Simon Ponsonby’s Butcher Sermon

Simon Ponsonby’s Butcher Sermon
Sunday 6th June, 2010
Here was the text, James 3. 1Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly. 2We all stumble in many ways. If anyone is never at fault in what he says, he is a perfect man, able to keep his whole body in check.
Just before the reading, a young woman came up to describe an image she said she saw. It was odd, a lion with a heart in its mouth. Embarrassed, she guessed at an interpretation (but no interpretation can match the power of an image or metaphor.)
Simon Ponsonby was so overcome by this that he felt unable to preach his sermon, which, ominously for anyone foolhardy enough to pick the passage, began with “Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.”
He preached with authority, sincerity, rhetorical power–and wow! (to go with the above)–brevity. He was a butcher, he said, and went on to prove it.
Leaning over, he pulled out a massive ox’s tongue, which he lovingly handled, caressing its cartilage, fat and gristle. An unbeautiful thing, black-streaked. Eee-ooh, the congregation gasped.
“From the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaks. Salt springs cannot bring forth fresh water.” Dentists, he said, can assess an individual’s health by looking at the tongue.
He then went on to the lovely injunction in Col. 4:6 “Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt.”
“Jesus was generous,” Ponsonby said, “when he opened his mouth, gifts came forth.”
He went on to say that we ourselves would be healed and blessed if our tongue spoke blessings.
The whole thing was over in 5 minutes max.
Visibly overcome, he sat down and asked us to use the 40 minutes to reflect and repent in silence on our speech and our hearts.
God willing, Simon Ponsonby’s multi-sensory sermon will stay with us for a while.
May it be so, Lord.