Don’t Peek 2.23.2023

    My topic this week was supposed to be the nature of Jesus’ Messianic claims in the Gospels. Instead, I will say a few things about the current “Elephant in the room,” the events at Asbury University in Wilmore Kentucky. 

    To begin with, I don’t know anything firsthand. I have read about it in several newsletters I receive via email. I have read about it in the news. Some of these accounts are first-hand, others derivative. All of which is to say, and I repeat, that I don’t know anything about it. Any opinions or conclusions I (or anyone else who is not there) might have, are framed by ignorance. Ignorance is fine when it is accompanied by humility. It is OK to say, “I don’t know.” 

    Despite a lack of first-hand knowledge as a pastor-theologian, there are some observations I can make from the known facts and a couple of legitimate conclusions which can be drawn. 

    One of the questions that interested inquirers routinely ask, even as the administration of the College tries to return the school to its teaching mission, “should I go?” This inquiry reveals much about our current cultural concerns and ongoing issues confronting the Church. I cannot address those issues here, but I think I can help provide some insight as to how we might process this event and the impact it might have on the Church—regardless of whether you and I participate firsthand. Let’s consider a couple of baseline Biblical ideas that I think help us keep this event, and all other profound “experiences” in perspective.  First, let’s remind ourselves of something Jesus told Nicodemus when first broaching the subject of new birth and the indwelling Holy Spirit.

“The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”” (John 3:8 ESV)

 Jesus is reminding Nicodemus that the Holy Spirit cannot be controlled, compelled, or coerced. An additional Biblical guideline comes from a full understanding of how the Holy Spirit moved the Church forward in the book of Acts. On the day of Pentecost, there was a broad representation of the ancient world which participated in the event. 

“Acts 2:7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? Acts 2:8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? Acts 2:9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Acts 2:10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, Acts 2:11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God.” Acts 2:12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?”” (Acts 2:7–12 ESV)

Within a generation of that crowd asking the question “what does this mean” the entire Roman world knew, and not everyone had to go to Jerusalem to find out. When God moves, when the Church is renewed, and when there is revival, reformation, renewal, or restoration the ripple effect is unavoidable. 

    I don’t know exactly what, but it seems that God is doing something in Kentucky. Time will tell how significant it is, what lessons are to be learned, and what actions need to be taken. Yet, if this is truly a revival, then we must let it play out as God wills, through His Holy Spirit, in the place, and among the people, He has chosen. So, by all means, pay attention. Assess what is going on. Make it a matter of prayer and filter it through Scripture.  And stay home. For the broader Church to benefit from the Asbury Revival we must let God’s Spirit move. Traditional and social media are not necessary to drive the work of God forward. Why should you and I let Asbury be Asbury while being prepared to apply the lessons we learn?  Let me provide some specific guidance. I think that this will be helpful not just for this event but for how we should always process the liminal experience of others. 

It is not your experience.

    Do not confuse media coverage with participation. I have no doubts that something profound is happening. I don’t have to be a part of it to understand, process, learn, and apply the lessons which might accrue to the Church through the experiences of others. Now, I know that I can have a harsh “bedside” manner, and simply pointing out that “it is not your experience” might seem like carping, but if this is truly a work of God then we need the patience to let God work. Jacob wrestled with God by himself. No one else was in the winepress with Gideon. It was just Paul and Silas in jail. Experiences are non-transferable and when we try, we end up changing the experience.

    You and I did not participate in the prayers or chapel worship leading up to this reviving experience. We did not attend class, live in the dorms, eat in the dining hall, or hang out with the students. We did not live their lives. We did not share their stressors. We are not embedded in their context. To rush to Wilmore, even in grateful participation, is nothing more than a form of gawking. 

1. It.

2. Is. 

3. Not.

4. Your.

5. Experience. 

    If it is a genuine movement of God’s Spirit, you’ll know. You won’t be able to get out of the way. Two factors have typified and largely defined Christianity for the last 30 years, diminishing or marginalizing the impact of the Church. Increasing juvenilization (youth ministry for big people) and the continual pursuit of experience. These trends can give the impression that the Church is not to be taken seriously, and that it lacks the capacity to be reflective and theologically contemplative. Rushing off to witness someone else’s profound, defining experience reduces it to spectacle and creates a commodity out of something which is un-shareable. If Asbury presages a genuine revival, you don’t have to be present to be impacted. If this is an act of God, perhaps it will remind us that we need to take seriously something that cost Christ so dearly. Maybe we will learn that the movement of God is not constrained by our social media feeds or our narcissistic need for participatory immediacy. Faith often means waiting. The Church must regain the patience to wait on God as He moves according to His sovereign will. 

If it is genuine…it’s coming your way.

    The quotation from Acts 2 reminds us of the broad spectrum of the Mediterranean world “present” at Pentecost. The rest of the book chronicles how people who were not present at Pentecost felt the ongoing movement of the Spirit through the work of Philip, James, Peter, and of course, Paul. 

    Surely there were some pilgrims who thought “I need to get on over to Jerusalem and see what is going on!” Most remained home.  Regardless, the Church was moving in their direction. 

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”” (Acts 1:8 ESV)

    In obedience to this mandate the Church bore witness and the Spirit moved. Christianity did not begin with a regressive “pilgrim” mentality of always returning to the place of its birth, but with a mentality of moving forward into the darkest corners of God’s fallen creation and bearing witness to Jesus. We bear witness to Jesus, The Spirit bears witness to Jesus, and as the song says Jesus Saves.

Don’t Kill Schrödinger's Cat

    Sometimes quantum physics and common-sense overlap. Observation and interaction affect the entity observed. It is impossible to keep secret the powerful movement of God at Asbury. Yet the more it is observed, and the greater the interaction with the off-campus curious, the greater the chance that the observation itself will alter the phenomena. As believers, we are emotionally invested in the work of the Lord. I understand. I’m pretty much obsessed with it myself. Yet none of us is the only one. There are others--many others who share our faith and passion. Their work is valid, and their experiences richly contribute to our ongoing life of faith and service. 

    There are times when we must be content with full faith informed by partial knowledge. (Reread that last sentence) I ALWAYS want full knowledge. Yet even when our knowledge is only partial, God compels us to be fully faithful.  Forty years of ministry is finally teaching me to be satisfied with what I’ve got. And as much as I sometimes want to peer into the box to get a glimpse of the elusive cat, we must acknowledge that yielding to that temptation—kills the cat. 

 

The Gospel in the Gospels: Miracle2.16.2023

    It is more difficult than one might imagine, to preach compelling, timely, and actionable sermons from texts dealing with Jesus performing miracles. This may not seem self-evident at first, believing as we do that Jesus is/was God in the flesh and thus able to intervene in whatever capacity He wished. While this is true, and our faith in His power is firm, that still doesn’t make it any easier to apply these narrative texts.

    You and I are not God. Though God may continue to act in supra-natural ways He does not need us to do so. Even more pointedly, as God-in-Flesh, Jesus was exercising His divine will when He chose to heal, cast out demons, control natural processes, or even raise the dead. 

    The reason these texts can be complex is that they amplify and condense all the other issues we have been discussing this month regarding the exegesis of narrative texts. It is already more difficult in dealing with narratives to make the leap from telling the story in the text, to applying the lessons from the text. The risk for the preacher is narrating, describing, and backgrounding the text; only to abandon it for personalizing and application. Our job is still to preach the text, even when it is hard. (Note…I just paused and looked at last Sunday’s sermon from Mark 6.1-6 to make sure that I did not violate the advice I am now giving.)

    This may be more difficult in our current circumstances than it has been for many generations. Let’s discuss why it is difficult and then we’ll explore some strategies for preaching compelling, timely, actionable sermons from the miracle texts in the Gospels. Increasingly, in dealing with a myriad of topics I find the following heuristic pattern useful for analysis.

Biblical

    There are several misunderstandings about the role of miracles in the scriptures in general and in the Gospels in particular that we need to consider. These issues can be reduced to number, distribution, purpose, and promise. Let’s start with a specific reminder from John’s Gospel

“John 20:30   Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; John 20:31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.” (John 20:30–31 ESV)

From a Biblical perspective, the miraculous signaled a new, groundbreaking epoch in the work of God.  There was no greater change in that work than the coming of Jesus. Though His miraculous deeds were not the reason for His coming they were marks of His coming: marks of the presence of God.

    Throughout the Old Testament miracles were not commonplace, and people did not necessarily expect or depend upon them. Some of the miracles recorded were for the encouragement of the recipient and did not have any further impact beyond the individual recipient who benefited directly. 

In looking at the Bible as a whole we tend to misjudge how many miracles occurred, where and when, for what reason, and whether each was attached to and fulfilled a promise.

    We need to understand that our belief in miracles should not lead to exaggeration or expectations which do not follow from the text. The various epochs defined by miracles signaled new often revolutionary developments in the covenant relationship between God and humanity. Yet the benchmark for this relationship always remained faith. The consistent testimony of scripture is that, despite common sense, miracles did not and do not produce faith. 

Historical

    Because of Enlightenment and Post-enlightenment attacks on the miraculous in scripture, it has become a historical necessity for Christians to “defend the faith” against these attacks. To that end defending the scriptures is often reduced to explaining and defending the miraculous. 

    The historical outcome of this apologetic trajectory follows, as one might guess, the laws of unintended consequences, and emotional satisfaction. It feels good to affirm the miraculous as an essential part of understanding scripture. In fact, it feels so good that such defense begins to subtly increase the centrality of the supernatural in general and the miraculous to the story of scripture and the unfolding Christian history. As Seth Godin recently stated in a blog post: “If it’s all in bold then none of it is in bold.” Once we define the Christian faith in terms of continuous miraculous intervention then we have, in effect put everything in bold, and nothing stands out. This is a historical misapplication of Biblical truth with consequences for daily Christian living individually and corporately. 

    Christ calls us to follow Him in faithfulness. This has been the standard since Abraham. Abraham followed before God moved miraculously to give him a son, provide a substitute sacrifice on Mt. Moriah, or overthrow Sodom and Gomorrah because of their sin. 

In short, we must be careful lest an overly ardent defense of the miraculous nudges us toward an overly indulgent dependence on the miraculous. We see some of the impacts of this sort of thinking in neo-Pentecostal movements whose recent record of accomplishment is to reduce the life of discipleship to waiting on the miraculous or even manufacturing it. 

Theological

    Which leads to the need for a theological perspective. If everything is miraculous, then nothing is miraculous. If the norm is abnormal intervention by God, then there is no need for us to understand the content of scripture or the outworking of faith in historical processes. This leaves the Church bereft of guidance and reduces the individual believer to something like a quest for enlightenment, where after enough reflective waiting, God acts. 

    This is not the normative application of scripture. This is not the normative process of historical development. This is not a theologically sound understanding of miracles. The job of theology is to take the raw material of sound exegesis and the factual flow of historical processes and to build a structure for governing our understanding. From this understanding, the Church and the individual believer can accrue faithful wisdom. It is this store of faithful wisdom that allows us to contribute to the growth and understanding of one another as we follow Jesus as disciples. Theology is important because it combines Biblical data and historical development. Theology is the context for living. 

Tactics

So, to summarize. We must be careful in preaching about Biblical miracles lest we:

• View what the Bible sees as exceptional as normal. Miracles in Scripture are not treated as commonplace. They were extraordinary, or should I say “miraculous.” The reductionistic tendency to make everything miraculous has the opposite impact. 
• Confuse the historical activity of God with our own activities. God acted miraculously in Israel’s unfolding history. God in flesh acted miraculously during His earthly sojourn. He has called us to be in a relationship with Him. Some of His servants in both covenant relationships were the means by which He acted miraculously. God does miracles.
• Reduce all theology to God’s actions without considering our corresponding reaction, which is of course faith. Earl Weaver’s offensive strategy when managing the Baltimore Orioles was to wait for a three-run homer. Far too much of our theological engagement seems to be the same. Discipleship, worship, fellowship, fruit-bearing, experience in the Scriptures, developing an aptitude to preach or teach, exercising diligent oversight. The church needs these acts of faith, and they are not miraculous. In fact, they require you and me to do the work. 

    Tactically we need to grasp why Jesus did miracles and what that can teach us about other means of working out diligent discipleship. With reference to faithfully and accurately preaching the Gospel texts dealing with Jesus’ miracles, this means making. three connections. 

Miracle and Incarnation

    Jesus is God the Word, made flesh. The acts of compassion or power in the Gospels point to His deity. It is always tempting to look for a motive beyond the obvious. “God in flesh” was able to personally override the laws He built into His creation. In doing so He demonstrated His graceful character and divine presence. In preaching miracles, we must point out the divine presence as communicated in the text. In trying to apply the text we will find material not so much in His deeds as in His motivations.

Miracle and Kingdom

    The presence of Christ meant the presence of the Kingdom. Jesus inaugurated Kingdom through His ministry. There were times to describe and teach the Kingdom message, and times to demonstrate the pure presence of the Kingdom. Jesus did both. 

    In His life, He confronted many who were opposed to His message. Kingdom was not well received by those in the throes of Empire. Even His hometown failed to see Kingdom through His eyes. 

“And he could do no mighty work there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and healed them.” (Mark 6:5 ESV)

Jesus didn’t perform miracles to “make people believe.” He performed miracles and some believed while others refused. Our job in the 21st century is to make sure that people decide for or against Jesus based on our faithful proclamation of Kingdom.  

Miracle and the Cross

    The Crucifixion is the ultimate demonstration that our understanding of God’s purposes. Our knowledge is limited, and we must focus on what is central. The Son of God willingly died. There was no miraculous intervention until the tomb was opened and death was defeated. As humans, we cannot see the big picture. God does. That picture determined His strategy and tactics for the scheme of redemption. 

Any theology of the power of God must ultimately deal with the reality that the Kingdom came in the humble power of a crucified Savior. To want anything more than the empowering life of resurrection, something spectacular, something to “get the attention” of the world around us is an ultimate misunderstanding of how God Himself, when present among us, lived, loved, and served. 

    Yes, this essay is long as well as late. There is a reason. It is hard, in our age in which preachers become trapped in the mania for application, to apply these important texts. We want people to “be like Jesus” and some mistake that guidance for figuring out how to have a “miracles” ministry in our time. Others reduce the message of Gospel miracles to petty moralizing. The best approach is to remember that “God with us” lived a life of compassionate service. This was worked out in healing as well as teaching. When Empire became frustrated with its inability to corrupt or corral Him, it killed Him. Not comprehending the ultimate outcome. The proper response to the life of Christ, the proper outcome for all our preaching whether that text teaches a parable or narrates a miracle, the proper response to the life of Christ—His whole life, is cruciform living.

The Gospel in the Gospels Message 2.9.2023

    Narrative texts can be difficult to preach, particularly in an era so addicted to “application-driven” preaching. The difficulty is both a matter of form and content. Narrative by its very nature, driven by plot and character requires us to deduce applications from the story. And let’s be honest, it’s a little difficult to identify with or draw conclusions from someone like Samson and his sprawling, violent, petulant, and sometimes erotic story. This is the nature of story. We tell them not only to understand the characters in the story but to come to grips with our own strengths and weaknesses. None of us has the same profile of strengths as Samson, but to one degree or another, we all share his weaknesses. We can find preaching trajectories through Samson’s story by looking at the way God ultimately used a very flawed person to bring deliverance.

    Biblical narratives are not primarily about flawed human characters, but about the gracious God who redeems. In a sense, every character in every Biblical narrative is a contemporary extension and stand-in for Adam. Fallen human beings, despite cultural and social distance are far more alike than different. Sin is the greatest commonality and grace the greatest need. 

    The exception is Jesus and the overarching “Story” narrated in the stories of the Gospel. Though characterization in the Gospels is somewhat simpler because of the divine origins and claims of Jesus, they are even more complex from a preaching point of view because we must pay attention to what is said by the Gospel authors about Jesus, as well as what Jesus Himself says and does. 

    How do we sift the various narrative streams in a Gospel to carve a path for weekly preaching? How do we arrive at a message? There are several paths I wish to discuss. Each of them is a valid and useful approach. I often frame these discussions in terms of longevity. Each year when we preach from a Gospel, we must choose one of these strategies, tracing a trajectory through the book. Next year, next Gospel. The year after, still a third Gospel. Three years in the future and we preach the fourth of our Gospels. In the fifth year, we are back to where we started, and we must decide how we are going to preach these same texts to this same congregation. There are lots of shortcuts and ways to beg, steal, or borrow but the best process is to work through the text before you year by year using different approaches, tracing different trajectories. Let’s look at some alternative approaches and see how they can both contrast and complement one another. 

Occasional

    In a sense, this is the original approach. Papias of Hierapolis affirms that in compiling his Gospel, Mark recounted the occasional preaching of Peter and recorded what he remembered, largely without attention to chronological order. Peter preached and Mark preserved. 

    It is possible to partially emulate the practice of Peter and Mark, randomly picking out texts from any or all the gospels according to the needs of the moment. The weakness of this approach is that, for most of us, it will result in excluding texts that are either hard to understand or too demanding. Or minimally we will focus on what interests us and marginalize texts which don’t leap immediately to the forefront. 

    Peter was an apostle. You are not. Peter walked (literally, physically) with Jesus. You have not, not yet at least. Peter and his associates worked to refine and hone the story of Jesus in that first generation of preaching and teaching. They were the originators of the message. All our preaching is derivative. 

    Additionally, the messages we preach must accomplish several goals. Teaching, reproving, correction. Providing guidance in right doctrine as well as applied Christian behavior and leading the lost to Christ. These goals would seem to require a more disciplined plan than “the next thing that crosses my mind or that piques my interest.”

Liturgical/Lectionary

    The most ancient approach in the Great Church Tradition is to follow a lectionary. For many Free-Church Protestants this is a little “high-churchy,” Though it is rooted in a more liturgical approach to scripture and worship, its ancient roots (the Synagogue used a lectionary system before the Church) are a time-tested way to ensure a balanced, planned approach to all scripture, not just the Gospels. 

    Lectionaries include both daily readings and readings for Sundays. As each lectionary entry includes (minimally) a Psalm, an OT lesson, and an NT lesson there is plenty of weekly material for an entire program of preaching and teaching. During the period between Christmas and Easter, a preacher can just decide to follow the Gospel readings and they will culminate on Easter. 

    The lectionary is great for those who don’t think they need structure or who don’t want to reinvent the wheel. For someone who is just starting out the Lectionary may be perfect for keeping on task. Though the reading is laid out for you, you must still do the heavy lifting regarding exegesis, exposition, and sermon crafting. 

Straight Expository

    At first glance, this is the easiest approach. Pick your Gospel, start at chapter one verse one, and preach pericope by pericope through the book. I’ve done it. The only real problem with this method is time. If you give each pericope due attention, the shortest Gospel (Mark) will take more than a year. Most congregations need greater variety and many simply won’t tolerate it. It looks less like a well-considered plan and more like laziness. While easy to follow, this method can be exhausting for everyone involved. It is possible to do this while summarizing or skipping large amounts of material but that kind of undermines the very notion of preaching the whole book. 

    Just a quick example, there is more than enough material in the three chapters of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount to get from Christmas to Easter. To do so, however, leaves out a lot of the road to the cross, the events of the Passion, and virtually every parable. Straight expository beginning-to-end preaching works better for non-narrative texts than narratives. Both because the texts are shorter and tend to be structured according to subject rather than by narratological plot. 

    Now don’t get me wrong, our approach to each text should never change. We need to do detailed exegesis regardless of how we proceed through the book.  Yet that exegesis, if it is to yield a preachable sermon must follow some sort of a plan or the weight of its randomness will become unbearable.

Thematic Exegetical

    If you want to flourish preaching the Gospels, you need to become so familiar with them that you can trace a variety of thematic trajectories through them to guide your exegesis. This is good for you as a preacher because it will help you be more creative and it’s good for your congregation because they will be able to see familiar material from different perspectives. The words do not change. The exegesis will remain essentially the same. We are talking about a difference in emphasis, focus, and perspective. I call it thematic exegetical, but you can use various trajectories to approach the material.

• Themes

• Topics

• Doctrines

• Characters

• Locations

    Here is a more detailed example. I’m preaching through Mark right now. My theme for Mark follows the theme of the year which is beginnings. Another trajectory could have been Mark discusses the problems Jesus faced, the parables Jesus taught, and the promises Jesus made. I could have used some of the same texts and the same exegesis. Different trajectory, different emphasis, different perspective. Four years from now, the next year for preaching from Mark I will have usable, accessible material at hand and the first use of that material will be to determine what trajectory I want to trace through the book. 

Summary

    Preaching and teaching are too important to neglect. Preachers talk about sermons, and they are our “work product” each week but our job is not to write and preach good sermons. Our job is to teach scripture. Sermons are the primary means to that end. Good sermons do a better job of feeding our flocks the bread of life than bad sermons. If this is to be your sacred task, your vocation, you need to think long-term. 

     Our sacred task is to bring a message from God to His people. This flock, in this location, under our care. Not any message for anyone but this message for these people. Not generic, not homogenized, not canned, not commoditized, not marketed, not stolen, not “borrowed”, not just preached but lived. By you, in your environment. This message, this place, these people, hearing God’s Word framed by your thinking and clothed with your voice.

 

The Gospel in the Gospels Method 2.2.2023

        When we hear the word “Gospel” our first thoughts are of the four books in our New Testament that record the life and ministry of Jesus. This use of the term is not the earliest. In fact, the Synoptics themselves use the term to describe Jesus’ own message. 

    The first NT author to use Gospel as a proper noun for the specific identifiable message about Jesus was the Apostle Paul. The earliest NT writing is the book of 1 Thessalonians. For the first, but certainly not the last time, Paul used the word “Gospel” to denote the specific saving message of Jesus. The Gospel is the message of the Church, the message that defines us, the message we preach. 

    A few years later, in his correspondence with the Corinthian Church, he described the contents of this message with greater clarity.

    “Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.” (1 Corinthians 15:1–8 ESV)

    This Gospel, which was common to Paul and the congregations at Thessalonica and Corinth, seems to mirror the content of our Gospel books, though in abbreviated form. One of our jobs as preachers is to make sure that when we preach from the Gospels, we preach the gospel. And though it seems easy, there are thousands of little rabbit holes down which we can go, straying from a clear articulation of how the story of Jesus forms the Church and nourishes our own story of faith. 

    During February we are going to pursue the theme: The Gospel in the Gospels. In framing the discussions, we need to consider methodology, the message of Jesus, the miracles of Jesus, and the Messianic consequences of His stories for our preaching.  We preach Christ. To do so means we must be intimately familiar with the story of His life and the stories that He told. This week we will discuss method(s). This is a crucial factor in overcoming more than 2,000 years of gravitational, historical shaping of the message. 

Gospel before Gospels

    The Gospel was preached before our Gospels were written. Proclamation comes before preservation, the message was articulated and formed the earliest Church before the Evangelists produced the books we now read to understand the story of Jesus.  We want to keep this in mind when we study and preach from any scripture, particularly the Gospels. Jesus saves. The Bible tells the story. Good preaching brings a listener into the story of Jesus. The written word without the Incarnate Word is impotent to save. Confusing the written and incarnate Word of God can lead to Bibliolatry.

Stories and Structure

    Tell me the Story of Jesus…Write on my heart every word. Every week you and I study and prepare and immerse ourselves in the Biblical text. We go spelunking in search of messages of life-giving hope for our congregations. 

    There are times we are tempted to enter the pulpit with a detailed description of the process rather than telling the story we set out to discover. There are times when our congregations need to “see our work” and there are other times when they just need to see the answer. Preaching requires us to strike a balance between the visibility of the structure and the potency of the story. Much of this balance comes from understanding what work should remain hidden in the Study and what needs to be trotted out in public. There is no formula, and I can’t tell you. A good rule of thumb, the “cooler” it is to the preacher, the greater its appeal to the Bible Student within us, the greater the chance that it will interfere with everyone else’s appreciation and understanding of the story. 

Plot and Purpose

    One last consideration. Jesus had a purpose. The earliest preachers had a purpose in preaching Jesus. When The Evangelists selected the stories of Jesus which had been preached and preserved those stories in the Gospels, they too had a purpose. At each of these levels: the ministry of Jesus, the preaching of the Church, and the writing of the Gospels a really good clue to purpose is plot. That is to say, as clumsy as this sounds: The story tells the story. Allow me to share a favorite quote by Edward Tufte. I dredged this up from memory, but I think I've got it mostly right, (clears throat) “Correlation may not imply causality—but it’s a pretty good clue.” Many people in the pew think of the Bible as incomprehensible, mysterious, and alien. That is not due to its content but to how we proclaim it. We have separated too much of the plot from the purpose. We have created such a gap between correlated elements in the text with identifiable causes and effects that it’s a miracle anyone understands anything. The purpose of a book or passage is often prima facie found in the plot of the story—right there waiting for us to proclaim what is there. That’s the job. Not to discover something new or notorious but to find the plotted purpose which has been there all the time and to tell that story compellingly, authentically, and powerfully.

Dependable, Trustworthy Guides

    The Reformation project of providing the Bible in as many translated languages as possible has led to a greater opportunity for Biblical literacy. In some times and places, this promise has been realized. At others, it waxes and wanes with the spirit of the age. Yet the Church has always acknowledged that common sense often runs aground on the rockier shoals of difficult passages. Though the Gospels themselves tend to be straightforward, there are occasions when the Synoptics are slightly different and John far different still. For this reason, God has, through His Holy Spirit provided Pastor-teachers, preachers who instruct the flock, leading to a greater understanding of the Scripture. 

    We need preachers who are dependable, trustworthy guides. Teachers who show up every Sunday. Teachers who have burned their eyes with Study. Preachers who do not say more than they know or who demand more or less than the Scriptures authorize. Men and women who teach not for glory but to guide God’s people, functioning as eyes and intellect for the Body of Christ. 

    What I am trying to communicate, week by week, in these little essays is this. The Gospel is important enough, the work critical enough, and the Church valuable enough to merit our best work. People want to know that you have been in the Word. That you have gone to the mountain to bring down riches from the Master. Your flock needs to depend on you to provide fresh bread. They need to learn to trust your judgment because you work diligently to earn it. They need to know that you will do whatever it takes and use whatever method is useful to squeeze every blessing you can from the Gospel.