Proclaimer Blog
On not preaching what we know is there, part 1
As we Cornhill staff listen to students giving practice sermons and talks and then lead the subsequent discussion time, I’ve noticed an occasional phenomenon. It goes like this:
• Leader: “Explain the logic and flow of that passage to us as clearly as you can.”
• (Student does so, and does it quite well.)
• Leader: “Good. But that wasn’t the central message of your sermon. Why not?”
• Student: “Well, I just didn’t know how to preach that.”
One very honest student (whose permission I have for this) was recently preaching to us on the second half of Isaiah ch.1. I, along with some others in the group, felt that he’d missed the crucial logic at work in vs.21-26. In that section, Jerusalem moves from being indicted by God as a ‘prostitute’ inhabited by murderers (v.21) to being called ‘the city of righteousness, the faithful city’ (v.25). And Isaiah tells us how this dramatic shift is going to occur: God will turn his hand in judgement against his enemy Jerusalem (vs.24-25a – which is no surprise), and in doing so will not sweep Jerusalem away but in fact will remove all her impurities (v.25 – which is a big surprise: here is divine judgement that does not destroy but purifies).
So we asked the student: “If that’s the core of the passage – judgement from God on his people that purifies – why did you preach about forgiveness, which is a rather different topic? What went wrong in your prep that led you to miss the key thing?”
To which he replied, with refreshing openness: “I didn’t miss it. I did notice it. But I just didn’t have a category for it.”
I think that’s a perceptive comment. A preacher who knows he must study Scripture carefully will often spot the core message of a passage accurately. But that’s not enough for preaching. He needs to have the necessary biblical/theological grids and frameworks in place which allow him to make sense of what he’s seen in the text, to know how to relate it to Christ and to his people, and therefore how to preach and apply it with faithfulness and power.
If my core understanding of Christ’s saving work defaults constantly to justification and forgiveness as my only controlling categories, then although I may still notice when Scripture says something else about salvation (as Isaiah 1.21-26 does), I’m probably not going to know how to make sense of it, preach it or apply it. As Mr Spock used to say, I may see the data in front of me, but it just won’t compute, Captain.
Further on this to come…