My neighbour asks, “Where are you and Jacqueline headed this time?” I respond that we are off to Nashville, Tennessee where we will attend The Festival of Homiletics. “What is homiletics?” he asks. “Homiletics is the art of preaching.”
Silence follows, then incredulity. “Do ‘Festival’ and ‘Homiletics’ go together? I can think of more festive ways to spend a week in Nashville than listening to sermons.” A young friend, hearing about our travel plans says, “That must be awful!”
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I wonder what kind of sermons they have been subjected to. The festival is inspiring and relaxing. The big name preachers are here, preaching to preachers and teaching us how to be better preachers. When 1,600 clergy sing, I am overwhelmed. I feel the vibrations from the pipe organ and let the music surround me.
One of the speakers, Jim Wallace, relates preaching to social action; “putting your words into practice.” I was reminded of a plaque on a kitchen wall in Alberta: “I would rather see a sermon than hear one any day.”
Wallace did not need to remind the preachers that living our faith is more than words. Many of us had already volunteered to help with cleanup following a devastating flood in Nashville a few days earlier. We reported to a command centre in an attractive, middle-class neighborhood. We were told that 3,000 homes and their contents had been destroyed by flood waters when the Cumberland River overflowed in “a once in 500 years event.” We were given orange T-shirts with big letters VOLUNTEER — DISASTER RELIEF on the back. Our job was to help clean up what had been tossed out of the houses.
It did not matter that the pastors and priests served a variety of religious denominations, worshiped with a multitude of traditions and held different doctrines. When they handed us a shovel and a rake, we were all the same, doing something useful for people we had never met.
I worked with a Lutheran pastor from Ohio and a Methodist minister from California. We moved piles of debris, drywall, insulation, books, clothes and children’s toys to the curb where large scoops dumped it into huge trucks. The smell of rotting food permeated the air. Homes where children played and parents chatted over the back fence had been destroyed by the power of rising water. When the musty drywall was ripped out only a shell remained. I wondered where the people were living and what they were wearing.
Jacqueline volunteered at an emergency clothing bank. She met a woman who had delivered her third child shortly after the flood. All the clothing for her children was lost and she had little to clothe the baby.
The bus was quiet on the return trip. Even preachers had little to say. At dinner our young waiter told us how he had helped people as the water rose. He was angry with a man on top of a hill who mowed his neatly manicured lawn while his neighbours below were losing their homes and possessions.
Many of you made similar responses to flooding in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, and hurricanes in Eastern Canada. St. James in the Bible is clear that words need to become action: “Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers.”
Suggested Scripture: Colossians 3:12-17, James 1:19-27
Rod Andrews is a retired Anglican bishop. He lives in Saskatoon.
