The Burdensome Joy of Preaching

There’s a phrase that’s been on my mind lately. It’s not original to me. It is from the title of a book by James Earl Massey--The Burdensome Joy of Preaching. (Abingdon Press, 1998) There is obviously a twofold aspect to this wonderful phrase that we preachers are keenly aware of. To say that preaching is a burden is to acknowledge the way in which preparing and delivering a specific sermon for a specific group of people with so many unique needs weighs upon the preacher each week.

Preaching is a joy, though, because of its divine purpose. We preachers sense deeply a calling by God to proclaim God’s love to others through the preaching event. It is a joy as well because, though we don’t always see, we know the redemptive effects that preaching has in and through the lives of individuals and congregations. That effect is not the result of the preacher but rather the result of God’s Holy Spirit working through the entirety of the preaching event and touching both the proclaimer and the listener.

I saw the reality of this phrase in its fullness at the preaching camp for the Academy for Preachers. Young preachers were preaching 4 sermons over a period of 5 days. That doesn’t sound like much. But consider the message that is being proclaimed, the work needed to be prepared, and the challenge of delivering both the Word and words and one can quickly see that their task could be an exhausting one.

Massey quotes Gardner C. Taylor as saying that preacher’s experience is “the sweet torture of Sunday morning.” After 20 plus years of preaching experience I can attest that preaching is indeed a burdensome joy. But would I do anything other than preach? There are times I have considered it. But the divine pull keeps me hooked. I have learned to live in and with that tension—the sweet torture of Sunday morning that is the burdensome joy of preaching.