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Huckleberry Spirit (Posted on December 13, 2009)
Although not a maven of pop songs of the twentieth century, I do have my favorites among the songs of Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Ira Gershwin, and a few others. One of my favorites is "Moon River" by songwriter Johnny Mercer. Set to an achingly lyric tune by Henry Mancini, "Moon River" conjures a romantic sweetness that always makes me smile and get a little "misty" at the same time. (Of course, it doesn’t hurt that the first time I heard the song it was being crooned by the incomparably lovely Audrey Hepburn in the film Breakfast at Tiffany’s. You can view the original scene on YouTube.)
Recently the complete works of Johnny Mercer were published in a single volume. A December 2009 review of this new book in the New York Times reminded me of a curious fact about that song. The reviewer noted that "Moon River" is a fine example of how an entire song can get lifted—and transformed—by a single word. It comes near the end of "Moon River," which the reviewer noted is a perfectly pretty little song until suddenly Mercer’s lyrics take an unexpected turn with the inclusion of the phrase "my huckleberry friend." The odd adjective "huckleberry" seems to reach to Mercer’s upbringing in the American South and, as the review stated, conjures up visions of Huckleberry Finn and all that goes with that allusion: "Mark Twain, the Mississippi, the South, vagabondage, companionship, the fond nostalgia of one’s youth."
It was every songwriter’s dream: the perfect word. And that one word at once transcended the other words and phrases around it and, in turn, made "Moon River" something more than it appeared to be at first.
One word did that. It was just one little adjective (that had perhaps never been used as an adjective before). It is a fine testament to the power of language. And for me as a preacher and a teacher of preaching, it’s a reminder that those of us who occupy pulpits every Sunday hold in our hands a powerful tool: words. Of course, we are unlikely on anything like a regular basis to hit on a "huckleberry" the way Mercer did (even he did that just once!). But then again, preachers have something going for them and for the words they wield that the average songwriter, poet, or writer does not have: the Holy Spirit. (Though let me hasten to add that this is not to deny the Spirit’s work in inspiring lots of people in different fields. But the church has long believed that the Spirit works in a special way in the proclamation of the gospel through preaching.)
Of course, the Spirit’s presence in sermons means that even the most ordinary and pedestrian of words can wing their way into people’s hearts in ways the preacher could never have imagined. Every preacher sooner or later gets thanked for saying something that the preacher cannot quite track down in the sermon manuscript. As William Willimon once said in a lecture, every Sunday the Spirit comes up to the preacher, takes the sermon manuscript out of his or her hands, sighs, and says, "Well, give me that thing and I’ll see what I can do with it!"
But the Holy Spirit is involved at every level of the sermon-writing process and not just on Sunday morning when the message goes live. Wise preachers know how to work with that Spirit in the choosing of words, phrases, and images to which the Spirit may direct the preacher and that the Spirit can then use powerfully when the sermon is delivered. But that means wise preachers do something else, too: they work with the Spirit in keeping their vocabulary larder well-stocked with fresh infusions of vivid words. Preachers stock up on good words by being themselves voracious readers of good books, thoughtful articles, lyric poems.
Anyone who has ever heard me talk about this subject knows that sooner or later (and it’s usually sooner) I invoke my favorite Maya Angelou quote. Angelou was once asked, "Did you always want to be a writer?" She replied, "No, I wanted to be a reader." The one, however, follows the other. I don’t know of a single successful author or poet or reporter who is not an exceedingly well-read person. The words they find to weave into their own writing are discovered in their encounter with other writers.
But preachers find words not only by reading but by listening. Preachers listen to how their parishioners talk, what words they use to summarize their thoughts and feelings. Everyone knows that young people have their own language (and that it changes pretty often, too) and so sometimes pastors try to stay current on that by peeking at their kids’ Facebook pages or listening carefully when cellphone conversations are going on between a couple of teens. But discerning pastors listen just as intently to people of all ages. Pastors listen to the people who are on the other side of the desk in a counseling session, to the patient lying in a hospital bed, to the grieving who stand beside a loved one’s casket. What people say and how they say it is something preachers pay attention to because they need to borrow that language come Sunday morning to speak into those same hearts in ways that will be understood.
As with Mr. Mercer’s famous song, sometimes it really may be just that one word the preacher intones that strikes exactly the right chord in the heart of a listener. At other times it may be a combination of words and phrases that the preacher borrows from pastoral encounters or from his or her own reading. But however it happens, the Spirit takes the preacher’s words and makes of them something more than what they might have otherwise been.
One of the joys of preaching is that preachers never knows when, by God’s gracious Spirit, they might just find their "huckleberry."