right) sang solo. She sang her choral verse over and over (the choir answering with staccato shouts) until she seemed to run out of words, when suddenly she dropped her head and rubbed her forehead with the back of her wrist. But that sober small director--straight as a pepper shaker--stepped to her, call her to attention, began with his right hand and a verbal tick-tocking to start the rhythm again from its beginning, and on cue Briana opened her mouth, sang her verse, triggered the whole choir's response, and the song went on.

Train up a child... Now here are several minor wonders:

--That the verse and the song which developed that verse led seamlessly into my talk. I made it my thesis my topic, and all my theme! When I said to the "Sunshine" leaders that the Holy Spirit had chosen these things, they all nodded. No news to them.

--That our common knowledge of one name, Jesus, granted us the immediate freedom to use other names, personal names, without embarrassment or threat: "Briana." "Walt." We could, dispensing with preliminaries, assume friendships, act upon them, live within them.

--That those little children did not leave when they had finished singing! Little as they were, long as the evening went, they sat there in two pews to my left hand side, mostly looking at me (especially when I told stories of children almost exactly their ages), periodically interested (though one cat fell sweetly and immoveably asleep against the pew's end), and friends to me. Why, we were performing together, weren't we? We were colleagues. They sang, I talked and we both named the name of Jesus. It is enough to make our kinship straightway ancient.

--And therefore my speech itself was shaped to and for the children. They were in the mind and the mouth of the speaker. Almost all the gentle older folk knew what I was doing. And so my communication to them carried both my intellectual message and the message of communion; no, the very business and conclusions of communion--for my manner and my language embraced the children and invited the people to embrace them with me, to embrace them in me.

Now, then: that is preaching.

I am not now suddenly changing the subject. I've been talking about it all along.

Oh, dear my colleagues, let preaching ever be more than the one-way, monologic communication of intellectual propostions. Let it be a dramatic event. Not, as in theater, the re-presentation of something which has taken place elsewhere (in, say, the preacher's mind; or in the ages of the Scriptures). Preaching makes past things immediate and intimate and very personal. Preaching is the NOWness of Christ, the HEREness of Immanuel--yes, and of the entire tale which the creed declares. Preaching is, if not always the establishment of, then the living and present celebration of, relationships and embracings: in the preacher's words and presence, people are braided with Jesus first, and invited to experience and to act within that braiding; likewise, people are braided with people too; and the preacher is both the catalyst and the serving participant in the event.

Something will be communicated, yes. But something must also happen. Words do more than bear thoughts one to another. Words (immense and delicate and various and complex) are places in which to dwell a while.

Information given; doctrines explained; ideas and propositions expounded: all these things are teaching. Teaching is important, for the people must know in order to confess what they believe. But dramatically to introduce them to the Lord Jesus, that they might experience his Spirit's motion and presence, that calls forth the acts of believing themselves. "Here, Lord," says one enacting belief: "Here, Lord, is my heart. Take it and make it yours."

For believing has ever been no less than beloving.

Walt