I wrote this in the last church newsletter; I thought it might be useful here – feedback welcome.
Recently, several people have asked me what goes in to a sermon. Most people who have attended worship services most of their lives have heard more sermons than they care to count. However, most people never really see what goes on “behind the scenes� to produce a sermon every week. So let’s take a look together at this mysteriously familiar phenomenon of preaching.
A sermon begins in silence. Silence is an essential part of good preaching because it requires the preacher to set aside all of the background noise of life – both the noise of the world around them and the noise of their own internal thoughts and ideas – so that they can hear the quiet voice of God, which is otherwise overwhelmed by all the static. This time of silence varies in its length, since it requires quieting one’s heart. Depending on the day, that sometimes takes quite a while.
Out of the silence, then, the reading can begin. Here I pick up the Scriptures, and I read the text for the week over and over, listening for what it will say, listening for what God will say in it and through it. If all goes well, the text sinks deep into my heart and mind, into the space created through silence. Here the text sits, and we go through the process of rumination together: periodically bringing the text up to consciousness, thinking about it, and then letting it sink back down into sub-consciousness. In this way, everything that follows grows up from the Scripture and develops scripturally. In so doing, I place myself – and all who will hear – at the mercy of the Scriptures.
When I believe I have heard the text, when I have studied it to see its greater place in its context – including listening to the voices of other faithful followers of Jesus Christ as they explore the same text – I begin to ask four questions:
1. How does this passage express the Good News?
2. What is the prophetic message of the passage?
3. What sort of response should this passage evoke?
4. What form must the message take to accurately reflect what the passage says?
Each of these questions is packed with meaning. They are answered, ultimately, in the process of writing the sermon. When we look for the Good News, we look for how the passage describes how God has come in Jesus Christ to destroy the power of sin, evil and death and to bring new life to all who will participate with him in his cross. The witness of our brothers and sisters in Christ is that we can find this Good News throughout Scripture.
When we look for the “prophetic message,� we look for how the passage says, “This is the Word of the Lord,� and then compare it to the corresponding areas of our own life – individually, as a body of believers, and as participants in 21st century American (or even global) culture. The prophetic message is the comparison and the contrast between the Word and our life, often looking at the result of the discrepancy.
When we look for what kind of response the passage tries to evoke, we find there are many ways of responding to the same passage. Sometimes the response will be encouragement and celebration; sometimes it will be very expressive; sometimes it will be quiet; sometimes it will be prayer; sometimes it will be repentance; sometimes it will be rejection of Jesus Christ himself – if people see what following Jesus means and choose not to follow. The passage often sets up what the responses will be, based on where people’s hearts are to begin with.
Finally, when we look for what form the message should take to express the meaning of the passage, we look for how the message will be formatted, what kind of style it will have, what visual, auditory or other sensory components it will have, and whether it will be best done as a pastoral monologue, a group discussion or a group activity. Here is the place where we begin to engage the services of concrete blocks and canoes and water coolers and duffel bags and “open microphones� and music and all the rest. Here is where we, one day, will include audio and film clips, brainstorming sessions, and much, much more.
All these things – good news, prophecy, response, and form – combine to shape what we see on Sunday morning in the part of the service we call the Sermon. The words, beginning in silence, emerge from the text to form a message that will evoke a response from the prophetic good news. That’s what goes on behind the scenes. Clearly, the pastor isn’t the only one involved. Let’s explore together how all of us might participate together as those who hear and respond to the Word of God.
