THE SERMONS THAT MATTER

 

THE SERMONS THAT MATTER

I. In all this, have we been speaking of a remote past, which may be

of interest to us but which fundamentally no longer concerns us?

                    Rudulf Bultmann, June 7, 1936

Driving down Fruitvale to have

my tires checked by Russ at Tires U-Save,

in the Honda Fit, three days,

three sermons into Bultmann’s

Marburg Sermons, This World

And the Beyond, 1936-1950,

twenty-one sermons, available

to me by way of Inter-library Loan

from the local public library,

I pull off to the shoulder of the road

after failing to steer safely

writing in my notebook,

Mostly, I just breathe,

holding this book, relieved,

(still in dis-belief) at what

I hold, I’m holding these sermons!

They’re in my hands.

This confirmation. These 50 years.

Afraid that I’ll lose it

before getting to the air machine

and the life of my tires.

There. Now I can drive again,

turn into traffic, arriving.

Sitting in the waiting room,

cold, two doors opening,

closing, in and out of the shop

workers, seated in the plastic

and aluminum chair, notebook

and sermons bound and not

remaindered, Bultmann writes,

This is the critical advent question.

He is with his students and colleagues,

with them, in their language, ahead

of them yes, but in hearing distance.

1936. It is January 11, 2025.

Here, there has been an election.

Bultmann cites the poet, The story of our days,

he has been reading forgotten poems

of Karl Immermann, gazing into evening,

and lo, beyond our time to guide

our children’s course, the story

of our days, our age’s stain,

must be effaced. Only in the waiting

then, we see ourselves with a chance

come from elsewhere. Forgotten

in the stacks, maybe stored in the library

basement, retrieved, delivered,

temporarily mine, 42 more days!

Fragile binding eternal, even

conscious fingers and hands

breaking under use, under-used

before evangelical clamor.

Jim Bodeen

11-17 January 2025