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.”