Getting On Toward Home
By The Rev. Dr. Christoph Keller
We know intuitively from the first time we hear Chris Keller preach in 1991 that he is one of the most outstanding visitors to the pulpit we will ever experience. His exact technique for writing is a mystery. However, I do know he spends hours mulling over every sermon preparation. He has set a high bar for all privileged to step up with fear and trembling1 into the same pulpit where he has left footprints. His sermons are never a Saturday night special.2 The number of us who have learned about preaching simply from listening to him is too numerous to count.3 He has mastered the formula for combining the needed ingredient of mind and heart into what he composes. This is especially true of his funeral sermons, where the heart almost always takes the lead through his innumerable homiletic journeys toward resurrection.
Today, as I reread each of Chris’ chosen sermons, many of whom I have heard in person, I try to share which homilies have been meaningful to me. Which sermons best follow Richard Milwee’s funeral direction, to tell the truth, but not the whole truth?4 I decide on this one, then that. It becomes impossible. Each has significant meaning, written for a specific friend or family member, or even persons unknown. Chris Keller writes about a beloved young man he baptized as an infant who died an early death. He has homilies for both of his well-known parents. He writes about beloved parishioners. He presides with words over the funeral of a talented physician who committed suicide. He preaches at the death of someone he has known since childhood with mental illness.
Finally, I decide Keller’s funeral sermons simply best represent Frederick Buechner’s description of preaching in Telling Secrets. “It is to try to put the gospel into words, not the way to write an essay, but more like a poem or love letter, putting your heart and your whole life into it, your own excitement, most of all your whole life.”5
1Philippians 2:12.
2Name for an inexpensive gun used by poorer neighbors, referring to preachers who write a Sunday sermon late Saturday night.
3“Too numerous to count” or TNTC is a medical term for a large number, usually about the number of organisms in a specimen.
4 Chris Keller dedicates the book to his longtime friend, Richard Milwee. One of my joys in ministry has been sitting beside Richard and Chris at the Diocesan Convention and learning about making a convention more exciting than I can write about.
5Frederick Buechner in Telling Secrets (HarperOne 2000) p. 61.
Joanna https://www.joannaseibert.com/