Legalism is alive and well in the heart of a pastor

One of my favourite analogies for preaching is that of an aeroplane taking off.  Sometimes when you step into a pulpit as you begin preaching something undefinable happens that means preaching feels like you have taken off.  The congregation are with you, there is an engagement that you can sense, you feel free of your notes and can sense the sermon building and leading people to better understand the scriptures.  Yet at other times the whole sermon feels like a plane taxiing on the runway.  You feel bound by your notes, as if everything is an effort, as if you and those listening are labouring hard just to stay with it.

And for me, it's in the afternoon and evening following that when legalism strikes, as I try to analyse what was different this week from last week, why did this weeks sermon left me taxiing whereas the previous week flew?  Was it something I did?  Or didn't do?  Did I not pray enough (probably not)?  Did I not do enough study (there doesn't seem to be a correlation here - though that's no excuse for not working hard)?  Did I not take enough time to be with and understand those I'm preaching to?

Now it's good to ask those questions and sometimes it can prove helpful in discerning unhealthy patterns and dependencies.  But at other times it can lead me to an unhealthy legalism and a doubting in the power of the word of God.  It's then that it is helpful to remind myself that I certainly have no control over what God is doing, or even always see what God is doing.  That sometimes God's work for his word is to produce a hardness and rejection of it.  Sometimes his work is a patient work which will bear fruit years down the line.

And that is humbling.  I see my tendency towards legalism, to want success, to be feted, and my tendency to depend on myself rather than on my loving Father.  And that is great news if it drives me back to my Father, to see again his love and grace to me his bumbling servant.