Shade Tree Wisdom 5/8/14

          It was the freshman Homiletics class (A Division), at Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, Missouri. The Date was late September of my first year. And the

professor was Dr. John Fritz. The preliminaries, attendance, chats, etc., were taken care of by the class Proctor. Class was about to start.

          Dr. Fritz was a big man. Now he strode to the podium. (An aside. Dr. Fritz never walked, he strode. He gave the impression he  was in a hurry to be somewhere).

          So he stood at the lectern, opened his Bible, and read a lesson. Read it well, with pauses, inflection¸well, just well done.Then he closed the Bible, leaned on the lectern, and said to us, “Do you know just happened here?”

          The answers included ‘read the Bible’, ‘tried a different translation’ and “just wanted to introduce the subject matter.”

          Dr. Fritz then explained. He said I treated you as my congregation on Sunday and read the Gospel. He continued. Your people will come to church feeling something like this, "We have come from a week in the world, we are tired, we have had our little temptations, our  struggles, and our living. We are here to find some help for the living. Give us some food for the soul. We have given you time to reflect, to study, to prepare a meal for our hungry souls. Give us what we need to grow as Christians.”

Dr. Fritz then used the story of the sower of the seed and the result from Luke 8, 4-8. The professor pointed out that such growing is a process, it keeps on going as people meditate, discuss, and think about what they heard read and spoken, because spiritual growth happens slowly, methodically, often imperceptibly, but it does grow unfailingly.

That is why, when you read the Holy Gospel and the Epistle appointed, you must read it with proper emphasis, with regular pauses, with inflection, so that those people who hear it for the first time that Sunday will understand what you read.

          I have never forgotten that class and Dr. Fritz’s sort of dramatic beginning. And through the years I often stopped by the Church on a Friday and read the assigned lessons for the Sunday out loud, often several times, and I did have people remark on the clear word they heard from my reading, and I am grateful for the lesson.

GPD 5/8/14