Forgetting Sermons (And Why That's Okay)

Do you remember riding home from church as a kid on Sunday afternoon ready to gnaw on your arm because you slept until the last possible moment that morning, skipped breakfast, and now sat famished? Do you remember the regret of realizing that mom (or grand mom) still had to finish preparing lunch, and, for some reason, at that moment one of your parents decided that it was the perfect time to ask a question:
"So... what did you learn in church today?"

Uh.......... (Brain tries to compensate by re-routing energy to memory....... fail........ Time to fake it.)

"Uh... God loves us! Jesus died on the cross for our sins!" Or insert your own default, though nonetheless true and doctrinally sound, Sunday School answers.

Not a few years later, it's sad to say that I still struggle to remember the specifics of even the best of sermons. I even regularly forget the main points of some of my own messages after a few days pass. This used to bother me, but then I began to think about what biblical or spiritual learning should really be about.

We tend to think of spiritual learning with the same categories as any other type of learning, and no doubt there is significant overlap. Learning = knowledge accumulation, application, and regurgitation. We could liken this building up of knowledge to adding books to the shelf of our mind. "I've got the basic gist of the gospel down. Check. Add that book to my shelf." "I've got the basic story line of the Bible down. Check. Add another book to the shelf."

This way of thinking about biblical learning isn't necessarily bad; it's simply incomplete. The reason it is incomplete is because spiritual learning is about both growth in knowledge and formation of character, and it's impossible to separate the two here. Spiritual growth is not only like adding books to a shelf, it's also like placing a rough-edged stone into a river.

When I hear my pastor preach I want to listen intently for new knowledge, and I want to affirm the knowledge that I already recognize as true. Going even deeper though, I want to allow his convicting, challenging, and edifying words from God's Word to wash over my soul. This is why spiritual formation is so much richer than many other learning endeavors, and it's also why remembering the main points of every sermon may not only be impractical but unnecessary.

I don't believe we'll be Bible quizzing on the Day of Judgment. God's word does say however that Jesus will reward each according to what he has done (Mt. 16:27). We understand that only those works done "in God" (Jn. 3:21), while abiding in Christ (Jn. 15) and walking in the Spirit (Gal. 5) will be worthy of reward.

So as I listen to a sermon, I want to ask the Holy Spirit to smooth this rough-edge rock. I want to ask Christ to think and feel and live through me. I want to ask God to do faithful and obedient works through this weak vessel.

Therefore, if we forget the three points of Sunday's message, but were eternally changed by a holy moment in the midst of it, I do believe we can mark that up as a win!

For example, my pastor made, what seemed to me, a passing comment this past Sunday. It wasn't one of his main points, but it struck me... like a brief but powerful torrent over a particularly rough edge of my soul. He said (paraphrasing), "We forgive...Not because the other person has asked for it or even deserves it, but because Jesus forgave us when we neither asked for it nor deserved it."

To close the loop on the point of this post - six months from now, I will not be able to articulate what my pastor said this past Sunday nearly as well as I just did. But I can promise you that his statement changed me, and the heart of it will stick with me, not merely as another book to put on my shelf, but as a life-changing truth that imprinted on my soul.

In Christ,
Andy


PS: I hope that this post doesn't encourage any sort of laziness in regards to listening well to sermons. As I affirmed above, we should all be listening well. I think this involves good note taking and returning to the text and notes the following week. My point in this post is that we should not think it sufficient to simply accumulate knowledge when it is the changing of our hearts that our God is after!