The Secret to Amazing Sermons

A few years ago I was putting my oldest daughter to sleep. She asked me what a rabbi does.
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A few years ago I was putting my oldest daughter to sleep. She asked me what a rabbi does.

Before I had the chance to answer fully, she told me she thought the answer was. "Here's what you do, daddy," she said. "Blah Blah Blah...God...Blah Blah Blah."

After I finished laughing, I told her about some other parts of the work--teaching, pastoring, counseling, and so on. But listening to her words crystallized the essential task: I search for God everywhere, and I listen to voices of wisdom.

She is one of those voices, but there are many more. Those voices reveal God's presence. They make space for encountering God in our lives. In do so, they help me preach. They help me teach. They make the words of the Bible come to life. (Click here to hear the hardest sermon I ever delievered

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Where can we hear more of those voices?

1. Our children: After the birth of my first child, a rabbinic mentor once told me never to talk about my kids. He said they mean the world to me, and I may be tempted to exaggerate their wisdom, brilliance or significance.

He may be right, but children also provide a great perspective on faith. They help us see God where we may not. Their idealism can awaken us from complacency.

Sometime the way they phrase things makes us look anew at a biblical text or story. Even if we do not have kids of our own, listening to their voices around us can deepen our wisdom and perspective.

2. Our elders: Jewish tradition reveres the elderly. The Book of Leviticus instructs us to rise and stand before them. Such reverence was not the norm in ancient Near Eastern societies. They valued people based on their usefulness and capacity for physical labor, and when a person aged, he or she became less valuable.

Not so in Judaism. Age is not a guarantee of wisdom, but it can be a source of it. Age brings with it experience, perspective and growth. Age brings us closer to what the great philosopher Spinoza called the "view from eternity." What seems large to us may be small for God.

3. Our opposites: Do you know someone who usually has the opposite reaction to a film, story or event? You both can see the same thing but arrive at vastly different interpretations?

While such people may annoy us, they also teach us. They teach us to see questions from multiple points of view. They teach us the limits of our intelligence, reminding us to remain humble and open.

This truth is captured in a rabbinic story I heard from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. A student asked his rabbi if he believed "God created everything for a purpose?"

"I do," replied the rabbi.
"Well," asked the disciple, "why did God create atheists?"

He answered, "Sometimes we who believe, believe too much. We see the cruelty, the suffering, the injustice in the world and we say: 'This is the will of God.' We accept what we should not accept."

"That is when God sends us atheists to remind us that what passes for religion is not always religion. Sometimes what we accept in the name of God is what we should be fighting against in the name of God."

Wisdom, indeed. To that we can only say Amen.
To hear the hardest sermon I ever delivered, click here

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