Quote of the Week: Conducting a Text

"The sermon is not an act of reporting on an old text, but it is an act of making a new text visible and available. This new text in part is the old text, and in part is the imaginative construction of the preacher, which did not exist until the moment of utterance by the preacher. Like a conductor 'rendering' Beethoven so that that particular music exists only in that occasion, so the preacher renders a text so that it only exists in that particular form in that particular occasion of speaking."

- Walter Brueggemann, The Word Militant: Preaching a Decentering Word (Fortress, 2007), p. 85.

Quote of the Week: More than a history lesson and some freeze-dried stories

"In the next millennium, knowledge about God will not preach. Knowledge of God will. And if that is too much to ask, then passionate pursuit of God will do. Those who listen to us expect more than a history lesson on Luke-Acts plus some freeze-dried stories we got out of a book. They want food for their hearts. They want help for their souls. They want to see Jesus, or at least someone who knows Jesus, and God help us if we offer them less than that."

Barbara Brown Taylor, "Preaching into the Next Millennium" in Erskine Clarke, ed., Exilic Preaching: Testimony for Christian Exiles in an Increasingly Hostile Culture (Harrisburg, Penn.: Trinity Press International, 1998), 98-99.

A Pastor's Sunday Morning Prayer

Every Sunday Lord, I tiptoe
around the fire, hoping
to speak just enough of You
that we leave a little warmed
without being consumed
even though, I know, the Word
that incarnates the air about me is
a consuming fire.

How can I play with such a fire
and not get burned?

....

You are the Word, Lord, speak today
else my words are spoken in vain.
Remind me, even though I die
a thousand deaths upon this pulpit
if I do so believing in you
yet shall I live -
though maybe not to preach another day.

The content of Christian preaching: not a 'how' or a 'what' but a 'who'

Instrumental in my call to preach was the story of Peter and the apostles being miraculously set free from prison in Acts 5. There the angel of the Lord opens the gates of the prison and leads them out commanding the apostles, “Go, stand and speak to the people in the temple the whole message of this Life” (Acts 5:20, NASB). When I read that verse as a teenager, it was as if the angel were speaking to me. My life’s task was to be the same as the apostles to stand and speak “the whole message of this Life.” That verse has continued to shape my theology of preaching.

Preaching is at its essence the proclaiming or heralding of a message. What is the content of the whole message of this life? It is the good news of Jesus Christ. It is the message concerning “the unique life God provides through Jesus.” It is the announcement of the kingdom of God that has become manifest in and accessible through Jesus Christ. It involves the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and the promise of his return. In a word, it is preaching the Word, who is Jesus Christ. I am continually struck by Christ’s preaching. It has one theme, the kingdom of God. Matthew’s report is paradigmatic, “From that time on Jesus began to preach, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (4:17, NIV). In the book of Acts, the followers of Christ are also spoken of preaching about the kingdom of God (Acts 8:12; 19:8; 28:31). The content of their preaching is the same as that of Christ. And yet, when Luke provides us insight into the actual words of their sermons, their preaching of the Kingdom is primarily a preaching about Christ! Peter, Stephen, and Paul all proclaim the kingdom by speaking of who Jesus is and what he has done. One can conclude, as William H. Willmon has put it, “Preaching like Jesus is preaching Jesus.”

Preaching, then, is not just any word. It is a word about and from God, specifically the God who has made himself known in the person of Jesus Christ, and who makes himself known today through the Holy Spirit. True Christian preaching focuses not upon how we can have better marriages or bigger bank accounts or healthier self-images. True preaching announces the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. So the Christian word is a limited word; we do not speak on anything and everything. We speak of Christ. We speak of his kingdom come. But this limited word is the word the world so desperately needs. Again, it is the whole or entire message of this life. Jesus is the only word that matters eternally. He is the only word that lasts. Without him, all other words cease to be. So while there is a place to speak of having healthy marriages, or more sound financial practices, or better parenting skills, I doubt that place is the pulpit. In the pulpit, we must speak the word that only the church can speak, the word we've been commanded to speak - the Word, who is Jesus Christ.

Illustration-a-day: The (non) utility of religious affiliation

This past week a group of mathematicians presented a paper that predicted that organized religion will eventually disappear from nine western democracies. You can read CNN's take here. The mathematicians came to their conclusions after measuring the movement from stated religious affiliation to non-affiliation in census reports over the last one hundred years. It should be noted that claiming to be non-affiliated with a religious denomination is certainly not the same thing as non-belief.

The reasons the mathematicians gave for the move from affiliated to non-affiliated status attempt to speak concerning the basic reasons humans are motivated to join up with religious groups. The first reason they gave is basically, people like to be in the majority. As more and more people dis-affiliate from religious denominations more and more people will dis-affiliate from religious affiliation. Essentially, we're all still in junior high doing what everyone else does.

The second reason provided is more interesting to me. Apparently, we join up with things that bring us personal advantages. The scholars call this the utility motivation. Religious affiliation used to have a utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. But recent data claims the opposite, non-affiliation now appears to have a utilitarian advantage over religious affiliations in many western democracies. No doubt there was a day when belonging to a denomination brought with it certain benefits for a person in society. In former days, you couldn't do business in the south without belonging to some church. That day is gone. Now affiliation has no utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. Let me repeat. Religious affiliation has no utilitarian advantage over non-affiliation. It won't help you be a better business person, have a happier family, be a part of a more cooperative society - at least not in the majority population's eyes (For an expanded look at this reality read Darrell Guder's Missional Church).

How is the church to respond? Well, many in the church are attempting to argue for the utilitarian advantages of affiliation. They ratchet up the marketing to promote the usefulness of church. Pastors preach sermons on the usefulness of Christianity for life, marriage, economics, etc. All in an attempt to win back the utilitarian advantage the church once enjoyed. That is one option. It might work. It might not.

Either way it doesn't seem a lot like New Testament preaching that preached not on the usefulness of the gospel, but its truth. Preaching that had little utilitarian advantage (believing the message could get you killed - how's that for non-utilitarian) but could certainly set you free. Maybe, just maybe, losing our utilitarian advantage isn't as bad as it seems. Especially, if it helps us return to the emphasizing our greatest advantage, the truth of our gospel and the power of the Spirit at work in our midst.