Why preach?
Among all the different methods available for teaching, the lecture format may be the least effective. Brainstorming, research-and-report, experimentation-and-analysis, and other pedagogical methods promote more vivid impact than only the spoken word.
Among the different media available for communicating, the hotter media of television, movies, and the Web all provide multi-sensory data that instruct via the multiple intelligences, thereby increasing students’ retention tenfold, twentyfold or better, over simply listening to a leader’s monologue.
Yet we preach. And the genius of the act remains much the same today as in the days of the apostles. A person captivated by the Message studies Scripture, seeks avenues of insight into the text, contemplates its meaning for a local community of friends, prepares a lucid explanation, and then stands before a worshiping congregation and declares, “The Word of the Lord.”
Such a bold claim we make: “The Word of the Lord.” Of course, preachers utter that expression after reading the biblical text, before starting their exposition of it. But even the reading includes the preacher’s own inflections, enunciations, and oral interpretation. As the Scots Confession says, the words then expressed in sermon do not degenerate into mere human words but become an extension of God’s voice speaking.
Many a member has attested accordingly after the benediction, “God really spoke to me through you.”
Funny thing about this ages-old practice: the more you learn of it, the less you comprehend it, or at least, that has been my experience. As I said to Nora Tubbs Tisdale (see interview this issue), “Over my two decades of pastoral ministry, the practice of preaching became more and more mysterious to me. It became increasingly difficult to explain why one sermon would connect and another would flop.” I asked her if she could shed any light on that.
She laughed and responded, “I doubt it.” Then she added, “The more I’ve been in ministry, the more I realize that while we preachers may have some control over the preaching, like how we prepare a sermon, how we deliver it, how we shape the liturgy that surrounds it in worship, etc., there are a whole lot of things in that worshiping moment that we have no control over at all.”
She went on to say, “Sometimes you write a sermon with particular people and their needs in mind, and they don’t even show up. And then, somebody else you didn’t have on your radar screen when writing that sermon, comes out the door and says to you, ‘How did you know? That was exactly what I needed to hear today.’ I attribute that stuff to the Spirit.”
Now that I’m writing my weekly “word” in the middle of the week, I find myself on Saturday nights wondering how the Holy Spirit is helping thousands of my ministerial colleagues as they sweat and pray over their Bibles and computers, as they rethink and revise the words they will deliver to the people — their people –in the morning. The burden of preaching is as great as the privilege of it. No preacher wants to misrepresent God. No preacher wants the dynamics of the Gospel to be diluted by a watery preaching delivery. Every preacher wants the proclaimed word to build hope, to inspire faith, and to motivate service. No one wants to preach or sit through a sleepy sermon.
What we do need to experience is a foolish sermon, as Paul taught. Dr. Tisdale summarized in our conversation, “We are dealing with the gospel that at its center has a crucified Messiah that announces the reign of God in which all the usual orderings of society are going to be upended and in which this radical reign of God is going to be born in our midst. To the world that’s always going to be a foolish message.”
We need to be reminded again and again about the reordering, crucified Messiah. Accordingly, we go to church Sunday after Sunday, week after week to give praise to God and to listen for God — through the foolishness of preaching — so that Messiah might reorder our lives.
And so we preach.
–JHH
