Poetic Pastoring: Using Poetry in Preaching by Jesse Baker

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by Jesse Baker

My interest in poetry began around the same time that I found it hardest to write sermons. Obviously, as a pastor, writing poor sermons is not a good thing, but I was not finding any real help to get me out of my slump. The commentaries I had in my library and the other academic books I owned, while full of information, were not quite giving me the tools or images I needed to bring a message to life. I felt that most of my sermons were fact-heavy but did little to inspire the heart or ignite the imagination. On top of that, if you had asked me on any given Sunday what my sermon was about, I wouldn’t be able to give you a quick answer. I would almost have to tell you half the sermon before conveying the gist. I had a sense—and was perhaps once explicitly told—that if I couldn’t summarize a sermon in a sentence or two, it likely wasn’t a well-constructed sermon. As someone who was trained to preach and who had taken classes on the practice of writing, this was both frustrating and a little embarrassing. 

During this writing dilemma, I started reading Malcolm Guite’s books Sounding the Seasons and Parable and Paradox. While I couldn’t state it then, Guite’s words were seeds that, in time, gave rise to a new way of writing sermons. If you are not familiar with these books, the former is a collection of sonnets based on days and seasons in the church calendar year, and the latter includes several sonnets meditating on various passages of Scripture. As I read poetry I found I also wanted to write poetry. I did not have any sense of a rhythm or habit in these beginning days. One week, however, I decided to take the text I was preaching on and—Guite-like—tried my own hand at writing a sonnet based on the reading, study, and meditation that was already a normal part of sermon preparation. To my surprise, I produced something. I remember one of the early poems actually helped me think about the text in a new light. I took a raw idea I had encountered and tried poetically to put flesh on the bones. I recall it being the backbone of the sermon. 

I should confess: however helpful the poem might have been in writing the sermon, it was not a good poem. As I said, I tried to write a sonnet, but I had no real grasp of the form. Still, even if the structure wasn’t perfect, there was something about the playfulness of the practice that opened up new imaginative possibilities for me. Thinking about the sermon poetically first allowed me to step into and explore passages as I had not done before. It was as if I was the subject of Billy Collins’s Introduction to Poetry: a mouse dropped into a poetic maze bumping in and out of dead ends before I found my way out, or holding the text up to the light like a color slide. Instead of simply trying to wrench meaning out of the Bible, I was able to experience it myself and then share that experience with the congregation on Sundays.

Over time, and especially after joining the writing community called The Habit, my writing improved. Meeting other poets and encountering instruction on various poetic forms allowed me to get better at the craft. I’ve stuck to the sonnet form for most of my writing (exclusively so for what I now call my “Sermon Sonnets”), primarily because I like the parameters. The structure of a sonnet (iambic pentameter and 14 lines) paradoxically invites more exploration than it limits and generates more ideas than it prevents. To make an idea fit into the sonnet structure, I have to treat it like it’s like a block of wood that constantly gets whittled down so that the end result is a sculpted phrase that can contain multiple layers of meaning. Plus, the relative terseness of the sonnet form helps me accomplish what my earlier struggles could not produce: a short summary of what my sermon was about. In short, if someone asks me now what my sermon focuses on, I can simply read the poem in less than a minute’s time. 

When I tell others about my writing routine (studying a biblical text, writing a sonnet out of that study, and writing a sermon out of the sonnet), most people find it a neat idea. But then I always get the same question: “Do you share the poems with your church?” The answer is no; at least, not during the sermon. I have sent several of my poems through our newsletters or presented them during Bible studies. Most people in my church don’t read poetry. Therefore I don’t want to regularly bombard them with something that they might find an obstacle. I wait for moments when they have more time to reflect on the poem, or when they can have the poem set before them in written form. I usually finish the poem too late in the week to get it ready for our Sunday visuals, so I don’t want people’s first encounter with it to be simply auditory. I would rather wait for a more intimate time to share poems with them.

While I wait for opportune times to share my poetry with my church members, I do think it is important to discuss poetry with them. I say this for several reasons. First, the Bible is roughly one-third poetry. Psalms and prophets are essentially off-limits if people aren’t readers of poetry. Of course, Hebrew poetry differs from sonnets in style and structure, but what they share is much deeper. Regardless of language or form, poets know how to write in such a way to make the writing inviting and experiential. Few people can read Psalm 51 and not desire for themselves that same cleansing and purifying from sin that David describes and longs for. In fact, when I preached on Psalm 51, that is exactly where my mind went in my poetic exploration of the text. This is what I wrote that week (I am going to include title and epigraph, as this is how I would present it to my church members):

A New Creation

Create in me a clean heart, O God,
and put a new and right spirit within me….
Deliver me from bloodshed, O God,
O God of my salvation,
and my tongue will sing aloud of your deliverance. (Psalm 51:10, 14)

I am awash in sin and overwhelmed
By my iniquity. I am like those
In Noah’s day—I’m only evil all
The time. It’s almost like I’ve been this way
From birth, with my transgressions swelling up
Like tidal waves that beat against the shores
Of my already broken heart. Mercy,
My God. Be gracious to this troubled soul.
Don’t take your spirit from me, Lord. Instead,
Just like when time began, come blow your breath
Upon these floods of guilt; and somehow use
These waters not for judgment but to cleanse
My unclean heart and make me new, and I
Will ever sing of your deliverance.

I hope, in sharing this with my church, not only will they see my poem as something to be experienced, but more importantly, I hope they see that Psalm 51 begs for an experience as well.  

Secondly, I want church folks to see that what biblical poets also do is weave various parts of the grand narrative together. My current church knows that Genesis 1 is foundational for me. Every sermon I preach assumes that text is looming in the background, and more often than not I explicitly mention it. Genesis 1 (technically climaxing in the first verses of Genesis 2), ends with the picture of a world teeming with life, where God and humans live on earth together. Even when that story goes off the rails in Genesis 3, so many future narratives show that the work God does through Abraham, Israel, Jesus, and the church, has in mind the recovery of that picture found in Genesis 1. Revelation 21-22 is presented by John as the full recovery of the Genesis 1 ideal, a sort of Eden 2.0. So when I preached a Pentecost sermon last year using Numbers 11:24-30 as the sermon text, I wrote this sonnet as a way to link the Numbers story with hints of Genesis 1, elements of Acts 2, and the hope of Revelation 21-22, imagined as the reader stepping into a conversation where Moses is speaking to Joshua:

Moses’ Spiritual Imagination

But Moses said to [Joshua], “Are you jealous for my sake? Would that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would put his spirit on them!” (Numbers 11:29)

While I appreciate the sentiment,
There is no need for jealousy on my
Behalf. The spirit is a gift, which I
Do not, by right, possess. Recall: God breathed
In Adam’s flesh the breath of life, and Eve,
Through him, received the same. Do you not think
Our Lord desires to give the same good gift
To all their sons and daughters after them?
I wouldn’t be surprised if one day God
Unleashed his spirit on humanity—
His wind and fire breezing through the land
And filling up the hearts that long for him.
They’ll be like tents in which our Lord will rest,
And through them will the world, again, be blessed.

Finally, the writing life has many connections to the life in Christ. I don’t know why—because it has never actually been the case—but almost every time I write a poem during the week, I think it is perfect. When I share it with my friends, of course, I learn that it isn’t. This is a picture of life in community. We keep each other on track. When something is not right, we help set things straight. Writers and disciples alike have the goal of wanting to put our best selves forward. Sometimes we encourage the good; sometimes we offer corrections on the less than good. Our model for this is Jesus, who spent a decent amount of time correcting and editing the choices of his disciples. It simply is the case that sometimes the things we think we love most need to be let go in order for us to live a life that flourishes in a godly way. Jesus teaches this to his disciples in the Gospels, and Jesus’ Spirit does the same with us today. We know Jesus plays the role of a shepherd, but maybe we should also think of him as an editor. The title (thanks to the suggestion of my friend Tyler Rogness) and the subject of this poem explores precisely that:

The Good Editor

For which of you, intending to build… does not first sit down and estimate the cost… (Luke 14:28)

The writer finds from time to time beloved
Ideas, phrases, words that stifle lively
Storytelling and have to be removed.
(Sometimes, we say, “our darlings have to die.”)
I’ve never thought the process easy, but
I’ve seen the letting go lead to real growth,
As if aerating the creative soil
Allows a fresh wind to breathe in new life.

I wonder if our Lord here plays the role
Of editor by asking his disciples
To trust that he can show them how to tell
A better story. He suggests that they
Part ways with images they once held precious
To find what makes their story truly priceless.

Every now and then, no matter how much time I take and no matter how much I try to write, a poem just doesn’t come before Sunday. I’ve learned to not get discouraged when that happens, as I’ve found those “failures” to be equally instructive. Whether preaching sermons or in listening to them, whatever good comes is to be first understood as a gift. Writing poetry has helped me to be open to these gifts; but, when poetic ideas don’t come on my timetable, I have also learned to trust that God will still provide in surprising ways. My job, as a Christian in general and a pastor in particular, is to be ready to receive. I am asked to have the lamp filled with oil and the wicks trimmed. The bridegroom will come at his choosing and in his time. On a Sunday afternoon, after preaching on the parable of the ten virgins in Matthew 25, this poem (breaking from my usual sonnet form) came to mind: 

Being Ready

“Keep awake, therefore, for you, know, neither the day nor the hour.” (Matthew 25:13)

I scratched out
a lot of unusable lines this week.
I’m not really sure
what the problem was.

What I do know
is that tomorrow I will come back
to my favorite chair, open up
my Moleskine, and listen again.
I might even buy an oil lamp before I do.

Poetry has helped my sermon writing; but, it has also helped me to experience the whole of the spiritual life as a patient, attentive, and prayerful experience of God and his Scriptures. With that poetic foundation, when I preach, I hope sermons have the same effect on listeners that a poem has on readers, that it is seen as an open door inviting people into an exploration of both the text and the God revealed in the text. I also hope the whole of our worship becomes, not simply a chance to learn, but an opportunity for the church to embody their spiritual lives prayerfully and poetically, that they in turn become living poems through which the world encounters the Maker of all things.

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Jesse is a pastor living in central North Carolina who often tries to entice his parishioners to join in his poetic enthusiasm. He has previously written for An Unexpected Journal, The Clayjar Review, Rabbit Room Poetry, and Radix Magazine.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash