'Jeremy spoke in class today'

I've already been blogging a lot this week, but something so surprising and terrific happened today that I couldn't help myself form writing about it. (Making it even better is that lyrics to a Pearl Jam song ironically provide a perfect title).

I sat down next to Jeremy before our Telling the Story class this afternoon. Jeremy acknowledged that I must be on Easy Street for the rest of the course, since I preached my sermon last week. I asked him whether he was giving his sermon for the class today; he said with no great amount of excitement that he was, and he admitted that he hadn't spent all that much time on it.

With that, my expectations weren't that high when Jeremy took the podium to deliver his sermon on Jesus' temptation by the devil in Luke 4:1-13, the text upon which we were all assigned to preach. But I was still quite curious to see how he'd do.

I'd like to consider Jeremy my friend. I don't really ever hang out with him, but we've been in a lot of classes together in the past months since we started at Luther Seminary, and we're in the same discussion group in our cluster of Contextual Leadership students. In all that, I had found Jeremy to be a pretty consistent guy. Foremost is that he never talks in class unless he has been directed to. He's a quiet guy from Northwestern Iowa. Really quiet. I even got a little angry with him a few times last semester when we were partners in our Hebrew course — I wished he'd speak up and help me when I was struggling to pronounce Hebrew phrases in in-class exercises.

The only surprise I ever got out of Jeremy before today came a few weeks ago in Telling the Story, when he gave our group an ingenious idea for our play on the temptation narrative — that he, being a bigger and clean-shaven fella, should portray Jesus in the beginning of the play. Then I, being less imposing and currently bearded, should step in as Jesus after we skipped ahead 40 days in which Jesus fasted in the wilderness. That hilarious change-over proved to be the highlight of our play. But of course, this got Jeremy out of speaking for most of the performance.

But then today, Jeremy took the podium to give his sermon. Right from the start, I was joyfully amazed. He started out by discussing, in perfect comedic styling, the well-publicized claim by filmmakers to have found the tomb of Jesus and his family. In a startling fashion, Jeremy used that news — whatever unfounded hooey it might be — to remind his listeners that Jesus was a human being and thus faced temptation like all of us do. Jeremy proceeded to seamlessly discuss Jesus' humanness and yet his godliness, with his triumph unlike anything that sinful humans have ever achieved. We as humans should call upon the Holy Spirit when tempted, but we'll never end up as spotless and righteous as Jesus, Jeremy said. And with that setup, Jeremy hammered home the Good News: that despite our shortcomings, God, through the cleansing blood of Jesus in his unwavering faithfulness, forgives us.

I really can't do Jeremy's sermon justice in describing it. It was snappy, poetic and perfectly conversational in a genuine way that didn't betray Jeremy's natural soft-spokenness. It was, in my opinion, the best sermon given by any of the students in our group (and there were some other pretty darn good ones in that bunch) and quite possibly the best sermon I've witnessed since coming to Luther Seminary. This quiet guy knocked the socks off of everyone in the room. Our instructor, Professor Grindal, said she could easily have been spiritually fed off that sermon for a week. No one had any criticism to give him.

I was only a little frustrated. Jeremy had put across the very same points I set out to address in my sermon, which I crafted for days and also performed for my Contextual Leadership church. But Jeremy did it better. He articulated it in a way that I wanted to but couldn't. And, as he told us, he apparently wrote it in less than a half-hour, by first speaking it to himself and then typing it out, piece by piece. Mostly, I was just overcome by the wonderful surprise of the moment and the beauty of the Gospel as Jeremy presented it.

I had to ask Jeremy afterward if perhaps his father, like mine, was a pastor. No, Jeremy said, his dad is a farmer. And his church in Iowa is literally in the middle of a cornfield. Jeremy said he got some experience by preaching a handful of sermons this summer at churches in Iowa that were without a pastor. But he also admitted he must have something of a gift. He said that ever since grade school, he has been surprising classmates when he, the quiet guy, gets up and speaks.

God grants people gifts in marvelously surprising ways. And thankfully, Jeremy is giving back to God. I'm sure he'll be surprising people with the surprising and wonderful Good News of Jesus Christ for years to come. As I told him, some church in a cornfield is going to be blessed with a remarkable preacher real soon.