On Preachers and Preaching
If you’re not Christian, the word ‘preaching’ is a pretty negative term. I remember asking a few friends if they would ever come hear me preach, and the responses were pretty telling. The responses went something to the tune of: “No, I don’t want to have someone tell me that everything I’m doing is wrong!” And if you are Christian, you’re not too far removed from that either. I’m not sure I could find anyone who would take being characterized as “preachy” in a positive way. Sunday sermons can be something that we just feel like we’re obligated to go to as part of the church culture.
One of my favorite classes that I’ve ever taken at Talbot is my current class in homiletics (the composition and art of sermons). Through this class, I’ve come to receive a heightened sensitivity to the importance of the sermon in the church today, and the realization that in today’s church, not all preachers are as dedicated as we should be to the task of letting God’s people know what He is saying to them in the way that Jesus, Peter, and Paul modeled. Let me say first that I often fall into this camp, so this post is mostly a reminder for myself to perform the task with the reverence, submission, and all-out effort that it requires.
Recently, I had the opportunity to hear a preacher speak on Matthew 14:22-33. It’s the well-known story of the disciples being caught up in a storm, and then seeing Jesus walking on the water. Peter gets out of the boat and joins him, but later fails and sinks because of his lack of faith, and Jesus calms the storm after the two of them get on the boat. For me, when I sit down to listen to sermons, I’m constantly working to “get ahead” of the speaker. It’s probably a result of being hypertuned as a stereotypically Asian student to try to glean as much information to understand what the teacher is talking about at all times. At any rate, the speaker had a lot of things going for him. He was dynamic, engaging, knew his audience, related to them well, related to them honestly and in terms they could understand, and had a good message for everyone to take home. As far as I could tell, that take-home truth was this: “Get out of your comfort zone as a Christian because it will allow Jesus to work miracles in your life.”
He related this to the disciples because as fishermen, they were comfortable on the boat. The boat was their comfort zone because they had spent their entire lives on boats up until the point they had met Jesus. So when Peter asked Jesus to call him to walk on water, he was “stepping out of his comfort zone and into faith in Jesus”. Similarly, said the preacher, we need to get out of what we’re comfortable with in our pursuit of Jesus. I’m fairly sure that I’ve heard other speakers preach this passage in this exact way before. It’s a pretty popular way to interpret the passage, and it’s easy to see the connection: the disciples were fishermen, so of course they’d be comfortable in the boat. Plus anti peer-pressure messages are pretty well-accepted, not only in church, but in society at large today. Take risks for Jesus, every Christian needs to do it.
But as I was really trying to digest his message and thinking about the text and the situation that Matthew was describing, I began to wonder whether it was really a valid way to present this text. The disciples are floating around in the middle of a huge storm; in fact, the language used to describe the situation in the passage is that the boat was “tormented” by the waves, and that the wind was “adverse” to the disciples’ efforts to get the boat safely back to shore. “Tormenting” is something that demons do, and especially given the fact that Satan is known as the adversary or the enemy, Matthew’s trying to tell us that this is no ordinary storm.
In this situation, is the boat really a comfort zone? Are the disciples really thinking, “Well, I’d like to go for a swim or try to walk on the water, but it’s just too comfortable here right now?” There’s clearly something else going on in this text, and the language used suggests to me that the focus is really on Jesus’ command over nature (the wind and the waves) and all that it is in it (including demonic forces) and that the source of this power is his faith in God (which is why Peter failed). At any rate, I haven’t done enough study to really understand this passage at this time.
I’m not saying that the message is a wrong one: God often does call us out of our comfort zones into more mature service for His kingdom. I’m saying that this isn’t what Matthew is talking about here, and all of a sudden by presenting this passage this way, we’re no longer faithful to the Word of God. But preachers often take the easy way out: we have a load of theology that we’ve either heard somewhere, learned somewhere, or picked up along the way, and we think in terms of topics rather than the Word, and then we go “surfing the Word” to find a relevant passage. I’ve been guilty of it many times. I ask myself “What do my people need to hear today?” And the easiest way to answer this question is “What are they doing wrong? What do they need to fix?” I imagine that the same thought process might’ve gone through the mind of the speaker in question. “What do these kids need to hear? Well, the church is totally in a comfort zone, so they need to step out of it.” When I take this approach, though, I set myself up as a moral compass rather than a spiritual compass. What that means is that I’m more talking about what’s right and what’s wrong than I am talking about what belongs to the Spirit and what does not. But really, my ultimate purpose is not to correct people’s unrighteousness, but rather to point them towards the one from whom righteousness flows. Regrettably, I do this all the time, and if you guys have ever heard me preach, you’ve probably frequently fallen victim to my lack of submission to God’s word.
But the more serious problem is that with this approach, we water down what the Bible is actually saying to us. When we hear preachers being pretty liberal with the Bible, most Christians take it pretty well. We’re trained to be accepting and submissive in church, especially to your pastor: don’t rock the boat. But in our heads, the message fails to resonate because there’s a certain cognitive dissonance when we receive messages that are contrary to what the Word is actually saying. As preachers, we’ve missed the opportunity to actually give to the people what God is saying to us through His Word. The end result is that the congregation loses interest in ever reading, studying, or hearing the Bible preached, because they either feel a) they can’t get to the point where they can see the same thing the preacher does, or b) people are just making stuff up anyway so why bother? When preaching is watered down, the leadership from the pulpit shows people that they don’t really have to take God seriously in the way that He’s revealed Himself to us in the Bible. In essence, the indirect message from the pastor is that it’s okay to make up our own god and ascribe to him the attributes and ways of dealing with his people that we feel are best. Did you catch that? All of a sudden we’re led to blasphemy and idolatry and all because of irresponsible preaching.
So it’s not really surprising that people don’t get excited about the word “preaching” these days. It’s also not surprising that so many professing Christians don’t know their Bibles very well today, or that the everyone generally likes to lament an erosion of values in the church today. That’s what happens when preachers become moral compasses rather than spiritual compasses. And spiritual compass-ness (for lack of a better term) begins at home: when I’m submitting to the will of God in my life, that can spill over in the way that I approach the Word. This works for anyone. When we’re sharing with our friends about our faith, are we sharing because someone’s told us that Christians share their faith, or is it because we really regard it as the best thing that’s ever happened to us? Do we memorize key Scriptures to share with people because we took a seminar or a course that advised that they were good ones to memorize, or because they resonate deeply within our own experience and understanding?
The sermon experience is really the pastor’s moment to speak to as many sheep in his flock as possible, all at once. So here’s the deal, for those of you guys who do have the opportunity to hear me speak on a regular basis. (Those of you who have stuck around this long, at any rate) I need to be accountable. I need to be called out on these things. If you ever hear me saying something that doesn’t quite mesh with what the text is saying, or if I seem to be just pulling stuff out of nowhere, please don’t just write it off as your own ineffectiveness in understanding the Scriptures. I’ll be the first to tell you guys that the lion’s share of the responsibility in the mutual task of understanding something lies in the teacher. So, please, guys, give me as much feedback as possible. I don’t ever want to set myself up as someone who’s above reproach in the church, but this is the way we treat our pastors today. I’m confident that when we can be as real and honest with each other as Jesus was with us, we’ll be living as God truly intended us to live as the body of Christ. I’m not there yet, but with all of your help, I hope to be pointed in the right direction.
Blessings,
-Ern [praying for a submissive heart]
