I know of an old preacher who was dying of brain cancer. As his health deteriorated, he lost his ability to speak. This was no surprise, for the doctors had told him it would happen. What did surprise him was his own reaction.
He wrote to his family saying how pleased he was that when he lost his voice and therefore his ability to preach, he had kept his pleasure in God.
He’d had dark doubts about his motivations. Had preaching become an idol? Would he no longer love God when he was no longer able to do the thing he loved to do for God? Had he slipped into what T. S. Eliot said was the greatest betrayal of all: doing the right thing for the wrong reasons?
He was relieved to discover that, at the end of his life, he had not. He still loved God more than preaching.
Preaching can be heady stuff. True, it is sometimes the opposite. Bruce Thielemann said the call to preach brings no special honor, just special pain, calling “those anointed to it as the sea calls its sailors; and just like the sea, it batters and bruises and does not rest. … To preach, to really preach, is to die naked a little at a time, and to know each time you do it that you must do it again.”
But more often the mere fact of having people sit and listen to you week in and week out can poison the soul.
I vividly remember the first time I made a broad gesture as I spoke, pointing toward the sanctuary exit, and saw half the congregation turn, as one person, to look that direction. My reaction: Wow! I hope to see that happen again! In a single stroke of narcissism, I was losing God while preaching about him. The content was theological, but the subject was me. Great betrayal. Right words, wrong reasons.
Irenaeus said the glory of God is man fully alive, and the life of man is the vision of God. This is doubly true of preachers and their hearers. When God is supreme in preachers and their preaching, people come alive. It’s glorious. The opposite is also true. To play to the crowd and exchange the vision of God’s glory for the pleasure of being thought eloquent or interesting or, that awful word, dynamic, is to deal death not only to one’s self, but to one’s listeners.
Do you love God more than talking about God?
A friend has a wall in his office with pictures of his heroes, among them Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Flannery O’Connor, Francis Schaeffer, and C. S. Lewis, people he believes finished strong, as in Paul’s words: “the time has come for my departure. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith” (2 Tim. 4:6, 7). Of course, only the dead can qualify for his gallery.
I want to finish strong. Not like certain retired preachers I used to avoid when I was younger. Denied the pleasures of regular preaching, they just had to have someone to listen to them, at length. If I’m being harsh here, it’s because I fear my own ugly cravings. Words come too easily for me, and too often. I want to be a quiet man, a good listener.
I want to finish strong. Like Joe Blinco. Joe was a great preacher and associate evangelist with Billy Graham. He was a mentor to me.
Joe also died of brain cancer and lost his ability to speak before he went home. I was very, very nervous as I knocked on his door one day just before his speech was completely gone. I didn’t know what to say. A preacher’s nightmare!
He opened the door, shook my hand and spoke a sentence he had obviously practiced over and over again. With excruciating labor, he slurred out the only thing he was able to say that day.
What was the one thing this old preacher wanted to say to this younger preacher? Just three words: “God is good.”
What a finish.
Ben Patterson is dean of the chapel at Hope College P.O. Box 9000, Holland MI 49422
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