Interpreting the Gospel/Book Review

Interpreting the Gospel/A Book Review

When I began thinking about preaching, I was frightened. I always thought you were born to preach. I never thought you could learn to preach: to build on the recognition that individuals and communities are pluralistic and in which we receive and process communications. I have come to understand that the preacher is preeminently an interpreter and helps the community interpret the significance of the gospel for the congregation and for the larger world. An Introduction to Preaching takes into account the emerging insight of human awareness in the act of interpretation; African American, feminist, liberation theologians, and evangelicals and many other denominations.

The primary purpose of the book is to: help students name and deal with anxieties that beginning preachers often feel when preaching their first sermon; to identify the foundations to developing the basic sermon; preaching in the context of the church; the community, culture and the life of the preacher; the nature and purpose of the sermon; direction of the sermon; and developing the sermon and giving the congregation an opportunity to participat by nature, the church does not constitute itself.

The church is to witness to the gospel for the benefit of the world. The gospel is the news revealed to the church through Jesus Christ of God's unconditional love for each and all, and God's call for justice for each of us. The church is to model in its words and actions to the world how God makes it possible for all people to live The nature and purpose of the church reveals a foundational reason for learning to preach. Preaching is a part of Christian practice. The church is a community of the practice of Christian faith. Christian practices are things Christian people do together over time in response to and in the light of God's active presence for the light of the world.

Dykstra identifies thirteen such practices: worship, telling the Christian story to one another, interpreting the Bible and the history of the church's experience, prayer, confession of sin to one another, tolerating and encouraging one another, carrying out acts of service and witness, suffering with and for one another, providing hospitality and care, listening attentively to one another, struggling together to become conscious of our context, criticizing and resisting the principalities and powers, working together to maintain social structures that will sustain life as God intends.

Preachers help the community "hear the stories and speak words that relate our practices to God's own creative and redemptive work. The sermon interprets Christian community as practice, and it interprets particular Christian practices. The preacher teaches "the inner workings and qualities of each practice" so that those "workings and qualities open up to the reality and truth on which they are founded." The sermon gives the preacher an opportunity afforded to very few leaders in North America: the regular opportunity to help a body of people reflect on the meaning of the whole of life. The service of worship is the largest regular gathering of the congregation.  Pastors have weekly occasion to share with the church the best of their interaction with the Bible, Christian Tradition, and current life.

Preaching is never generic there are basic contexts for preaching today. It always takes place in a particular context. The preacher should understand the contexts of the sermon in gospel perspective. The Christian community is not only a context in which preaching is expressed. Christian practices are "conditions under which various kinds and forms of knowledge emerge - knowledge of God, of ourselves, and of the world; Knowledge that is not only personal but also public. Christian practice forms the virtue and character and wisdom of the communities and individuals who participate in them."

Churches do not always think, feel, or behave in the best of Christian practice.  Since sin is an active agent within the Christian community, the church can distort its interpretation of God, church and the world. In some cases, the perspectives of the world can prompt the church to refocus, enlarge, or correct itself. The reading of the Bible and preaching comprise the sacrament of the word. A sermon functions much like an icon. An icon is a medium through which worshipers experience the truth that the icon represents. The Homilist seeks to be a conduit whereby the Spirit can bring the gospel of the historic church to life in the congregation.

The Second Vatican Council was a watershed in Roman Catholic understanding of preaching in the twentieth century.  Prior to that council, the homily was primarily an explication of a theological doctrine. An Anglican or an Episcopalian sermon is much like a Roman Catholic one.  The Episcopal sermon is to be biblical, liturgical, kerygmatic, and conversational, usually in an Eucharistic context. Lutheran preaching, too, is biblical, indebted to a lectionary, and liturgical.

In the Reformed tradition, preaching has a teaching quality.  Reformed preachers who follow Calvin's example preach clearly and directly.  The preacher explains how God's grace operates in the biblical passage, and how it continues to operate in the world, generating faith. Preaching in the Wesley spirit is "plain truth for plain people." Wesley turned away from the florid sermons of his day to simple preaching so that people could easily understand the gospel and feel the Spirit.

Anabaptist liturgy is usually simple, consisting of congregational singing, extemporaneous prayers, and other acts of worship shaped by local leaders, with the sermon as the focal point. Other churches descended from the radical reformation approach the sermon from the ecclesiological conviction that the church is radically disjunctive from the larger world. Pentecostalism understands the sermon as an event led by the Holy Spirit. Occasional Pentecostals make no preparation for the sermon so that their human efforts will not interfere with the message and experience that the Spirit would create in the moment of preaching. In liberation theology, the sermon helps the congregation name God's liberating purpose.

The service of worship is the immediate context of preaching. A generation ago, many pastors thought of the sermon as the crown jewel of the service of worship. According to the liturgical renewal movement, Christian worship starts with the community coming together for worship (call to worship, opening hymn and prayer, confession of sin) and remembering the gospel (Bible readings, sermon). Both word and sacrament are means of proclamation. This approach to worship often results in service in which the liturgical materials and the sermon centers on a single theme. Thematic worship can be theologically and aesthetically rich. Western culture is divided into three eras: Premodern-world authority is lodged in the community’s tradition and the authority of the Bible, the church the preacher. The premodern era lasted from the dawn of civilization to the Enlightenment.

In the modern world, tradition recedes as an authority. Postmodern has come to be widely recognized only in the last twenty years.  The transition from modernity to post modernity is still in process and its outcome uncertain. Each community interprets the world through its own particular lenses. Many Congregations are having difficulty negotiation the transition from mainline to the margins. Many of these congregations are declining due to birth rates, age and memberships. D. Newell Williams points out that preaching in the church today needs to the Christian community discover the distinctive qualities of the Gospel.

Preaching in a disestablished church calls for five particular emphases the preacher can help the church by: naming thee changing relationship with the culture; to help the community learn the formative language of the bible; articulate its distinctive vision of the world; identify points of similarity and difference between its vision of the world and the culture’s vision; and to emphasize the promise that occurs from Christian faith and community while keeping sight of the demands of the Gospel.

The author asks the question “What is experience.” Experience is the full range of awareness of all in which we participate and includes that which happens to us and in us, all that we perceive through our senses, that we feel, think and intuit. Our experiences is a grid of lenses of thought and intuition shaped by elements which include gender, race, social class home life etc.  By definition, experience is always a medium for theological reflections and all theological conversations take place in experience.

The purpose of preaching is to provide language to name our experiences in terms of the Gospel.  The life of the preacher seldom unfolds as a series of discreet experiences that the preacher can evaluate theologically in the sequence—and at all times- that they occur. The life of a pastor is a collage of experiences, some of which takes place serially and others simultaneously. The pastor is not a Tabula Rasa, a blank slate, when beginning to prepare a sermon. The preacher’s experience affects all that the preacher sees, hears, thinks and feels. In connection with each sermon, a preacher might ask a question like  “How does my experience help me deal with this subject.”

Worship, Bible study, meditating on the Christian tradition, confession of sin, tolerating and encouraging one another, providing hospitality and care, listening attentively-these and the other practices can help ministers develop language, concepts, modes of thinking necessary for a Christian existence. Preachers need to find ways of engaging in the practices that are congenial to their personalities, theological orientation and communities. Preachers need to have a clear idea of what a sermon is, what is supposed to happen in the congregation when preaching takes place and how to evaluate the success of the preaching event.  The vocation of the preacher is to help the congregation interpret the significance of the gospel for the sake of the congregation and the world.

The minister preaches the gospel. The minister does not preach the Bible, a Christian doctrine or practice. Justo and Catherine Gonzalez states that a preacher is not a lone-ranger interpreter. At its best, interpretation takes place through conversation in the community. Conversation is a mutual exploration of ideas, feelings and behaviors with the goal of coming to as promising an understanding as is possible at a given moment. In the church, the conversation of preaching aims for an adequate interpretation of the significance of the gospel for the life of the ecclesial community and the world.

The conversation of preaching should identify the community’s pre-understanding of the subject so that the pre-understanding will not inappropriately prejudge the conclusion in which the conversation will come. The next task is to identify a secure relevant material that the community needs to make sense of the subject-questions to be pursued, information, feelings, behaviors that arise in connection with the subject.Conversations include many different forms of content, such as questions, stories, logical arguments, research, etc. A conversational approach to interpretation is not fool proof. The best contribution a sermon may make in a congregational conversation is to go against the community’s thinking

The preaching conversation can take many forms such as an organized congregational sermon preparation group, the bible as a theological conversation partner and voices from the Christian history and tradition. The preaching conversation tends to develop in the direction of the major emphases of the denomination.  In addition four contemporary approaches to theology cuts across denominational communities: revisionary, post-liberal, liberation and evangelical theologies. As a part of the preaching conversation, the preacher needs theological criteria by which he reflects on the texts, doctrines and situations. The author poses two areas to assist in this process: The Appropriateness of the gospel. Moral plausibility.

The preaching conversation usually results in a pastor and community coming to one of four possible interpretative relationships with biblical passages, Christian doctrines, practices or movements. The relationship determines whether the preacher runes with the text, doctrine, practice or situation, with a minimum of explanation, must engage in considerable exploration of surface and depth dimensions, must take issue with some aspect of witness, or ignores the text. The starting point for the development sermon preparation can be viewed in the following preaching models. There are two basic starting points:

Expository sermons center in the exposition of the meaning of a biblical text. The bible put us in touch with the formative expressions and experience of Christian faith. The bible often helps us interpret our situation from the perspective of the gospel. Bible exposition helps form the identity, life and witness of the church. The expository preacher helps the church remember that which is essential in biblical text and themes, even while helping the congregation adopt their understanding of biblical materials and new situations.

Expository preaching can help the church reclaim biblical language that has lost some of its power. Preaching from the bible gives the congregation a point of reference for gauging the development of Christian doctrine. Expository preaching helps the long established churches rectify their biblical and theological illiteracy; reminds the preacher to make the sermon particular; symbolizes the congregation’s commonality with other Christians, Jews with Muslim communities.

Preaching from the different parts of the Bible helps the congregation deal with the diversity of the Bible. The preacher identifies a biblical text as a starting point for sermon preparation in one of three ways: a Selected lectionary, a continuous lectionary or preachers free choice. lectionary (lectio selecta) derives from the Latin word  lectio “reading” and “selected.” The scripture reading s are selected from different parts of the Bible in order to serve the larger purpose of the lectionary. Most lectionaries are coordinated to the Christian Year.

Most congregations that order themselves after the Christian year also follow a lectio selecta. The revised “Common Lectionary is the most widely used reading today. The preacher must decide which of these lessons will be the focus of the sermon.   When preaching from the lectionary in the Christian year, the minister does more than interpret the text. The preacher uses the text in order to help interpret the major theological emphases of the season of the yearfamily: Lectionaries intend to represent the fullness of the gospel with its duel motifs of the promise of God’s unconditional love and the call of God for justice.

The use of the lectionary helps form the church community and helps counteract the narcissism and tribalism that permeate North American society today. The lectionary stress the gospel’s promise of unconditional love, they give comparatively less emphasis to text that stress justice in community and calls different text to the attention of the congregation, many of the most challenging text are missing.

Most expository sermons concentrate on a single message. The preacher may develop a single sermon trace of theme through the Bible and that helps the community interpret the significance of the theme from the community’s present life. Free Selection of text, I mean that the preacher chooses from week to week the text that is the starting point for sermon preparation. After the preacher has settled on a starting point for the sermon preparation, the detailed process of developing the direction of the sermon begins.

There are nineteen specific steps used to identify essential elements in the preaching conversation and they are: Open yourself to the divine presence through prayer; Before reading or directly engaging, the text describes your pre-associations and those of the congregation; Read aloud the pertinent materials on which the sermon draws; List as much as you can that you need to know about the text or situation in order to understand it in a satisfactory way; Clarify the meaning of key biblical text, images, concepts and characters; Identify the historical context of the text, Christian doctrine, practice and situation; Identify the literary or rhetorical form, characteristics and function of the text, doctrine and practice; Imagine as much as you can about the text doctrine, practice and situation; Investigate how the larger church has interpreted the text, doctrine, practice and situation; Note how your denomination has interpreted the text, doctrine, practice and situation; Note how your particular contemporary theological family (revisionary, post liberal, liberation, and evangelical) orients you to interpret the text, doctrine, practice and situation; and Identify the vested interest in the biblical passage, doctrine, practice and situation.

Could these materials be used to support the interest of some at the expense of others? Do you understand the biblical text, doctrine, practice and situation enriched by social sciences and other sciences family: Summarize your understanding of the witness of the Biblical text, doctrine, practice and situation in its historical and/or literary context.

Evaluate your understanding of the witness of the text or topic according to the criteria of appropriateness to the gospel, intelligibility, and moral plausibility. Describe your experience with the witness of the biblical text, doctrine, practice and situation and that of the congregation.When preaching on the biblical passage, doctrine, practice and situation, note how the context of the Christian year and the settings within the congregation’s year orients the interpretation of the materials.Identify the hermeneutical relationship that will guide the sermon. Formulate a compact summary of the direction of the sermon.

Sermons sometimes communicate with clarity and sometimes they don’t. Preachers have an idea of the conversation they would like to have with their congregation, but sometimes the sermon does not prompt the conversation they intend. More often than not, the following attention paid to the sermon will help the congregation engage the gospel: Describe how you hope participating in the conversation will affect the congregation in thought, feeling and will; Take time out to list the questions, issues, perspectives, data, stories, experiences and materials that need to be in the sermon for the sermon to serve its purpose; Describe whether the sermon will largely move deductively or inductively; Arrange the main questions, issues, resources, explanations and data in a sequence that serves the purpose of the sermon and the relationship of the congregation to the direction of the sermon; Decide how to begin the sermon, how it will end and begin writing the sermon.

The preacher needs to arrange the main questions, issues, resources, explanation and data in a sequence that serves the purpose of the sermon and the relationship to the congregation. The author delineates a number of preaching models for developing your message and what prominate educator and preachers think about preaching styles and techniques. Puritan Plain style is named because it is a plain from of preaching preferred by the Puritans. The Puritans developed the plain style to contrast the ornate style of some contemporaries. The Quadrilateral as sermon structure.

The Christian community knows the so—called Wesley Quadrilateral as a theological method that draws on scripture, tradition, experience and reason as sources of the knowledge of God. Scripture is the preeminent source, functioning through interaction with the other three. The Verse by Verse Preaching-The term Verse by Verse is a misnomer, Preaching through the text segment by segment. The preacher makes a running commentary on the text. Simple inductive Movement-Some inductive form s of preaching can be outlined easily.

The process of sermon preparation forms the movement of the sermon, the movement of the text shaping the movement of the sermon, the sermon as taking a trip.&.The Sermon as Putting Together a Jigsaw Puzzle-This sermon is made up of distinct pieces-from the Bible, Christian Tradition, Theology other sources of insight, data, from the media and contemporary existence Sermon Prepared on the Model of an Author writing a novelist begins with the rudiments of setting, plot, charter and atmosphere. The novelist has an idea of a story line, along with an array of ideas, scenes, turns of plot, character development.

The Sermon as a Single Narrative The story itself is the message. The Four pages of the sermon Paul Wilson combines theological rigor with disciplined imagination in proposing a four-page approach to the sermon. We should stress God’s gracious activity in the world. God’s grace forms the framework for understanding sin and brokenness. The awareness of the divine presence enables us to respond faithfully to Gods goodness. The Sermon as Plot and Moves David Buttrick contents that the sermon is to form communal consciousness. The sermon is not directed to a collection of individuals but to the church as a community.

Plot and Moves that Climax in Celebration Henry Mitchell says that Buttrick understanding of the sermon as a series of distinct subsections developed together into a plot provides a conceptual framework to describe the movement of much traditional African American preaching. In most African American preaching, the final move is celebration. Eugene Loweryanother pioneer in the narrative approach to preaching points out that the sermon is an event.  Events unfold sequentially.Individual moments follow moments, creating plots. The sermon, then, is a plot in a series of five moment’s fold into one another: Oops, Aha, Whee and Yeah.

The sermon as Movement of Images-One of many provocative suggestions from Thomas Troeger is to think of the sermon as a movement of Images. Troeger recognizes that ideas and propositions have an important place in preaching. Fred Craddock posits the process by which the preacher prepares the sermon as a movement for the sermon itself.  “Why not on Sunday morning retrace the inductive trip” that the preacher takes in the study to see if the “hearers come to the same conclusion.”

Paul Riccoeur posits a three-fold movement by which we can critically engage the text. This movement can structure a sermon on a biblical passage, doctrine, practice or situation. The interpreter begins with first naivete’, moves into a second phase-critical reflection, then concludes in a second naivete.

Thomas G. Long, a leader in thinking about the relationship between literary criticism and preaching, identifies three main types of images in sermons: A smile is an explicit comparison between two things, is a word used very loosely in preaching circles to refer to almost any figure of speech. God the rock is a metaphor and synecdoche-uses a part to stand for the whole or the whole to bespeak the part. Preachers have recognized remarkable power in stories. The elements of the story may be real or created.  Stories offer a framework of meaning within which to understand persons, relationships, events and actions.

Early generations of preachers spoke stories, images and experiences as illustrations. Stories, images and experiences can function in sermons in several ways: experiences can defend the world; the materials can establish the world; can prompt the congregation to want to investigate the everyday world; and may subvert the world. The same story, image, or experience may function in different ways because it interacts differently with different listeners. John S. McClure a leading interpreter of contemporary preaching, notices that stories and images that we use in sermons are not casual matters. Preachers frequently evoke the power of cultural assumptions that lie behind the characters, activities and issues represented in stories an, images and experiences.

McClure is direct, “over time, what people hear through sermon illustrations is a culture being generated, validated, legitimized and made into a norm Susanne K. Langer, a philosopher of art, explains how stories and images work. That it makes them “quite different from any actual segment of life, is that events in it are simplifies, and at the same time much more fully perceived and evaluated that the jumble of happenings in any person’s actual history

The question of weather preachers can refer directly to their own experiences in the sermon has been a minor firestorm for the last twenty years. David Buttrick cautions that the use of the preacher’s personal story can split the congregation’s consciousness, that is, causes the congregation to focus on two things at the same time. Embodiment, the word a means ‘to give a body to”. The sermon is not just a package that the preacher leaves in the mailbox of the congregation. The sermon grows from the preacher’s mind, heart and soul. The sermon becomes a sermon only when it comes to life through the preacher in living conversation with the congregation.

African American preaching follows a distinctive pattern of embodiment. Many African American sermons begin with the preachers speaking slowly and deliberately. As the sermon progresses, the intensity builds. This principle that the embodiment of the sermon should create the same sense as the content of the message-is qualified by the phrase, “while being consistent with the personhood of the preacher” and that the preacher should always be themselves. Because of anxieties that accompany preaching, embodiment seldom happens in an optimum way, on its own. The most important dimension of embodiment is the preacher’s sense of presence. This quality is hard to define. It is a function of the preacher’s gestalt: eye contact, the voice, gestures, facial expression, the pause and good posture.