A preacher with no voice

By Rev. Kathy Neary

I’ve lost my voice. It’s completely AWOL. I can only speak in whispers. For a person who identifies as a preacher, this is devastating.

However, not being able to speak, being forced to listen more than pontificate, has had some illuminating effects on me, too. Not speaking (Jiminy, I used to talk a lot!) has given me some insights into the nature of preaching that I would have missed otherwise. Surprise, surprise: I’ve learned a few things by not speaking.

Even voiceless, I can’t resist sharing a few insights with you, my dear readers.

First, I need to provide some context. I apologize to those who have not heard this from me personally. A few months ago, I was diagnosed with late-stage cancer, and I chose to forego any treatment for that cancer.

This means my body is reacting in strange, marvelous, and quite unexpected ways to the growth of tumors. Every body is different so the health care team couldn’t predict how this process would proceed in my body, but nobody saw the loss of my voice as a possible symptom.

The loss of my voice is connected to a severe, chronic cough I developed. While the team is making progress in controlling the cough, it is unclear if my voice will return.

The other symptom I deal with is fatigue, so even if my voice returns, I don’t have the strength needed to deliver a sermon. So, there you have it: a preacher with no voice.

It sucks. That is the first nugget of wisdom I’d like to share.

Second, I appreciate in a much deeper way that the opportunities to preach were all amazing gifts of grace and love. I didn’t always receive them in that manner.

There were many late Saturday nights I spent tearing my hair out, trying to find the right words, and cursing the day I chose this profession. Then there were times when someone commented after hearing my sermon that indicated they had missed my point entirely, making me feel like a failure and incapable of doing the one thing I thought I was called to do.

Preaching was often a chore to be gotten through. I could go on with my list of grievances. Amidst my bellyaching, I would lose sight of the amazing gift that is the opportunity to preach.

I was given the chance to spend hours contemplating the Holy Scriptures, and felt a connection to these ancient texts, which still afford us miraculous treasures of wisdom, comfort, and challenge.

Imagine this: Paul, an itinerant preacher himself, sits down to write a letter to friends in Philippi about 2000 years ago. He is moved to write: “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you,” (Philippians 2:12–13).

Paul had many reasons for writing these words to the Philippian community. Still, he certainly had no idea that a 21st-century woman, living in a place he didn’t know existed, who was trying to make sense of her connection with the divine, would find these specific words comforting, challenging, and awe-inspiring.

People often ask me if I believe in miracles. I do, because I experience the miraculous every time I connect with people over vast expanses of time and space. Over and over again, I experienced a connection to the universe and the Divine while preparing and delivering sermons. Can you believe people paid me to have these experiences? What an unbelievable world we live in!

Lastly, I found preaching to be a truly collaborative endeavor between myself and God. Each time I prepared a sermon, I felt this tug and pull, this back and forth, between my ideas and what God thought about the scripture passage.

My best sermons came out of “vigorous discussions” with God. I have had many, many moments when I doubted the existence of God. My scientific proclivities naturally led me to be skeptical of what I could not see or truly understand.

I’ve always thought that being an atheist would be so easy and tempting. I could tell myself that there is no way to prove the existence of God, so I could just put that part of my existence away in a drawer and live a life expecting no experience that was beyond what my senses told me was real.

Preaching, however, brought me an experience of God, of a reality that we live in but are often unaware of. Preaching was a touchstone for me, allowing me to experience God’s presence profoundly.

I have many images of the Divine that I keep in my head. Still, the one that manifests while I am preparing a sermon is that of a woman sitting at my kitchen table, sharing some snacks with me, and “vigorously discussing” the text for my sermon with me.

Preaching, for me, was simply an encounter with the Divine.

I’ve always felt a connection with the story of Jacob wrestling with the angel/God. My whole life has been one long wrestling match with God.

Now that I can’t preach, I must remind myself of this divine wrestling match in other ways. Lately, I have been having “vigorous discussions” at that kitchen table, about the nature of death, and why my life seems to have an expiration date not too far in the future.

I guess preaching has given me a process that I can rely on in these interesting times. I hope that you, dear Readers, find your own ways to experience God regularly.

I know She would love to stay in touch.

---

Rev. Kathy Neary serves as Transitional Ministry Developer for the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church.