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
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