This past month I got to sit in the congregation with my seven year old daughter. My wife is in choir so she usually sits with friends. It was nice to enjoy worship with her. I was exiled from my pulpit on purpose. We were celebrating a first sermon. Jaime Fitzgerald, a sophomore at Carson Newman, was delivering her very first sermon at her home church. And we are also participating in the Martha Stearns Marshall Month of Preaching in honor of Baptist women in ministry everywhere.
Sitting there in the congregation I remembered that twenty-one years ago I preached my first sermon. I’m forty years old and when I was nineteen my home church invited me to preach the word. Now here I was sitting and listening to another college student begin her preaching journey.
I remember how terrifying it was to stand there behind that pulpit and look back at those faces staring back at me. I had sat through my share of sermons in my life time and now it was my turn. I had heard sermons that had inspired me to go and change the world. I had also heard more than enough sermons that lulled me into a catatonic state. I had spent my share of goofing off on the back pew with my friends during church. Now it was my turn to preach and notice that the preacher really can see everything those kids are doing back there. I realized that the preacher really can see who is with it and who is a million light years away.
And I remember preaching a sermon that best stay in the past. If a crazed scientist and a cool kid in a Delorean offered to take me back to that moment I’d have to pass. But I had to do it. I had to get that first sermon out so I could start that long journey that I’m still traveling.
So I sat and listened to Jaime and I noticed how some things change and some things remain the same. Jaime gave a far better first sermon than I gave. Hands down it was moving, well prepared, and gave evidence of the preacher she is going to become. Sitting there I am reminded that when I was her age we never envisioned the young women in our church preaching a first, second or any kind of sermon. And yet here we are in a church that affirms her and was packed. We had a crowd that was larger than some of our Easter services! And folks were thrilled to hear her message and affirmed her. This was someone who grew up in this church and heard God’s call here and is now going out to do God’s work. And being female simply didn’t matter.
Still it was a first sermon. She went through the same emotions and fears all of us do the first time we stepped up into that pulpit and opened our Bibles. The excitement, fear, and joy all was present. The cameras were out and the video was rolling. This was a big day for Jaime but really it was a bigger day for our church.
It was a big day for our church because we saw that God is calling people from our church to go and proclaim.
It was a big day for our Sunday School teachers, children’s leaders, and others who saw that their hard work does pay off.
It was a big day for the little girls (and women of all ages) in that room that could see that they too can follow God’s call and be who God calls them to be.
I sat there with my seven year daughter and saw that it was a big day. Tears were shed and smiles filled the room.
After I gave my first sermon word got out about this ‘young preacher boy’ who was 19 and ready to preach the word. Small churches all over the area invited me to come and preach and I got some great experience and gave some really bad sermons. Sitting there remembering this I felt some sorrow creep up on that good day. Jaime isn’t a young preacher boy. She’s a young woman and a talented one. But she is a woman. The small churches are not going to call her like they would if her name was James. There will be fewer calls and opportunities to preach.
Or will there?
Will some churches open their doors to dynamic preachers like Jaime? I hope so. I hope that folks will open themselves up to the Spirit’s movement.
Remember it wasn’t Philipp’s sons who preached.
Blessings,
Derik Hamby
(Pastor at Randolph Memorial Baptist Church, blogs at http://dwhamby1.wordpress.com)
