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A Sample Sketch of the Sermon Process

It might be helpful to illustrate the process of sermon development and delivery which has been discussed in the preceding pages. This sample is not a finished sermon but is rather a sketch of the process.

The conception of the sermon. However vague at this point, there has to be the germ. It may spring from a text or from the life situation of the congregation. The place of origin is not important so long as both text and congregation are permitted to respond to each other.

This sermon arose from the reading of a text, Philippians 1:12-18, especially verse 18. It is a surprising and arresting statement: "whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed; and in that I rejoice." Paul has opponents in the ministry who apparently preach out of strife and divisiveness, and Paul seems to disregard the motive, celebrating the fact that they are preaching. Is Paul really subordinating motive for a greater good -- a Christian act? Sounds like a good word for hypocrisy! But then, it may be possible that some of us are too concerned about inner feelings, too preoccupied with motives? And yet the other extreme is frightening.

Playing with the idea. Here open all the faculties, permitting the idea to trigger thoughts, feelings, memories, former ideas, etc. Be playful, jot down ideas, but forget about order or sequence.

In Phil. 1:18 Paul disappoints us at first. He seems to contradict Jesus ("as a man thinks in his heart") , and all our Christian training to the effect that nothing you do can be right if your reason for doing it is wrong. Didn’t church people applaud Washington Gladden for returning to John D. Rockefeller a gift to missions because "the gift without the giver is bare"? And the real force in the voice of the Fourth Tempter in T. S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral is the offer "to do the right thing for the wrong reason." Basic to our accepted understanding of the Christian life is not only that heart and hand agree (integrity) but that all that the hand does should be from the heart. The order of business is: think it and feel it; then do it. Reverse the order and you have hypocrisy. We have been advised and we have advised: Don’t do it unless you sincerely feel it.

Arriving at clarity: We need, then, to turn again to the text. Does Paul really say what he seems to say that he can celebrate a Christian act that is not from a Christian motive? Here the tools and skills of a contextual and textual analysis are put to work. The preacher begins with the text as would any member of his congregation, asking the immediate and spontaneous questions, as in the paragraph above, but now his responsibility as pastor-teacher-preacher demands exegetical work, careful and honest.

And so Paul does say it, but how can he? Is there a flaw in our priority on motive? Has he a word for us here?

Well, on an elementary level, doing something without an adequate or proper inner motive is, regardless of all theories and theologies, necessary. Floors are swept, meals cooked, diapers changed, doors opened, papers graded, classes taught, even sermons preached because some things must be done even when we are not all excited to do them. Waiting for the heart to prompt us would bring the world to a grinding halt.

And it can be a healthy exercise to act first and feel later. The old James Lange theory in psychology insisted that feeling follows the act. Interest in a book follows study. How often we don’t really want to, but we do, then we are glad we did. Surely it isn’t hypocrisy in a bad sense to smile, then feel like smiling; to act friendly and then become a friend; to give and then know what generosity is.

In fact, it may be just plain Christian to engage in Christian activity prior to or apart from good, pure motives. Maybe part of the failure of the church has been its inwardness, its tinkering with its soul to get tuned up for action. The old adages about not legislating morals, not forcing people to love each other, etc. have been true enough to perpetuate themselves but false enough to prevent attitudinal changes that follow rather than precede Christian conduct. New social contexts and civil issues, new patterns of thinking and living, of course, threaten and give rise to fear. Shall I wait until my heart is right to listen, read, participate, extend my hand? Is it possible that by acting like a Christian I may become one? God may move from hand to heart as well as from heart to hand. (Some cases in point come to mind.)

Method of sharing: Suppose the process described above matches somewhat the normal process of conceiving an idea, playing with it, wrestling with it, and bringing it to clarity; is there any reason why you could not repeat that process in the pulpit as your method of sharing? Read through it again and see if the method of personal preparation and the method of public proclamation are not, in terms of movement, much the same. It is too often the tragic fact about preaching that after the minister comes to a conclusion about a matter, it is that conclusion he announces, exhorts, illustrates, and repeats. Given the opportunity, the congregation could arrive at that conclusion, and it would be theirs.

And it would bear fruit.

Let us suppose that the conversation has taken place between the text and the congregation, in the person of the minister who not only knows the congregation’s situation in the world but who really belongs to that community himself. Let us further suppose that the sessions have been fruitful; the Word of God has been heard. How, specifically, is it to be shared? Or, in the traditional framing of the question, how is the point to be made into points, how many and in what order?

If one were to compare a large section of Scripture with a file of sermons based on that section, one of the most noticeable differences between the two would be the striking variety in the literary forms of the one as over against the dull uniformity of the other. The Bible is rich in forms of expression: poetry, saga, historical narratives, proverb, hymn, diary, biography, parable, personal correspondence, drama, myth, dialogue, and gospel, whereas most sermons, which seek to communicate the messages of that treasury of materials, are all in essentially the same form. Why should the multitude of forms and moods within biblical literature and the multitude of needs in the congregation be brought together in one unvarying mold, and that copied from Greek rhetoricians centuries ago? An unnecessary monotony results, but more profoundly, there is an inner conflict between the content of the sermon and its form. The minister is seriously affected by the conflict. The content calls for singing but the form is quite prosaic; the message has wings but the structure is pedestrian. Energy that should be entirely channeled in the delivery is thus dissipated in the battle of the sermon against itself. The hearers may detect the inner contradiction and neatly label the problem: the minister does not have conviction and enthusiasm; his whole life is not caught up in his words; David is trying to fight in Saul’s armor.

The importance of an inner harmony between form and content is illustrated in Nathaniel Micklem’s The Labyrinth Revisited, in which he explains in a brief preface why his philosophic theme should come to the reader in metric shape.

Of course, some ministers have sought to break the monotony of the usual outline, but these refreshing alterations have been so rare that the minister has been self-conscious about the change and the attention of the congregation has, been stolen by the novelty of the sermon. And often these gropings after a new style are no more than tinkering with the introduction and conclusion, or perhaps, after a false diagnosis of the nature of the illness, taking into the content of the sermon large doses of undigested heresies or controversies simply to stir the drowsy listeners. There are, however, more constructive ways of keeping the passengers awake than by putting rocks on the road.

There is much to be said for variety and sermonic forms simply for the sake of granting relief to both speaker and hearers in an occasion that occurs every week. However, the taste for variety should not lead the minister to adopt structures for his material that violate not only the content but also his understanding of what the preaching experience is. How one communicates comes across to the hearers as what one communicates and they receive very clear impressions of what the speaker thinks of himself, his text, his sermon, his congregation, and the world. There is no avoiding the fact that the medium is a message, if not the message.

In the case of inductive preaching, the structure must be subordinate to movement. In fact, this subordination means that in most cases the structure is not visible to the congregation. Everyone understands, of course, that in pursuit of certain polemic or didactic aims, a preacher might wish that a series of clear statements be lodged in the memory of the hearers. He may, therefore, not only itemize these statements as he develops them, but repeat them in the conclusion. Such occasions are rare, and in the usual ministry, ample other opportunities are provided for instruction and polemics so that the pulpit does not have to be so used. Usually, for the skeleton to be showing, with a sermon as with a person, is a sign of malformation or malnutrition. The movement of the sermon is so vital to its effectiveness that a structure should be provided which facilitates rather than hinders that movement. And it is a clearly experienced fact that ‘points’, announced or otherwise made obvious, interrupt both the unity and the movement of a sermon. Some of the congregation, especially the young people, find the ‘points’ useful for estimating the hour and minute when the terminus can be expected. The process is simple arithmetic: time the first point, multiply that by the number of ‘points’ announced ("I have three things to say about this matter this morning") and one has not only something to anticipate but a fair estimate as to when to expect it. The minister himself experiences the awkward presence of these ‘points’ in his sermon. For example, the transitions from the bottom of a point now thoroughly treated to the top of the next major section are at times so difficult that even the coupling of conjunctions, transitional phrases, and impressive throat-clearings will hardly bridge the gulf. Ministers who write their sermons from an outline often find the structure an obstacle. For this reason, not a few confess to writing the sermon and then outlining what they have written. While such a practice is considered by some practicioners as a homiletical crime, there is an instinct at work in this procedure that is fundamentally sound simply because it more nearly corresponds to normal communication.

Not only does inductive preaching demand of an outline that it be subordinate to movement; it demands that the outline, however it may look on paper, move from the present experience of the hearers to the point at which the sermon will leave them to their own decisions and conclusion. It bears repeating that a preaching event is a sharing in the Word, a trip not just a destination, an arriving at a point for drawing conclusions and not handing over of a conclusion. It is unnatural and unsatisfying to be in a place to which you have not travelled.

Let the preacher, then, first of all know where he and they are going, whether this be in the proper sense a conclusion or whether this be a point at which he stops, leaving each person to draw his own conclusion, as Jesus often did in the parables. ² Whatever the nature of this destination, it will be the fruit of preparation and lively engagement with the Biblical text, it will be clear to the minister, and it will be the beginning point for the sermon preparation proper. He dare not start with the introduction. If he does so, one of two errors will likely be committed. In case his conclusion is not clearly in mind, he will commit all the blunders of a guide who does not know where he is going if the conclusion is well in mind, beginning sermon preparation with the introduction will produce an introduction that has the conclusion in it, destroying all anticipation, and being in fact a brief digest of the whole message.

One begins, therefore, with the terminus. Perhaps a statement of the conclusion could be written at the bottom of a sheet of paper. The question now is, By what route shall we come to this point? Shall it be brief, or will brevity leave some unprepared to assume the responsibility that begins at the end of a sermon? Shall it be slow or fast? The complexity of the matter and the type of listener will determine this. Shall we go with singing and laughter, or are we to tiptoe in hushed reflection? Are we going to battle, to school, to a forum, to a reunion, to a strange city, to work, to rest, or to a new mission? Will all or some or none arrive ready for the trip? Do they want to go? All these questions, and more, are but ways of planning the trip which, on a sheet of paper, will be called a sermon outline. Above everything else, the minister wants all, if possible, to make the complete journey. He wants to sustain anticipation so that, while the trip will not be the same experience for everyone, all will stay to the end. He desires also that it be an experience for the whole person, all faculties being engaged.

Such an image of the sermon does, of course, find somewhat artificial the traditional structuring of a sermon into three appeals: to the mind; to the emotions; to the will. While all these facets of human capacity are involved in inductive preaching, they are involved in the more natural and normal way; that is, together. This psychological pattern is supposedly based on the natural process which salesmen understand to be the ordinary way customers come to the point of making a purchase. But the salesman-customer analogy is totally inadequate to carry the full dimensions of the preaching event. In addition, this trinitarian formula probably fits very few people. Observation and experience indicate many rather normal people place emotion earlier on the agenda, with intellect limping along later, giving reasons for the course already taken. One reason we need the preaching of the Gospel is that people are not living by this neat formula. Among the hearers will be many who have felt one way, thought another, and who cannot remember that their present situation is the result of any clear decision of their own will. This is tragic, of course, and the preacher would have it otherwise, but he is the minister of, the preacher to, these people as they are and he wants to communicate. The outline is made for man, not man for the outline.

As he ponders the movement of his sermon to achieve the desired experience, the minister would do well to reflect on dramas seen, stories read, conversations shared. What was the nature of the movement that carried the participant along to a complete experience or, at least, to the point of being convinced that he had things yet to do if his life was to be complete? What was the format? In one case, interest in a person or event is assumed, as with the assassination of a president, and the format is simply the narration of the events involved. In another, the reader or observer is brought to interest by the presentation of a series of experiences, the outcome of which is uncertain. In yet another, a flashback is used, opening with some penultimate scene such as a murder trial, and then the events leading to the trial are brought forward by "remembrances". Or perhaps two persons representing entirely different value systems are joined by business contract or marriage bond and the ensuing struggle enlists interests and almost visceral participation. The variety of structures is endless, many of them brilliantly devoted to no loftier aim than to entertain, to make money. Has the minister thought that the loftiness of his theme, the eternal significance of his message, has rendered unnecessary such efforts toward gaining the involvement and participation of the hearers? Should it not rather be the reverse: having such a theme, can he do less than those who screw all their powers to the task of making the evening entertaining?

Perhaps three brief examples of the vital function of movement in the total experience of sharing a message will enlighten what has been said and free us to move on.

It is common knowledge that, despite its wide familiarity Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven continues to grasp the reader and hold him even beyond its last powerful line. Poe has written an essay in which he describes the process of writing a poem. ³ His first composition was the stanza which he thought would be ultimate but which finally became penultimate. Then, Poe says, his task was to create a series of stanzas that would bring his readers to be able to experience that stanza. He realized preparation of mood as well as mind were vital. It was only later, after much careful work, that he came upon the way to begin that experience for his reader, not too suddenly, setting up resistance, and yet without wasting words: "Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered. . ." Every stanza provides an experience of its own, yet quickening anticipation of the next, until the last haunting syllable. Even then, the appetite is not completely satiated nor feeling exhausted. And so it should be; the readers have the right and the responsibility to bring something of their own to the occasion.

Thomas de Quincey, an English writer of the eighteenth century, chose as his principal medium the essay and as his principal subject matter the social, political, and ethical tidbits that were either overworked or tossed aside as of no consequence. De Quincey, however, saw in small matters the major stuff of ordinary life and wished to highlight the fact that for most of us, life is a number of small incidents or decisions that make or break us. It was, of course, necessary, if he kept his readers with him all the way, to come to his point obliquely. After all, a direct and obvious discussion of what is generally regarded as a trifle is to have one’s essay tossed away, unread. Movement into his thesis was vital to the communication of that thesis in such a way that the reader would be engaged by it and hence would ponder it. The following example shows how one man moves with sustained interest and surprising force to a point that, handled otherwise, would have sounded like another dull preachment about "life’s little things".

A third example is drawn from the New Testament. In a series of parables, gathered and preserved in Luke 15, Jesus defends his ministry which had come under heavy fire from those critics who recognized unsavory characters in his circle of disciples. Jesus presents his own work as the joyous recovery of the lost. As there is no tragedy quite like being lost, there is no joy quite like being found. The celebration is too much for one family; friends and neighbors are called in. But while neighbors rejoice, a son and brother in the family most touched by the drama of lost and found is unable to celebrate. To him, a concerned father explains the party in these words: "For this my son (‘your brother’ in v. 32) was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found" (Luke 15:24) Our present concern is to notice only the arrangement, the movement of ideas. An entirely different story representing another set of values would be expressed if the order were: "This my son was lost, and is found; he was dead, and is alive again." As it is, the listener is brought to sense the abyss of lostness by placing the word "lost" out beyond the word "dead", and the height of joy in being found by locating "found" beyond "alive". The order and movement of the phrases says there is that which is worse than death and that which is better than life.

The very nature of inductive preaching renders it impossible to suggest "the" outline pattern. Unlike the inductive preaching of the 1920’s which imitated the problem-solving pattern of science, here induction embraces a range of human needs, faculties, and experiences beyond problem-answer activity. However, a few suggestions may help those who wish to begin to employ such movement in their preaching. First, it is to be remembered that preaching is oral communication, and, as was pointed out earlier, there are great differences between oral and written communication. It is to invite problems, therefore, to devote the major part of preparation to writing outlines and manuscripts and a minor part in preparing to share orally what is written. It is reasonable that one operate as much as possible in preparation as one will operate in delivery. This does not mean "practicing" the finished sermon. This can make the actual preaching a flat and deadly anticlimax. Oral preparation is working at how to say it, not how to outline it or write it. A tape recorder can be helpful if one imagines sharing an idea, a story, an argument with a friend. Play back the tape and observe the order of ideas. Better still, by talking through parts of the sermon with someone the minister himself can sense the flow of his ideas. Again, this is not after writing the outline; preparation is not yet that far along.

Second, by playing back a tape. or reflecting on how ideas were shared in conversation, or sitting alone and imagining the preaching event itself, as the sermon unrolls, list by words, phrases of brief sentences the ideas in the order of their occurrence. They may be numbered straight down the page but not structured into any outline. The question is, does the material move along, evoking ideas and sustaining anticipation until the end. Is it, in the proper sense of the term, a good story?⁸

Third, look for the transition points, the moments in the telling of it that will be marked by "And yet", "However", "But", "On the other hand", "Beyond this", "And", "Therefore". If we maintain the image of a trip, the transitions mark turns or changes in the direction and in the elevation of the road. There will be slow turns ("however", "and yet") , sharp turns ("but", "on the other hand") , straight stretches ("and") , uphill drives ("moreover", "in addition", "also", "beyond this ""in fact") , and arrivals at the top ("so", "therefore", "now") If it is observed that the ideas are invariably joined by and, the minister should be warned thereby. Any traveller knows that long, straight stretches of road are dangerous because they induce sleep. Beyond the monotony, however, such a level movement of material indicates an oversimplification to the point of unreality. Life does not move along with each new page in the diary beginning "and and and so. . ." If people with such lives sit before the pulpit, now, at least, a new direction is offered. The Gospel interrupts the flow of their personal history and says, "But. . ."

Fourth, underline these transitional phrases or set them slightly to the left, or type them in capitals. They are not ‘points’ of course, but they will function quite well as pegs on which to hang series of ideas, preserving the hard-won flow of material. In the event a fellow minister sees the ‘outline’, however, one should be prepared for comments reflecting surprise, curiosity, and maybe jests about the poverty of thought in ‘points’ entitled "However" and "Yet perhaps".

By looking at these transitional expressions, the preacher can readily see the movement of his thought and the format which provides its shape. One can almost feel the progression of thought by such phrases as:

"It seems. . ., but still. . .";

"Of course. . ., and yet. . .";

"Both this. . ., and this. . ., yet in a larger sense. .";

"Certainly it isn’t the case that. . ., however. . ., so perhaps. . .";

"You have heard it said. . ., but. . ."

Some sermons will move in a circle, a statement being made, pursued, then stated again, the latter now seeming an entirely different statement from the original. Sometimes the text will not appear until given at the end, the movement to it being adequate preparation for the reception of it. Perhaps a sermon may be a carefully prepared trip to the edge of absurdity, the congregation being led to see the true nature of a prejudice or a selfish charity. The preacher may devote the message to a defense of the indefensible, each stage of his development moving his hearers progressively in the opposite direction. He may take a route exactly parallel to the path his community is going toward ethical compromise or denial of the Christian mission, and yet the minister knows that if he dealt with the issue in a direct and obvious way, heated emotions would hinder clear reflections. The listeners will transfer the sermon to the issue just as Jesus’ hearers were able to perceive that he was talking to them.

The point must be clearly understood that these various movements in preaching are not games of hide-and-seek or cat-and-mouse. The sole purpose is to engage the hearer in the pursuit of an issue or an idea so that he will think his own thoughts and experience his own feelings in the presence of Christ and in the light of the Gospel. An oblique approach is not the trick of a coward; it is often the powerful vehicle of a man whose primary concern is not to appear every Sunday as Captain Courageous "telling them off" but to communicate with men who will have to continue after the sermon is over thinking their own thoughts, dealing with their own situations and being responsible for their own faith. Some preachers do, of course, think of the Gospel as a searchlight and there is for them an uncontrollable joy in turning that beam down dark streets and watching the sinners run. However, now that most of the sinners have stopped running, the fun is sharply reduced. Why not a method that invites a man to walk again down the street where he lives but this time in the presence of a Third? It may be that he will see his street as never before, his heart burning within him as the Lord is made known to him in the sharing of the Word. He may decide to change that street or to live it anew, but the point is, he will decide because he has been permitted to decide.

It will probably be true that the preacher will discover many of his sermons will have two transition poles rather than the usual three points. This is not because he is trying to be different or that sermons have to be shorter these days. He will often use such a format for the same reason Jesus did. Jesus preached in a society that had, through long association, custom, and familiarity become blind to the message in the Scripture they possessed, deaf to the voice of the God they possessed, and unaware of the presence of the Kingdom they planned to possess. The culture in which men preach today is quite similar, with its Bible belts, praying together to stay together, attending church to fight communism, and easy identification of material gain and the favor of God. In such situations, preaching has to address these easy assumptions and blind familiarities; the text of Scripture has to fight its way through the "almost Scripture" that is everywhere to be found and passes for Biblical support of custom and prejudice. Hence the format "You have heard. . ., but. . ." of Jesus and the need for a similar structure in our time. It can be done without messianism.

He who preaches inductively will need to be prepared for frequent comments from the congregation to the effect that his sermons seem to be long introductions with a point stated or implied at the end. ⁹ The minister may interpret this a number of ways. He may reflect critically upon his sermon: is he being too subtle and inconclusive? He may recognize that the congregation is having to adjust its own psyche and ear to hear this man who speaks as one who has no authority. He may be mildly pleased that this remark indicates his sermons are interesting and move in a way natural for the listener. He may, however, detect that for which he had hoped: his congregation cannot shake off the finished sermon by shaking the minister’s hand. The sermon, not finished yet, lingers beyond the benediction, with conclusions to be reached, decisions made, actions taken, and brothers sought while gifts lie waiting at the altar. Those who had ears heard, and what they heard was the Word of God.

In each of these examples, a poem, an essay, and a parable, movement performs two functions. First, the movement sustains interest and preserves the anticipation necessary not only to hold attention but to prepare the hearer’s mood or mind set to grasp and participate in the central idea when it comes. Secondly, the movement is integral to content, to what is being said. Change the order of the phrases and ideas and you have a quite different message. There is a content-force in movement that cannot be replaced by increased volume or multiplied words or other common efforts to recovery by quantity of sounds what had been lost by improper or ineffective movement of ideas. A sermon is in bad need of repair if the composer of it discovers that the component parts can be switched about with only slight alteration of meaning and hardly any loss of power.

Perhaps this is the point to pause and address the objection that has probably arisen; namely, that this view of preaching calls for more artistic ability than most ministers possess. To be sure, ministers differ in artistic ability and those at both ends of the scale have special problems: at one end, the problem of communicating; at the other, the problem of communicating the Gospel. Most ministers, however, possess more capacity for artistic expression than they realize. In many cases, traditional instruction in homiletics has not encouraged latent gifts, with the result that the capacity was either not developed, or if it was, it found expression in areas other than preaching the Gospel. This may be a result of that common notion of art which identifies it with embroidery and sets it over against truth. If in one’s mind art and truth are so juxtaposed that the increase of one means the decrease of the other, then art must forfeit the contest for the sake of the Gospel. However, in our present consideration, "artistic expression" means simply the careful unfolding of an idea in a way consonant with the content and mood of that idea. In other words, homiletical structures should not be allowed to violate and distort the finer sensibilities that seem naturally to make the adjustments appropriate to the subject matter. If "art" in this sense seems to take a disproportionate amount of time in sermon preparation, it can be safely assumed that this time will diminish as the process of unlearning clears away artificialities that obstruct communication.

From where, then, does a preacher get an outline pattern or structure for an inductive sermon? By this time it should be obvious that there is no single model available as is true with the traditional form of preaching:

Introduction

Body:

I.

A.

1.

2.

II.

Conclusion

One might experiment with the possibility, since the traditional form is deductive, of inverting the structure to make it inductive.

1.

2.

A.

1.

2.

B.

I.

Here, at least, one has the impression of movement up to, rather than down from, a point. However, if the sermon had several points, all the old problems with points would re-appear. The preacher might also discover that while his format looked inductive on paper, his own mental habits and patterns of development of ideas were the same as before. It probably is wisest, therefore, to be less concerned about how the sermon looks on the paper and be more attentive to the arrangement of the ideas. Outlining as such has enjoyed too much prominence in the history of preaching and of teaching homiletics, obviously for the reason that a sermon has been viewed as a rational discourse rather than as a community event.

If the minister feels lost at first with a body of ideas without a skeleton, he may adopt the form in which the Biblical text is presented. ⁵ Amos Wilder has written most helpfully of the forms of early Christian rhetoric. ⁶ Many oral and written forms lay at hand and were employed by the Christian community for communicating the Gospel. In addition, modifications or entirely new forms were created because not every mode of discourse is equally congenial to the Gospel. It is a very real question whether the later decision to use the forms of Greek logical discourse did not of itself radically affect the nature of the message, the type of audience to which it would appeal, and eventually the constituency of the Church. Even if the adoption of Greek rhetorical forms for sermon outlines was a wise choice in the mission to the Hellenistic world, certainly after nineteen centuries, the time has arrived for critical review of sermon form as well as content.

If the speech-forms of the Bible were adopted, sermons would be strengthened by the fact that the text would not be forced to fit a new frame. In other words, narrative texts would be shared in narrative sermons, parables in parabolic form, biography in biographical sermons, and similarly in other speech models. However, Wilder properly warns against trite imitation.

One reason for a discriminating selection of speech-forms, even from the pages of the Bible, is the radical difference in the speaker-hearer relationship in our time as over against authoritarian societies. Preachers today cannot operate on the assumptions regarding the hearers’ view of the speaker that prevailed in prior centuries when it was generally accepted that authority resided in a few, not the many. And especially is our society different in that the authority figure in most communities is not a clergyman, as it once was, but very like the scientist, whether or not the community knows one personally. For this reason Wilder’s warning needs to be doubly heeded, for all the rich variety that the adoption of Biblical speech models would bring to the pulpit.

Footnotes:

1. Op. cit., p. 1.

2. For example, ci. the discussion of the parable of the Marriage Feast (Lk. 14; Matt. 22) in Eta Linnemann, Jesus of the Parables, trans. John Sturdy (New York: Harpers, 1966) , pp. 88-96.

3. ‘Philosophy of Composition".

4. "On Murder", De Quincey’s Works, Globe ed. (New York: Houghton, 1882) , Vol. VI, p. 573.

5. The familiar insistence of Hermann Diem that the sermon stay in the text, moving as it moves. Warum Textpredigt? (Muncheo: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1939) , pp. 197-221.

6. The Language of the Gospel.

7. Ibid., p. 13.

8. As M. Mezger properly characterizes a sermon. "Preparation for Preaching", op. cit., p. 177.

9. K. Barth’s theological objections to introductions cannot be accepted as valid in view of the modern speaker-hearer relationship. Prayer and Preaching, pp. 110-111.

The preacher who is doing his reading these days has been encouraged by the fact that there are a number of recent attempts "to find a new way through from exegesis to the sermon".¹ That these efforts among biblical scholars, systematic theologians, and practical theologians are taking place has several clear implications. First, the fact that they are only "attempts", and some of them not very helpful to the preacher, is a clear reminder that the use of Scripture by the Church in her evangelism, polemics, and instruction is a most difficult problem. The problem is as old as the Church, for there has always been a tradition preserved in sacred texts with all the uses and misuses that accompany Scripture. Jesus frequently faced the problem of being charged with flying in the face of Scripture. The "you have heard it said -- but I say" format in the Sermon on the Mount is not a simple "Old Testament or Jesus" antithesis but rather a question of what is the proper interpretation of the Scriptures. And when Jesus was quizzed about divorce on the basis of Deuteronomy 24:1-4 (Mark 10:2-9) , he subordinated that passage as a concession to hard-heartedness and lifted up the Genesis accounts affirming the indissolubility of the marriage union (Gen. 1:27; 2:24; 5:2) as the expression of God’s will. By what hermeneutical principle could Jesus say one text expressed God’s will while another did not? His opponents could not stand still for this. Nor was the problem solved for the Church when she could support her message not only with Psalms and Second Isaiah but with the "Sayings of the Lord", for these Logia likewise had to be interpreted as texts. For example, Matthew’s account of the Marriage Feast (22:1-14) is quite noticeably an interpreted expansion of the earlier form found in Luke 14:16-24. Joachim Jeremias, in his monumental work on the parables, has pointed out clearly the task of the early church in interpreting the words of Jesus. It is important in studying the parables, for example, to see them in the setting of the Church and if possible in the setting of Jesus’ ministry. The difference in settings is important because the Church faced the task of taking the words of Jesus to a particular audience and presenting them as the word of the Lord in a new situation.² It took both wisdom and courage for the Church to assume this awesome burden of interpreting, but to have failed to do so out of an overwhelming reverence for quotations from Jesus would have ended the work Jesus began. And this work of interpreting anew is not confined in the New Testament to the words of Jesus. As we will notice later in this chapter, traditions such as that of the Last Supper had to be interpreted anew in contexts that differed from the original setting (I Cor. 11:23 ff.) We remind ourselves, then, at this point that the route from text to proclamation is an old and difficult one, but not such as should discourage the preacher but rather should help him to see that interpretation is not an alien and abusive intrusion upon the Scriptures. The problem of honest and relevant interpretation of texts is imbedded within the Bible itself and is not to be looked upon as an exercise post-biblical in origin. In fact, most of the New Testament can be viewed as interpretations and re-interpretations of the tradition (note I Cor. 15:1 ff. as one statement of it) in the light of new situations faced on the mission fields of a vigorous and growing Church.

We dwell on this point because a real prophetic pulpit today waits upon the release of the minister from a shackling hyper-caution about interpreting the Scriptures as the word of the Lord to our situation. Until this release is effected, the prophetic voices will seem to be those which impatiently cast aside Scripture and tradition and speak a new word. The shades of Marcionism move lively again across the pulpit when the Church, for reasons probably sincere and rooted in a theology of the Word, is unwilling to take up the task of interpreting Scripture for specific contemporary settings. And there could hardly be any clearer go ahead signal than the recognition that the New Testament itself arose out of the continual interpretation of the Gospel for new situations. New interpretations are necessary because the new context of the hearer has to be addressed. The use of Mark and Matthew and Luke represent dimensions of this interpretation process. Or again, I Peter 1:3-4:11 probably had its original setting in a baptismal service, but in the New Testament document before us the baptismal message is interpreted for those who have already been baptized and for those responsible for their care.³ Without this continuing interpretation and reinterpretation, the text of the Gospel would be brief, old, dead, and under glass protecting it from the soiling hands of tourists.

Very likely in the early Church, those designated as prophets were engaged in this translation of what Jesus said into what the Lord says to the church in the new situation. They did their work in a church conscious of and open to the Holy Spirit, and yet a church also aware of the risk involved in speaking for the Lord. The Spirit reminds of what Jesus said but also leads through that door left open by the words, "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth" (John 16:12-13) A timid spirit repeats what has been said and feels secure in the continuity; a brash spirit comes up with the new and revels in the discontinuity. But the Church needs in each new context the prophetic spirit.

A second implication of the new attempts to move from exegesis to sermon is a recognition of the inadequacy of older attempts. When reading the history of interpretation of Scripture, one is permitted to smile but not to laugh at allegory, symbolism, typology, and levels of meaning, for these were sincere efforts to hold the Scripture as Scripture while insisting that the congregation deserved some relevant word for its own situation. Perhaps equally sincere but no more worthy of the popularity they enjoy are the exegetical methods common today: selection, elimination, reduction to general truths, modernizing Biblical characters through popular jargon, or archaizing the present by calling upon congregations to "go back to old Jericho for a few minutes this morning". The preacher is not Moses or Paul and the people before him are not Israelites or Corinthians. To pretend such for homiletical purposes has about as much net gain as is enjoyed by the young man who unconsciously addresses his date as Linda when her name is Judy. Of course, it is far easier to lament the inadequacies of former or current exegetical methods than it is to suggest a better. All serious preachers are bound by the fear that in the responsible transaction of changing coinage, there may be a reduction of value.⁴

A third implication of the effort to find a new route from text to sermon is the understanding that exegesis has its natural and proper fulfillment in proclamation. Preaching is not an appendix, an unscientific postscript, an application totally independent of exegesis itself. The texts originated as sermonic materials and "proclamation that has taken place is to become proclamation that takes place".⁵ That which came to expression in the text must now come to expression anew in the sermon. Since exegesis involves putting the text into the speech of the exegete, the message character of exegesis does not just appear later in the sermon but is intrinsic to the very nature of exegesis.⁶ Therefore, the exegete who denies interest in preaching may simply be wishing to distinguish himself from a body of unscholarly clerics, but if his disinterest is fundamental to his methodology, then his exegesis is a barren fig tree.

On the other hand, and this is a fourth implication of the attempts to move from text to sermon, exegesis and preaching are not wholly identical. While exegesis and proclamation admit of only relative separation from each other, still the degree of that distinction must be preserved for the health of both. The use of a text as a text implies a great deal of effort to understand it as a past proclamation. Every text demands honest historical interpretation. But the fact that it is a text of Scripture in the Church’s proclamation means that an historical interpretation of a sermon of the past is incomplete. The sermon is not in this sense, then, an exposition of the text but a proclamation of that which the text proclaimed.

This essay is concerned with this route from exegesis to sermon. In the previous chapter a general charge was made against preaching to the effect that sermons which kept exegesis and preaching clearly separate were lacking in unity and movement while sermons which achieved these by relinquishing either the text or the congregation were irresponsible. Is there another alternative? Two suggestions may help us move in another direction.

In the first place, the route from exegesis to preaching is made unnecessarily difficult in traditional practice by a radical reversal of the mental processes in the transition from the study of the text to the structuring of the sermon itself. If we keep the image of the whole process as a route, the first stage (exegesis) is like ascending a hill while the second (sermonizing) is like the descent on the other side. This shift in motion is keenly felt by the preacher, either as a sense of pleasure in only half of the trip (which half depending upon his inclination toward desk or pulpit) or an ill-defined sense of guilt because his congregation is taken only on the second half of the trip. The shift consists of a transition from inductive to deductive movement of thought. Exegesis is inductive if it is healthy and honest. The particulars of the text: its words, phrases, categories, characters, literary forms, context, writer, readers, date, place -- each separately and all together demand attention and contribute to the student’s conclusion as to the meaning of the passage. If exegesis has to labor under the burden of providing particular support for a dogmatic conclusion already occupying in mind, it ceases to be exegesis. Essential to exegesis, both in method and motive power, is the thrill of potential discovery. This anticipation sharpens the faculties and moves the study to a fruitful conclusion with a quality in it of which the student can be proud. In fact, the confidence born of this exercise will later register on his hearers’ minds not as arrogance, which is usually born in a poorly hidden sense of inadequacy, but as conviction and as convincing clarity.

But all the minister has done thus far is inductive, climbing the hill. The joy of the challenge and the anticipation of the peak is dulled by the fact that he did it alone, without his people. They are not to ascend; they must descend, beginning with the summit of the conclusion of his work (his proposition or thesis) and moving down deductively to particular applications of that thesis. The preacher cannot recapture his former enthusiasm as he breaks his theme into points, unless, of course, his image of himself is that of one who passes truth from the summit down to the people. The brief temptation to re-create in the pulpit his own process of discovering is warded off by the clear recollection of seminary warnings that the minister does not take his desk into the pulpit. What, then, is he to do? If he is a good preacher, he refuses to be dull. And so between the three or four "points" that mark the dull deductive trail he plants humor, anecdotes, illustrations, poetry, or perhaps enlivening hints of heresy and threats of butchering sacred cows. But the perceptive preacher knows instinctively that something is wrong with his sermon: not its exegetical support, not its careful preparation, not its relevance. It is the movement that is wrong.

Why not re-create with the congregation his inductive experience of coming to an understanding of the message of the text? For obvious reasons it would not, of course, be an exact re-creation. Technical details pursued through books could not be similarly pursued in an oral presentation, but the minister may be surprised at the mental ability of his people to chase an idea through paradoxes, dilemmas, myths, history, and dramatic narratives if the movement of the chase corresponds to the way they think through the issues of daily life. What people resist in preaching, while courteously calling the sermons "too, deep" or "over their heads", is that movement of thought which asks at the outset the acceptance of a conclusion which the minister reached privately in his study or received by some special revelation. Too long have sermons proceeded by that special logic which presupposes that, unlike the marketplace, office, and classroom, "in church everything is possible, and the absolutely incomprehensible becomes as self-evident as a fairy in a fairy tale".⁷

It is also true that preaching that re-creates the experience of arriving at a conclusion would for the minister differ from his own study in all the ways that private experiences differ from those shared with others and in all the ways that people differ from books. The speaker himself can expect to make new discoveries in the process of sharing not simply because of some mysterious "inspiration of the audience" but because communication is fundamental to clear thinking, opening and releasing maximum powers of mind and heart.

The question was asked earlier, why not the same inductive process in delivery as in preparation rather than a broken path of private induction and public deduction? The full response to this question brings us to the second suggestion for achieving movement and unity on the route from exegesis to preaching. Bluntly stated, the whole idea of moving from exegesis to preaching is fundamentally erroneous and must be rejected to the extent that it implies an inadequate appraisal of the place of the congregation "from exegesis to preaching" puts the hearers of the sermon in the position of recipients only; they are merely the destination of the sermon.⁸ Such a view of the role of the congregation in preaching, Biblical preaching, lacks the support of history in that the relation of Scripture and Church is a dialogical one; lacks the support of Scripture in that the New Testament clearly demonstrates that the life and needs of the congregations addressed contributed greatly to those products we now call Books of the New Testament; and lacks the support of actual practice in that the congregation is in the pastor’s mind during, not merely at the close of his exegetical work.

Now perhaps it should be said immediately that this is not a call for exegesis that is mere problem-solving activity (as the inductive preaching of late liberal Protestantism tended to be) nor for client-centered preaching that is an exercise in self-analysis and smothering subjectivism occasionally embroidered with Scripture verses. It is, however, a call for a program of Biblical study and Biblical preaching that is more realistic and more responsible as far as the bearing of the congregation’s situation upon understanding the message of the text is concerned. Let us see in more detail what this means.

First of all, the fear of interpreting Scripture by and for a congregation as though it were a case of laying soiling human hands upon the Divine or pouring water into the pure wine must be dispelled. If this fear is born of some near-idolatrous view of the text itself, then historical criticism, whatever its faults, helps to release one from this fear. Historical criticism has brought the general acknowledgment of the historical contingency and relativity of every expression of the Word. It can be safely studied in the confidence that even among toppling preconceptions and misconceptions the benefits harvested for thoughtful discipleship will far exceed the sentimental value of the former reverential hesitation. Or perhaps the fear proceeds from a second-hand Calvinism that has darkened the air with gloomy reminders that "we are only human". If so, reading either Testament will bring relief. The stories of creation and of incarnation not only invite every man to grapple with the Word of God; they charge him to do so.

Secondly, our membership in the Church must be accepted. This is no difficulty if one thinks of a local congregation, nor is it any more painful to affirm membership in a particular denomination or combination of denominations. It is quite another matter, however, to accept membership in the Church historic, for this means sharing in the Church which witnesses in the New Testament and to which the New Testament witnesses. As was discussed in the preceding chapter concerning Church-Scripture dialogue, this means being responsible to and being responsible for the Scriptures. It is easier to be cushioned from that responsibility by the intervening centuries, reverting to the "We" and "They" dichotomy which in all areas of life comforts "We" when "They" are in trouble. Belonging to the historic Church also means participating in and witnessing to God’s continuing activity and revelation rather than locating the time of God in the distant past or future. The congregation finds it simpler and less troublesome to believe the things God did as recorded by those few writers who survived the babel of conflicting proclamations of God’s Word and achieved canonicity than to venture some faith-decision amid differing announcements of what God is doing in our time. The preacher also finds it easier homiletics not to risk identifying God’s will with or against any current issue, but rather to locate the Kingdom of God in an ideal past or an ideal future and then regularly to chastise his people for being born too late or too soon.

Thirdly, it follows that more realistic and responsible Biblical preaching means bearing the awesome burden of interpreting Scripture for the congregation to which one preaches. This does not mean that it is the preacher’s responsibility to hand down a more or less authoritative interpretation for them, but as pastor-preacher he will lead them into the experience of hearing the message of Scripture for their situations. This calls for real courage, courage that moves ahead even while dreadfully conscious of the pitfalls of eisegesis and the thousand chances to be proven wrong by history.

In fact, this courage is rare among preachers, replaced in some by an apparent courage and in others by a reasonable cowardice that passes for humble obedience. Apparent courage is that which translates Scripture for sermonic use into the popular jargon and idiom of the day. This seems to bring the Word into our time and make the Bible come alive in our language, but the question is, has the word of promise and of judgment, of gracious offer and of crisis for the world, come through forcefully in this translation, or has the preacher simply been cleverly interesting? Reasonable cowardice that passes for obedience is seen in the practice of quoting the words of the text without translation or interpretation with that humble smile found only on the lips of servants who are delighted that messengers bear no responsibility for the contents or effects of the messages they deliver. Or if an interpretation is given (and it always is, in the very act of selecting this text, in the uses of the voice, mood, etc.) , it is identified so completely with the original text that the preacher may safely comment, "If the sermon this morning makes you angry, I am sorry, but remember that I am only bringing you His Word, not mine". After all, should not the one commanding rather than the one executing an order bear the responsibility? So it is that the limitation of conformity to duty permits some ministers a complete freedom from responsibility! ⁹ By this logic the grossest evils have been committed by men who felt no responsibility for what they did because they acted in duty-bound conformity to "the will of God". This fiction can survive even in sincere hearts. The fact is, of course, that every disciple is responsible for how he hears and responds to Christ, and the man who proclaims his own hearing in the hearing of others is doubly responsible.

To be sure, the fear of eisegesis is very real, and it often drives a preacher who takes the text seriously to a kind of objective distance from the text as a safeguard against this error. While this caution against an exegesis "colored" by the existential situation is understandable, it is nevertheless true that the present situation adds something other than "color". Sensitivity to the concrete issues of one’s own time increases sensitivity to the issues of the text, contributing positively to the understanding of the passage of Scripture.

This fact leads to the fourth statement in explanation of the expression of "realistic and responsible Biblical preaching": the text is to be studied and shared not in dialogue with "the human situation" in general but with the issues facing the particular congregation participating in the sermon experience. The familiar statement of Hermann Diem, "The congregation is born in preaching" is also true in reverse: "Preaching is born in the congregation".¹⁰ One has only to listen to sermons prepared for a homiletics class with no congregation in view to realize how vital to preaching is the concrete situation. A line fastened at one end in the text but extended into the empty air at the other hardly constitutes an experience of the Word of God.

The matter to be underscored here is the concrete situation of the particular congregation addressed. It is not enough to use the expression "existential involvement" several times in the sermon. Rudolf Bultmann’s program of existential interpretation of Scripture has rendered real service to the sermon but Bultmann has not done every pastor’s homework. If the program of Bultmann is not carried to the concrete existence of a particular congregation, then we are left with a universally applicable interpretation of Scripture in terms of "the human situation". Left at this point, the existentialist approach is properly scored for giving us only a generalized anthropos, a skeleton of human nature which remains unhistorical as long as it is not specific and concrete.¹¹ And to the extent that the "New Hermeneutic" does not exhibit sensitivity to the ethical issues of our time in its listening to the Word of God, to that extent it also comes under the same indictment.¹². The whole fabric of the social and cultural life of a person or congregation contributes to the understanding brought to the sermon and is involved in the meaning of salvation which the sermon brings. It is right that preachers be concerned that the Word of God not be hindered, but it is also right they understand that this hindrance may be caused not only by the mishandling of a text of Scripture but by a misreading of the situation of the congregation. Taking the congregation out of context is as much a violation of the Word of God as taking the Scripture out of context.

This means, then, that the sermon grows out of the dialogue between a particular passage (not a general and meaningless reference to what "the Bible says") and a particular congregation (not "the human situation"). What comes to fruition is not just a truth but the truth for this community.¹³ A sermon so understood would not be the same for different congregations. The man who preaches the same regardless of who comes to hear would probably preach the same regardless of whether anyone came to hear, and may very well soon have that opportunity. To change one of the partners in a dialogue with no change in the content of the conversation is to admit to a monologue.

A fifth and final statement in elaboration of the idea of realistic and responsible Biblical preaching concerns the matter of language. Biblical preaching that is preaching is not repetition of the words of the text but a new expression of the message of the text in language indigenous to the situation addressed. Two characteristics of the New Testament establish this point. First, there is the presence on every page of the words, categories, myths, images, and technical terminology of the social, cultural, religious, and scientific life of the communities addressed. The early missionaries used these expressions in preaching because they were used every day, and they had to run the risk of being misunderstood in order to be understood. They had no pure, disembodied word to share. Second, there is the immense variety in the affirmations of the Gospels, variations dictated by concrete situations. What was the Gospel for those living in fear of demons, principalities and powers? For those who held mortality to be man’s chief burden? For those married to unbelievers? For those whose livelihood was related to the idol business? For slaves? For employers? What we have in the New Testament are proclamations to concrete situations with the Gospel as the text in each case. The text was not just repeated; it was interpreted, translated, proclaimed. An excellent illustration is to be found in I Corinthians 11 where Paul’s text is the tradition ("The Lord Jesus, on the night in which he was betrayed, took bread. . .").¹⁴ His text, translated and proclaimed for the Corinthian situation, stands now as our text for proclamation to the situation of the present hearers, a situation that will, in dialogue with the text, create a new speaking and hearing of the Gospel. It is a comfort to those who fear something is lost in translation to imagine how much more would be lost if there were no translation. And if the language indigenous to the congregation’s life seems unworthy of such a lofty task, it should be recalled that "Jesus... particularly in his parables, exalted everyday life as the ‘stuff’ of the revelatory event".¹⁵

This understanding of Biblical preaching allows us to pause here in order to sweep aside two issues, one practical and one dogmatic, which should now cease to be issues. The practical question, long discussed by homileticians, has to do with whether one begins with the text or with the people in sermon preparation. This is an important question if the sermon is viewed as a one-way trip from one to the other. However, in the movement here recommended, the experience is not of a trip from text to people or from people to text but, as we have been discussing, both are actively involved. It might be helpful to think of it as analogous to the massive dialectic between the existential and the ontological in Martin Heidegger’s "hermeneutical circle". His analysis calls first for looking at man’s existence; then looking at it anew in the light on an understanding of Being as the context for existence; and then correcting and enlarging in view of that context the initial understanding of man’s existence. Substitute for ‘existence’ and ‘Being’, ‘congregation’ and ‘Scriptures’ and the dialogical involvement of each in the other can be seen. Understanding the movement as dialogical should help the preacher avoid, on the one hand, making his congregation mere passive recipients of the text, and on the other, forcing the text to serve up answers to the questions of the congregation. If the matter were to be pressed further by a rejoinder to the effect that even in dialogue one partner speaks first, then the response has to be, "the congregation". Very likely most of those who, in fear of a utilitarian captivity of the text insists on beginning always with the Scripture, only think they are beginning with the text. Every pastor knows that even with carefully guarded study hours behind locked doors, the people stand around his desk and whisper, "Remember me". They are not intruders; it was in order to be with them that he locked the door.

The dogmatic question which this understanding of preaching regards as no longer real concerns the relation of the Word of God to Scripture. Gerhard Ebeling has clearly expressed the inadequacy of the traditional framing of the issue.

In other words, to say the Scripture is the Word of God or that Scripture contains the Word of God is to identify the Word of God too completely with only one partner in the dialogue. Word, whether it be of God or of man, is properly understood as communication, and it is rather meaningless to discuss word in terms of one person. Equally meaningless is a discussion of Word of God fixed at one pole, the Bible, apart from the other, the Church. Just, as sound is vibrations received, so word is a spoken-heard phenomenon. The Word of God, if it is to be located, is to be located in movement, in conversation, in communication between Scripture and Church. In the absence of that communication, definitions of the Word of God that say "Lo, here!" and "Lo, there!" have to do only with potentiality, not actuality. And this is affirmed in full awareness that there is a strong tradition of preaching which consistently refuses to embrace any position that implies that the Word of God is contingent, modified in any way by the situation of the congregation, or that it moves in any direction other than downward.¹⁷

Having said all this about Biblical preaching that moves inductively, how is the preacher to approach the text as he prepares for his message? First, let it be the text itself which he first confronts, not dictionaries and commentaries about the text. There will be a time for these, but not too soon. It is difficult to get the congregation and the text in conversation if half a dozen experts are already at the table. Not only the congregation but the text falls silent in such circumstances.

Second, let the engagement with the text be a lively one, with real questions being asked. When the text speaks of turning the other cheek, giving away the coat, not looking with lust, being concerned only for today’s needs, bearing crosses, loving enemies, tombs opening, demons going into pigs, Jesus ascending into heaven, or the earth dissolving in a great conflagration, what are the immediate human questions? Ministers often are too hasty to reduce all questions into harmlessness with the "Of course, we know this doesn’t mean. . ." type of comment. There is no need to protect the Bible and the people from each other. Let all faculties of mind and heart be free to apprehend and comprehend. Often a text will open up and begin to talk if it has to defend itself against another text. For example: let Paul’s frequent admonition to grow up answer to Jesus’ call to become as little children. Or conversation may be stimulated by asking if there is any truth in the opposite of the affirmation in the text. For example: Paul said, "All things are yours." Is it also true that "nothing is yours"? Oversimplifications, hasty conclusions, obvious half-truths, and one-dimensional moralizing can often be avoided in this way.

Third, listen carefully to the text. This is very difficult to do for a number of reasons, many of which pertain to listening in general. Listening means receiving and receiving calls for a posture awkward and painful for all except the most humble. It is not only more blessed to give than to receive; it is also much easier. Listening is further hindered by the search for a sermon, a search that can easily dictate to the text what to say, or at least alter the mood of the text. An impatience for a sermon quite often fixes the minister in the mood for exhortations and imperatives, causing him to see them where they do not exist. For instance, "Blessed are the pure in heart" is an affirmation, not a command, but how many times do the great affirmations of the Scriptures come out as imperatives in the pulpit. "We must be pure in heart" is a statement entirely different from the text. Changing the mood, even if the same words are kept, is as much a misquoting as a change of the words.

Listening is also hindered by the fact that our culture is saturated with "almost Bible" that continues to pass for Scripture. The minister has breathed this same air and has been affected. Some of this floating material arose from interpretations that gradually moved from the margin of opinion into a textual certainly even though not in the text, such as Jesus ministering for three years or, while on the cross, committing his mother into the care of the Apostle John. A different type of this hindrance to careful listening to a particular text exists in the oral tradition of a harmonized New Testament. For instance, the concept of Twelve Apostles, basic to the New Israel, is very significant in Luke-Acts, but in the average Christian mind, it is assumed to be an idea of equal clarity and importance throughout the New Testament. Or again, that Christ died as an atonement for sin is often referred to as "the New Testament teaching" with no consideration of significantly different interpretations of the cross in Acts and the Gospel of John. Similarly, the category of pre-existence, or eschatological motifs, or interpretations of the resurrection are generally credited to the whole New Testament in a homogenized view, when what we actually have is a shelf of twenty-seven different works. Study of the Gospels, in particular, suffers from such harmonizing, or from the predominance of one of the Gospels in the mind of the Church to such an extent that the other three are virtually unknown. So familiar is Matthew’s account of the confession of Simon Peter at Caesarea Philippi that a use of Mark’s account, "You are the Christ" would strike the congregation as a deliberate or careless omission of part of the text. And Christ’s response to that confession according to Mark and Luke is so overshadowed by Matthew’s account that the minister’s use of Mark or Luke would in some quarters confirm suspicions of his heresy. And of course, most congregations take it as unanimous in the New Testament that Mary and Joseph lived in Nazareth before Jesus was born (contra Matthew) , there was at Jesus’ baptism a public announcement from heaven as to his divinity (contra Mark and Luke) , Jesus was rejected in his home town because he was a familiar local figure (contra Luke) , Peter was the foremost apostle (contra John) , and Judas hanged himself (contra Luke, in Acts)

All this is not to deny the governing theme of the New Testament which gives it unity, namely, God’s redeeming act in Jesus Christ, nor to accent to the point of exaggeration the variety of responses to that act, simply because general themes from the New Testament have flooded our minds since childhood and erased the message of specific texts. Serious study of a single text has to work against the obstacle of an assumed knowledge of the whole. Even familiar texts, which many ministers avoid in sermons simply for that reason, are often not really understood. John 3:16, probably the most familiar, is very commonly linked to the cross as the act of God giving his Son, when this is not at all John’s understanding of God giving his Son. A preacher would render not only a real instructional service, but would have a most satisfying experience in the pulpit if he shared the unfamiliar Gospel imbedded in familiar texts. But let him beware of clever and shocking notions; the texts themselves will sustain interest if he will listen to them carefully and then share what he hears. And all temptations to chastise the people for not really knowing the Bible will be squelched by the discoveries the minister himself makes in passages he thought he knew thoroughly.

A fourth and final suggestion for approaching the text in anticipation of preaching has to do with attitude toward the minister’s own study. It is commonly known that many pastors spend more time lamenting lack of study time than in actual study. Of course, the pastor is busy, or should be, and the fact that he is no longer in the seminary library early impresses itself upon him. No suggestions will be made here about establishing priorities and carving out precious study time. Only this one sentence will be devoted to urging not only the irreplaceable importance of careful study but the need to come clear in his mind that time in study is, in a vital sense, time spent with all his congregation. They share in what goes on there and will benefit continually from it. The point more pertinent to present purposes is the minister’s recognition of the positive value for study of the Scripture that there is in the fully engaged ministry which on the surface seems to stand in the way of that study. The documents of the New Testament arose out of the church in mission, in the task of evangelizing, edifying, correcting, comforting, opposing error, and, in general, witnessing publicly and from house to house. Some writings, of course, carry more than others the sense of urgency, the noise of battle, the heat of debate, the movement of swift feet on the mountains, but they also served who gave themselves to the less exciting tasks of catechism and copying texts. To the extent that the minister gives himself to that same mission in the world, he will harvest a clarity of understanding texts that arose out of that mission. Common purposes and commitments greatly enable communication, and the minister who sits at his desk already weary from the exercise of his mission is more open and ready for dialogue with his postolic predecessors than is the man who, guilty and embarrassed, interrupts idle hours to study his text for Sunday.

It is usually the case that the man most given to his mission as minister is also the man who is most conscious of his need for more time in his study. But he is also the man who should be encouraged by the fact that the fullness of his ministry prepares him for the most fruitful use of the study time he has. In his case, the conversation between the Scripture and the Church begins immediately. The immensity of his problems makes him a willing listener to the text; the significance of his task gives him something to say in response.

Footnotes:

1. G. Ebeling, Theology and Proclamation, p. 14.

2. J. Jeremias, The Parables of Jesus, 6th., trans. S. H. Hooke (New York: Scribner’s, 1962) , pp. 42-48.

3. Willi Marxsen, "Exegese und Verkündigung", Theologische Existenz Heute, neue Folge, Vol. 59 (1957) , pp. 1-13.

4. Manfred Mezger, "Preparation for Preaching", trans. Robert Kraft, Translating Theology into the Modern Age, Journal for Theology and Church (New York: Harper’s, 1965) , Vol. II, p. 165.

5. Ebeling, Word and Faith, p. 329.

6. Marxsen, op. cit., p. 50.

7. Mezger, op. cit., p. 174.

8. The view of J. J. von Allmen, Preaching and Congregation, trans. B. L. Nicholas (London: Lutterworth Press, 1962) p. 27.

9. D.Bonhoffer, Letters and Papers, pp. 2-4.

10. Mezger, op. cit., p. 175.

11. Amos Wilder, "The Word as Address and the Word as Meaning" pp. 205-206.

12. C. F. Sleeper, "Language and Ethics in Biblical Interpretation", The Journal of Religion, Vol. 48, No. 3 (1968) , pp. 288-310.

13. Marxsen, op. cit., p. 56.

14. Robert Funk, "The Hermeneutical Problem and Historical Criticism", New Frontiers in Theology, Vol. II, pp. 167-180 for further illustrations.

15. Ernst Fuchs, "Must One Believe in Jesus if He Wants to Believe in God?", Journal for Theology and the Church, Vol. 1, p. 154.

16. Word and Faith, pp. 312-313.

17. Karl Barth, Prayer and Preaching (London: SCM Press, 1964) p. 71.

The most important single contributing factor to consistently effective preaching is study and careful preparation. This must be said repeatedly in considering inductive preaching because the method itself can so easily degenerate into casual conversation with the congregation. Since this method makes such large room for the particular experiences of the hearers, it is possible that some indolent preacher may choose this method as a recess from the books. The fact of the matter is that inductive preaching, because it has in it the possibility of easy detours and is so susceptible to prostitution, actually requires more discipline of thought and study. Confidence that sets one free to preach in this mode is gained in the same way one is confident and free in any method of speaking: know the matter being presented and be convinced of its importance. And it is a mistake to assume that the inductive method’s embrace of the dialogical principle makes such preaching merely the tolerant exchange of differences and indifferences among sophisticated participants. Tolerance is there, to be sure, but like all sharing of the Gospel, inductive preaching seeks to persuade.

There is, then, no substitute for careful preparation. When such preparation is lacking, the preacher gropes about in his frustration for quick confidence to enable him to face the people. He may grab another man’s sermon and handle it well, except for a hollow ring here and there and the subterranean sounds of his own soul crumbling in slow erosion. These sounds have bested the strongest arguments ever offered for filching sermons. Or he may turn to tricks and gimmicks in the pulpit, every Sunday leaping from the pinnacle of the temple, only to learn bitterly that he who begins with a rabbit out of the hat must soon come up with an elephant if he would hold his crowd. Or the unprepared minister may hide behind "style". If he happens to be blessed (or cursed) with easy words and immediate speech, he may use the high gloss of marvelous verbiage to blind his hearers to the fact that there was nothing on the tablet. On the other hand, he may pass off a real or pretended crudeness of speech as the credentials of the prophet who does not come "with persuasive words of wisdom", but who humbly brings the treasure of the Gospel "in earthen vessels". Some American politicians and pulpiteers have made capital of the anti-intellectualism in our society which accepts poverty as goodness, crudity as sincerity, and awkwardness as humility. Or the man facing Sunday morning without a message may sink into a negativism. His morning paper provides something to which he and all God’s saints are opposed and so in five minutes he is prepared to oppose it for twenty minutes. The real dimensions of this tragedy are obscured by the popularity of muckraking, attacking vaguely defined enemies, and firing heavy mortar into empty buildings. But the preacher himself is not fooled by his tactics; he knows he was called to build and running a bulldozer over the lot once a week is hardly an adequate response to that call.

If the preacher is prepared, one of the clearest evidences of that preparation is the unity of his message. Rather than trying to corral several sermonettes hastily gathered under one title, perceptive listeners will be responding to a single theme which governed the selection or rejection of all material bidding for a place in the sermon. If the point has been made that the primary characteristic of forceful and effective preaching is movement, then it should now be said that unity is essential to that movement. There can be no movement without unity, without singleness of theme.

The contribution to the movement and power of a sermon made by the restraint of a single idea can hardly be overstated. This may not be apparent at first to those who have struggled after enough "points" to make their sermons complete. Actually the anxiety to get several points to serve as the basic structure for the sermon is paralyzing. It is better to forget about points. The question is, "What is the point?" Sermons that move inductively sustaining interest and engaging the listener, do not have points any more than a narrative, a story, a parable, or even a joke has points. But there is a point, and the discipline of this one idea is creative in preparation, in delivery, and in reception of the message.

In preparation, the imagination is released by the restraint of one governing consideration. Strange as it may seem, freedom blooms in confinement. Just as Saint Paul, John Bunyan, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote most profoundly about freedom when the usual locomotions of apparent liberty were denied them, so the more confined the topic fixed in mind, the greater the freedom of mental range in pursuing and developing that topic. A broad topic or theme has no center of gravity, it draws nothing to itself, but sits along on the page and stares back sterilely at the composer. But not so the precise and clear thesis. Like a magnet it draws potentially helpful material from current and remembered exposures to people and books. Because the preacher can state his point in one simple sentence, he knows the destination of the trip that will be his sermon. He knows where he is going. Made confident by this fact, a number of structures, or in a better figure a number of avenues for the trip begin to suggest themselves to his enlivened imagination. Some possible ways of beginning so that all the listeners can begin the trip together will appear. All the while, potential illustrative materials will be examined in the light of the central idea of the sermon. Whoever has this one governing theme in mind is in the enviable position of being able to reject a good story because it will not serve the purpose. A good illustration or analogy is an arrogant piece of material, mastering rather than serving. Unless carefully screened by a controlling thesis, a good story heard on Friday will take the spotlight in the next Sunday’s sermon whether or not it has a place. It is the mark of sound preparation to be able to delay the use of good material.

Trying to assemble a sermon without the "releasing limits" of a single germinal idea is a deeply frightening and frustrating experience. Igor Stravinsky has written of his experience in the composition of music. First, he said, is the anguish of unrestricted freedom, but the experience of a creative freedom

In delivery, the limitation of the single idea is the key to forceful and effective unfolding of the message. The difference between a moving stream and a stagnant marsh is constraint. Such is the difference between sermons with and without the discipline of the controlling theme. In the process of delivery the difference is experienced by the preacher and detected in a number of ways by the congregation. Hands, face, eyes, voice, the whole body communicates the presence or absence of a clear sense of direction in the speaker. And the speaker knows it. All his energies that should have been harnessed to the one task are scattered and dissipated in the frantic search for a place to stop that will give the semblance of planning to this aimless wandering. Neither pilot not passengers get much from a trip that is made with landing gear down all the way.

And finally, in the reception of the sermon, singleness of theme contributes interest and meaning. One has only to recall the limitation of a forbidden tree in Eden, the midnight hour for Cinderella, or "high noon" in a popular Western drama to be reminded that it is boundary that arouses interest. It is the presupposition of the bounds of monogamy that draws readers’ attention to stories of infidelity. Death is a great creative limitation in the affairs of each generation. The withdrawal of that restriction would be an unspeakable tragedy. So do hearers of a sermon sense very soon whether there has been careful restraint in preparation, whether some things will be left unsaid. If a listener knows something will be left unsaid, he will contribute interest and active participation to what is said. If he senses anything and everything may wander across the preacher’s mind and tongue, he attends to nothing. The difference between the two types of sermons is the difference between a registered letter and a piece of fourth class mail "To the Occupant". Unity does for the sermon what a frame does for a picture. The hearer, as with the viewer of a picture, has the edges of his attention gathered up and focused by the clear sense of being personally addressed with a definite expectation of some kind of response.

There are, of course, preachers who discount all arguments for the single idea sermon with the insistence that the variety of needs in the average congregation can be addressed only by broad themes and multi-directioned messages. If this response is a cover for a lack of rigorous discipline, then no answer is necessary. If, however, a minister sincerely holds his view, he needs to reflect on several considerations to the contrary. First, he cannot say everything at once. He will, therefore, have to set priorities and accept judgment upon his silences as well as his sermons. Secondly, he should preach as though there will be a tomorrow rather than no tomorrow. He will trust that God will give him occasion to speak again. There is some dramatic force in the "If I had but one chance to preach" psychology, but the pastor who tries to preach on a dead-end street will invariably hang crepe. And finally, he may perceive that in spite of differences of age, culture, education, and social involvement, there are basic problems and needs common to us all. To deal specifically with one of those needs is to feed not one sheep but many. To say one thing each Sunday for fifty weeks is good medicine; to say fifty things each Sunday is to circulate aspirin in the waiting room.

The singleness of theme which we are considering here is not easily achieved. Any minister who has sought to have a point rather than a parade of points in his sermons knows the difficulty. And for him who would take the Biblical text seriously, the difficulty seems to be compounded. In fact, it is sermons regarded by those who preach them as Biblical that are most commonly lacking in unity. Is there a flaw here in one’s use of Scripture or is it in the nature of Biblical materials that singleness of theme can be achieved only by their violation? A number of observations are called for at this juncture.

In the first place, it may be true that the text has a number of ideas in it. However, thorough exegesis of the passage in its context may reveal that all those ideas are really subordinate to and supportive of a larger overarching issue. Only after this exegetical work is the preacher in a position to decide if this larger issue is of such dimension and importance to require treatment in more than one sermon. It may be that the selected text was too large and has within it two or more now discernible pericopae. Too much at once as well as too little may result in a deformation of a writer’s meaning. Only careful study in each case enables one to make proper judgment of this matter.

Secondly, the desire to be thorough in treating a text often leads the preacher to move around within the text, with the result that this apparent thoroughness sacrifices both unity and clarity. This temptation to touch all the bases is especially keen in narrative texts that present a number of characters. For example, the parable of the Prodigal Son can be scrambled into ineffective confusion by letting the father and the two sons be "the three points" from which applications and lesson are drawn. Or the dramatic story of the healing of the blind man in John 9 offers a real trap here. Unless one takes time to hear the point of the story and make that point the governing consideration, every one of the characters may receive separate, brief treatment as a launching pad for "a lesson for us today".

Thirdly, and in this same vein, there are two forms of seduction in a homiletical use of Scripture to which one may fall victim. One is the seduction of the concordance. Suppose the preacher checks his concordance for all the references in which his subject, or at least a key word in his subject, occurs. If the least is measurable, he may feel that a truly Biblical sermon would be the use of all these references with a few comments on each passage. And, regretfully, some of his parishioners will accept this parade of verses as Biblical preaching. The preacher himself should know better. The unity is only apparent, not real. The concordance has led him to mistake common occurrences of certain words for common subject matter. And the various documents, themes, and purposes of the Biblical writers have been leveled in a near word-magic use of the Bible that violates both spirit and letter of all Scripture. Concordances have legitimate functions, but providing sermon outlines is not one of them.

The other form of seduction is that of the easy text. As all Bible readers know, some passages seem to contain prepared and packaged outlines, and sermon-hungry, point-conscious preachers rush upon these as upon oases in a parched desert. How many have come upon John 14:6, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" and felt they were halfway home in sermon preparation! Unity and structure seem built into the text. This same gift of an instant sermon seems to be offered by Ephesians 3:18, "power to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth". Who could resist this four point outline, free for the taking?

The fact is, all should resist every temptation that promises a sermon without struggle, study, appropriation, and decision, even if that temptation is presented by the Bible itself. Whoever allows himself to be so seduced finds that he does not have a sermon but three or four sermonettes, each related to the others as pegs in a board. In the delivery, transitions are awkward and unity is non-existent. Exegesis of the two passages mentioned as well as others of this type would have made it clear that no one of the apparent points nor the sum of all of them constitutes the point of the text. It may be that the preacher will find the apparent points of some structural value later on in preparation but only after his study has led him to the point the author sought to make. No preacher has the right to look for points until he has the point. And even then, if unity and movement hold deserved priority, he will not think in terms of points at all but of transitions, turns in the road, or of signs offering direction toward the destination. Suggestions in this regard will be given in the discussion of structure in the final chapter.

All this has been to say again that unity is difficult to achieve, but irreplaceable if the sermon is to move. It is a mistake to assume that text or title or outline provides this unity for the sermon. The desired unity has been gained when the preacher can state his central germinal idea in one simple affirmative sentence.

Careful examination will reveal that most sermons rather than possessing unity, fall clearly into two parts, regardless of the number of divisions the outline may contain. This is assuming that the sermons make some effort to take seriously the Scripture and tradition. This broken unity mirrors the di-polar nature of the preaching task and testifies to the tension experienced by the man who preaches. Part of the sermon, often the earlier material, is oriented toward the past, Scripture and tradition, and represents the minister’s effort to share the fruit of his research. The other part of the sermon, usually the later material, is oriented toward the present, the congregation, and represents the minister’s effort to be relevant and prophetic. There is often a great distance between that past and that present, and the negotiation of that distance is the preacher’s hermeneutical task. The task is a difficult one, as the whole history of Biblical interpretation reveals, and full of agony for the minister who would internalize the tension that exists inevitably where honesty toward the past and responsibility toward the present are twin motives. But blessed is the preacher who chooses to live with this tension rather than accept the easy unity that costs the release of one of the poles, sacrificing history for modernity or sacrificing the present congregation in adoration of the past. Perhaps it would be helpful to reflect upon this tension built into the preaching task, not that such reflection will resolve it, but by understanding its nature, it may be that more preachers will be more bold to preach unified sermons without feeling that yesterday or today has been compromised.

There are a number of ways to view the two poles which threaten the unity of every sermon and yet which offer the promise of creativity and the possibility of actually speaking God’s Word today. Psychologically, the tension may be said to exist between the tendency toward fixity on one hand and toward flexibility on the other. Some older textbooks in psychology referred to this as the ambivalence between contentment and mastery. More recently Reuel Howe has called this ambivalence, in terms of communication, a desire to speak and yet not wanting to; a desire to listen, and yet a fear of doing so.² All of us are pulled in both directions, but with more force toward one or the other at different times. Usually the seminary years and the period shortly thereafter is the time when there is greater polarization around flexibility. This is understandable since there is in the academic world an acceleration of questioning and pre-occupation with the problematic. ³ The easy rejection of the past during these years is reflected in sermons which, if they possess unity, are unified too quickly and simply about some issue enjoying such currency as to blind one to its historical antecedents. Likewise understandable is the tendency toward fixity among those whom time has made brittle and whose long buffeted and trampled ideals are exhausted. The unity of sermons from this quarter is purchased at the price of closing all the unsettling modern freeways of thought and re-opening memory land. The sight of relief and relaxation that rises over the comfortable sanctuary may muffle for the minister the clear announcement of his conscience that he has capitulated.

Liturgically, the di-polarity of the preaching task may be referred to as order over against spontaneity. Were this tension confined to the matter of differences in traditions and tastes in worship, it could be dismissed as a problem beyond the province of this book. The issue touches preaching, however, not only because some ministers have eliminated either order or spontaneity from their preaching, but they have tended to identify their own preferences with the Holy Spirit. Does order focus and clarify or does it restrict and reduce? Unless one is prepared to accept both answers and be alerted thereby, his preaching will eventually absolutize either the lectionary or the late news. It is a good practice to discipline one’s pulpit with a planned and ordered preaching calendar. Then when an urgent matter arises and insists upon interrupting the schedule, that matter will have to earn a place by competing with the subjects for preaching already determined. This test of the strength of any intruding topic is healthy; where there is no planned order of subjects for preaching, the blank page for next Sunday hungrily welcomes every passing issue and invites it into the pulpit. Good preaching always gives the impression of dealing with matters freshly chosen from among competing topics and yet which are mellow from sufficient time in the cellar.

From a pedagogical point of view, preaching embraces the tension between an understanding of itself as a content that is given and yet as an activity that is learned. "Preaching" can be properly defined as both "that which is preached" and "the act of presenting the Gospel". The first definition underscores the fact that the message is given to the preacher and to the church. Such a definition reminds the minister that preaching is a gift and moves him into the posture of the grateful recipient. And yet the second definition can be neglected only at the risk of the demise of the pulpit. This understanding of preaching reminds the minister of his task as communicator, as one called to articulate with interest, persuasion, and clarity. The givenness of the content of his communication does not diminish but heightens his obligation to prepare thoroughly, mastering as fully as possible the media by which he will publish the good news. It is because of the gifts of Brahms and Mozart that the most accomplished pianist is not ashamed to practice his scales. Let a preacher focus solely upon the givenness of the content and we have a Gospel that is forever theoretical and potential because it remains locked within inarticulate lips and hidden in confused speech. And yet let him center upon preaching as a learned act and the measure of his mastery of speech arts will be the measure of his arrogance. Although he cannot resolve them, neither will the minister relinquish either pole of his affirmation, "I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God" (I Cor. 15:10)

Historically, the tension within preaching is expressed in the relation between Scripture and Church. On the one hand, the Church not only preceded the New Testament chronologically, but the New Testament was produced by the Church, both in its writing and in its selection from among the many available Christian documents. The New Testament is, therefore, the Church’s book and she has the right to lay hands on it in bold investigation. On the other hand, the New Testament is the Scripture for the Church and before it the Church is to sit in obedient submission, open to guidance, discipline, and judgment.

Many Christians have felt this ambivalence in their relation to the Scripture. Because this is Word of God, the Church is not only invited to but urged and obligated to study it. Implied, of course, in this as in all study is the bringing to the material all one’s faculties: questioning, discussing, applying all available tools for prying open the mysteries in the ancient documents. In the process, the Bible takes on the physical characteristics of all well-used textbooks. And yet, because this is Word of God, study is inhibited by reverence. A sense of humble respect stays the student’s mind and turns aside the critical questions of free investigation. The frequent result is study that really is not study, or reverence that is not really reverence.

Especially does the minister, whose task is to embrace both Scripture and Church in his preaching, experience this ambivalence. Regretfully, he may gain a cheap peace by keeping the desk and the pulpit separated. At the one, he operates as the free investigator of ancient writings; at the other he recites the sacred phrases as though proper intonations alone would bring healing to the hearers. Eventually, of course, this schizoid pattern loses momentum, the pulpit with its immovable deadlines winning out over the desk where gathering dust announces the demise of seminary habits.

Blessed is the congregation whose minister offers himself as a frail bridge between Church and Scripture. His sermons will possess the unity not of a monologue of the Church to the Scripture nor of the Scripture to the Church, but the unity that characterizes all genuine dialogue. It is fabric woven of two distinct and always perceptible threads: the situation addressed precedes the Word of God; the Word of God precedes the situation.⁴

Finally, it may be helpful to conceive the di-polar nature of the preaching task hermeneutically, for the struggle to achieve unity in sermons that deal seriously with Scripture is also the struggle of Biblical interpretation. Just as Biblical sermons tend to fall into two parts (the meaning of the text and its application) so Biblical interpretation has generally divided its task into ascertaining what the text said, and what the text says. Both steps have seemed necessary where both honesty and relevance were prized, but the lack of unity in the process has been less than satisfying. Preaching that involves the highest level of interest and forcefulness possesses unity, but this unity waits upon a hermeneutical method that negotiates the distance between the congregation and the text without radical discontinuity. This is assuming, of course, that preaching must struggle with the Biblical texts, a conviction firmly held here but without the comfort of universal endorsement.

The problem facing the preacher as Biblical interpreter has frequently been framed on the "Word of God -- word of man" dichotomy. For a number of reasons this has an unsatisfactory way of conceiving the tension, productive of a host of additional problems. First, this concept has led some preachers and many hearers to divide easily the message into two parts, all Scripture quotations being Word of God and interpretation and application being word of man. This not only guarantees for them the purity of God’s word, but at the same time it disarms the preacher and assures the Church that God will not interrupt with further communiqués. Secondly, this distinction between God’s Word and man’s word has led some to seek the Holy Grail of exact quotations from the Lord. Once in possession of this slim but one hundred percent red-letter edition, all the portions of the Bible consisting of human interpretation could then be reduced to the status of sub-canonical options. Thirdly, the "Word of God -- word of man" conceptualization has led to the mystical dismissal of words in a book in favor of the pure immediacy of the Word of God. Or finally, the Divine Word human word dilemma has in some quarters resolved itself into a compromise: the Word of God is the eternally valid content and the word of man is the historically conditioned vehicle by which that content is conveyed. This "kernel and husk" theory permits every interpreter to decide what is kernel and what is husk, a permission of such latitude that it quickly defeats itself as a method of interpretation.

All this is to say the preacher who divides the raw materials of his sermon into the two categories of "Word of God" and "word of man" will, all reverence and sincerity notwithstanding, nullify his own effort and fracture his sermon into two neat but equally useless halves: one with authority and no relevance, the other with relevance and no authority. The reason is that he has done his work on the basis of

A more fruitful approach to the di-polarity of the preaching task, set in the hermeneutical frame of reference, is to begin with the understanding that all the words we know are human words. We could not experience non-human words and therefore should not try to work with the assumption that God spoke a divine language which was then translated into a particular human language. Given, then, the assumption that words are words, how are the words in Scriptures to be approached, as content to be traditional, or as address to be heard and shared?

Stating the issue as a sharp either/or question is hardly fair, of course, demanding as it does a simple response to a body of literature that is rich in varieties of forms, moods, and functions. Such a structuring of the question does, however, provide a way of getting into the open the complex issue of interpreting Scripture. And as a matter of fact, the history of the Church’s use of Scriptures in her preaching and teaching has tended to move in an either/or pattern, there being periods of strong emphasis upon the Scripture as the body of authoritative tradition, provoking a reaction in favor of an understanding of Scripture as address to the hearers.

This can be seen in the shift in accent in Biblical interpretation prompted by the work of Karl Barth following World War I. Prior to his initiation of a new approach, the Bible was being approached primarily as a body of content from the Judeo-Christian tradition. To understand more thoroughly that body of literature, a host of helping disciplines had arisen: historical, literary, form, and textual criticism. And very helpful they were. The preacher should not look upon these disciplines as otherwise, for the Bible as a collection of ancient documents surely deserves the compliment of objective examination as much as other literature. A refusal to make use of these tools to ascertain the proper text reading, its relation to other literature, and the cultural-historical milieu out of which it arose, is a move toward dishonesty prompted either by a fear of what might be discovered or by an impatience to get a sermon that cannot tarry at books that are not heavy with homiletical fruit.

A problem arose for the Church’s preaching not because of these methods of Biblical study but because of an unlimited confidence in the total adequacy of these methods, eliminating any need to attend to the Scriptures for anything other than what these tools were able to dredge up. To discover what a writer said to his intended readers is demanded, of course, by honest research, but this discovery alone is inadequate if the Bible is to function as the Scripture of the church. Needless to say, this ascendancy of historical-literary criticism produced a pulpit that was full of research properly footnoted but which fed the congregation a steady diet of remote yesterdays, hardly digestible even if the nutriments were there.

Karl Barth was dissatisfied with this approach which understood the task of the Biblical interpreter to be fulfilled when he, as a subject, has properly understood the text as an object. His dissatisfaction was that of a preacher, but he was wise enough to know that satisfaction would not come with some new and clever way of approaching the past. Homiletical appropriations of the past through allegory, gnostic flights out of the confines of history, archaizing the present, modernizing the past, reduction of texts to universal principles, and a host of other devices, were thrown out as failures to take either past or present seriously enough in the effort to hear the Word of God. The problem lay rather in the whole subject-object diagram upon which Bible study took place. If the text wrestles with serious questions and if the reader does also, then the reader’s own questions are not extraneous intrusions upon a "pure understanding" of the text but vitally involved in a proper understanding of the text. The text is not, therefore, to be approached with the arrogance which accompanies the notion that the present is always superior to the past nor with that acquiescence which marks the opposite view. Rather the reader listens as one engaged in serious conversation about ultimately serious matters. Because the reader may not really be serious, he may come under the judgment of the text and discover that he, not the text, has been the "object" interpreted. ⁶ In this encounter with the text, the Word of God is not simply the content of the tradition, nor an application of that content to present issues, but rather the Word of God is the address of God to the hearer who sits before the text open to its becoming Word of God. Most importantly, God’s Word is God’s Word to the reader/listener, not a word about God gleaned from the documents.

This all-too-brief statement concerning interpretation, on the one hand, that sees its task as thoroughly grasping historical content, and, on the other, interpretation that hopefully comes to a hearing of God’s Word addressing the interpreter is not intended to lead the reader to a choice and to prejudice him in that choice. On the contrary, this statement is merely to illustrate that he does not have to choose; indeed, he must not choose. Karl Barth did not choose. They err who have regarded him as the champion of anti-intellectual Bible-listening, his commentaries on Romans and Philippians being proof enough. Bringing one’s own problems and questions to the text does not replace thorough study; it rather gives study the proper posture and a compelling reason. The point of our present consideration is simply that the preacher must not, in his longing for unity in his messages and in his, whole modus operandi accept the easy victory that comes with either/or. Both approaches to Scripture sketched above participate in the struggle to understand, not just a text, but the will of God and the meaning of being Christian in one’s context. This understanding is the goal of interpretation and this understanding gives unity to the sermon. Unity short of this is pre-mature and more apparent than real.

There have been other ways of framing the issue of the fundamental tension that exists between the views of Scripture as content and/or as address. Joseph Sittler has labeled the two poles of the hermeneutical struggle "narrative" and "kerygma" locating the tension within the literature of the New Testament itself. ⁷ Kerygmatic declarations are found primarily in Paul and John where the accent is not upon a Jesus of Nazareth enmeshed in historical relativities but upon the crucified and risen Christ who now calls men out of death into life. Such declarations can be termed "address". Narrative materials, on the other hand, such as are found in the Synoptic Gospels, present more of the historical account. However difficult the grappling with the historical elements within "gospel" records, the presence of the first three Gospels in the New Testament testify to the Church’s recognition of the essentiality of the temporal, historical contingencies within her story of redemption. These narratives can appropriately be called "content".

Amos Wilder has analyzed the content and/or address character of the preacher’s message as it is being discussed in recent hermeneutical circles from a different perspective. ⁸ He has raised the issue of the nature of man and has asked whether the New Testament when viewed solely as content or solely as address has a message capable of redeeming the whole man. He regards it as an inadequacy of the Bultmannian approach that in viewing the Gospel as address, man is viewed simply as a volitional being, called upon to decide and nothing more. Man, Wilder rightly insists, is also a noetic being who needs explanations and meaning, who cannot make a "pure" decision apart from his whole social and cultural context. Social, historical, and psychological factors are not accidental to the man who is addressed and are therefore to be regarded positively in understanding God’s action in time and place rather than negatively or at best neutrally and as inconsequential to the decision for or against the addressing Word of God. To be sure, the introduction of historical and cultural content into the Gospel message raises the fear of the loss of immediacy and threatens the church with an archaic and history-trapped pulpit. But the alternative raises the charge of reducing the Word of God to a decision at the moment and reducing the man to a "decipher", abstracted from a context of meaning which the doctrine of creation so positively asserts.

Is the preacher, then, to regard the Gospel as content in response to which he seeks belief? If so, he can do no better than to work through his New Testament in order to arrive at a full summary of the items included in the Gospel. The best and most influential study of this type is still C. H. Dodd’s The Apostolic Preaching and Its Development. ⁹ Professor Dodd arrives at a digest of the kerygma of the early church after careful analysis of the sources in the New Testament, especially Acts and I Corinthians. But if this content is preached, how is the preacher to escape Bultmann’s charge that his sermons are history lessons calling for consent, a consent which lacks the courage of faith because it requires the support and legitimization of historical evidence before it will say "yes"?

Is the preacher, then, to move away from historical considerations in search of the immediacy Bultmann has found in regarding the preaching event itself as the eschatological occurrence, the end-time for the man who hears Christ address him in the sermon with the threat of death or the promise of life? This immediacy, this sense of the eternal significance of the present is for the preacher more precious than rubies. But how shall he escape Dodd’s charge that his sermons are gnostic evaporations of history and departures from the tradition which Paul and others, having received it, were careful to pass along to others?¹⁰

It was said earlier that unity is essential to movement in preaching, and that movement is the first essential to interest and effective power in preaching. However, it was further pointed out that the principal reason for the breakdown of the unity of the sermons of men who prepare for the pulpit is to be found in the di-polar nature of the preaching task itself. At no point is this di-polarity more evident and more difficult to negotiate than in the effort to create sermons that have Biblical texts as a primary raw material. The geographical, linguistic, psychological, cosmological and chronological gulf between the ancient Near East and modern America yawns frighteningly wide. It is small wonder that some preachers turn away in their sermons either from the ancient Near East or from modern America, while others dutifully grant equal time to "Background" and to "Application".

We have come, then, to the unenviable position of having asserted that the absence of serious interpretation of the Biblical text endangers the Christian character of the sermon while the presence of such Biblical interpretation endangers the movement of the sermon, and the unity essential to that movement, both qualities being requisites for maximum effectiveness. Obviously the next step in our consideration must be in the direction of a use of Scripture that is supportive of the thesis regarding inductive movement and yet a use which does not violate the honest exegesis which the text demands as the Scripture of the Church.

Footnotes:

1. Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970) , p. 87.

2. Op. cit., p. 59.

3. See the perceptive discussion of this problem in Sittler, op. cit., pp. 1-11.

4. van den Heuvel, op. cit., p. 66.

5. Ebeling, Word and Faith. p. 325.

6. James M. Robinson, "Hermeneutic since Barth", New Frontiers in Theology (New York: Harper’s 1964) Vol. II, pp. 1-77.

7. Op. cit., pp. 20ff.

8. "The Word as Address and the word as Meaning", New Frontiers, Vol. II, pp. 198-218,

9. London: Holder & Stoughton, Ltd., 1936.

10. For an excellent discussion of the Dodd-Bultmann tension cf. William R. Baird, "what is the Kerygma?" Journal of Biblical Literature 76 (1957) , pp. 181-191.

The inductive method of preaching makes such a demand upon the imagination that the nature and the significance of that demand need to be considered in detail. If, as has been stated thus far, the preacher is to communicate in such a way that the congregation can hear what he has heard, then he will not be satisfied to reduce the sights and sounds of his experience to points, logical sequences, and moral applications. He will fervently desire to recreate that experience and insight; he will seek to reflect it, not simply reflect upon it. In this task, the preacher will be served best by what Martin Heidegger calls the primary function of language: letting be what is through evocative images rather than conceptual structures.¹ But we may be moving ahead of ourselves here. Perhaps our full appreciation of this idea and the role of imagination in preaching waits upon our being disabused of faulty and inadequate understandings of this particular faculty of the human spirit.

Imagination is fundamental to all thinking, from the levels of critical reasoning to reverie and daydreaming. It is unfortunate and unfair that imagination has been popularly allied primarily with fantasy and thus often spoken of pejoratively as "just imagination" in the sense of the unreal and the untrue. Problem solving of all types, in the laboratory, in the kitchen, on a battlefield, or in the board room places a great burden upon the image-making faculty of the mind. Our own age, committed as it is to facticity and to the literal sequences of printed words can easily forget its indebtedness to imagination. Alfred N. Whitehead, scientist, mathematician, and philosopher, has described the path of human progress this way: "The true method of discovery is like the flight of an airplane. It starts from the ground of particular observation; it makes a flight into the thin air of imaginative generalization; and it again lands for renewed observation rendered acute by rational interpretation."²

The galleries of the mind are filled with images that have been hung there casually or deliberately by parents, writers, artists, teachers, speakers, and combinations of many forces. The preacher knows they are there, and he knows they may or may not correspond to reality and therefore may aid or hinder communication and learning. For example, he knows when he says "saint", an image appears and that image is very durable and most difficult to alter. If he goes on to speak of "a saint riding in an airplane", he should realize that saint and airplane are two very different images for many of his hearers and they will relinquish one or both rather than admit his radical conflation of the two. It may privately satisfy the preacher to ridicule and scorn antiquated imagery but the persistence of those old pictures is a tribute to the communicative power of previous generations and an indictment of his own inability to replace them.

Images are replaced not by concepts but by other images, and that quite slowly. Long after a man’s head has consented to the preacher’s idea, the old images may still hang in the heart. But not until that image is replaced is he really a changed man; until then he is a torn man, doing battle with himself and possibly making casualties of those nearby in the process. This change takes time, because the longest trip a person takes is that from head to heart.

All this is to say that in dealing with the imagination we are not on a tangent moving away from the center of the sober business of the Gospel. We are, however, on a line of thought that moves against much common opinion. Recall how lightly pictures in a book are regarded in comparison to the script. Do examinations over a book include questions about the pictures?

Because images, in a book or in a sermon, are generally regarded as decorative and hence optional in their bearing upon the principal form and content of the communication, the imaginative preacher may have to endure such comments as "His sermons don’t seem theologically weighty" or "It was too interesting to have contained much truth", or perhaps such inverted compliments as "I was much involved in your talk, or whatever it was. It didn’t seem like a sermon." But the preacher will know what he is doing and will understand the power of an image to replace an image and hence to change a man or a society.

Imagination is as essential to life as is hope; in fact, the re-activation of the dimension of hope in theology has begun to bring about more positive re-assessments of imagination. A significant little book appeared recently with the title Images of Hope and the subtitle Imagination as Healer of the Helpless.^.4 Imagination and hope belong together because imagination is ingredient to hope. Hope has many images: a lion and lamb lying together, breaking bread together, children beside a Christmas hearth, a banquet table, a bridal gown, a diploma, a pardon. No thoughtful person would toss these into a corner as "just imagination"; they are anchors cast within the veil.

For the minister, therefore, evocative imagery is not just an interesting introduction to a sermon nor a welcome break midway in the main body of the message nor a gripping conclusion. Images are not, in fact, to be regarded as illustrative but rather as essential to the form and inseparable from the content of the entire sermon. By means of images the preaching occasion will be a re-creation of the way life is experienced now held under the light of the Gospel. Here imagination does not take off on flights into fantasy but walks down the streets where we live. Here imagination reflects reality, and it is in their being real that sermons are delivered from dullness and impotence.

The place to begin discussing the function of imagination in preaching is not at the point of using imaginative words and phrases, but at the necessarily prior point of receiving images. As it is the person who hears who has something to say, so preaching begins not with expression, but with impression. This calls for a sensitivity to the sights, sounds, and flavors of life about him that is not easily maintained by the minister, or by anyone else.

Several factors are at work to close the pores of one’s psychological and mental skin and effect the loss of sensitivity. This loss is in part a natural one, a poor bargain made in the process of maturing and growing older. William Wordsworth lamented for all of us the fading of those alert years when "the heart leaped up" at the sight of a rainbow or when eyes not yet dulled by dissipation could catch the "splendor in the grass". The physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer once said, "There are children playing in the streets who could solve some of my top problems in physics, because they have modes of sensory perception that I lost long ago."⁵ All his life the minister needs to do battle against this gradual loss, for he knows that, as far as his preaching is concerned, it is better to have a child’s eye than an orator’s tongue.

The battle can be waged with some success simply by staying alive personally. This means that the preacher does not allow himself to become only a dealer in those commodities that allow others to live; he himself lives. He does not just announce the hymns, he sings; he does not just lead in prayer, he prays. Time spent walking rustic lanes, pushing on crowded subways, strolling among window shoppers, or standing in dreary terminals where life is reduced to arrival and departure is not with notebook in hand getting illustrations for sermons. Rather these are the movements and scenes of his own life and from his own psyche they inevitably become part of his preaching. If the imagery of his sermons is to be real he must see life as life, not as an illustration under point two. This means that the preacher who sees a cloud as a cloud, garbage as garbage, a baby as a baby, and death as death will be able to share images that are clear and that awaken meaning. It is true that there are tongues in trees and sermons in stones but only he who deals with trees as trees and stones as stones gets the message. It was while looking for his father’s asses that Saul found a kingdom. Two men of Emmaus shared an ordinary evening meal with a stranger and that supper became a sacrament. Life on its grandest scale comes to him who opens the door to the ordinary.

This same open receptivity toward life mediated through literature will be equally rewarding in the effort to maintain sensitivity. Nothing is reflected more obviously in the content, mood, and dimensions of a man’s sermons than the variety of his own reading. The most valuable literature for preaching is the great book read when the pressure of the next sermon was not there to turn the mind into a homiletical magnet, plucking useable lines from the page.

Of course, it must be admitted that some of the loss of sensitivity in the minister, or in anyone, is necessary for thought and concentration. To a certain extent becoming deaf and blind to distractions, a process often referred to as negative adaptation, is nature’s way of enabling us not only to keep our sanity but also to earn a college degree, operate machinery, carry on a conversation, meditate, or get a little sleep. But even so, of all people the minister should most often be asking himself, "In addition to that loud television next door, to what else have I become deaf?" Knowing the usual professional hazard of becoming hardened to the very human dramas that first moved him to the ministry, he will beware lest he add to it the conscious hardening that serves as defense against pain and loss. To be sensitive and open to others is to be vulnerable; that was made clear at the outset, at Golgotha.

By this time it should be evident how indispensable to preaching, and most especially inductive preaching, is the pastoral involvement in the life of the congregation. When the pastor writes a sermon, an empathetic imagination sees again those concrete experiences with his people which called upon all his resources, drove him to the Bible and back again, and even now hang as vivid pictures in his mind. When a pastor preaches, he doesn’t sell patent medicine; he writes prescriptions. Others may hurl epithets at the "wealthy" but the pastor knows a lonely and guilt-ridden man confused by the Bible’s debate with itself over prosperity: Is prosperity a sign of God’s favor or disfavor? Others may display knowledge of "poverty programs" but the pastor knows what a bitter thing it is to be somebody’s Christmas project. He sees a boy resisting his mother’s insistence that he wear the nice sweater that came in the charity basket. He can see the boy wear it until out of Mother’s sight, but not at school out of fear that he may meet the original owner on the playground. There are conditions worse than being cold. Others may discuss "the problem of geriatrics" but the pastor has just come from the local rest home and he still sees worn checkerboards, faded bouquets, large print King James Bibles, stainless steel trays, and dim eyes staring at an empty parking lot reserved for visitors. Others may analyze "the trouble with the youth today" but the pastor sees a fuzzy-lipped boy, awkward, noisy, wishing he were absent, not a man, not a child, pre-occupied with ideas that contradict his fourteen years’ severe judgment against the girls.

Some ministers have conducted themselves on the principle that too much involvement in the lives of the parishioners constitutes an overexposure which weakens the force of their preaching. In other words, distance is essential to authority. In terms of one traditional view of the ministry, this observation is correct, but the inductive method cannot live with that image. In the inductive method it is essential that the minister really be a member of the congregation he serves. Some men seem unable, for reasons deeply imbedded in their own needs and fears, to live in this relationship with the people and hence to preach in this way. This is the meaning of earlier statements to the effect that one’s method of preaching is determined by and is expressive of issues and convictions far beyond the province of a course in public speaking.

The danger for preaching that lies in open sensitivity to the experiences of others is not in an erosion of authority by overexposure but in the overwhelming of the preacher’s imagination. Having his mind flooded by the wide range and multiplicity of conditions of human need, he may make one of three errors in the sharing of images received. First, he may feel that so many needs face him that he cannot be specific and concrete in his sermons. To preach a sermon that re-creates and interprets the world of a teen-ager would be, he may feel, to neglect the elderly, or vice versa. Thus aware of all, he stretches the canvas of his mind to include everyone and the pictures become vague and general and hence unable to evoke thought or meaning. Secondly, the preacher may, out of this concern for all the individuals before him, preserve the sharp clear imagery of concrete situations but crowd so many different pictures into one sermon that his kaleidoscopic presentation lacks unity, and lacking unity, it lacks movement. Both of these problems will be discussed in the next chapter. The third danger to preaching caused by an overwhelmed imagination is that of allowing the mind and therefore the sermons to dwell on the more spectacular, the more newsworthy images of the human condition. The news media now bring the world of violence, poverty, war, and moral debauchery to the mind on wide screen, in color. The preacher will need to be careful lest his messages all become widescreen and color presentations. While these conditions are with us and bear upon the meaning of being a responsible Christian regardless of how quiet and secure the local parish, it is also vital that the preacher not be seduced by his television into thinking that these are the only needs in the world. There are many "meanwhile, back at the ranch" people whose needs are not only very real but whose conditions are worsened by the fact that they have been made to feel that in a world as sick as ours, they have no right to cry for help. Many whose lives are small screen, black and white, push through the crowd to touch the hem of His garment, hoping for a little inconspicuous healing.

The minister who is most capable of receiving and sharing the images that reflect reality is the minister who is not suspicious of any of his own faculties for such impression and expression. Some men, for theological or moral reasons, are not only suspicious of but are negatively disposed toward some dimensions of their own physical and psychic make-up. For example, quite a large percentage of the life pictures that come to us and ask to be reflected in our preaching are markedly emotive rather than logical or rational. A minister who is suspicious of emotion or uncomfortable with it, will allow his preaching either to suffer the total loss of this flavor or to suffer the distortion of emotion by his poor translations of it into rational concepts. For this reason it is important for the minister to think through carefully his own estimation of those pathways in the human psyche along which men feel as well as think their way. This examination may raise the deeper but directly related questions as to his own ability to cry or laugh or celebrate.

Some of us have been educated to regard emotion negatively, to define it as disorganized behavior or a biological lag. In the wake of this perspective came a view of maturity that was without emotion. The mature person served afternoon tea to both teams but certainly never got caught up in the struggle. The result was a tourist class citizen, negotiating life with a calm indifference, preferring to die curled up on some principle rather than to give his life fighting for what might eventually be judged an error.

This is, of course, a confusion of emotion and emotionalism, defining a quality by its extreme. Certainly there has to he clear recognition of the dangerous possibilities for dishonesty, deception, and maneuvering people by emotionalism. A preacher of integrity will avoid the practice of imitative magic, manufacturing tears, laughter, and other emotional signs in order to generate these among his hearers. On the other hand, such tricks by the charlatans should not effect the error of the opposite. In a simple figure, it is quite all right if the cup overflows, but the minister should not tilt it.

In our own time, the dominance of facticity characteristic of a technological age has tended to submerge the normal channels of emotional life, often producing abnormal and unhealthy emotionalism when they do surface. However, there are clear and welcome signs in recent years that we have learned anew the presence of a full set of emotions is no evidence of the absence of intelligence, nor is the ability to feel strongly about a matter to be interpreted as lack of maturity. Effective preaching reflects the minister’s open receptivity to those life scenes which are noticeably emotional in flavor but which constitute memorable and important stations along the way most people travel. From the time a baby reaches from the crib to catch the sunbeam streaming through a keyhole until the day when he sits old and alone among the pigeons in the park, the significant turns in the long road are marked by images with an emotional force that lingers in the memory long after the factual details are faded and dim. The preacher must be a whole person to admit such material without distortion or apology into his sermons.

We are considering the large room that belongs to imagination in every life with the obvious implication that preaching which moves inductively from concrete experience must not radically diminish that room nor alter it beyond recognition. This requires first of all an empathetic imagination in the preacher, a capacity to receive the sights, sounds, tastes, odors, and movements of the world about him. That this be real and not contrived necessitates receptivity to the full range of human emotion. Related to and yet possessing qualities beyond emotion is the aesthetic dimension of human experience. Sermons that reflect and address reality do not easily and always dissect every subject into true and false, right and wrong. Such divisions are also distortions because they are both partial and contrary to the way much of life is experienced. Many parishioners have come to expect but still resent the minister’s reduction of life into the two categories -- right and wrong. The reason for their resentment is that their experience has not been primarily one of right and wrong but perhaps could better be classified as the experience of beauty and ugliness. Should not the preacher include these categories if his sermons are to register the impression and the expression of reality?

Two objections may be raised against the homiletic embrace of the aesthetic. First, it may be argued that the aesthetic factors, while offering some interest and pleasure to the hearers, are, in fact, pure ornament and lack power to bring about any change. The urgent business of the Kingdom, we are told, demands that there be some leverage in all that we say and do, and beauty is powerless. Or to change the imagery, beauty is frosting, but it will not feed the world.

There is a practical ring to this position that is not without persuasion, nor precedent. It arises in church board meetings when the topic is carpets, steeples, stained glass windows, and pipe organs. It arose when a woman "wasted" an alabaster jar of expensive ointment when she anointed Jesus at Bethany. (Matthew 26:6-13) In a few minutes the aroma of that perfume has dissipated and what improvement was there in the condition of the world? The disciples had a point: the ointment should have been converted to cash and the cash to blankets, bread, and milk for the poor. Is Jesus’ defense of her, that she had done a "beautiful thing", really adequate? The world needs food, not fragrance. According to the usual canons by which men make judgments in the marketplace, Jesus stands corrected by any observant schoolboy. Should roses cumber the ground where onions will grow? How impractical and spendthrift is the aesthetic spirit! A choir of seventy voices works a total of more than seven hundred man hours to prepare for a five-minute delivery into the air. That same amount of time and energy more practically directed would cut all the weeds along Interstate 35 from Wichita to Kansas City.

For all the wise caution and sound counsel in these clear-eyed observations, there still remains something essentially vulgar about this craving for utility. Whoever looks upon a forest as only so many feet of lumber, or upon clouds as only inches of rain, or upon meadows as only bales of hay operates his estate at a loss. Extract from man’s life a healthy portion of songs and flowers and you have reduced to something less than man "the creature the Lord God has made to have dominion over land and sea". This issue involved here is no less than the nature of man. That person who refuses to grow flowers because he cannot fry rose petals in the fat of swine is a person who would, upon embracing the Christian faith, turn everything to practical ends: prayers help insomniacs, Bible reading settles nerves, clean living and honesty pay dividends, and church attendance wards off Communism. There is hardly any reason to preach to a man who would stand before a masterpiece in an art gallery with his hat on; he might hear the words but he would miss the tune of the Gospel.

If the preaching of the Church would address the whole man then let the imagination play over the facts and awaken tired spirits. Many of the parishioners are not so much evil as they are bored, and their entire Christian experience has never provided them a chair in order to sit for an hour in the heavenly places with Christ. They do not need an argument; they need air. Why not sermons that celebrate the unconditioned love of God? Instead of using Thanksgiving to scold the ungrateful, why not a doxological message? Instead of the weary harangues against commercialism at Christmas and the attacks against the once-a-year churchgoers at Easter, would it not be just as courageous to announce the Good News? Some Sunday mornings the minister should take the congregation by the hand and with them step off the dimensions of their inheritance as children of God. Some of them have been "preached at" for years but have never been given a peek into the treasury, much less to run their fingers through the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Is it true that there is no power in such preaching? Certainly not! The power of a revolution resides in the spirit that approaches life aesthetically. The great champions of the Social Gospel application of the message of Jesus and the prophets to the industrial, social, and economic problems of America were men who looked at those problems with aesthetic sensitivity. The poetic spirit of Washington Gladden was violated by injustice and economic imbalance; the ugliness and stench of poverty and disease stirred to action beauty-loving Walter Rauschenbusch. And those now involved in the church’s struggle against injustice would do well not to permit the aesthetic dimensions of the problems to be dismissed in the name of "stark realism". The social crises of our time are, among other things, conflicts of harmony and noise, symmetry and distortion, poetry and prose, beauty and ugliness, fragrance and stench.

The second objection to the sermonic embrace of the aesthetic is that such preaching does not speak to every one. This position is predicated on the view that in the hierarchy of human values and needs, aesthetics is near the top and therefore beyond the experience of all but the cultured and leisure classes. These sober brows tell us that no preacher has the right to speak of beauty to the balconied few while the groundlings struggle with the soil for bread.

The facts themselves answer this objection. Man in his struggle for survival has never been so reduced that his privations snuff out his aesthetic life. Put man in the simplest cabin and he will plant petunias about the door; drive him into a cave and he will play the artist on the wall; leave him nothing but sticks and he will devise a flute; bind him in chains and he will drag them to some remembered cadence; imprison him and he will sing hymns at midnight. The song leader of America has been the Negro; what right has he to sing? Our country has been led in laughter by Jews who cannot remember when Israel did not have crepe on the door.

The preacher who shares the whole Gospel with the whole man cannot listen to the guilt-laden people who weary us with their counsel that we cannot celebrate Christmas until Herod is dead. Of course, the celebration is premature; all celebrations are premature. It is premature to sing carols at the crib when Good Friday is yet to come; it is premature to light birthday candles when death is one year closer; it is premature to kill the fatted calf when there is no guarantee the prodigal will not leave again. But Christ is born King even before Herod is dead. If in that harsh world a mother’s whisper and a baby’s cry could be heard above the clash of shield and sword, why should the preacher withdraw his own soft hopes and turn cynic? This is not to say that he will ‘‘use" aesthetics to infuse sweetness into bitter things. Rather he will remain sensitive to those meaningful qualities of human experience which are often muffled by the sirens that daily alert the public to the beginning of a new countdown. The minister whose imagination receives and shares these sights and sounds will preach with a realism beyond that of a journalistic mentality.

We are considering the minister’s capacity for impression as the necessary prerequisite for expression. An empathetic imagination means first having the wisdom and grace to receive the images of life about us and then secondly the freedom and confidence to reflect these with appropriate expressions. Such honest receptivity and reflection is fundamental to the nature and movement of inductive preaching, concerned as it is with the concrete realities within human experience. As we have noted these experiences involve thought, emotion, and aesthetic appropriations. Finally a word should be said about humor, because an honest reception of life’s imagery will naturally and normally prompt laughter. The reason for this is that humor is directly related to the experience of concrete reality. The extent to which the preacher’s mind dwells upon the general, universal, and abstract will be the measure of his lack of humor. Traditional deductive preaching, bringing general truths to bear upon the lives of the hearers, has therefore been marked by a lack of humor. But inductive preaching opens the door immediately to the presence of this dimension of our common life.

Inductive preaching will, therefore, have to face the criticism of often appearing less serious. Those who make such a criticism, feeling that the high seriousness of preaching precludes all humor in the pulpit, are more influenced by a Puritan heritage than by the Bible. They also fail to understand the nature of humor. Humor grows out of the genuine capacity to sense the seriousness or importance of an occasion, or an event, or a word. It is the person who is always apparently serious who is not really taken seriously. The force of humor as humor depends upon the direct evidence of truth or significance in the matter involved. An analysis of humor will reveal at its base something sacred, profound, or highly significant. Hence much humor involves occurrences in a school room, in a sanctuary, in domestic relations, or the attendance to creature needs. Even the sacraments of the church have provided occasions of humor, muffled, of course, by a sense of guilt which failed to see that only the true and meaningful can provide the leverage necessary for laughter. The human body knows this because its physiological adjustments are essentially the same for laughter and for tears.

The raw materials for humor are the concrete realities experienced by all of us. Humor arises not when these realities are viewed nonseriously but when these are brought together with incongruity, effecting a misplaced accent, a slight distortion of the usual, or the mixing of values. Mary’s little lamb at school, a bird in the sanctuary, a fly on the preacher’s nose, a leak in the baptistry, a stubborn lock on the restroom door, these very concrete and "experienceable" occasions prompt laughter. There is no laughter in broad references to education, adoration, stewardship, righteousness, and humanity.

The minister who receives and shares the authentic signals of life as the congregation knows it will have a sense of humor. This does not mean he tells jokes. Telling jokes is no clear sign of a sense of humor and is a questionable pulpit practice with much common sense against it. But a sense of humor is simply the freedom to receive and to share life’s imagery without the compulsion to evaporate the concrete into spiritual truths or melt it down into bland generalities. Thus understood, humor becomes for speaker and hearer a form of celebration, an expression of fellowship, a confession of trust in the Creator who made things as they are and who does not need the protection our humorless piety would afford.

Given, then, the capacity for being impressed by the full range of signals from life without and within, there remains for the preacher the task of expression. Simply put, this task is to use evocative imagery that will allow his congregation to see and hear what he has seen and heard. What he has seen and heard is not a special esoteric corpus of information about God which has been delivered to him to pass along, but our existence as it is in the liberating light of God’s graciousness toward us. God’s Word is not so much "a light which shines upon God but a light which shines from Him".⁶ But how is the minister to speak so that the images he has received are formed in the imaginations of his hearers with clarity and force sufficient to effect changes in attitudes, values, and life directions? Perhaps the most adequate answer could be framed by distilling into several guiding principles what has been said or implied in this regard in this and the preceding chapters.

First, let the selection of images to be shared be drawn from the world of experience known to the hearers and let these images be cast in forms recognizable as real and possible. This is to say, at no time are God’s people to be given the idea that they are living at the wrong time, in the wrong place, on the wrong planet, to be really genuine Christians. It is a famous fault of preachers that they, perhaps to gain persuasive leverage, often draw upon the exaggerated, the extraordinary, and the extreme image to portray the Christian life. The history of the Church is embroidered with real but rare dramas of martyrdom; Polycarp, Ignatius, and Joan of Arc did actually exist. But if the preacher makes normative the sacrifice of Polycarp, the conversion of Saul, the stewardship of St. Francis, and the service of David Livingstone, then he will leave his most serious listeners wishing they were someone else, somewhere else. In the meantime, the Kingdom does not come to dull little towns where God’s lightning never seems to strike. And the same is true in portrayals of evil. Nothing creates hypocrisy in the average church so much as the sermons which succeed in identifying sin with those headlined crimes that plague distant cities.

Secondly, as far as is possible, let the preacher use words and phrases that image specific and concrete relations and responses. Each of his hearers is equipped with a set of senses with which he experiences the world about him, and addressing those senses will awaken that experience anew. The minister would do well to check his sentences to see if his words convey that which can be heard or seen or smelled or touched or tasted. If the sermon deals with marriage, words that re-create the image of a particular wedding communicate much more than references to "holy matrimony". Holy matrimony does not reflect a single wedding ever experienced; it reflects upon all weddings, and all weddings means to the hearers no weddings, just as every where means no where. If the sermon revives the memory of the odor of burped milk on a blouse, it evokes more meaning than the most thorough analysis of "motherhood". It is well to remember that much of the force of the sermon is dependent upon the preacher’s sharing what his hearers already know.

Thirdly, the principle of economy in the use of words, especially adjectives and adverbs, is invariably a sound one. The decision to do so is not simply in the service of brevity, but an economic use of words implements several principles of inductive preaching already discussed. The use of a few words suggesting the main lines of a picture permits the hearers to fill in the details and complete the image. This is their right and their responsibility as participants in the preaching. For the speaker to supply the total image robs them of this right, insults their intelligence, deprives them of a vital part of the process of arriving at new meaning and insight, and lastly, may cause them to feel some revulsion toward the speaker. The reason is that detailed and complete description, especially of scenes of great joy or sorrow reveals a lack of sensitivity in the speaker. Many ministers have gotten the opposite of their desired responses to very vivid and detailed portrayals of the Crucifixion. Communication, like revelation, must leave room for discovery. For example, no one ever directly reveals himself, but through specific attitudes, acts, and comments, observers are able to draw the portrait. This is the principle operative in the reaction of many Christians to the Fourth Gospel’s reports of Jesus’ sayings: "I am the bread from heaven", "I am the good shepherd", "I am the light of the world". These are better understood as conclusions about Christ reached by disciples than his assertions about himself.

In this same vein, an economic use of adjectives and adverbs helps the preacher resist the temptation to tell people what to think in response to his comments. For example, if a speaker introduces a narrative illustration with such words as "I recall an event in the life of a very fine, genuine, outstanding Christian man", he has already told his hearers what conclusions to reach about the man: he is a fine, genuine, outstanding Christian. Why not tell the story about "a man" and upon its conclusion the congregation may say to themselves, "that man is a genuine Christian". In discussing the literary imagination, William F. Lynch has reminded us that "In tragedy the spectator is brought to the experience of a deep beauty and exaltation, but not by way of beauty and exaltation."⁷ Let the minister pile upon his people long sentences about the "inspiring and moving" and he thereby drains the occasion of all possibility to inspire or to move.

A final but not unimportant reason for not being complete and exhaustive in framing images for the listeners is that had they actually been present to see for themselves what is being described, their experiences would have been partial and incomplete. Direct sensory evidence is never presented whole at a given moment but is always fragmentary. No one has ever seen all of a chair or football or automobile at one time. If "being there" means fragmentary experiences, the preacher should know that exhaustively detailed imagery smacks more of unreality than of reality. It is a child’s art that places both eyes on one side of the head to assure observers of the profile that the person portrayed had two eyes.

Effective words are set in silence, during which time the hearers speak. The real sermon is the product of all that is contributed by both speaker and listeners during their time together.

A fourth guiding principle for conveying to others images received is to avoid all self-conscious interruptions in narration and description. Dozens of times in sermons a minister may take his eye, and hence his listener’s eye, off the subject by inserting such phrases as "we find", or "we see". Under no other circumstance does a person interrupt himself by telling those about him "we read" or "we find in this story". He just reads it and does not get between the book and those attending to it, unless, of course, he has an abnormal craving for attention. No one stands at a window with another and continually inserts distracting phrases such as "We are looking out this window" or "We see out this window". One simply points to the bird or the meadow or the cloud. Then why should these worse than useless self-conscious phrases continue to weaken and scatter attention drawn by the preacher to Biblical narratives or to the life scenes about him? These wordy encumbrances serve the sermon as effectively as a conversation would be served by the conversants saying frequently to each other, "We are talking".

A fifth and final principle to guide the effective sharing of images which awaken images is fundamental to the whole preaching task: the language used is to be one’s own. There was a time when the language of the English Bible and the language of the marketplace and of the home were much the same. In fact, the English Bible was for many the basic text for learning and for teaching reading and writing as well as for more advanced essays into the world of literature. In that time the minister’s own language, that of his congregation, and that of the Bible were very similar. Now this is becoming less and less the case. For the minister to fill his sermons with Biblical terms and phrases assuming they have meaning is to err tragically. In fact, it is a question whether there is in some of these terms real clarity of meaning for him personally. One has come to expect to hear "blessed", "spiritual", "righteous" and "soul" in sermons and they seem to caress the emotions of many, but little clear signification is conveyed. Some ministers and laymen may continue an indiscriminate reciting of these words because they lament the demise of the Bible culture and the growth of secularity, but if the desire to communicate is strong, the lament will be cut short. There is no intrinsic value in simply repeating the confessional language of other people, even if their words are in the Scriptures.

All this sounds very much as though the traditional language of the faith were being excised as an act of concession to modern ears untrained, untuned, and uninterested. The fact of the matter, however, is that this call for the vernacular in the pulpit is a call to obedience to Jesus Christ who talked of the Kingdom of God in terms of borrowing a loaf of bread at midnight, worrying a judge to distraction with a civil suit, scrambling for seats at the head table, pulling bums in off the street to eat the king’s banquet, and patching worn clothes. His refreshed hearers were happily amazed while his critics scored him for the clear absence of that jargon which often marks sermons off from all other human discourse. Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote:

To refuse to use one’s own language is to refuse to accept one’s self, one’s words, and one’s hearers as an occasion for God. It is clear evidence of a lack of faith. But to offer up one’s own words in the service of the Word is an act of full trust in Him whose power is made perfect in weakness.

Footnotes:

1. John MacQuarrie, Martin Heidegger (Richmond: John Knox Press, 1968), p. 48.

2. Alfred North Whitehead, Process and Reality (New York: Macmillan Co., 1929) , p. 7.

3. Ong, Op. cit., p. 51.

4. W. F. Lynch, (New York: The New American Library, 1965)

5. M. McLuhan and Quentin Fiore, The Medium is the Massage. (New York: Random House, 1967) p. 93.

6. G. Ebeling,, The Nature of Faith. p. 190.

7. Christ and Apollo (New York: c. Sheed & Ward, 1960) , p. 77.

8. Letters and Papers from Prison, trans. R. Fuller, rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1967) , p. 161.