I hope you’ll join the fantastic Jim Martin and me as we teach “Preaching That Connects” at Harding School of Theology (Memphis, TN) Feb. 28-Mar. 7, 2013.  This D. Min. course promises to be practical and inspiring.

Preaching Point #12 - Monday Morning Factor: Preaching will be both more biblical and more effective when it answers the question “What difference does this make on Monday morning?”

The great heresy addressed by Paul in 1 Cor. 6 was that some Christians believed God cared about the soul and not the body (thus, it didn’t matter what you did with your body–even visiting prostitutes was fair game!).  Paul writes to help these Christians see that God cares for both the soul and the body.

We see the same interest in Jesus’ ministry.  Jesus did not merely teach and thus address the mind and heart.  He also healed–giving sight to the blind, making the lame walk, and casting demons from the possessed.

The great heresy in preaching is that God cares about Sunday and not about Monday; God cares about the hereafter and not about the here and now.  And yet the truth is that God cares as much about the regular routines in your Monday as he does about the religious rituals on Sunday.  He is as concerned with your here and now as he is with your hereafter.

One question has helped me to keep this perspective in mind when working on a sermon: “What difference does this text/ topic/ doctrine/ story make on Monday morning?”  If listeners can’t see in what way their life or their world might be impacted on Monday by the message, the message may not be worth preaching.

This is especially important in such a pragmatic culture like ours.  People are desperate for what “works”–whether in relationships, work or spirituality.  And while we must not lead people to judge the Christian faith to be true solely because it works, it does work–because it is true.  I strive each Sunday to show this in my preaching.

Think of one individual in your life right now.  In your mind, see that individual.  Now sit quietly before God with that individual in your heart.  What does he/she truly need?  What is most urgent for that person?  Now, pray about what you’ve heard.

You, Lord, are like the mountains.

You surround us, protect us, and inspire us.

You, Lord, make us like mountains.

You cause us to become strong, enduring, and unshakable.

Be my mountain today Lord.

Make me a mountain today Lord.

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When I look back over my life, I see one thing clearly: you are for us.  You are on our side.

There was that time when dangerous people made my life so difficult!

But you rescued me.

There was that time when all my carefully constructed plans suddenly collapsed!

But you saved me.

There’s not a single doubt in my mind.

You are for us.

You are on our side.

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The Heirloom of Prayer

During her sunset years of life, Kendra’s grandmother hand-stitched several colorful quilts for Kendra.  They are some of our favorite heirlooms—especially the double wedding band quilt.  The blankets remind us of Memaw’s generous love, fun-loving spirit and quirky personality.  I think of her every time we pull a quilt out of our hallway closet.

Perhaps you have an heirloom from a much-loved-one.  A family piano.  A treasured set of crystal.  A piece of framed art.  These items reflect that individual’s kindness and care.  They tell us something about the heart of that person.

Leaving an inheritance is a common practice.  We’ve come to expect it from those who are important to us.  But what about the One who is most important?  Did Jesus leave an heirloom?  If so, what was it?  What gift did Jesus bequeath to those who lived after he left?  If Jesus had written a will, what legacy would he have listed on its pages?

Perhaps with such questions in mind, George Buttrick writes this: “Two signs of Jesus abide, though all else be ignored or forgotten—a prayer and a cross…These are His memorial: not a tombstone or a moneyed foundation, but a simple prayer and a gallows set against the daybreak.”[i]

You may not be surprised to find the cross listed on Jesus’ Last Will and Testament.  Almost universally, when people think of the Christ they think of the cross.  The worldwide symbol of Jesus’ contribution to humanity is his cross.  The world-changing summary of Jesus’ challenge to humanity is his cross.  He died so we might live.  We die so that others might live.

But you may be surprised by the mention of a prayer.  A prayer is listed among his most prized possessions?  Buttrick is referring to a specific prayer—what we call “The Lord’s Prayer.”  Besides the cross, what captures the heart of Jesus is the heirloom bequeathed to us in his Lord’s Prayer.  As Jesus sought some way to pass down what most mattered to him, he chose to grant us the inheritance of Calvary’s cross and the Lord’s Prayer.  William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas write, “So if you are asked, ‘Who is a Christian?’ the best answer you can give is, ‘A Christian is none other than someone who has learned to pray the Lord’s Prayer.’”[ii]  To be a Christian is to pray Jesus’ prayer.

What’s so valuable about this prayer?  Consider its wonderful words:

⁹  Pray then like this:

“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
¹⁰ Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
¹¹ Give us this day our daily bread,
¹² and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
¹³ And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil. (Matt. 6:9-13 ESV)

The prayer, as Frederick Buechner writes, focuses primarily on God’s omnipotence and our impotence.  It is rooted in the belief that God can still do anything and that we still can’t do much of anything.  It is the ultimate declaration of dependence.  It puts God in his place.  It puts us in our place:

“We do well not to prayer the prayer lightly.  It takes guts to pray it at all…’Thy will be done’ is what we are saying.  That is the climax of the first half of the prayer.  We are asking God to be God.  We are asking God to do not what we want but what God wants…To speak those words is to invite the tiger out of the cage, to unleash a power that makes atomic power look like a warm breeze.  You need to be bold in another way to speak the second half.  Give us.  Forgive us.  Don’t test us.  Deliver us.  If it takes guts to face the omnipotence that is God’s, it takes perhaps not less to face the impotence that is ours.  We can do nothing without God.  Without God we are nothing.”[iii]

The prayer puts God in his place and us in ours.  It invites the tiger out of the cage.  Authors Mike Breem and Steve Cockram propose that everything Jesus taught about life in the kingdom of God is summarized in this brief prayer.  True discipleship comes only as we learn to pray this prayer.[iv]

The cross and this prayer.  These are Jesus’ greatest gifts.  In them we find all that is needed for a life of following in his footsteps.

Preaching Point #11: The Compass Factor – The most fruitful preaching will point North toward God, not simply East to a Text, South to a Topic, or West to a Demand.

There are trends within contemporary culture which suggest that God-oriented sermons will connect well with listeners.  In general, postmoderns are more open to the general idea of a deity who is part of life on earth.  In rejecting modernism, postmoderns also reject the modern belief that a god has no part of the narrative of life.  David Tacy suggests we are in the midst a “spirituality revolution” in which people have rejected the “values and assumptions of mechanistic science and humanism…” and in which young people especially “realize, often with some desperation, that society is in need of renewal, and that an awareness of spirit holds the key to our personal, social and ecological survival…”[i]  Similarly, R. K. Brewer writes that a dominant quality of postmoderns is that they are “spiritually curious.”[ii]

But not only is interest in God a central part of contemporary culture, it is also a central, in fact the central focus of the Gospel.  In the words of Paul, the central story of Scripture is that of a God who acts in human history so that humans “would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us (Acts 17:27).”  Regarding the primary message of Jesus, Scot McKnight calls it the “Jesus Creed.”  Jesus’ message could be summarized simply as a call to love others and love God.[iii]

Preaching can utilize this common ground between Gospel and culture.  Paul Scott Wilson writes, “Preachers tend to think of the sermon as an object or a thing, like an essay or lecture, rather than a vehicle God uses to establish a relationship with God’s people.  Salvation is communicated and authentic life bestowed.  God’s advent in part is through preaching.”[iv]  That is, God comes to us through the preaching.  Thus, in general, the sermon should have as its theme an action of God’s.  The “good news” of the sermon ought ultimately to be something about God.[v]

This theocentric preaching primarily seeks to answer the questions: “Who is God?” and “What has God done on our behalf?”  Listeners walk away not having just encountered the text (bibliocentric preaching) or the demands placed on them by the text (anthropocentric preaching).  They also walk away having encountered God through that text.  Thus the ultimate good news of the text is “God News”—a word about who God is or what God has done.

How about you?  What direction does your preaching point?  How do we keep preaching pointed at God?

I’m watching you, Lord.

My eyes are fixed on your hands.

The way a child looks to the hands of her father.

The way an athlete looks to the hands of his coach.

The way a patient looks to the hands of her doctor.

I’m watching you, Lord.

My eyes are fixed on your hands.

May they bring the mercy I so desperately need.

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Here are the 50 words:

God made. Adam bit. Noah arked. Abraham split. Jacob fooled. Joseph ruled. Bush talked. Moses balked. Pharoah plagued. People walked. Sea divided. Tablets guided. Promise landed. Saul freaked. David peeked. Prophets warned. Jesus born. God walked. Love talked. Anger crucified. Hope died. Love rose. Spirit flamed. Word spread. God remained.

What would you add/ take away/ revise?

Preaching Point #10: The Wailing to Dancing Factor – Preaching tells the best story when it moves between bad news and good news.

Factors within contemporary culture and within the Gospel prompt this kind of sermon structure and content.  Within culture, we once again recognize the experiential-bent of contemporary listeners and the reality that many of their experiences today are “bad news” experiences.  Dominic Strinati writes that, “The loss of a sense of history as a continuous, linear narrative, a clear sequence of events, is indicative of the argument that meta-narratives are in decline in the postmodern world…Meta-narratives are ideas such as religion, science, art, modernism and Marxism which make absolute, universal and all-embracing claims to knowledge and truth.  Postmodern theory is highly skeptical about these meta-narratives, and argues that they are disintegrating, losing their validity and legitimacy and increasingly prone to criticism.  It is argued that it is becoming increasingly difficult for people to organize and interpret their lives in the light of meta-narratives of whatever kind.”[i]

This loss of meta-narrative creates the potential for anxiety, frustration, and fear—if there is no grand story which makes sense of my story what is my purpose? For many in the postmodern and post -Christian world, therefore, “bad news” is a constant experience.  Farhat Iftekharuddin states that “…life in the last half of the twentieth century seems restless and disjointed, at least as reflected in contemporary American literature.  The dejection and cynicism of the moderns appears to have culminated in the fatalism and brokenness of the postmodern era: fragmentation, alienation, and inescapable isolation permeate the characters of fiction.”[ii]  There is a sense in which many in this postmodern culture experience a brokenness, a pain, and a fragmented life.  They are all too familiar with the “bad news” of life.

But not only is “bad news” (and the corresponding need for “good news”) inherent in our culture, it is inherent in the Gospel.  The story of the Bible and the Gospel moves from bad news to good news.  Discussing the theme of judgment and grace seen in Genesis 1-11 William LaSor writes: “The primeval prologue prepares the way for the history of redemption.  The relationship is that of problem and solution.  Its chapters carry utmost importance for understanding all of Scripture.”[iii]  That is, the theme of judgment and grace, problem and solution is sounded in Scripture’s earliest pages and sounded thereafter.

Paul Scott Wilson has made a particularly important contribution to sermonic form in this regard.[iv]  Wilson argues that trouble and grace are the “grammar of the Gospel.”  The gospel has a “polar quality to it: sin and redemption, judgment and atonement, trouble and grace, cross and empty tomb, old age and new creation.  The movement from one to the other is the signature movement of the gospel.”

This common ground between Gospel and culture provides a way to further reflect upon sermon structure.  Not only are inductive narrative structures helpful, especially those which reflect both upon text and upon contemporary life; but these structures may be particularly productive if they attempt to reflect the brokenness of the postmodern narrative/life, the judgment and law of Scripture and the Gospel/grace/good news of Scripture.

Once again, Paul Scott Wilson’s work provides an effective way to consider these issues.[v]  Wilson suggests that sermons ought to contain bad news and good news, trouble and grace, law and gospel.   The sermon can thus take the form of 1) moving into trouble in the biblical text, 2) showing that trouble in life, 3) moving into grace in the biblical text, and 4) showing that grace in life.  The narrative and inductive structure is maintained by withholding the “good news” until the sermon’s end (diagram below).

Lord, you may be sought and found anywhere.

Wherever we are, you are.

But there are also special places for seeking and finding:

sanctuaries,

chapels,

monasteries,

mountains.

The places and spaces where your people gather for praise and petition are perfect for discovering the divine.

So, for these places and spaces, I pray for peace.  Peace among members.  Harmony between worshipers.

May the House of the Lord be filled with peace.

May I seek you today where you wish to be found.

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