AKMA’s Random Thoughts

That's a reasonable complaint. But I stand by my decision about the One Preaching Rule that I want to condense into a pill and drop into the water supply. Even more than connecting the sermon to the readings, *even* more than preaching only one sermon per sermon... for pity's sake, preachers, Do Not Tell Me how you thought of this idea, how you found this book, why you were so bored you were leafing through this passage, whether it was on Tuesday or Thursday and whether it was raining, or in any other way what led you to have the idea you want to convey to us this morning. Just convey it. Hint: If at any point in the first two pages of your sermon you find the phrase "When I sat down," take those two pages and burn them. Begin reading on page three.

I swear I am going to buy a water pistol.

Laura, you’ll need a SuperSoaker. You left out, however, the part about never under any circumstances using the word “exegesis.”

I heard a pastor at an ecumenical gathering once confess how frightened he was that the seminary he had just enrolled in taught classes on ex-Jesus. Who was this "ex-a-Jesus", and why would a seminary say anything about Jesus being an ex? He declared right then he was "Inta-Jesus", never exaJesus.
P.S. Some of the worst sermons I have ever heard wandered off into book-review / movie-review land. My mind immediately checked out, uncaring if a connection was going to be made. I want REAL LIFE STUFF, what does this SCRIPTURE say to me / us, today, here, not what does some author or playright or screenwriter say...

Hey AKMA, in my history class this semester, which is a broad sweep of Western Civilization, one of the profs (there are two) regularly--every couple of weeks--reads directly from the New Testament. I'm an atheist, but it's really engaging when he reads from the text, because the other prof just says "you really need to read the New Testament" when it's not even an assigned reading for the course. That will be one of my complaints for the end of semester review: put some sections of the Bible as required reading.

One day, when classes or over, I'm going to sneak into a church and just listen. Not for more material to denounce, but to listen to what is hopefully great oratory about the best-selling (and, some say, best) book in the history of the world, a book I have yet to read. Are atheists allowed in the house of God?

Amen, brother AKMA! Permit me to add my own two cents.

Cent #1: Why is it that many preachers feel obliged to throw in a story or a reading (usually, as you mention, from some popular book) at the *end* of the sermon--as if to justify it by showing that some other person had the same idea? In my experience, doing this demeans the preacher and weakens the message.

Cent #2: When I was preparing for my first sermon, a friendly PhD. student asked if he could pass on the best sermon advice he had ever received. "Sure," I said. "Cut, cut, cut," was the reply. Edit ruthlessly. Get rid of the fat. Get down to the core of the message. It *was* (and remains) good advice!

I've always thought that it was acceptable for a priest to not fill up their alloted time for sermon. I'd much rather hear a few honest words than filling or padding. And frankly, I prefer to hear a sermon linked to the readings. That's where we are collectively on the journey. If there is some compelling reason to deviate, then perhaps an inserted lesson closer to the sermon topic would be preferable. I like to chew a little on the scriptures that are read. Often the priest's take on the readings makes me think about them in ways I had not considered. And sometimes, I have my own thoughts about what they are saying.

Interesting about your reference to The Lion King.. Julie Taymor, the director who created the overall concept for the musical, and who has a background in opera and experimental theater, spent several years in Bali learning Indonesian puppet theater. She said that in Bali the audiences always knew the stories being acted out, and part of the art was in how to re-tell them over and over again. When she was asked by Disney to create the musical, she decided that the audience, having had their children repeat the movie over and over, would have a similar knowledge of the story before they ever got into the theater. This freed her up to re-tell much of the story in a very low-tech/craft manner.

Does a priest really have to give background info about The Lion King?

It seems like the problemis that no one has taught preachers to write or present speeches. All the problems that I have noted in sermons mentioned here are things I have had to learn not to do over the years, either in the process of working on my writing (and believe me, as a social scientist surrounded by plenty of writing-"challenged" colleagues, that can be a challenge) or in my speech and debate days in high school. I'd be curious what we are teaching in homiletics classes these days.

If a student of mine pulled that crap about "When I began to think about this topic, I was standing in the shower....", s/he would immediately get a strict comment and a lower grade for frivolous, unnecessary stuff used just to fill space and hit the minimum page requirement.

I want teaching and consideration in sermons, not a string of anecdotes. But since I haven't gotten much of those, I've learned the historical documents at the back of the Episcopal prayer book pretty well (these being a refuge for the bored in sermon). For strings of anecdotes, I can read the Chicken Soup books.

Another thing that I wish preachers would remember is their audiences. Forgetting one's audience leads to dire consequences sometimes. At my old parish in the San Francisco Bay Area, one of our ordinands preached a sermon on globalization and terrorism, giving the sort of standard liberal line to a congregation of standard liberals. Or so he thought. But our congregation had an economics professor, a sociology PhD, and seven political science graduate students, half of whom study international relations, and are quite familiar with security and globalization questions on a fairly complex level. So when he entered into a discussion on how American prosperity and international globalization -- in his sermon -- had led almost inevitably to terrorism like Sept. 11, 2001, and he proceeded to demonstrate a basic lack of knowledge about global economics and generally understood theories of political economy, I know we tuned him out. To a person, all of the aforementioned people discounted all he had to say, because he tried to be smarter than experts in a certain field and because he proceeded to lecture us for 15-20 minutes. I found out later that he was dimayed by our reaction (a couple of people were more vocal than others). But he didn't preach the lectionary texts and he forgot his audience, and as a result, his message was lost and forgotten. he may have thought that the reaction against him occurred because of his prophetic words (and there could be other reasons), but for me, it was because he forgot that we knew more about the phenomenon than he, that he lectured us somewhat sanctimoniously, and that he didn't deliver a sermon, merely a bad piece for the local lefty alternative paper. Even if his facts and such had been straight, he did not tie the topic he had in mind to the day-to-day Christian life that most of us were trying to lead.

Words cannot fully express my agreement with your gripe against the "let me tell you about something completely unrelated to today's readings" sermon. My synagogue, unfortunately, has a monthly "Social Responsibility Shabbat." Nothing makes me feel less socially reponsible than being told I should listen to a twenty-minute lecture on our society's problems with prescription drug coverage (yes, a real live example) when I was looking forward to, uh, celebrating the beginning of the Sabbath.

Also, speaking as a twentysomething in a Boomer-heavy congregation, there comes a point at which autobiographical reminisces from the late '60s and early '70s make part of the audience feel a tiny bit alienated. And I am ordinarily the last person on earth to resent historical interludes; I just feel that out of several thousand millennia of tradition, we perhaps need not go into detail about both the rescue of hostages from Angola and Bobby Kennedy's assassination on the same holy day. (God help the kids who haven't had a good U.S. history course.)

Note the new asterisks whenever we reference favoriteNumber, except for that new line right before the return.

Our next line looks familiar, except it starts with an asterisk. Again, we're using the star operator, and noting that this variable we're working with is a pointer. If we didn't, the computer would try to put the results of the right hand side of this statement (which evaluates to 6) into the pointer, overriding the value we need in the pointer, which is an address. This way, the computer knows to put the data not in the pointer, but into the place the pointer points to, which is in the Heap. So after this line, our int is living happily in the Heap, storing a value of 6, and our pointer tells us where that data is living.

Each Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.

Each Stack Frame represents a function. The bottom frame is always the main function, and the frames above it are the other functions that main calls. At any given time, the stack can show you the path your code has taken to get to where it is. The top frame represents the function the code is currently executing, and the frame below it is the function that called the current function, and the frame below that represents the function that called the function that called the current function, and so on all the way down to main, which is the starting point of any C program.

Inside each stack frame is a slew of useful information. It tells the computer what code is currently executing, where to go next, where to go in the case a return statement is found, and a whole lot of other things that are incredible useful to the computer, but not very useful to you most of the time. One of the things that is useful to you is the part of the frame that keeps track of all the variables you're using. So the first place for a variable to live is on the Stack. This is a very nice place to live, in that all the creation and destruction of space is handled for you as Stack Frames are created and destroyed. You seldom have to worry about making space for the variables on the stack. The only problem is that the variables here only live as long as the stack frame does, which is to say the length of the function those variables are declared in. This is often a fine situation, but when you need to store information for longer than a single function, you are instantly out of luck.

But variables get one benefit people do not