The Poet Speaks to the Preacher
a poem about a living God and repenting from functional atheism
There is a heavy pounding in my chest. My heart wonders— it is always wondering. What to say? Why speak at all? Will it matter? These are the anxious thoughts of one who forgets about a speaking God. If God speaks, then you must become quiet enough to hear. Listen. Listen. Wait. Wait. The author of lifeful words is nearer than your reaching.
In my current pastoral role, I don’t deliver a sermon every week. I do, however, think a lot about the right words and how to configure those words to convey impactful meaning, to touch the lives of people like you. I wrote this poem the other night as I prepared to share from my heart with a group of volunteers before a Vacation Bible School session, and why it mattered. For me, sharing from the heart is no easy exercise. It involves wading into the waters of my soul and asking questions like, “What am I thankful for?” “What am I sensing?” “What can I say that may find resonance with God’s action in the world?”
In all of my striving to speak from the heart, I often commit something that Parker J. Palmer once described as “functional atheism.”
“Functional atheism—the belief that ultimate responsibility for everything rests with me—is the unconscious, unexamined conviction that if anything decent is going to happen here, I am the one who must make it happen.”
This is one of the greatest tensions of Christian leadership—or simply of being a Christian in many contexts today. On one hand, we say we believe in a God who, as in the example from my poem, speaks and is active in the world. We believe that God broke into our universe, invading time in the person of Jesus the Son. We believe that God suffers with us and rejoices with us. We believe that God is constantly and generously present.
Yet we often cast ourselves as the main characters in our productions of the Christian life. Our mouths might confess certain things, but—speaking for myself—my actions often say something else.
This poem was my attempt to address my own problematic thinking. We might search far and wide for something interesting to say. But what if, as the story of Jesus seems to communicate, what we deeply need is already coming to us—inviting us to die to our ways so that something of true significance can begin?