NASHVILLE — Listening to Jerry L. Cannon preach is like riding a roller coaster — zooming up, swooping down low, screaming around corners. All the while, he never stops talking.
Cannon packs more words into one sermon than some pastors do in a month.
Statistics, examples, theology, quotations from the Bible, from the Book of Order, from his children, demonstrating with his body, wheeling his arms and legs, talking faster, faster, faster, dipping down suddenly into an unexpected, rich moment of silence.
So here’s a little (just a little!) of what Cannon — a fifth-generation Presbyterian and senior pastor of C. N. Jenkins Memorial Church in Charlotte — had to say to the National Presbyterian Evangelism Conference, preaching during worship Sept. 1.
“Don’t worry about a thing. God is in total control.”
That’s not Bobby McFerran — that’s Elijah in the 17th chapter of I Kings, relaying a message from God to a widow from Zerephath, who was scraping the crumbs from her larder and fearing she would soon starve to death. Elijah told the woman to feed him from the last of her supplies, and not to worry, God would provide.
Cannon used as an example riding a roller coaster with his teenagers. “I wanted to make sure I had some cool points with my children,” he said. As the ride operator strapped him in with seat belt and shoulder bar, Cannon prayed over and over: “God have mercy on me.” It wasn’t until he’d survived the first ride — terrified, screaming, thrilled — and came back for a second dose that he actually heard what the young operator said just before they took off.
“Relax and enjoy the ride.”
“God has to show us an empty place before God can show us a full place.”
So sometimes there’s scarcity before abundance, death before life, tribulations before triumph, messiness before mercy.
“The Bible says it is in our weakness that we are strong, in our emptiness that we are filled.”
“It just doesn’t happen without God.”
We need a relationship with God, so we understand “we are God’s every day, all day, on a good day, on a bad day, on a hard day, on a low day, on a day when we feel like it, on a day when we don’t feel like it. … We can’t make it without God.”
“God will indeed lift us up.”
Many people have “serious situations,” as the widow did, facing real suffering and fear. Millions have no health insurance, including people who work long and hard. AIDS is leaving children parentless, then claiming the orphans. Drunk drivers smash into the unsuspecting. Thousands have been killed and maimed in the war in Iraq — “it does not make sense for us to stay silent on the war issue,” Cannon said.
But we are to trust in God, not in ourselves.
“The Bible says, `Don’t worry. ‘ “
And “God does His best work in miraculous things and ridiculous situations” — when the pastor leaves unexpectedly, the larder’s bare, the diagnosis takes one’s breath away, someone we love dies, the pain comes flooding in.
Be faithful, Elijah told the widow.
God will provide.
