Prepare me the kind of tasty food I like and bring it to me to eat.  (Gen 27.4)

Preparing a sermon is like cooking in a Crock-Pot.  I start with the meat — a healthy portion of scripture.  I put the meat in the pot on Monday.  I study the scripture and let it begin to cook.  The type of meat matters.  Scripture comes as narrative, poetry and discursive writing.  I prefer to preach on narrative texts, but the others have their possibilities too.  For a balanced diet, it’s probably good to vary the type of scripture.  What’s important is it be a passage of substance.  Make sure there’s plenty of meat.

On Tuesday and Wednesday I add vegetables to the pot — illustrations and interpretations on the scripture.  These I draw from commentaries, online resources and my own reflections.  I’m looking for the intersection where the Bible and life meet.  It helps to get away from the office to a public place, a park, a library or a table at the grocery deli.  I sit and watch people and write what comes to mind.  I also reflect on that ongoing conversation with my parishioners, drawing on what I’ve learned listening to their lives.  All these juices mingle together in the pot. Whenever possible I add seasoning to the mix – humor, or at least something quirky that makes me smile.

I let the mixture cook until Thursday, when it’s simmered enough to write an outline of the message.  Here’s where the analogy breaks down.  Before I serve the congregation, I must eat the meal myself — that is, get the words off the printed page and inside of me.  Preachers can’t simply read an essay aloud.  They must embody a message, and for that to happen it needs to live in the blood and sinews.  Over Friday and Saturday then, I talk through the message a half dozen times or more and so consume it.

No longer writing a full manuscript helps me to have more natural speech patterns as I preach. On Sunday I’ll keep the outline handy but only reference it occasionally.  For all practical purposes I’ve written the message on my heart — I need only deliver it with energy, animation and lots of eye contact.

Afterward when the sermon’s done, I seldom worry about it.  Sermons don’t end when they end — they continue in the listener’s mind and heart.  In this I agree with Kathleen Norris:  “The sermon is an oral art form, always more a thought in progress rather than a finished product.  Even more so than with literature, the listener is the one who completes the work.”  To take up the cooking imagery again, a meal isn’t complete until someone eats it — their body digests it and draws energy from it.

Everyone practices the art of preaching differently, but this is how I prepare a tasty sermon.