Prophetic Preaching - or Ignorant Preacher?

I drew the short straw.

I preached yesterday, on the 4th of July. Nobody else on staff jumped at it, and because I adore this country and because I was an American Studies major in college and have a particular affinity for exploring the boundaries and occasional discontinuities between the American and Christian identities, I bit.

I decided to preach about immigration. You can hear what I said beginning Tuesday on the Marble Church website.

I won't go in to a lengthy explanation of what I was trying to communicate. What I want to reflect upon here is my own experience of the sermon--what worked and what failed in my own eyes.

First, what failed:

1) I offended a few people. Some would say this in itself should not be counted as failure. Sometimes telling the truth hurts, even when it's Gospel truth. Comforted the afflicted, afflict the comfortable, preachers are told (mostly by people who don't preach for a living). Fine (I won't go into the problematic nature of that truism now). But I still feel terrible when people reveal to me that they were offended by something I said in my sermon. Could it be that a higher principle for preaching than "tell the truth" is "do no harm?" Are we too inclined to escape from under accusations that we've offended by hiding behind self-justification? Is the excuse "I was being prophetic" just a bad excuse? I'd love to hear your reflections on this question.

2) I over-generalized. In a point that was not key to the sermon, I made a comment to the effect that "upper-level management and business owners profit from illegal immigrants while labor does not." That is most probably true based on research I did for the sermon--but the effect of stating it that way was that at least one "upper-level manager/business owner" in my congregation felt painted over with a too-broad brush. She felt judged, unfairly. In truth, I meant upper-level management and owners in companies that hire illegal immigrants, not ALL management/owners. I should have made a finer distinction. By not being careful with language, someone felt judged who should not have felt judged.

3) I cheap shot-ed BP. I did what I tell myself never to do: I picked on someone who's already down. One key point of my sermon was that anti-immigrant sentiments at this historical moment are very likely a function of displaced anger that is more properly focused on a government that has not been creating conditions for broad-based economic opportunity. I said that our government feels to me as though it's bought and paid for by business interests that are more invested in profit-making than in people or the health of the communities they operate in... and then I said... "companies like British Petroleum." It was a cheap shot. I regret it. Didn't help the sermon at all.

Here's the most important place that I believe that I failed:

4) Did my congregation really need to hear the message that I preached yesterday? This is the hardest one to answer, but it's the one that's nagging me most. I mean, who was I really preaching to? Did I just need to get this stuff off my chest? Or was there a real need for our congregation to reflect on the underlying issues around immigration? Several people, including several immigrants in our congregation, told me afterward that they loved the sermon and were fed by it. But in the rearview mirror, it's clear to me that this was a sermon that I needed to preach, but it's not clear that this was a sermon that those who were sitting there needed to hear.

So, what did I do well yesterday?
1) I took a risk by tackling a "political" issue in a context that does not hear preaching on contemporary social issues very often.
2) I tried to look at a complicated issue from all sides and depict some of its complexity in my message.
3) I consulted several people with different opinions and perspectives on immigration in preparation for the sermon, not presuming my own expertise.
4) I tried to keep my message directly linked to the scripture for the day (Deut. 26:1-11).

and...

5) I'm open to feedback. I'm already planning to get together this week with the one person who walked out on the sermon so that I can listen to him and learn from him. I give him all the credit in the world for taking the time to email me afterward.

Still, I wondered as I walked this morning... is there really such thing as a "prophetic sermon?" I'm not sure I know what that really would look or sound like. I wonder whether that's become a cliche for the liberal version of "preaching to the choir." I wonder whether prophetic preaching has not become a euphemism for a sermon that's far too wrapped up in the preacher's own ego need to be "right on the issues."

Here's the biggest dilemma for me: I wonder, in our current cultural moment of political polarization and heightened suspicion around religion's perpetual corruption by politics, whether people can hear any politically-inflected speech from the pulpit without dismissing it as a cynical attempt at manipulation? My intent yesterday may have been good, and my message infused with gospel, but what if our culture is just in a place where any speech from any pulpit that is interpreted as political reflexively locks doors within the listener and further alienates them from the church and the Way of Jesus? I'm afraid that that might have been the effect of my sermon yesterday--I'm afraid that I did more harm than good.

***

In all of the swirling emotions of yesterday, I thought there is one thing most of us can agree on: America, she is beautiful and the wisdom of the land is deeper than any babbling pastor. Enjoy the photo.