PREACHING

I had planned on writing a blog on preaching for this week. In one of those happy coincidences–serendipity, as I have written about earlier–an added dimension to my thought was raised by my good Presbyterian colleague, Brady Seeley. Pastor Seeley and I are working on a training program for lay visitors. In our conversation, Pastor Seeley mentioned his own training in homiletics (preaching). His class used as a text book Design for Preaching. I knew the book at once, for it was used in my homiletics class. It was written by H. Grady Davis, Professor of Functional Theology at the Chicago Lutheran Theological Seminary in Maywood, Illinois. It was the book that transformed preaching in the 20th century. Even though it was first published in 1958, it continues to influence preaching today.

I had the great good fortune to take the last class that Grady Davis taught before his death, “Ethnic Backgrounds of Liturgical Music.” The course had little to do with that title, but it didn’t matter. It was a tremendous experience to learn anything at the feet of the master preacher.  He was also kind enough to sell me a copy of his book The Gospels in Study and Preaching. This was the first volume of a proposed series that examine the texts for the Sundays of the church year from an exegetical standpoint by New Testament professor Arthur Vööbus and preaching notes by H. Grady Davis. It was a tiny sample of what the five-day-a-week preaching seminar must have been like at Maywood with Vööbus, Davis, and theologian Joseph Sitler each speaking on the lessons. Unfortunately, Fortress Press did not continue the series even though they had the manuscript for ten more Sundays in hand. What a loss! I wonder if any Maywood grads still have notes from their presentations?

What was so great about Davis’s idea of preaching? Maybe this will give you an idea. He wrote:

A sermon should be like a tree. . . .
It should have deep roots:
As much unseen as above the surface
Roots spreading as widely as its branches spread
Roots deep underground
In the soil of life’s struggle
In the subsoil of the eternal Word.
 
Sounds like poetry. Or take this except.

The Word of God is a call to both these persons, to broken and divided selves who stand swaying giddily on the edge of life. It is a call both to mind and heart at once and equally. At such a time, the form which strikes directly and silently below all rational defense may make the difference between a hearer’s redemption and his despair. The truth can reach him best through its imagined forms: beauty and compassion, strength and courage, regret and forgiveness, faithfulness and love, pain and hope.

I doubt that I have come close to preaching with the depth that Davis imagined a sermon should achieve. I have never preached a sermon I have been totally satisfied with. Nevertheless, I strive to root my sermons in the “Soil of life’s struggle and in the subsoil of the Eternal Word.”

A brief story: I was in college when this happened–a music major, not a religion major. I had not the slightest inclination to be a pastor. The current pastor of the church had riled up a good many people in the church. I think in his view the church was mired in the past and he was going to drag it into the 20th century kicking and screaming. He was probably right, but he had no people skills. He tried to lead by demands and threats, which doesn’t work in the long term. Many of his sermons were nothing more than scoldings. Even when he preached on love, he scolded people. I couldn’t have explained then what was wrong, just that the preaching was completely ineffective. One Sunday morning I went to his office before the service to ask him something. He was at work at a table writing on a stack of paper, a large, old book open before him. When I got close enough, I saw what the books was–a collection of sermon illustrations. He was writing the sermon he was going to preach in less than an hour. Now maybe this was a one time occurrence. It can happen that a preacher isn’t ready on Sunday morning. But I got the sense that this was a regular practice. No wonder there was no depth to his preaching. It didn’t have any roots in the Word.

I have never used canned sermon illustrations. They would never work for me because they don’t come out of my experience. Davis wrote: “Only an idea that comes alive in the preacher has power to expand into a living sermon.” Absolutely right!

Many years ago as a seminary student I faced the dread Synod Examining Committee. This was the group that decided whether or not you should be recommended for ordination. I was worried and frightened and some of my examiners had serious doubts about my worthiness to be a pastor.
One of the questions put to me was, “How do you prepare a sermon?” Although I had never formally thought about that, there was a very clear pattern I always followed. Usually on Monday I read the texts for the next Sunday to let them simmer in my mind. Almost all of my sermons are text based. For me they have to be or else I risk talking about any old thing and not what God’s doing. As the days go on I check for variations in the text, read commentaries, and ask myself (if it is a Gospel) what did this mean when Jesus said (or did) this? What did those around him understand? How did people understand this story when it was told later?  What did the Gospel writer see here? What does it say to me now and to the people I know, their experiences, their needs, their questions and struggles? I look for a germ of an idea that can grow the sermon.  And if I don’t learn everything I should from the text, don’t say everything that I could say, that’s all right because it will come around again.  

Late that afternoon I was informed that I had received an enthusiastic endorsement. Later it was explained to me that I was the only person examined who could explain how they wrote a sermon.

I am still learning how to preach. Over the years I have continued to read books on homiletics, Preaching by  Fred B. Craddock, Homiletic: Moves and Structures by David Buttrick, The Witness of Preaching, by Thomas G. Long, and the seminal The Servant of the Word by H. H. Farmer, a book that strongly influenced H. Grady Davis. And currently I am reading a collection of Karl Barth’s early sermons–powerful stuff. 

As helpful as these are, however, the real food for my preaching is my daily encounter with the Word of God, both in my devotional life and in study. I’m teaching an adult class on Acts, so I have had to study that book in much more detail than I ever have. Good thing, too, since this year’s Easter readings come from Acts. The Office of Readings that I pray every morning is taking me through Revelation as it took me through Exodus during Lent. That’s what I need.

From April 30 to May 2 I’ll be at the Florida-Bahamas Synod Assembly. (Please pray for us.) The important thing will be the sermons I hear because one of the greatest lacks a solo pastor has is hearing the Good News proclaimed. Listening to yourself on Sunday mornings is not enough and more than it is enough to hear yourself pronounce the absolution on others. You need to hear it said to you.  

Well, this came out rather differently than I had anticipated, but that often happens in the sermons that I write.

May the Lord God bless you on your journey and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne






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