Getting Less Good at Pretending 1.25.2024

 When I was 22 years old, I knew everything. At this point in my life, I understand E.P. Sander’s humorous observation about the Pharisees “We now know considerably less about the Pharisees than we did one hundred years ago.” My caveat, I know considerably less about everything, than I did 40 years ago. That is the very reason to work hard at getting better at the central task of preaching. For this commitment to take hold, one of the first things we must do, me as well as you is to get less good at pretending. You know what I mean. Making statements about facts; without any facts. Affirming loudly in public, issues we are confused about privately. Drawing conclusions we do not own, through lack of study. 

    If our hermeneutics are solid, our exegesis accurate, and our explanation of the text is focused on known knowns and known unknowns, and less upon pious genuflections to some mystical meta-language-plain sense of the text, the first and, perhaps essential result will be humility. There are times when this humility will be very personal, stating “I don’t know.” This does not mean that a fact or matter of interpretation is unknown or unknowable. It simply indicates that I, at this time, do not know. There are ways to rectify this insufficiency. 

1. Study.

2. Acquire new tools to pursue #1 above.

3. Consider new hypotheses to for using #2 above, in pursuit of #1, above.

4. Cheat.

Clearly, I would not advocate #4, but we have colleagues who both advocate and pursue strategy 4. Don’t be that person. 

    We want to be prepared when we preach. That preparation is an outcome. The only path to that outcome is to do the work. If you don’t want to do the work the only other paths are those of least resistance, all of which require significant amounts of pretending because your mastery of the text and topic of the message in question will be superficial. 

    It is pretentious and arrogant to parrot knowledge that you have not earned. It is far better to do the work adding incrementally to your own partial or emerging understanding than to trot out someone else’s expertise.

     This, in part, explains the kind of hubris I ascribed to my younger self. When we are just starting out, we have a more complete mastery of the material at our disposal—we have just learned it! We are still dispensing information we have spent many years gathering in our formal education. Through preaching and ministering in a changing world with the presses pumping out new information at an ever-increasing pace, with new scholars entering the relevant fields, and older scholars finally publishing their magnum opuses the young preacher can quickly fall behind. And the knee-jerk reaction is to start cutting corners rather than committing fully to a program of lifelong learning. 

    Once the learning stops—the pretending begins. Once the pretending begins, borrowing without attribution becomes easier.  Reading is essential to intellectual growth. Yes, there are times when we will need to quote an authority. There are times when we will find a turn of phrase, we have encountered in our reading works well in a sermon. Quote and attribute. Properly citing the work of others in either writing or preaching is about as hard as you want to make it. It is not esoteric, mysterious, or necessarily complex. If you quote too often, people may begin to wonder whether you have any original thoughts.  If you seldom quote or discuss the gleanings from your research people might get the impression that you don’t think you need any guidance. We develop a healthy balance through a well-rounded reading program that forms our intellect while keeping us posted on the relevant developments in our area of expertise—domain knowledge. 

    If you are not growing very soon you will find your own spiritual hunger so dominant that you will find it difficult to provide a well-rounded diet for your congregation. It is at this point that we each must decide. I can Change for the better by being more diligent in my studies; or begin I can pretend. Once the pretending begins it is very difficult to stop. 

    You must be your own person. In the study. In the pulpit. While working in the other areas of ministry. You will find yourself needing periodical reassessment, realignment, and recalibration.  Through that process, you will find a renaissance and yes, reformation.  

    In bringing this essay to a close let me recommend a method that I have found helpful. Every preacher needs, as early as possible in their career, to choose a “lifetime research project.” Something to focus on beyond the yearly, monthly, and weekly cycles of preparation. In the early ‘90s, the Third Quest for the Historical Jesus was well underway. After reading some of the literature in that area of study (which juxtaposes the Synoptic Problem, Historical Criticism, and emerging Social-Science Biblical criticism) I decided that this would be my ongoing lifetime project. I particularly chose it because I was going to preach from one of the Gospels every year anyway and this meant that there would be a natural season for returning to this, for me, never-ending project. You may choose something else. Pauline studies perhaps? Maybe the Catholic epistles? The choice is yours, the point being to be continuously engaged in some kind of rigorous studies. You will complement this work with supplementary projects that add to your arsenal of information. This becomes your storehouse for illustration and expansion in your preaching. 

    Your knowledge and understanding is your storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. You store this information in folders, cards, and notebooks. In Word documents and PDF documents, hard drives, and floppies. This work will keep you humble. You will find that the world is filled with smart people. Some agree with you, but many don’t—you can learn from all of them. As you know and understand more you will find that your own thinking, writing, and preaching are becoming clearer. You will be an “unashamed workman”, and you won’t have to ever pretend.

Exposition, Explanation, and the Myth of the Plain Sense. 1.18.2024

     If you did not grow up reading the Bible or hearing it preached there are some things that will strike you as odd. Cultural customs which have been eclipsed. Ancient practices which have never been well understood. Assumptions about the nature of created reality which no longer comport with our understanding of the world. To tell someone who lacks any connection with Scripture that “it all makes sense,” or “It takes faith.” Is not to explain the Bible but to obfuscate it. 

    Last month while studying for my sermon taken from Mary’s meeting with Elizabeth, I became a little amused by some word study work on the Greek word ποιέω. The way that this word is used in the NT should give pause to anyone who wants to focus on the mythical “plain” meaning of the text. The word ποιέω is used 567 times in 513 verses in the Greek New Testament. The entry in BDAG, the premier Lexical tool for New Testament work, is fourteen pages long listing 7 primary definitions and dozens of sub-definitions. Ποιέω is a core vocabulary word. You see it all the time. Most of the time it falls within a clear semantic range. That semantic range is defined by context. It is not inaccurate to say that you don’t know how ποιέω is used in a given sentence until you know how it is used. Which is to say there is no abstract plain sense of Scripture or anything else! There is only understanding that real words are deployed by authors to make their point in any given text. 

    It is not always easy. You are the expert in your congregation, Sunday after Sunday, to ensure that people understand what God intends for them to know.  Our topic this month, broadly speaking has been hermeneutics. Last week we focused on the exegetical process. This week we deal with the next steps exposition and explanation. And you cannot really do a good job of either until you dispense with the magical pixie dust of “plain sense.” 

Generally, when someone claims to be discussing the “plain sense” of the text the discussion goes like this:

“This is what the NIV says…

This is what (insert your favorite English-based word study tool) says…

This is what (your favorite commentator) says…

This is what _______, on the TV says…

This is what I heard on K-LOVE...

This is my opinion.”

This does not help the church, and it certainly does a disservice to the Text of Scripture.  If you want to explain a text, you must know it. If you want to know it, you have to do the work. The work is hard, exacting, and often frustrating. There is no shortcut. No easy path. You’ve got to do the work. When you do the work, you spend less time trying to trap the elusive unicorn promised by a simplistic “plain sense” and will embrace the text for what it is. 

    When we preach, the explanation part of the process is where we unpack meaning. The text is not mysterious or secretive—it merely embodies a different communications strategy from what is common in our culture. In the 21st century, we expect the wants, needs, attitudes, and expectations of the reader to determine meaning. This works to the detriment of understanding In the NT world the expectation was that the reader (more properly, the auditor) would understand the author’s intent from the text and apply a reading strategy appropriate to the genre and form of the literature. 

    A real reason that the church does not read the Bible well and explain it clearly is that we don’t read anything carefully, diligently, or strategically. Virtually every communication has become a canvas upon which the reader/listener projects his or her own prejudices, needs, desires, or conjectures. 

    Good preaching begins by affirming “there is a central, intended, guiding truth to this text.” Next, good preaching explains that there is a distance between our contemporary reading culture and the expectations of this text. To understand requires us to read the text according to its own internal rules—that is how the author expected it to be approached.  Another vital step for good preaching is clearly stating what kind of literary genre you are preaching from, “This is a parable. This is a series of aphorisms. This is narrative. This is a teaching unit.” This is the critical step where your congregation understands that you are the expert on this text for this congregation, here and now.

    These expository and explanatory steps should be a part of the structural framework of the sermon. Too much contemporary preaching uses the text as an anecdote or a caption duct-taped to the sermon the preacher already was determined to preach. This model of preaching does not explain the text. It does not draw the listener closer to the mind of God. It does not deepen the commitment to discipleship. In a Biblical sense; it is not really preaching. 

    This current trend of explanation-free preaching allows heresy to flourish, personality to dominate, and narcissism to define the current Church. Explanation-free preaching turns “pastors” into celebrities—celebrated for their ability to create a crowd without challenging the masses with the message of Christ. Explanation-free preaching elevates the audience's expectations and reduces the role of history and theology in the name of relevance. Explanation-free preaching severs current expressions of the “faith once and for all delivered to the Saints” from the historic roots that have always nourished believers. Explanation-free preaching cripples the Church in the name of equipping it—like a surgeon who solves the problem of a broken leg by amputating it. 

    It will not be easy, and it will take time to preach God’s Word clearly, accurately, and appropriately. You will need to analyze the text; you will need to prepare a clear explanation of what it says. You will need to creatively articulate that message. You must pray! You must read! You must think! You must write! You must do the work! If you do that work, if you do the digging your reward will be a look of understanding and ardor in the eyes of those who hear, learn, and obey through the clearly explained preaching of the Word. What are you waiting for?

Exegesis: Theory and System 1.11.2024

     A system needs to be no more complex than necessary to accomplish the task for which it is designed. Preaching is among the creative activities, the constituent parts of which, can be organized into a system that is both effective and efficient. This is because preaching is a regular activity that when done correctly requires several steps to complete a given sermon. This week I want to look at only one part of that process. Exegesis, the study of the weekly preaching unit. 

    When I preach or tell a story I want to get the point. If it is a joke, the punchline, if a story the resolution, in preaching a sermon the proposition of the message. I envision the process graphically as a triangle. The goal is to move from the wide base to the very point at the top of the triangle. Like telling a story to a child or grandchild, the working preacher should make his or her goal to drive home the central point. It can take a lot of study to distill the truth of the text into a single point to be elaborated and illustrated in the sermon. Good exegesis is not an end in itself but the means of the preacher extracting this distilled essence for the pulpit. I call it the Triangle of Truth. 

    The Triangle of Truth is all about getting to the point! I have long wanted to introduce my exegetical/hermeneutical method in this space. I have worked this way for many years and have developed quite a bit of ancillary paperwork and checklists to allow it to flow smoothly, week by week, through a year’s worth of preaching.  The work can be hard, for several reasons, among them being a low regard for the work it takes to study the Bible deeply, understand it correctly, and preach it authoritatively. 

    Allow me to restate this. Systems should be no more or less complex than needed to complete the task. The purpose of a system is to regulate and direct work as clearly and repetitively as possible. There is no reason to reinvent the wheel every single time you preach. If that is what you are doing, I am confident that together we can improve your exegetical study to the point that you enjoy and relish the work. To begin with we need to clear the ground a bit.

• The Bible is understandable. That does not mean the material is “easy.” 

• The Bible contains several different kinds of material, and any exegetical system must adapt to the realities of the material being studied. That does not mean that having no system is better! Barely repeatable chaos is not a dignified option.

• You need to learn to do much of the heavy lifting yourself. Study the text before seeking the opinions of experts. 

• The architecture of a passage of scripture is often the key to its understanding. 

• The Bible contains language that is abstract, concrete, illustrative parabolic, comparative, imprecatory, particular, universal, simple, complex, delicate, and disturbing. It is essential to good interpretation that we take that language for what it is without trying to “defend God’s honor” by eliminating that complexity. 

This Triangle of Truth has four elements, moving from the most general to the particularly particular.  

Stage=The broad historical and introductory backgrounds necessary for rightly understanding a text in context.

Strategy=A simple preliminary hypothesis, based on your preliminary (native language) reading of the text. This provides a deductive structure for your intense historical-grammatical work on the text.

Structure=The historical-grammatical scholarly work. Your personal lexical, grammatical, syntactical, and discourse analysis of the text using the best available professional tools. 

Story=The process of “getting to the point.” People don’t come to Church to be buried in your research. The final phase of exegesis is moving from structure to story, from understanding the story to telling the story. 

    This is important and potentially life-changing for those who hear you preach. That does not mean that it is easy to do or that they will find it easy to listen to you.  The Bible can sometimes be hard to grasp and even harder to accept. When someone tells you that they have a key to remove all ambiguity and discomfort from the Biblical text he or she is either a fool or a fraud. 

    This working method has been under constant refinement for more than 35 years. It’s not perfect. It does, however, organize a year’s worth of weekly research into manageable chunks so that a preacher can be prepared to preach to the best of his/her abilities. 

    Any matter can only be simplified within the parameters of its design. Preaching is complicated because humans are complicated. Behavior and motivation are moving targets and all language—Biblical language included can be ambiguous.  Some believe there is no ambiguity in scripture—all is plain and clear with no need for interpretation. For some, accepting the ambiguity of Biblical language hardly seems to be an endorsement of a high view of scripture. But it is. The Bible is God’s revelation in human language. Too many assume that exegesis is a removal of ambiguity. Those who define the task as pruning away the nasty tangles, and confusing underbrush misunderstand the task and shortchange their listeners.  

    At times ambiguity is intentional, and a central part of the message of the speaker or author. Exegeting away the intent of the text does not serve the interest of God, the interpreter, or the eventual listener. Our goal is to get to the very heart of God’s intended message. As much as we would wish to use the scholarly tools at our disposal to imagine our way into the environment of the text we are left with the words of the text. 

    In the Biblical world, the Kingdom of God is abstractly compared to mustard seeds, leaven, hidden treasure, and a merchant. We are told that to enter the Kingdom our faith should be like that of a child, and that it is easier for camels to enter therein than the rich. The New Testament describes the Church as a flock, a vine, a temple, and a body. None of these abstract images are considered mutually exclusive. Biblical language is fluid and multivalent. Making it concrete in the name of simplicity, understanding, or clarity only shows that the exegete has failed to understand the text. How can one preach from such misguided motives? 

    This is our happy task! Week after week to make these ancient words and often strange-sounding concepts comprehensible to those who come to hear God’s Word preached. Faithfulness to the task requires fidelity to the conceptual, intentional, inspired words that we actually find in the text—not what we wish were there. For God’s Word to speak truth to a fallen culture requires that Word to function within the messiness of that culture. The task of studying scripture and preaching it in the Post-Modern world is an act of faith in which we do the work, organize the message, and then leave the results to a God who said, “My word, shall not return to me void.” 

Hermeneutics 1.4.2024

     There is no simple way to define or even describe hermeneutics. To define it as the “art and science of interpretation.” Merely opens a pandora’s box of confusing notions of “art” and science.” Describing the discipline is in itself, an interpretive act. When presented with a text—any text, hermeneutics is a set of strategies for determining its meaning in a widening variety of contexts, because—to be absolutely honest here, unless we are reading for pleasure there is generally some kind of agenda at stake which requires applying the text(s) we are interpreting. 

    The basic question regards the locus of meaning. Does a text in its essential quality mean what the author intended for it to mean, or is its essential truth determined by the reader? Whatever conflict you might want to have about any text be it the Bible, the Constitution, or the meaning of Don McClean’s American Pie, the matter really comes down to this simple question, Who is “in charge of meaning?” You can either have the intentionality of the author or the intentionality of the reader. One will always be preeminent.  Every interpreter must determine how he/she will negotiate the truth out of the text—partnering with, marginalizing, or abandoning the author. 

    My concern is the reading and application of scripture, a task that many think should be wholly democratized. While it is true that everyone has a stake in the truth of scripture, not everyone has the equipment for accurately understanding and applying it. For many, the last 250 words are gibberish. “The Bible says what it means and means what it says!!” For this sort, there is no need for hermeneutical reflection. The text just is. 

    Except it’s not actually that simple. There are linguistic, social, cultural, and historical gaps in many people’s education. Particularly in the 21st century, there are once-known facts that have become esoterica or trivia. Many who subscribe to this simplistic hermeneutic (for that is what it truly is, though not called that) surround themselves with a selection of hermeneutical tools, from concordances to footnotes to favored authors who do all the heavy lifting for them so that they may pretend that they are not practicing hermeneutics—hermeneutics by omission, but nonetheless hermeneutics. 

    This battle for hermeneutical superiority transcends common theological categories. There are liberals, conservatives, fundamentalists, and neo-orthodox who practice an author-centered, text-driven hermeneutic. Similarly, the same groups have representatives for whom the text is simply a mirror reflecting the prejudices and preferences of the reader. 

    You, Oh preacher must decide. Where will your interpretive loyalties lie? Will you stand with the narcissistic mob who perennially sees its best self in the mirror of interpretation, or will you humbly listen for the voice of the author?

    The allure of all forms of “reader-centered” hermeneutics—whether in a seminar room or Sunday School class is the appearance of simplicity. Whether couched in the esoteric literary gibberish of structuralism, post-modernism, or deconstructionism. Or if it be asked in the pious question “What does this text mean to you?” It’s all the same group grope designed to disengage the text from any objective referent. It all comes down to the personal preference of the reader ascendant over the intent, design, and dignity of the author. 

    I hope I don’t need to explain what that does to any conception of authority in the Bible (or any other text), much less inspiration. Hermeneutics of this type is designed to ease the psychological burden of facing the fact that there is no “there, there.” If this is your hermeneutics, you have no need for my scrivenings.

    The other option, focusing on the authorial intention as the goal of interpretation takes work. It requires delving into culture, history, geography, philosophy, languages, theology, and spirituality. This method of interpretation assumes that the author (inspired if the text is from Scripture) knew what he wished to say and chose his words to that end. There may be some disagreement about how the apparatus of scholarship discerns what the author intended, but interpreters of this type agree that intent remains to be discovered. 

    This not only revolutionizes the process of study it makes a powerful impact on presenting the fruit of that study in a sermon or lesson. If the process of interpretation, as practiced by the reader-centered critic is only a reflection of what I bring to the text, it is somewhat presumptuous (even pompous) to declare “Thus saith, the Lord” when we know full well that the words are ours, not His.