Where's the manuscript?!?
There is not a manuscript for this sermon, because I delivered it from an outline. I like to switch between outline, extemporaneous, and manuscript preaching. I limit outline preaching to main points and quotes that can fit on one page. Everything else is extemporaneous or practiced beforehand.
The Outline:
Part 1 -Intro - On Soliloquies
Jean Valjean’s Soliloquy
“I feel my shame inside me like a knife, He told me I have a soul, What spirt comes to move my life, is there another way to go? I am reaching but I fall and the night is closing in, As I stare into the void to the whirlpool of sin. I’ll escape now from that world from the world of Jean Valjean, Jean Valjean is nothing now, Another story must begin!”
Time stops, the spotlight shines down, and we are granted the opportunity to hear the conflict within another’s head.
Part 2 - King David’s soliloquy
Transition
David finds himself soul searching, longing for change. In this first Sunday of Lent, we are offered a chance to do our own soul searching. This is the moment for your soliloquy.
Part 3 - Your soliloquy
“The Christian way of life does not take away our loneliness; it protects and cherishes it as a precious gift. Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful conversation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief” (84)
Have to keep it tight! Focus less on sin and more on opportunity for the thing.
When a soliloquy ends, and they have to end, time starts ticking and surroundings flash by like normal again. Only you and God will know what was said or what you resolved to do while contemplating. The next step is to step into change.
Send 0ut with Vs 13-14 and Henri Nouwen’s wounded healer.
“Making one’s own wounds a source of healing therefore, does not call for a sharing of superficial personal pains but for a constant willingness to see one’s own pain and suffering as rising from the depth of the human condition” (88)
“Hospitality becomes community as it creates a unity based on the shared confession of our basic brokenness and on a shared hope. This hope in turn leads us far beyond the boundaries of human togetherness to Him who calls His people away from the land of slavery to the lands of freedom. It belongs to the central insight of the Judeo-Christian tradition, that it is the call of God which forms the people of God. A Christian community is therefore a healing community not because wounds and pains are alleviated, but because wounds and pains become openings or occasions for a new vision. Mutual confession then becomes a mutual deepening of hope, and sharing weakness becomes a reminder to one and all of the coming strength” (93-94)
The text from Psalm 51 in the NRSVue:
Prayer for Cleansing and Pardon
To the leader. A Psalm of David, when the prophet Nathan came to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.
1 Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your steadfast love;
according to your abundant mercy,
blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is ever before me.
4 Against you, you alone, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight,
so that you are justified in your sentence
and blameless when you pass judgment.
5 Indeed, I was born guilty,
a sinner when my mother conceived me.
6 You desire truth in the inward being;[a]
therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.
7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness;
let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins,
and blot out all my iniquities.
10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right[b] spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from your presence,
and do not take your holy spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation,
and sustain in me a willing[c] spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways,
and sinners will return to you.
14 Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 For you have no delight in sacrifice;
if I were to give a burnt offering, you would not be pleased.
17 The sacrifice acceptable to God[d] is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18 Do good to Zion in your good pleasure;
rebuild the walls of Jerusalem;
19 then you will delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar.
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