Since the time of the Protestant Scholastics, sermons have been designed according to a schema: subtilitas intelligendi, subtilitas explicandi, subtilitas applicandi—careful understanding, explication, and application. A text was exegeted, interpreted, and applied in what was often a tri-part sermon.
Through the years the pattern modified. A preference for brief texts emerged, employing a single verse from Scripture or sometimes even a phrase. Where a brief text was not chosen, preachers reduced longer passages to a single topic, a theme that could be stated propositionally. As a result, “stock” homiletic design evolved: An introduction was followed by the text, which in turn was reduced to a propositional topic, which was developed in a series of “points” (often categorical), before the sermon ended in a conclusion. The system, set forth in homiletic texts, is still with us.
In these homiletic systems, there is what might be called a “method of distillation” by which passages are reduced to single propositional “truths.” Let us probe the method more deeply. Suppose, for example, a preacher has decided to preach a passage from the New Testament, Luke 7:2–10, the story of the centurion’s slave. Remember the narrative: A centurion has a slave near death. He dispatches “elders of the Jews” to plead his case with Jesus. “He is worthy!” the elders exclaim and tell how the man loves the country and has shelled out for the synagogue building fund. Jesus heads toward the centurion’s house but is intercepted by folks who relay a message from the Roman captain: “Lord, I am not worthy,” he insists, “but say the word and my ‘boy’ will be healed.” We catch onto what he means by “say the word” when we hear him speak of his own authority to command: When I say “go,” they go. Then Jesus turns to a crowd (which has appeared out of nowhere) and says in effect, “This is faith, and I haven’t seen it in Israel.” The passage concludes with a postscript reporting that the centurion’s slave is now a picture of health.
Now, how does the preacher proceed? Usually, he approaches the passage as if it were objectively there, a static construct from which he may get something to preach on. Either he will grab one of the verses: “Say the word,” “I am not worthy,” “he loves our nation, and he built us our synagogue,” treating the verse as a topic, or he will distill some general theme from the passage; for example, “the intercession of friends,” “the compassion of Jesus,” “an example of humility.” Notice, in either case, the preacher treats the passage as if it were a still-life picture in which something may be found, object-like, to preach on. What has been ignored? The composition of the “picture,” the narrative structure, the movement of the story, the whole question of what in fact the passage may want to preach. Above all, notice that the passage has been treated as a stopped, objective picture from which something may be taken out to preach on!
Suppose we venture a different sort of exercise. Let us propose questions that a preacher might ask of a passage, questions that may yield different results and that may indirectly suggest a different way of “biblical preaching.”
1. What Is the Form? Obviously, form tends to orient consciousness; it predetermines expectation. So, for example, if we begin a story, “Once upon a time there was a lady who lived in a house that seemed spun of gold … ,” listeners will expect a fairy tale. On the other hand, if we start, “Did ya hear the one about the farmer’s daughter … ,” listeners will brace for a dirty joke. Notice! In each case not only is expectation formed but the response may be anticipated; I will get ready to respond as I ought to a vulgar story. Of course, the listener may be crossed up (as is often the case in the New Testament). The story of the farmer’s daughter could turn into a plea for agrarian reform, or what started as a fairy tale could continue, “and her name was Hilda Glockenspiel and she lived at 2400 Grand Concourse, Bronx, N.Y.” But, at the outset, let’s notice that form, particularly in an oral culture, can orient consciousness, can predispose a hermeneutic.
So, at first glance, our preacher will see that Luke 7:2–10 is a “miracle story.” More, he may realize that miracle stories were designed to evoke a “wow!” from listeners. The wise preacher will guess that a turgid apologetic for miracles or, worse, any rational explanation of miracles may scuttle the sense of “wow” and, therefore, be homiletically inappropriate. If a passage wants to provoke amazement, it would seem homiletically respectful to aim at the effect.
2. What Is the Plot, Structure, or Shape? While passages may be distinguished by form, every form will have a particular structural design. So looking at Luke 7, we may exclaim “miracle,” but still note that the story involves a sequence of episodes, designed dialogue, and so on.
With narrative material, we are pointing to an aged distinction between “story” and “plot,” or perhaps as may be the case in Scripture between plot and “history.” For what we bump into in Scripture is not history but plots, systems of structured telling, sequences of juxtaposed episodes that can be analyzed with literary categories—time, space, character, point of view. The distinction between plot and history may provide a way out of the undue preoccupation with historicity that has deformed both exegesis and preaching for too many decades. While there may well be historical bases for biblical narratives (surely Jesus did heal), historical questions are secondary to the material at hand, which is, of course, plots. In Luke 7:2–10 we have a plotted story, and a preacher can quickly demark episodes: Jesus with the elders; Jesus and the centurion’s friends; Jesus and the crowd. Plot can be distinguished, interactions of episodes noted, and the “logic” of the system considered. Of course, non-narrative material may also be plotted, insofar as all language involves structured speaking, a sequence of ideas, or images logically designed.
3. What Is the “Field of Concern?” “Field of Concern” is a clumsy term for a crucial matter. Biblical writers are often working with sources. In writing, they look at their source material through some sort of hermeneutic lens. As a result, pericopes have in them a hidden perspective, a lurking field of concern. To seize an example, Isaiah 56:3–8 deals with an exclusion of eunuchs and aliens from the temple. YHWH objects: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” Now if a preacher approaches the passage asking, “What in the passage parallels my congregation’s experience?” one may end chattering about homosexuals and unbelievers in the church. (The question of parallels is almost always fatal!) On the other hand, suppose our preacher seeks a field of concern in the passage: He may then happen on the broader issue of exclusiveness and inclusiveness among God’s people and, as a result, reach for rather different examples than are found in the passage itself.
4. What Is the “Logic” of Movement? Earlier we noticed that the historical-critical method and rational homiletics view passages as “still-lifes,” static systems from which something may be taken out to preach on. Now, let’s admit that passages in their episodic sections are more like film-clips from motion pictures: passages display the movement of thought, event, or image. No wonder they so resist distillation!
Preachers can learn to ask, “By what kind of ‘logic’ does the passage move? What logic orders its plotted language, its sequence of events, its lively conversational give-and-take?” “Logic of movement” is tricky, for it involves a subject matter, an author’s perspective, and purpose, as well as an “implied reader.”
5. What Is the “Addressed World?” Parable scholars of late have been pushing the idea that parables may speak to “world constructs” that live in the minds of listeners. So, the parable of the workers and hours (Matt. 20:1–15) seems to presume that listeners have bought into a “just” Deuteronomic world in which meritorious labors are rewarded by a record-keeping God; whereas the similitude of the mustard seed may address a mentality that anticipates the salvation of the pagans through Israel’s triumph. To cite a non-narrative passage, Romans 12:1–8 may counter a lust for spiritual worship with the earthy word body—“offer your bodies.” When a speaker speaks or a writer writes, he has some notion of the mind-set of his audience, some reading of the audience’s “world.”
6. What Is the Passage Trying to Do? Is it possible that all biblical language is intentional, that it is performative? In the ancient world, spoken language was employed in more sophisticated ways than in our crumbling linear culture. First-century folk grasped language like a tool, choosing form and style and structure to shape purpose. Thus, biblical language is a language designed to function in consciousness. Now we are not suggesting that we can probe passages for authorial intent. What we do suppose is that passages may be analyzed as to how they may have operated in the consciousness of an audience. We can ask, “What is the language trying to do?” So, for example, the little parable in Luke 17:7–10 sets up its hearers in a position of mastery, “Will anyone of you who has a servant … ,” only to flip them into slavery by the last line, “We are unworthy servants.… ”
Speaking of Scripture
Preaching should be a speaking of Scripture and not about Scripture. Referential language—“In today’s gospel lesson … ,” “In our text, we see that … ,”—can be avoided: We need never talk about a text (“then”) and draw application (“now”). On the other hand, we cannot tumble back into the immediacy of Scripture, preaching a dramatic monologue or uninterpreted story (the “I, Nicodemus” type of sermon), hoping for subjective effect. Sermons should be designed to locate as action in hermeneutic consciousness where language and the images of human experience meet. If there are passages that cannot be preached without launched expeditions into historical background or lengthy critical excurses, they may not belong in the homiletic “canon” (not all Scripture may want to be preached!). If preaching is the Word of God as Reformers insisted, we cannot preach about tests as if they were objects of rational inquiry.
Preaching should favor mobile structures, foregoing fixed topics and categorical development. What we encounter in Scripture is movement of thoughts or event or image by some “logic.” So sermon structures ought to travel through congregational consciousness as a series of immediate thoughts, sequentially designed and imaged with technical skill as to assemble informing faith. While sermon structure will be plotted much as narrative, moving episodically (or by some other logic) and displaying various “points-of-view,” sermons need not follow the sequence of a particular passage slavishly. Likewise, a sermon need not be bound by biblical form: The how and why of form is more important than the form itself. In other words, to preach a biblical narrative we do not need to adopt a story form. Clearly, a sermon on Luke 7 could be designed as a conversation moving about in the field of theological concern with only slight reference to the text; or it could move as a story in which theological implications keep opening up to consciousness. In preaching, deep structures and performative purposes take precedence over form.
Certainly, a preacher must seek to discern an implicit field of concern. The odd idea that preachers can move from text to sermon without recourse to theology by some exegetical magic or a leap of homiletic imagination is obvious nonsense. Theologic is required to understand the “whys” of episodic juxtaposition in the plot, is required for a reading of deep structures, and is surely required if we wish to grasp the depth of implication in a field of concern. Moreover, if exegesis involves some translation of biblical imagery into theological meaning, homiletics involves a reverse procedure, namely, the retranslation of theological understandings into designed, imagistic language. A preacher must be a poet, exegete, and theologian simply because sermon structures must be shaped so that the language of preaching “plays” in a theological field of concern.
The idea of an “addressed world” is tricky. Is there something perennial about the “worlds” which the gospel addresses because “structures of the life-world,” as social constructs, are inevitably sinstruck? Clearly, a contemporary world in consciousness will be different from a first-century world because human consciousness is historical. If a sermon is to work, will the preacher not have to evoke a world for it to address? In preaching the parable of the works and hours, must we not buy into a world where justice demands fair pay for righteous works before we can be jolted by the boss’s harsh “Take your pay and go!” And can we be shaken by the centurion’s “I am not worthy,” until we have admired his virtues to the point of exclaiming, “Now that is what I call right living!”? The notion of an addressed world can determine homiletic strategy.
The crucial matter for homiletic theory is the idea of performative purpose. The question “What is the language doing?” may translate into a craftsman’s query, “What must my sermon seek to do?” Homileticians always think strategy, for they attempt to form understandings by the movement of language in consciousness. True “biblical preaching” will want to be faithful not only to a message but to an intention. The question “What is the passage trying to do?” may well mark the beginning of homiletical obedience. Sermons can no longer be a weekly leap into a “stock” pattern (three points and a poem, revisited), because every text may intend differently, require different designing, and beg to fulfill different purposes. Presumably, a sermon on parable will function differently in consciousness than one on a doxological poem; a controversy-pronouncement sermon will move differently than one on mythy stories from Genesis. But sermons built as moving modules of language can function variously and be open to various intentional strategies.