On preaching

The study of theology is, of course, essential to this pursuit. Not that it gives us the content of sermons but that it gives us a framework or a language in which the sermon can be placed. The battered and bleeding who attend a liturgy do not need a smart account of long debated theological issues. They often come because hope is failing and the fire of love is threatened and they are at a loss. A lecture on the filioque will not suffice. As their plight is a strong plight they need strong medicine, an unflinching declaration of the gospel is the only help we have despite the crowd of “helpers” in secular form that surround us.

The preacher is in the business of the cure of souls. As has been the case in all ages our souls are damaged by wrong thought. We seek our lives in the wrong places and by the wrong means and we become the living dead. It is the preachers business to indulge in truthful speech even if that speech, or particularly if that speech, scares the bejesus out of his listeners.

Do we really think that the forces that are arrayed around us, more powerful than in any other age, will be cowed by the limp junk that is trotted out each Sunday from pulpits across the land?

It is a great pity that we have lost the figure of Satan, the tempter, from our preaching. Such language has always been metaphorical, no such actual being exists, but it is a name, the name of the devil, that reminds us that the forces of this world that conspire towards our death are real and powerful.

As we have lost the sense of systemic evil, even in our own dear hearts, we have lost the sense that Christians rightly have enemies. One might think from listening to many sermons that we live in a benign world and all men are committed to making the world a better place. We wonder at how hard the old liturgies labour over sin. Cranmer’s prayers of confession seem to go on forever and leave no place untouched. John Locke’s image of our minds as being clean slates defuses such gloomy talk and teaches us that we do not inherit the sin of Adam. We are released into a morally neutral world where we might do as we will. There is no place for preaching in such a world because there is no adversary.

Such talk immediately brings to mind some very serious preaching, still found in some sections of the church that lives off the economy of belief and eternal damnation/eternal blessing. I have been surprised by the amount of ink used by 16th century English Protestant writers in outlining and warning against the dangers that overtake the unbeliever in the afterlife. This is where the theological understanding of the preacher is crucial.

The Medieval obsession with heaven and hell as places of joy and pain reserved for the generate, and the ungenerate, after death was based on a theological mistake even though there are some passages, particularly in the gospel of Matthew, that give it some credence. Surely, the use of fear to bolster faith is a contradiction since Christ is the one who casts out fear. It is the theological formation of the preacher that will determine how biblical texts are interpreted and subsequently the kind of sermon they preach.

This is why a deep knowledge of Christian dogma is essential for good preaching, we must be trained to listen for the unique Word in the face of all of the words that surround us. It is often the case that poor preaching is just a mouthing of the commonplace in what is a domestication of the transcendent.

Part of our problem in this is that congregations do not expect anything to happen in sermons because nothing has happened before. If the preacher says something with a bit of an edge to it they are likely to become anxious and restless so used are they at having all aspects of their lives confirmed. It is in this situation that the preacher must be at his most cunning in changing the expectations of his audience.

I use the word “cunning” because the position of the preacher in today’s church is precarious because the gospel is captive to the status quo, the ordinary, the therapeutic and the uplifting, not to mention the sentimental. This means that the preacher has to use all his skill in order to be faithful to the gospel and to take his listeners with him. In an age when the word “preach” has become a pejorative this is a mighty task indeed and should attract our brightest minds.

A recent publication from the Australian Theological forum entitled Don’t Put out the Burning Bush edited by Vivian Boland OP is a welcome addition to our understanding of preaching in the church today, especially the chapter by Bruce Barber “Lanterns at Dusk, Preaching After Modernity”.