Ben Meyers, "How (not) to preach the parables"

http://faith-theology.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-not-to-preach-parables.html

Friday, 8 August 2008

How (not) to preach the parables

I've often been struck by the way Jesus' parables are interpreted in Christian preaching. Several years ago, I heard an extended series of sermons on the parables, and after a while I realised that each sermon had the same basic structure: first, the parable was narrated (with a few observations about historical context and such); then the pastor proceeded, with great warmth and sensitivity, to provide a "balanced" ethical interpretation, carefully guarding against any "extreme" application of the parable. So when Jesus says to sell everything, it's not about possessions, it's about the state of your heart – and so on.

I still remember my own psychological response to these sermons. First, the parable would be told in all its starkness and simplicity: and I would feel my heart pounding in dread and anticipation at the challenge of Jesus' words. Then, by the end of the sermon, all my fears would be alleviated – no need for alarm; God's command isn't so uncompromising; Jesus really demands nothing of me after all!

It's a curious thing that pastors often find it so difficult to preach Jesus' parables. In truth, the only hard thing about the parables is that they are so simple, so straightforward in what they claim and what they demand. They are so simple that we need to make them difficult in order to escape the piercing gaze of Jesus. Or perhaps some pastors feel they need to soften the parables in order to protect the congregation from God. After all, it is God himself who bursts through these stories, coming on the scene with the unaccountable strangeness of a seed in the ground, with the disruptive suddenness of a thief in the night.

In his great book on Discipleship, Bonhoeffer highlights our tendency to "interpret" the teaching of Jesus in a way that leaves us safe, comfortable, unchallenged. Referring to typical interpretations of the story of the rich young ruler, Bonhoeffer remarks (p. 79): "Everywhere it is the same – the deliberate avoidance of simple, literal obedience. How is such a reversal possible? What has happened that the word of Jesus has to endure this game? … Anywhere else in the world where commands are given, the situation is clear. A father says to his child: go to bed! The child knows exactly what to do. But a child drilled in pseudo-theology would have to argue thus: Father says go to bed. He means you are tired; he does not want me to be tired. But I can also overcome my tiredness by going to play. So, although father says go to bed, what he really means is go play."

In a different context, Karl Barth once told a little parable of his own: "To what shall I liken the basic principles of [liberal] theology? Is it not like a clock which is so cleverly constructed that the hands move from right to left instead of from left to right?" Our preaching about Jesus is often "cleverly constructed" in exactly the same way.

By removing everything offensive from the teaching of Jesus, we might succeed in making it easier to enter the kingdom of heaven – but in this very act, the kingdom is turned into a bland mirror image of the status quo. If we want to preach the words of Jesus faithfully, perhaps we need to lose some of our cleverness, our talent for interpretive evasion, and work instead at making our proclamation simpler – not easier, but simpler.

posted by Ben Myers at 12:49 PM

Justin Taylor, "Questions to Ask Before you Preach"

Questions to Ask before You Preach

Joe Thorn:

These questions help to clarify and correct my preaching even before I stand up on Sunday.

1. Does this message exalt the gospel of Jesus Christ?
Will people walk away from this gathering encouraged to trust in law or grace? Can a person hear this message and know our only hope of redemption?

2. Will people know what to do after hearing the message?
I never want my preaching to merely grant knowledge. Good theology always impacts the will. Does a man know what he should do in response to the truths unpacked in the message beyond the general call to repent, and believe? What will repentance and faith look like for my audience?

3. Am I saying anything that will distract from the point I am trying to make?
Here I am thinking less of content and more of expression. Might the language I use, or the illustrations I choose, become the focus rather than the message I am trying to communicate?

4. Do I, at any point, make much of myself in this sermon?
I have heard a number of people express frustration with how some preachers make much of themselves in their preaching and teaching. It is as if some men are ever the example of how to do things well. This will either lead men to think "That pastor is awesome!" or "That pastor sure thinks a lot of himself." Either way I am getting in Jesus' way during the sermon if I make much of myself.

5. Would I like this to be the last sermon I ever preach?
It's a good question to ask, because it just might be the case. Believing that this may be my last opportunity to preach Christ will clarify what really needs to be said. Am I okay with this message being the last thing my family and church hears from my lips? And more importantly, am I okay with this message potentially being the last thing a man, woman or child will hear about the gospel before they die? This too just might be the case.

When asked, these questions bring a sense of sobriety and urgency to my preaching. Do you ask yourself any questions like these before preaching/teaching? What else might we ask ourselves?

posted by JT at Friday, April 25, 2008

Alastair on Problems with Evangelical Preaching

While lamenting the state of much preaching and asserting the importance of preaching, Alastair traces the effects of the primary focus on preaching in evangelicalism, which he argues actually can undercut the rest of the church's ministry, which tends to elevate man's word over God's Word, its effects on the role of the pastor and the congregation, etc.

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http://alastair.adversaria.co.uk/?p=707

From time to time I hear people lamenting the current state of evangelicalism and particularly of the loss of an appreciation for preaching. I couldn�t agree more that there is a lot of bad preaching around. Fortunately, I don�t have to sit under such preaching too often, but the fruits of it are not hard to see.

However, although I see a big problem, I am not at all convinced that traditional evangelical preaching is the answer (perhaps people would appreciate preaching more if we only had it once a month, like the Lord�s Supper�). I believe that there are deep problems with many of the traditional paradigms for preaching in evangelicalism and elsewhere. Preaching has become the event of the weekly gathered worship of the Church, which seems to me to be a serious departure from the biblical pattern. Even when Paul speaks until midnight at Troas, the Eucharist is spoken of as the reason for gathering (Acts 20:7). In the context of the weekly gathered worship of the Church, preaching should essentially be �tabletalk�.

While the Scriptures certainly teach about the importance of preaching, they also say a lot about aspects of the service that evangelicals tend to downplay as a result of their emphasis on preaching. The Scripture says a lot more about the institution of the Eucharist than it does about Christ�s institution of the Sermon as an essential element of gathered worship.

Such a focus on preaching has created new concepts of the Church. The Church becomes defined primarily around ideas and ever more sharply defined theological positions, rather than around community, which is something that the Eucharist retains the centrality of. The Church has also become organized more and more around one man�s activity (and, as James Jordan comments, that man is not Jesus Christ). Evangelical congregations are often more passive in gathered worship than medieval ones were and this is a serious problem. The service becomes something that the preacher does, rather than the shared activity of the body of Christ.

Worship becomes a mere preface and epilogue to preaching. Scripture-rich liturgies are abandoned and in some churches the congregation only open their mouths for the singing. Pastors do not prepare the liturgy. The liturgy is an after-thought, hastily thrown together, while most of their effort is put into crafting the rhetorical masterpiece which is the Sermon.

The pastor becomes increasingly defined by his role as the �preacher�. Rather than letting the father-like leadership that the pastor exercises over the congregation condition our understanding of the role and practice of preaching, other dimensions of the pastor�s role have been forgotten as his preaching becomes all-important. In actual fact I am not at all sure that preaching is the most important task committed to the pastor. One does not have to look far in evangelicalism to find good examples of the way in which preaching can eclipse all else, reducing churches to preaching centres. Far from building up the Church, such preaching undermines it.

Scripture reading in the service is often reduced to the reading for the sermon. Contrast this with the Eastern Orthodox liturgy. For instance, Robert Letham lists the readings in the EO liturgy for Good Friday � John 13:31-18:1; John 18:1-28; Matthew 26:57-75; John 18:28-19:16; Matthew 27:3-32; Mark 15:16-32; Matthew 27:33-54; Luke 23:32-49; John 19:25-37; Mark 15:43-47; John 19:38-42; Matthew 27:62-66 and, quite literally, these are just starters. There are probably a couple of dozen more Scripture readings in addition to those already mentioned.

This brings to light one of the deepest problems with preaching as understood and practiced within conservative evangelicalism. This problem is the priority that it tends to give to our own words in worship, over God�s words. Our words gradually squeeze out God�s words. Rather than letting preaching be the handmaid of God�s Word, we will reduce the Scripture readings far sooner than we will cut down the length of the sermon.

The responsive and receptive character of Christian worship becomes downplayed and our words become less and less controlled by God�s Word. The Scripture content of the liturgy and prayers plummets, to be replaced by evangelical clich�s. The texts for sermons become ever shorter. Some evangelical preachers pride themselves on preaching huge sermons on a couple of words in a text. This often has the effect of leaving preaching largely uncontrolled by the Scriptures. For many sermons the �text� is merely a pretext or springboard to explore a dimension of systematic theology or the like.

Evangelical worship is full of the noise of our own voices. We continually speak at God but don�t take the necessary time to attend to and to digest what He might be saying to us. Having more times of silent response to readings of the Word of God, for instance, would be a huge step in the right direction, as would having more lengthy readings that are not preached on (throwing out the technology that eclipses the simplicity of worship would also be helpful). Sometimes we need to resist the urge to continually rush to say what the Scriptures mean and just allow them to work on us, practicing the art of listening to Scripture together (which means that we do NOT read along in our own Bibles). Contemporary evangelical worship, with all of its technological bells and whistles, provides us with dozens of distractions from the simplicity of the Word of God and from the terrifying silence that might actually lead to personal or theological epiphanies.

Preaching has come to be understood as a great rhetorical event. I believe that significant changes in popular evangelical preaching styles would have to take place in order to bring them more in line with Scripture. Calm Scriptural exposition should replace many of the impassioned rhetorical displays that one hears from evangelical pulpits (rhetorical displays that often disguise a depressing lack of content). The pastor should teach the congregation as a father teaches his children. This means that the ideal position is sitting, not standing, and that shouting and the raising of voice for rhetorical effect is generally unnecessary.

The pastor should also remember that he is like a father teaching children, something that many evangelical preachers forget. If unbelievers attend worship they are eavesdroppers; the gathered worship of the Church is not for their benefit, but is about the relationship between God and His people. The fact that preaching in the Church is for children means that preaching is for the converted. Sin and unbelief are still addressed, but they are addressed as issues in the lives of the children of God � the baptized.

The oratory model of preaching tends to place orator and audience at different poles. The model presumes an initial distance between orator and audience that needs to be overcome by rhetoric. Standing behind the lectern, the orator tries to win over his audience with clever rhetoric and artificially exaggerated emotion. Preaching becomes drama; preaching becomes an �act� in which the preacher adopts an affected style of speech.

The pastor should address the congregation as one who already has a relationship with them. The father or the pastor should not have to �win over� their hearers in the way that the orator does. They �win over� their hearers differently, by powerful truths plainly and lovingly spoken and by teaching with a gracious authority. The pastor should teach the congregation entrusted to him much as Jesus taught His disciples. He speaks naturally to his hearers and does not employ an affected style. The passion and emotion that arise are natural and not exaggerated or affected.

Many of the problems of emotionalism and rationalism in evangelical circles arise from distorted models of preaching. If pastors were more concerned with plainly addressing the truths of the gospel to the consciences of the saints in the context of the gathered �family meal� of the Eucharist I suspect that we would not have the same problem with the rationalism and intellectualism that arises from the rather silly idea that the intellect is primary, for instance.