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My apologies for having spent more time away from my blog desk than planned, everyone. Been busy!

Still, let’s circle back around to what I last wrote in this space. Perhaps a trifle of a question, but a book on writing by author Elena Ferrante has posited that when she puts pen to paper, it’s no longer she who is doing the writing:
What writing captures doesn’t pass through the sieve of a singular “I,” solidly planted in everyday life, but it is twenty people, that is, a number thrown out there to say: when I write, I don’t now even know who I am.

How fascinating! And as I think about it, other authors have mused and acted similarly through the years. Saul Bellow, for example, was (in)famous for taking friends and acquaintances of his and writing them as characters into his novels. Apparently, Bellow would change their names, but that’s about it! As those comrades discovered versions of themselves on the page, they weren’t too happy with old Saul.

Point being here, though, that Bellow would assume the personalities and voices of other people as he crafted different characters. Effectively, Bellow isn’t Bellow anymore whenever he constructs different characters.

More recently, Haruki Murakami is on record in his 2022 Novelist as Vocation with a different tack. All of the people in Murakami’s novels are, after a fashion, Murakami: he divides himself between different principals and goes from there. Everyone in a Murakami novel contains different shards of the author. (Recall from my last post that for Ferrante in In the Margins, she references Virginia Wolff and observes, “The 'I' who writes seriously is twenty people, a hypersensitive plurality concentrated in the hand provided with the pen.” The idea of writer as “hypersensitive plurality” may get at Murakami's method.)

“All fine and good,” you say, “but what about the humble preacher?” When I preach, am I Jim, or not Jim?

At many levels, yes and of course, I preach as Jim and not, e.g., as Bob. For better or for worse, even, I put more of my personality into my sermons than most other preachers might. Just this past Sunday, for example, I began the sermon by talking about how my dropping off my oldest child at college for the first time sparked a mini-midlife crisis in me last fall. Try plagiarizing that, Pastor X!

On the other hand, it’s probably the case that preaching requires a balance. I need to preach as myself, but also not as myself, and in a couple of different ways. For one, while I don’t want to put myself to sleep with my own sermons, it would be both unwise and impossible for me to deliver the exact sort of sermons that I would want to hear. Because I’m me, and you’re not!

Moreover, it’s healthy for preachers to try and imagine how various people of different backgrounds and experiences than themselves would tend to hear a particular bible passage or message. Otherwise, as the saying goes, we’re just preaching to the personal choirs. As a result, I’ll often ask myself the question, “What would people with certain particular sets of histories want or need to hear in this sermon, and how might I speak into those things in an authentic way?” Being able to shade in those directions might not be completely different from construing an author as "hypersensitive plurality."

Then there’s the dangerous part. I don’t believe that there’s ever been a sermon I’ve preached where I was faking it, but there have certainly been seasons in which I’ve delivered messages when my own spiritual journey has been waxing or, worse, waning. Engaging in preaching when one’s faith is at a relatively low ebb is risky business for the soul. I’m not sure if there’s an equivalent peril for an author.

Finally, however––and this might be the best part about my vocation––preaching is less about the author and more about the audience. The ultimate hearer of every sermon ever preached is our triune God himself. Keeping this in mind helps me to stay honest, humble, and hopeful. Schlemiel that I may be, and however I may divide for sermonic purposes my own voice and self, Lord, let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, my rock and my redeemer.

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