Old Sermons and Libraries

What do you do with old sermons? That was a question I faced a year ago when I retired. For more than forty years I had carried from pastorate to pastorate and then to service as an executive presbyter my old sermons. Some were hand written, some produced on a standard typewriter, some on and IBM Selectric, some on a Commodore 64 computer and dot matrix printer, some on an IBM 8088 computer, some on a Tandy “laptop,” some on various generations of computers and programs such as WordPerfect and Word. There was an interesting study in the technological develop of my sermon stockpile.

Very seldom did I go back and “recycle” any of the old sermons. Once in a while, I would go back and look for an illustration or line of thinking related to a particular text. I know, in today’s practice of homiletics using a manuscript is frowned upon, but for the vast majority of my preaching efforts I had a full manuscript on the pulpit. It might have been interesting to do a study on the development of my theology through the use of the old sermons. That would have been a task for somebody else. One of the reasons I did not “recycle” the old sermons is frankly some of them were not worth preaching the first time. A second reason was the situation of myself, individuals, the congregations, the world was different every time the lectionary texts cycled around. A third reason for not recycling the old sermons was I needed to struggle again with the texts.

What then do you do with file drawers full of old sermons which were arranged with dividers for the books of the Bible depending on the primary text for a particular sermon? During my last week in the office, I gathered all the sermons into two large, and almost too heavy, garbage bags. I loaded them in my car; drove to the recycling center; dumped them all in the office paper bin. When I had told others what I had done some gasped in disbelief. “How could you?”

I did much the same with my library which had been a source of comfort and assurance that I was a literate person. Instead of dumping the books in a recycle bin, I carted box upon box to the Catholic Student Center at the nearby university for their annual book sale. I kept a few of the books. One cannot be void of a library of some sort, at least I cannot.

Getting rid of the old sermons and volumes from my library were acts of acknowledging an end to a particular portion of my life. I have not regretted the purging actions. Oh, there are a couple of the books I now wished I had kept, for sentimental reasons, if nothing else.

If I need a sermon, I will write a new one. If I need a book, I can download many to my laptop, iPad or Kindle. When I travel I can take dozens of books with me with the mere weight of the iPad or Kindle. It is all very freeing.