Did you guess why I am so often complimented? By far, the most common compliment I receive is that I preach from the biblical text. I know, I know, if only all churches were so loving and forgiving! If only everyone had such a simple standard! Perhaps I'm living in some strange paradise, but the folks who say that aren't referring to only one pastor before me--some of these people have been at Moriah for decades, and some of these people have only ever known me as their pastor. So I know they aren't making specific comments about any specific pastor, at least not as a group. What is going on?!
I must admit that I do not fully have an answer, but I have suspicions and I welcome further discussion into the topic.
My first suspicion is that pastors, as they preach for years and years, run out of steam and begin to delve into the secondary literature that is so readily and oft ordered from the various retailers. Now I admit I love to read such books; I have probably read 20 to 25 books since I became pastor, completely aside from my assignments at school. And I use these texts sometimes in teaching and even preaching--but I do not use secondary literature as the basis of any sermon. Rather, I preach the biblical text in conversation with other Christians who came before me. This includes people who are alive today, such as William Willimon; ancient Christians such as Tertullian or Origen of Alexandria; or other key theologians such as John Wesley and Karl Barth. No sermon has been thoughtfully prepared if it does not take into some kind of consideration the larger conversation at hand, incorporating discussions from many of the world's greatest Christian theologians, past and present. But our problem is that pastors are preaching from secondary sources first and foremost, and only make casual reference to the biblical text during a sermon. It's not as if doing this is inherently wrongdoing, but Christians who come to church are hungry for God, not us, and not other people. We as preachers have the task of proclaiming, interpreting, heralding the Truth, the Truth being Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh who dwelt among us.
My second suspicion is that pastors use the biblical text in order to point to humanity. That is, they do in fact preach directly from the Bible, but they use it as a tool for humans to understand themselves and what they should do, exclusively. For these pastors, God is an ideal, a superhero, worthy of worship but some distant, irrelevant Person. And for these pastors, the primary goal of Christianity is to guide and direct us rather than to reveal more of this God to us. We do not read the Bible to learn more about humanity; the Bible is about God first and foremost, and only by understanding who God is can we learn about who we really are. So often we "go" to the Bible in order to search for some hidden truth, a pancea for our earthly problems. We feel that the Holy Spirit's purpose is to be with us when we need, and otherwise we're not interested. As pastors, I feel that sometimes we feel that we can interpret the text just fine without God, and only when we have writer's block Saturday evening do we clamour for the power of the Holy Spirit to inspire our preaching. But even if this is not true, and pastors are indeed looking to the Bible as their primary source for inspiration, they are largely doing it in reverse. We do not "go" to the Bible looking for anything; the Bible comes to us, and tells us who we are. Someone might say, "Eric, what do you mean by that? That's what we do every day." I agree that we believe we do, but our actions might prove otherwise. Do we approach Scripture in search of something, or do we allow Scripture to move and change us? Do we appeal to Scripture when it proves our point, or do we hunger for Scripture to prove us wrong? We as preachers have the task of knowing the difference, and modeling this for our congregations so that they have any chance at all of being able to be part of the wider conversation, of God's incredible works in our midst.
My third suspicion is that pastors believe their congregations need us to "dumb down" the text so that they can understand it. That is, the theological concepts are too difficult for the "average Joe" to be formed in new and significant ways without cheesy illustrations that slush their way into irrelevance. For these pastors, because they know very personally that the people in their congregations are full of sinful tendencies, they assume that these people are unable to comprehend the greater, more radical messages of Jesus' teachings. I Peter 2 comes to mind, when, at the beginning of the chapter, the apostle tells the congregation to first start on "pure, spiritual milk" in their journey, suggesting that greater things are to come, but only if basics can be lived out. I find this interpretation of spiritual milk to be completely false. God's truth is far beyond any human comprehension; that which we are able to preach is only the simplest, tiniest sliver of God's incredible magnitude. Nothing that we understand as preachers is all that much more complicated than the simplest commandments. My point is that why would we hide or shield our congregations from difficult topics of Scripture, or break down the truth so much that it is a sad, boring glop of nothing? God's people are hungry for a challenge, a deeper truth which pierces through them and challenges them to see the world in a completely new light. Our congregations know that all is not right in the world, and they know when you are holding back from proclaiming that truth. We as preachers have the obligation to share the deepest insights which God has entrusted to us, that the entire congregation might share in the gift of knowledge, wisdom and revelation that we have been gifted. I Corinthians 12 anyone?
My last suspicion is that pastors still believe that the Reformers, the original Protestants from the early 1500s, were right about the importance of preaching. Moving away from Catholic tradition, the Reformers insisted on the centrality of the preaching during worship, and in fact all of Christian life. To this day in America, we often think of the sermon as the most important function or part of a worship service. But this simply is not true. Many have argued that prayers and liturgies are the most important; still others argue that the Lord's Supper (Communion) is the center of worship. I would agree that communion is highly important, and prayers and music and everything has its place. As bad or obvious as this may sound, the most important part of a worship service is the God we have come to encounter. You may say, "Eric, that was given. Obviously, our primary reason is to worship and encounter God; we are arguing which part of the service offers us this encounter primarily." And I understand this argument, because I believe that you believe this to be true. But think about the last time you went to a worship service. I will use myself as an example. The last time I went to worship, outside of the church I serve at Moriah, I was not remotely thinking about an encounter with God. As a pastor, I was busy thinking about the layout of the room, the leadership up front, the music choices, how communion was administered, etc. You may not be a pastor, but do you truly come to worship Sunday with the first and foremost thought being, "I can't wait to see how God pops up today!"? My guess is no, and we pastors are to blame. Pastors have slipped into the assumption that we have to make sure worship goes well so that people may encounter God. I do think that it's important for us to be aware of our movements, word choices and leadership, or else we as pastors will send the wrong signals. However, we need to think less about ourselves and more about the God we claim and believe we are worshipping. We need to think about how we can better help others encounter God through our sermons, through the liturgies, through the Lord's Supper, through any and all element of the worship service. We as preachers are responsible for making sure that the Trinity--one God in three persons--is the forefront of everyone's mind, not the sermon, not the music, not the prayers, not the announcements.
All four of these suspicions are simply the beginning of the conversation. My guess is that parts and pieces of all of these, as well as other items I have not mentioned, are potential problems in differing amounts for all of us. They are all certainly challenges we must face each week as we stand before the assembly, given charge for the care and delivery of God's word. It is no small task!
And my guess is that, because I tend not to slip into these items too often (I am still a very, very new pastor, and praise God for this), I am told by the congregation that I am a good preacher because I stick closely with the biblical text. The fact is that our congregations are highly intelligent and very much want to encounter God--they know when they are not being challenged, when the whole truth is not being told, or when we are not faithfully using the Bible in a right manner. But that does not mean that they know how to explain their thoughts and feelings, nor does it mean that they want to spend all day analyzing it! As pastors, it is our responsibility to be sensitive to and listen for these types of comments on Sundays and throughout the week so that we may gauge what happened in those pews, so close yet so far away, that Sunday morning.
Their comments, while not always perfect or golden, can teach us so much. Perhaps the most important sermon on a Sunday morning is not the proclamation of the word to the congregation, but the response of the congregation to the one who is giving the proclamation. How else will we pastors be kept in check, dutiful and mindful to the incredible task of preaching God's truth week after week? How else will we know what to say or not to say next week, if no one corrects us from spewing the boring, irrelevant and pop-psychological mess that we default to when we find ourselves with writer's block on Saturday night?
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