I love preaching. It darn near kills me, but I love it.

In trying to be a better preacher, I am thinking more intently and prayerfully about the practice and theology of this curious, holy, frightful, and joyful discipline.

One of the temptations I have found in sermon preparation is that of providing a full explanation of the text (or topic) at hand. Most of my preaching is “expositional” (meaning that I am working with a specific passage of Scripture). This means that my material is helpfully confined within the set parameters of the text. If I preach a “topical” sermon, the parameters are usually much broader: if I am addressing the issue of “money and possessions,” for instance, I feel pressured to exhaust the “whole counsel of God” on the topic found in the Bible. An impossible demand for one preacher and one sermon.

It is also impossible to exhaust the richness and depth of just one text, no matter the set parameter of verses.

I think I used to operate under the idea that preaching is ultimately didactic, that exposition is ultimately explanation. My idea of a good sermon was that it had to exhaust the meaning of a text and supply a comprehensive explanation of its entire meaning.

Untrue.

Preaching is certainly didactic (meaning that a sermon teaches something). Preaching is certainly explanatory. But in a Christian framework, teaching and explanation never result in the intellectual mastering of the subject matter. This is because the Subject Matter of a Christian sermon is the Triune God. And our Triune God cannot be fully explained; he always exceeds our didactic (teaching) capabilities. He cannot and will not be mastered… intellectually, or in any other way.

A sermon must ultimately present the Triune God of the text. Preaching is a revelatory means of God’s self-presentation through a mortal voice. So it is okay if a sermon leads more readily into worship than into intellectual understanding. It is okay if the sermon mystifies more than it explains.

Now, if you know me at all or follow this blog even a little, you know I am not interested in promoting any sort of anti-intellectualism or encouraging a mystical, gnostic conception of faith absent of rigorous theological thinking and vigorous ethical living. Sermons should certainly explain and enrich intellectual understanding.

But with that disclaimer, let me say it again: it is okay if a sermon leads more readily into worship than into intellectual understanding; it is okay if the sermon mystifies more than it explains.

In fact, a sermon that fully exhausts and entirely explains a text (or at least presumes to do so) may actually be a failure.

This is because such preaching may give the congregation a false sense that they have now mastered a passage, that they can tick it off as “done” and then move on to master other texts. A sermon that presumes to explain an entire biblical passage (or topic, as the case may be) teaches something dangerous: that our sacred Scriptures are a repository of limited knowledge that can be sufficiently grasped and mastered by mortals.

What a disastrous idea.

And what an awful message for a sermon to convey.

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything except pledging yourself to act accordingly. My God, you will say, if I do that my whole life will be ruined. How would I ever get on in this world? Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is the Church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Oh, priceless scholarship, what would we do without you? Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament.

I open the New Testament and read: ‘If you want to be perfect, then sell all your goods and give to the poor and come follow me.’ Good God, if we were to actually do this, all the capitalists, the officeholders, and the entrepreneurs, the whole society in fact, would be almost beggars! We would be sunk if it were not for Christian scholarship! Praise be to everyone who works to consolidate the reputation of Christian scholarship, which helps to restrain the New Testament, this confounded book which would one, two, three, run us all down if it got loose (that is, if Christian scholarship did not restrain it).”

-From Kierkegaard’s Journals

The release date is still about 6 weeks away, but it will be worth keeping an eye on the discussion generated by Francis Watson’s Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective.

Prof. Watson is my supervisor at Durham, so I am somewhat familiar with the material and arguments of the book (almost 700 pages). Here is the synopsis provided by Eerdmans on the book’s webpage:

That there are four canonical versions of the one gospel story is often seen as a problem for Christian faith: where gospels multiply, so to do apparent contradictions that may seem to undermine their truth claims. In Gospel Writing Francis Watson argues that differences and tensions between canonical gospels represent opportunities for theological reflection, not problems for apologetics.

Watson presents the formation of the fourfold gospel as the defining moment in the reception of early gospel literature — and also of Jesus himself as the subject matter of that literature. As the canonical division sets four gospel texts alongside one another, the canon also creates a new, complex, textual entity more than the sum of its parts. A canonical gospel can no longer be regarded as a definitive, self-sufficient account of its subject matter. It must play its part within an intricate fourfold polyphony, and its meaning and significance are thereby transformed.

In elaborating these claims, Watson proposes nothing less than a new paradigm for gospel studies — one that engages fully with the available noncanonical material so as to illuminate the historical and theological significance of the canonical.

 

And here are a few endorsements from major figures in biblical and patristic scholarship:

What is the best ecclesial context for doing theology as a “pastor-theologian”: a mega church or a small church?

This is the question of my previous post, and I take up on those thoughts here focusing on the small church context…

Theology in the Small Church

The vocational model of “pastor-theologian” sounds a bit too highfalutin’ for the “1st Baptist Church of Smalltown, USA” or for the village parish somewhere in rural northern England. High-brow theological training at multiple academic institutions can leave a minister feeling licensed for “bigger and better” positions in greener pastures (let’s just be honest… and the burden of student loan debt will certainly cause some of us to look for a certain salary range).

If we pastor-theologian-types can wrestle against our personal sense of ministerial grandeur, we might find that the small church setting can be a rather exciting environment for serious theological work.

Pastors of small churches cannot rely solely on their efficient management skills: they must relationally lead as well; nor can they rely on managerial executive pastors to run the church on their behalf while they devote the majority of their time to study: they must help balance the budget while reading Barth and Calvin. A small church pastor has to get into the relational, administrative, and political messes of parish life. There is no insulating layer of a highly qualified staff.

These messes may at first be viewed as distractions from the pristine work of doing theology.

Not exactly. In fact, theology that cannot engage and address a local church’s relational, administrative, and political messes is too shallow for the people of God and for the God of the people.

And when a pastor is personally wading in the muck of the parish, that’s when the parish will listen to theology and care about it.

Personally…

I’m not sure yet whether I will end up serving a local church or working in a seminary/divinity school when I complete (Deo volente!)  my PhD program. But when I was working on a Master of Theology degree a few years back, I was also pastoring a small Baptist church.

The rush and thrill of learning in a high-profile environment was exhilarating.

But if I didn’t have theology thick enough to sit in Jo’s living room after paramedics had just removed her husband’s body from her house, then the classroom experience was all for naught. If I didn’t have a theology thick enough to sit at a hospital bedside and help a nurse adjust the position of a sedated parishioner, then the impressive theological training was suffering a disconnect.

Of course, it is not entirely up to our theological instructors in the seminary and the div school to connect our theology to our ministerial labors. Ultimately, that is the job of the minister. And context helps make the connection happen.

In this regard, the small church setting was really helpful for me. It forced theology to leap off the pages and out of the libraries into living rooms, kitchens, hospitals, and graveyards.

In light of the previous post, “Will the Job Market Drive PhD Graduates into the Pulpit?“, I just wanted to think aloud with any interested readers on the ideal ecclesial setting for the vocational model of a “pastor-theologian.”

For more on how I am envisioning this model of pastoral ministry, see here and here.

I want to be careful not to promote some elitist brand of “minister” by writing so often about the “pastor-scholar/pastor-theologian.” The current pastoral leaders of the church are differently gifted and a vast range of divinely-guided inclinations are shaping their individual ministries. In using the term “pastor-theologian,” I am loosely referring to someone who engages the work of theology with all the rigor and zeal of academic theologians, but within the specific context of the parish and the pews of local church life.

But what sort of ecclesial setting is more conducive for the pastor-theologian: a small church or a larger one? There is no easy answer here because churches differ in their leadership structures, just as ministers differ from one another in their range of gifts and interests.

Pastoral Theology in the Mega Church Context

In this post, let’s just think for a bit about the potential for doing theology from the pastoral office of a mega church.

Many of our larger churches are led by CEO-styled ministers who are effective at governing and inspiring a sizable institution. This managerial model does not seem that viable for the sort of sustained reflection and quietness that attends what we normally think of as the work of theology.

Some mega church pastors, though, are permitted to devote their ministerial labors primarily to the preaching and teaching office of the church. Many of those we normally think of as high-profile pastor-scholars spend 20+ hours a week on each sermon. Their schedules are carefully preserved for studying and writing, while other manager-type ministers occupy themselves with the business of running the church.

The problem here, however, is that a pastor-scholar who gets this much time safely for reading and writing can be shielded from the daily life of the flock. Such a pastor-theologian, therefore, may not be able to do theology pastorally. Of course, if all that prep work is devoted to a sermon, then there is a powerfully pastoral element at work. Homiletics is essentially pastoral. Those countless hours of reading are usually devoted not to producing an erudite essay but a message for Sunday morning. But it should be acknowledged that being confined to a study and immersed in the works of biblical scholars and great theologians can become as much an “ivory tower” setting as the office of the professional academic theologian on the university quad.

Advantages and disadvantages abound. Any thoughts?

[Next post will be up soon focusing on the Small Church Context for Theology]

This is the story of Death.

He was born in the most pristine of settings, at the dawn of creation. His first cries were heard amidst the teeming, shining newness of plants erupting joyfully from the fresh new earth.

Along with the birdsong and the rippling rush of four rivers had been the sound of a Voice. Once it issued a warning: “the day when you eat of that tree over there, you shall surely die.

Life was off to a grand start. But at the crunch of a bitten fruit, with the drip of its juices running off human lips, the shadow slipped darkly into world. This was the birthday of our story’s protagonist.

He was there to drink Abel’s blood when it soaked into the dirt. He was there amidst the many sounds of clashing steel and whizzing arrows. He laid joyfully in the sun on the red ground, smiling broadly while he fed corpses to his precious pets—the great black birds with noses for rot.

Death’s rise to supremacy over all the lands was almost immediate.

This was not a reign marked solely by quick endings. He does not just bring the absence of life. He is happy to poison life, to make its every breath raspy, its every heartbeat a quiver. Death can be a slow influence as well as an instantaneous stopping of the heart. He seeps into veins and vessels, into neural pathways, into the mystical fibers of souls. He is as pleased with administering his signature work of bringing closure through slow, subtle processes as well as by the sudden swing of sabers.

His reign has not gone entirely uncontested.

Rumors were whispered. Sometimes a voice shouted. Prophets raised clenched fists into Death’s snarling face and announced that his rule was terminal. Isaiah talked about a meal in which Death featured as the main course for the hungry jowls of the living God. Ezekiel saw a mass grave resurrected from a heap of bones to a living, breathing army.

Then another birth took place amidst the shadows. This birth was viewed as posing some sort of death threat to Death. Soldiers were dispatched to a small village with drawn blades to bring an ending. The little boy somehow made it out. Alive.

(Alive.)

This child became a man. His every breath was breathed into Death’s face. Once a tomb even got emptied. No contender had ever shown such potential for unseating the Throne of Violent Endings.

Then Death got the upper hand as the hands of this tomb-emptying Contender were nailed to a dead tree. Finally, Death could regain his grin, cupping the flow of unstaunched blood with glee. He had his way with this man, this man whose ending put an end to all opposition.

No one could really have guessed the sudden turn that comes next in the tale. It was unforeseeable.

The tomb-emptying dead man escaped the ultimate place of closure. This man clutched so tightly that his blood and breath were squeezed out forever put an end to his own ending.

There is a breech in the system. Fissures popped in the impenetrable superstructure of Death’s governance. The empty tomb of the Crucified is a hole that cannot be patched, a ripped open tear than cannot be resealed, a puncture wound that cannot be plugged.

This is the day Death began choking on his own fumes.

This is the day Death began to age and wrinkle.

This is the day Death began to die.

This day is today.

The biography does not end on this day. Not yet. Death is coughing and spluttering, but his claws are still sharp, his teeth still red. Chomping, snatching, stealing, threshing… it is all still underway. The black birds still fly with bellies full.

Death’s biography cannot be written posthumously. Not today. But the story’s ending can be recorded here with confidence. And the genre is “tragedy.” The great tomb-emptying antagonist of Death has trumpeted news of a new order.  The endings will end.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more.

Easter tidings to all.

Dark. Tomb dark.

The Light of the world is snuffed out. No city shines on the hill. The nearest hill around is called “Skull-Place,” and it’s marred by the black stains of dried blood.

The sky was deathly quiet yesterday, on that Friday we now call “good.” Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani? was met with no reply. Now, the ironclad silence has given way to stone sealed night.

The grave: when silence is at its quietest; when darkness is most dense. No closure is more final than that of a sealed up tomb.

There are no embers to stoke. No spark in which to infuse any sort of hope. All former hoping is now exposed as gross naïveté.  Everything must now be reconfigured around those grim perpendicular bars. The cross mauled and pulverized all promises. Dreams flickering with the heat of prophetic urgency are now lightless and smouldering in the smoke of ruin.

He’s gone. Over in that garden lies the disfigured heap of his corpse.

Yes, today is the day when God’s body laid drying in the dust as a corpse.

Shame on you for hoping. Cursed are you who believed. Fools.

Fools.