Preaching
A message from Presiding Bishop Mark S. Hanson
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February 11, 2009
Dear Colleagues in Ministry,
“A voice says, ‘Cry out!’ And I said, ‘What shall I cry?’” That daunting exchange from the prophet Isaiah (40:6) has stayed with me since we read it in Advent. I have carried that question as Martin Luther reframed it, “What shall I preach?” and added, “What shall we preach as we live at the intersection of fear and hope?”
It is not just my question, however, for it is the shared query of all of us called to the ministry of Word and sacrament. Finally, however, the question belongs to the entire assembly gathered for worship because we all participate in proclaiming and hearing the Word.
I long for and am committed to a deepening conversation on preaching throughout this church. Speaking to rostered leaders in four synods in January, I have posed questions that I hope will contribute to such a conversation.
I share these questions with you with the hope that you will bring them not only to text studies and ministeriums, but also to conversations in your congregations. Why? Because our commitment to grow as an evangelizing church engaged in God’s mission for the life of the world is inseparable from making preaching a priority throughout the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.
What shall we preach?
The response in Isaiah is to speak the truth of our humanity, mortality, and frailty. “All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the Lord blows upon it; surely the people are grass” (Isaiah 40:6-7). That truth shatters all the myths of self-mastery that entice us.
In our preaching, let us join the chorus of messengers whom God sent to announce, “Do not be afraid!” While it is clear we are preaching to people who know the reality of fear, we also know what fear can do to us. Fear can cause us to turn inward, becoming preoccupied with our survival as individuals, households, congregations, and denominations. Fear can drive us to become mean-spirited in our attitudes and actions toward others. Fear can cause us to long nostalgically for the past as a buffer against the harsh realities of the present. Fear can lead us to demand answers that will remove ambiguities and calm anxieties.
Instead, we can reframe questions to release our imaginations as we discern together what it means to be witnesses of Jesus at the intersections of fear and hope. At those intersections, we are called to announce, “Do not be afraid!” For when the walls of anxiety are held back, God has space to do a radically new thing for the sake of our salvation, our reconciliation.
The question, “What shall we preach?” beckons us to ask, “What gospel are we proclaiming?” There are many false gospels that seduce us as we serve in a competitive and consumer-oriented religious marketplace. How tempting it is to proclaim a self-help gospel so that our hearers might feel better about themselves. How easy it would be to preach a morality gospel conveying the message that we can save ourselves by our right conduct. Some preach a political gospel that offers liberation through the path of ideology and action. Others preach a prosperity gospel that too often preys on the plight of those in poverty.
We are called to proclaim that “the word of our God will stand forever” (Isaiah 40:8). That living Word of God is both law and gospel, demand and promise, judgment and mercy. That living Word of God is Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. It is the good news that your sins are forgiven: “for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3).
In our preaching, we are providing another narrative, a “rescripting,” as Walter Brueggemann calls it (in The Word that Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship, pp. 45-58).1 This narrative is very different from the narrative of consuming, competing, deceiving, and despairing that frames so many lives. We proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ as a liberating narrative that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, we live into together as the Body of Christ.
At the intersection of fear and hope we proclaim an eschatological gospel. Expectantly and faithfully we live into—lean into—God’s promised future that is ours through our baptism into Christ’s death and our trust in the promise of resurrection to new life in Christ.
Why preach?
It may seem strange to ask, “Why preach?” to those called to the ministry of Word and sacrament, yet it is an important question to ponder. Think about Paul’s challenging answer in Romans 10:14-17. If we do not proclaim the word of Christ, how will people come to faith?
I preach because the gospel message is simply indescribably good—itching to be told. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are what he has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life” (Ephesians 2:8-10). Wow! How good is that? God’s work, our hands.
We preach because a fearful world deserves to hear the message. I use the word “deserves” intentionally; it is stronger than “needs,” as if the gospel were an unpleasant medicine the world needs. Isn’t it rather, “You’ve got to hear this!”
Finally, I can’t imagine serving in this call if I could not preach. It is for this the Holy Spirit anoints us.
What do you expect will occur in the hearer through your preaching?
Too often I become so focused on the task of preparing a sermon that I fail to pray about what the Holy Spirit might accomplish through the Word proclaimed. When I ask other pastors about their expectations, they admit that, like me, it is not something to which they give much thought.
Could it be that our expectations of the Holy Spirit are too low? Why not expect that— through the Word proclaimed—the Holy Spirit will be moving hearers from unbelief to faith, from fear to hope, from guilt to forgiveness, from alienation to reconciliation, from resentment to gratitude?
When I begin to preach do I expect the stench of death to give way to the fragrance of new life in Christ? Do I anticipate thousands will be added today as reported in the book of Acts? Do I trust those in poverty will hear good news and the oppressed go free?
Sisters and brothers, we talk about and pray for renewal and revival in this church. I believe that transformation begins where the Holy Spirit is working through the means of grace.
What assumptions about our hearers do we bring to preaching?
In a recent article Douglas John Hall challenges four assumptions preachers often hold:
- We assume that we are preaching to Christians.
- We assume that our congregations already know “the basics.”
- We assume that there is no offense in what we are called to preach.
- We assume that preaching can occur without suffering on the part of the preacher.
Hall states, “We shall not be able to claim freedom for our preaching until we have dispensed with these assumptions and appropriated assumptions and practices more in keeping with our new reality as communities of faith where disengagement from our traditional role as ‘culture-religion’ makes it possible for us to exercise this new freedom also in our preaching” (“Claiming—and earning—freedom for our preaching,” Journal for Preachers, 30,4 (Pentecost 2007), p. 15).2 Hall presents a marvelous challenge for us as we live out our commitment to being an evangelizing people.
How shall we preach?
Let us preach with the passion of a believer, the humility of a forgiven sinner, the imagination of a poet, the courage of a prophet, the wisdom of a sage, and the rhetoric of an orator. No, not every sermon by every preacher, but it should be the standard we seek to uphold.
Let us preach with all our being—mind, body, and soul. In a newly published book Barbara Brown Taylor recalls that most of us could use a reminder that God comes to us not beyond the flesh but in the flesh. She explores “the practice of wearing skin,” and continues, “the daily practice of incarnation—of being in the body with full confidence that God speaks the language of flesh—is to discover a pedagogy that is as old as the gospels” (An Altar in the World, p. 43).3
The Word is alive! The Word is event. Would one know that through how we preach as well as through what we proclaim?
Gordon Lathrop writes, “Indeed, the sermon itself—a primary example of fresh words brought into the assembly—needs to be ‘learned by heart,’ though, here, that does not mean it is ‘memorized.’ Rather, whether one uses notes or a manuscript, the place and function of the sermon needs to be learned by heart, imprinted on the body” (in The Pastor: A Spirituality, p. 28).4
Edwin Searcy urges us to rediscover the devalued language of testimony. “The pulpit becomes a witness box, the congregation a jury and the preacher a daring witness to the confounding truth that Yahweh is engaged in a redemptive mission of cosmic proportions in Christ. The preacher’s voice is now filled with the unmistakable urgency, risk, and passion of one giving dangerous testimony to the activity of God that otherwise goes unspoken. The church gathers to hear the truth and nothing but the truth about its living witness as a sign of the Kingdom of God” (“Seven Working Assumptions for Preaching in a Missional Church,” The Gospel and Our Culture, vol. 15, nos. 1 and 2 [March and June, 2003], p. 3.).5
What makes for a good sermon?
Perhaps we are not the ones to answer this question. Yet, I find the categories drawn from classical rhetoric instructive:
- logos: true to God’s work in Christ; necessitates Christ (i.e., speaks a message for which Jesus’ death on a cross and resurrection is necessary for it to be true);
- pathos: true to the assembly (audience). Good preaching speaks, sings, and dances in the various idioms of the assembly. It is first order discourse—speaking a word from God to the assembly and not just a word about God or about the worshiping community;
- ethos: true to oneself as the preacher. Good preaching comes from a messenger whose own life is fundamentally shaped by the message. It has the character of congruence, which is strangely evident in the tacit repentant acknowledgment of our incongruence with the life of Jesus Christ. Ethos is conveyed through one’s whole being—the full range of vocal rhythm, inflection, volume, facial expressions, and body movement.
How do we prepare to preach?
It is almost impossible for me to preach if I have not been paying attention all week. That certainly means paying attention to the Holy Spirit through prayer and to the text through study, but it also means paying attention to the context of the lives of the hearers and to the prevailing narratives that seem to be giving people meaning, community, authority, and transcendence.
In his article, Edwin Searcy states, “[T]he preacher proclaims the truth of an alternative way of figuring things out. The cruciform pattern of Good Friday, Holy Saturday, Easter Sunday provides the coherent narrative that is rehearsed in sermon, in liturgy and in all aspects of the congregation’s life together. This movement from aching loss (Friday) through forsaken absence (Saturday) to astonishing newness (Sunday) stands in stark contrast to the dominant figural narratives provided by a culture of satiation and self-reliant success. In other words, the church’s testimony is pre-figured. The figural preacher is like a figure skater whose sermons are practiced movements through the patterned figure (or ‘type’) of the cross” (p. 3).6
As I conclude these reflections, I return to my intent in writing. It is to express gratitude for your proclamation, whether you are one called to preach or one whose witness is through Word and service. It is to encourage you and to invite lively and thoughtful conversation.
Finally, I write trusting in Paul’s promise to the Corinthians, “For we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake. For it is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in clay jars so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (2 Corinthians 4: 5-7)
In God’s grace,
Mark S. Hanson
Presiding Bishop
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
References
1. Walter Brueggemann, The Word that Redescribes the World: The Bible and Discipleship (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2006), pp. 45-58.
3. Barbara Brown Taylor, An Altar in the World (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), p. 43.