I was not upset by these two incidents but there, right in the middle of the sermon, I heard utterances I considered crude. They're the kind of words said in locker rooms, all-male executive retreats and some newsrooms where the reporters are not held to a high standard.

I cut the two churches a little slack, because they were designed to appeal to twenty-somethings and to people who have not been to church in a long time. I wondered if the preacher thought using a bit of profanity would draw more people. So, I let the first one slide by. But then I went to the other church, and there it was again: In the tail end of the sermon, the preacher got crude.

This must have shocked me, because I awakened at exactly 4:16 a.m. the next morning and my only thought was that preachers had been profane on two occasions during a worship service. I thought about that for a few minutes, and went back to sleep.

But now it troubles me again. We have this sacred moment in our lives when everything should be elegant and sophisticated and, instead, preachers are swearing at us. It's not what one would call "using the Lord's name in vain," but these expressions are just crude. We hear them everywhere, standing in line for a sandwich, sitting in the doctor's office, looking at used cars - everywhere we go we can hear these expressions.

That's why it is such a wonderful thing to go to church and not hear them. But in those two worship services, preachers stood in their pulpits and were intentionally being crude to me. Am I supposed to feel grateful? Do these preachers of the holy word believe I need to hear these phrases? Will I be a better man?

Instead, it feels like a whack right between the eyes, as if a big brick has been dropped from the second floor and I'm on the first floor, looking up and standing right in its the path. The crudity hits me, bounces off and leaves me dizzy with disgust.

Coincidentally, this week I received a book in the mail called American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King Jr. (The Library of America, $40). And because preaching fascinates me, I had been reading the book through the weekend.

It did not surprise me that none of these great sermons contained any crude remarks. Each one was elegant, decorated with the finest language, and filled with wisdom that could surprise and delight the most cynical person.

You wouldn't dare slip a profane phrase into one of those sermons, because it would seem like a rotten egg amid a bouquet of roses. Some things deserve to remain pure: There should be no rock 'n' roll in a Bach fugue, no hillbilly music in a symphony by Mozart, no cheap pop music in a piece arranged by Duke Ellington. And no swearing in sermons.

In one of these sermons, a partial sentence seemed to sum up why swearing is such a vile occupation. The sermon, "In Praise of Swearing," was written by an anonymous preacher.

"... but swearing is, as I have said, learning to the ignorant, eloquence to the blockhead, vivacity to the stupid, and wit to the coxcomb." (Coxcomb means a silly, vain and foppish person.)

So that's the kind of person to whom swearing in church appeals. Preachers who swear through the sermon will attract those people.

Perhaps I am being too tough on young preachers who are trying to reach out to a portion of our population that largely has been ignored by the traditional Christian church. Preachers might get the false impression this young and fairly worldly audience can be won with crudities.

But even with this group, the persuasive comment will be something finer than you have heard, something truer than you have wished and something more elegant than you have dreamed.

Don't give that beauty away and, especially, don't throw it away with a crudity.

Clark D. Morphew