What Is A Sermon, Anyway?

Derek Rishmawy, Alastair Roberts, and Brad East discuss the nature of preaching, exploring its purpose, context, and the role of the preacher. They discuss the importance of engaging the heart and conscience of the audience, the need for contextualization in sermons, and the common pitfalls that preachers face. The conversation emphasizes the collective nature of engaging with scripture and the significance of avoiding jargon to ensure accessibility for all listeners.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hey, this is Ian. I'm the producer for Mere Fidelity. Here at Mere Orthodoxy, our mission is to create thoughtful media for the renewal of the church and culture. That includes this podcast, along with other podcasts, daily articles, a print journal, an online community, and more. Mere Orthodoxy and all of our projects are supported by readers and listeners just like you. 2026 is looking like it will be the most exciting year in Mir Orthodoxy's 20-year history. But we need your help to make it happen. If you enjoy this podcast, want to see it continue, and partner with us to create even more resources like this. You can make that happen by becoming a member. Go to Mir Orthodoxy.com slash member to partner with us. That's Mir Orthodoxy.comslash member. Let's renew minds and restore hope for the good of the church and the culture. Go to Mereorthodoxy.com slash member today.

SPEAKER_00 1:24

Hello and welcome to another episode of Mere Fidelity, a podcast by Mere Orthodoxy, where we think about the Word of God and the world we live in. My name is Derek Rushmaui, and I'll be your host for today. And I'm joined by regular cast and crew members Aleister Roberts and Brad East. Well, today we're actually gonna talk uh about um the Word of God and the world we live in in the subject of preaching sermons, the nature of the sermon, what what's preaching about, uh, how should we go about it, how should we go about listening to it, things like that. And to to get us going on this, because this wasn't my subject. Uh Brad, Brad, get us in. What what what did you how did you want to lead us into this uh topic today?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Yeah, you know, this is a Protestant podcast, and this is just about the only doctrinal locus uh where I have good Protestant bona fides. Uh I I am I am never more Lutheran than in my understanding of the word of God and the word proclaimed. I'm gonna set the table with a set of questions, and then I'll give y'all my own definition of uh preaching, which I published on my blog and then on Mere Orthodoxy five or six years ago. I think it was 2019, Jake Jake put it up there. Um, a number of theses. So some of the questions that I would love to do to explore in our conversation are what is the purpose? And of course, all of these can be plural if we want to make them plural. There's no a priori reason why it needs to be, why the answers all need to be singular, but what is the purpose of preaching? Who is the audience for the sermon? What is the subject matter of the proclamation? What is the source? What is the context? So does context matter? Can you can you preach or can you preach anywhere? Uh or does it have a particular context? Um where does the power of preaching come from? That one's kind of obvious. And of course, practically speaking, what is the God ordained length for all times and places? Uh now uh uh we can we can get into that uh if we want since we have some disagreements uh uh between us. I'll give y'all my my um definition. This is my definition, and then I'll give you m the shorthand abbreviated version I give to my students. A sermon is the proclamation of the gospel by an authorized member of the church out of a specific text from Holy Scripture in the setting of public worship among to and for the sake of the gathered local assembly of the baptized. And the way I break that down for my students when I'm not reading it is simply to say uh you have a sermon when you have the good news of Jesus Christ, so that that's element number one, you have the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed, number two, out of some biblical text. And actually, I'm willing to just say, period. Like that that's what I need to say. I have heard a sermon, whether it was a good sermon or a bad sermon, eloquent, ineloquent, um, inspiring, not inspiring. Uh the the good news of Jesus Christ preached out of some passage of the canonical holy scriptures. And then I like to add for my students, because they will be preaching and teaching, I like to tell them that I want to see some sign of having wrestled with this text. I want to see some sign that the preacher, like Jacob with the angel or the Lord by the river, has struggled and refused to give up until having received a blessing. And that blessing, uh, whatever it may be, needs to be the word that we as the congregation hear. And I'll I'll conclude with this that I tell my students, a sermon is not a lesson, preaching is not teaching. I could hear a hundred faithful sermons in a row for for for two straight years of Sundays, and never, as a theologian with a PhD, never learn a single item of new information. But that would not mean that the word was not faithfully proclaimed, because that is not the end. Education is not the end of the sermon. So that's the beginning of my soapbox. I look forward to bringing it out uh repeatedly throughout this conversation. But what do we what do we make of that at first glance?

SPEAKER_03 5:52

Provided that terms are defined carefully, I largely agree with that. I think that the distinction between preaching and teaching that you draw is an important one. And although when I preach, and I am actually doing a lot of preaching at the moment, um, over the six-week period that we're within, I'm going to be preaching five weeks of those six in various churches. But I generally defer to what is the normal mode of preaching within those contexts. I think that's important. But my ideal vision of preaching is one that is very clearly distinguished from teaching. It's a form of address that that is directed chiefly not to just the delivering of information but the moving of the heart and the addressing of the conscience with the claims of Jesus Christ. And uh the point that you make about the biblical text that's really important. You want to hear scripture and you want to hear the authentic uh uh voice of the text, and this is one of the reasons I do like the lectionary. The lectionary forces you to uh deal with a text that isn't just a chosen one that can serve as a springboard for your own personal message that you want to share. Rather, it's something that forces you to um reckon with the givenness of scripture, that you don't get to choose the text that you're dealing with. Um and so I think having a a clear sense of the end in moving the the heart and the conscience uh by the claims of Jesus Christ delivered from a particular text has consequences uh beyond that. But it also I think situates the sermon within a more liturgical context. This is directed to the people of the church, it's directed to the baptized congregation. This is not an evangelistic message primarily. It's evangelistic in the broader, more technical sense that it's a message of the gospel, nor is it an event of teaching. And as a s as such, I think a lot of our sermons are essentially Swiss Army knife addresses. They're trying to do everything. And it would be best to have sermons of no more than 15 minutes in length and have teaching as a dedicated part of the Sunday morning gathering outside of that context, um, the immediate context of the gathered liturgy, where you could have people divided into appropriate classes that address them at their um fitting level. But you don't need to have you can have an address to the conscience that is suited for a wide congregation. That does not have the same limits as uh a lesson. And then seeing that as culminating and related to the practice of the supper, ideally, and then the sending out. This is not just uh a matter of instruction, it's something that's giving people the confidence to come to the table to partake and then to be sent out into the world with a sense of what it is that they're supposed to do, and a confidence of their acceptance in Christ and of their calling by Christ. Um so that would be my um response. I I largely agree with what you're saying and would just add those remarks.

SPEAKER_00 9:22

I I think the nutshell, I think we're obviously gonna like agree about the nutshell core of what the act of preaching is and what we're aiming at. Um I'm just gonna read a very helpful passage from uh the larger catechism, which doesn't get as much airplay uh because it's larger. Um but it question 159, how is the word of God to be preached by those that are called thereunto? Uh they are called they that are called to labor in the ministry of the word are to preach sound doctrine diligently, in season and out of season, plainly, not in the enticing words of man's wisdom, but in demonstration of the spirit and of power, faithfully making known the whole counsel of God, wisely applying themselves to the net the necessities and capacities of their hearers, zealously, with a fervent, with fervent love to God and the souls of his people, sincerely aiming at his glory and their conversion, edification, and salvation. I think that's like a fairly comprehensive nutshell picture of what a pastor should be trying to do generally across the year, across the seasons of their preaching. Obviously, within individual sermons, as you know, the text demands and as is appropriate week to week, there is s different emphases, whatever. So, I mean uh to to push, I'll say on evangelism, I've been deeply shaped by Tim Keller's preaching philosophy and his lectures on preaching Christ in a postmodern world. Uh I've you know, went through those things a couple of times and the the whole idea of basically preaching to the converted and the unconverted, preaching to the Christian and the non-Christian at the same time. And you're gonna have sermons where um you're primarily preaching to one and the other is listening in, and others where you're preaching primarily to the other and the others are listening in. But you know, my my shared assumption is that you have you have functionally unconverted heart parts of the you're you're your your believers have parts of their hearts that are just like their pagan neighbors in some ways that need to be converted, and your your unbelievers have enough baseline, like shared religious, like anthropology, that um they are instructed about what the Christian life in light of the gospel and grace looks like, such that uh uh even a sermon that's primarily aimed at you know edification, so to speak, is evangelistic in in a in a in a proper sense as well, because you're you're showcasing here's what the good news does and calls you to in in the life of a of a believer. So um I don't I don't as much like you know, yeah, that that's that's one kind of caveat I had. It's kind of how informs a lot of the way I think about each sermon. But um I think those things are in play. I do think I do think the the needs of the moment uh culturally change uh era by era in terms of you know the line between teaching and preaching. You know, in my my context, on a Wednesday night at large group, whatever on campus, I'm on campus, I've got a more split audience. Um I've got college students coming in who your average college student who hasn't like grown up in the church, whatever, is so radically undercatechized and has no background in basic Christian metaphysics, narrative, et cetera, that a fair amount of teaching has to happen for preaching to happen. Um and I think that's actually something that is the case across the board. There has to be, there has to be amount uh a good amount of of teaching or like what would be well if we're if we're creating that distinction, there actually has to be a a good amount of like expositional, you know, not mechan like talking about the mechanics of of doctrine, the mechanics of the text, the background, all that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_01 13:22

Um if you're can you say what context you're talking about? I don't actually quite know.

SPEAKER_00 13:26

Right. This is good. Um my context is I, you know, I'm a campus minister, I work on campus with college students, and so I'm usually my my main preaching or teaching time, whatever you want to call it, then this is actually a discussion among campus ministers. Are we preaching or teaching? What are we doing? Because it's not a typical liturgical setting, right? I don't administer the sacraments there, I won't baptize you on campus. You gotta go to church for all that. And I one of the things in RF we really try and emphasize is like this is not a church replacement. This is the church coming to campus and like bringing some of it with us, but it's an extension. Uh it's not a replacement. So I don't do all the liturgical things. Nevertheless, I do think there are there is a gathering of believers and unbelievers. Um, and there is the proclamation of Christ on the basis of the Word of God. And we I usually go through books of the Bible. Uh on right now, I'm going through the Apostles' Creed, uh preaching off of texts in the Bible, uh, that kind of thing. But I have to do a lot of heavy catechesis, right? And so um otherwise it will be incomprehensible. So that section there, uh, how's the word of God to be preached? He says, uh applying themselves to the necessities and the capacities of their hearers, the necessities and capacity that they're hearers in a current post-Christian, fairly secular, you know, whatever you want to call it, moment where people don't have, don't have the architecture of Christian belief in the background, uh, there does need to be a decent amount of explication that's technical or whatever, in order for it to get to the heart, right? So you have to do a a decent amount of that. Maybe that in a in a in a in a Christian, in a more fully Christian society where most people there, even if you might think that guy's unregenerate, he still knows where Habakkuk is, right? Uh he still knows the basic outline. Like, you know, you you read the Enlightenment thinkers, the Enlightenment philosophs, they still actually knew the Bible better than a lot of people just sitting in the pews right now because they were so we don't live in that, right? And so when you when you have a room full of people who know the Bible, you can cut to the heart quicker. You can you can engage in that mode that I think Alistair is talking about. Uh you can take some you take some quicker shortcuts there without as much explication. So that's one thing I'd say given the moment, given our given our expectations, given given that I would I would say you probably have to have a little bit, even while even while you have to get to the point where uh Tim Tim said this all the time, like it's all right if you're taking sir if you're taking notes at the beginning of my sermon, but if you're still taking notes at the end of it, I failed. Right? I I we that your sermon needs to get to the point where like nobody's taking notes. So just because they're that it's it's the heart that's that's that's being engaged. But the head, you have to do actually kind of a lot right now, is my is part of what I'd say. So push on that. I don't know, it's not really and then and then the length, obviously 15 minutes, you can barely get anything done. Uh and it's often often you just don't get people. You just don't get people other than that hour, hour and fifteen at church and whatever it is. And so like you don't have the the theopolis preference of here's the hour lecture by Peter or Alistair or whoever it is beforehand, where you get all the deep biblical theology, and then you've just got your liturgical kind of your homily sermon in there that like is fitting within the nice, beautiful architecture of liturgy, et cetera, and all the all the readings and all that. Um you don't have that for most people. Um But should you be moving towards it. That's a really nice anti-pragmatic appeal that I feel the force of the Trevor Burrus.

SPEAKER_03 17:06

I do think one of the things that for maybe frustrates me a bit about the way that people talk about this is the suggestion that preaching is coterminous with the Ministry of the Word. The Ministry of the Word, as I understand it, is very broad and includes a lot of different types of rhetorical forms, a lot of different types of address, a lot of different types of interaction with scripture as well. So you've got more the sort of theological training that you might have within some settings, uh a setting of catechesis for those who have just converted, a setting or for young people, or a setting of discipleship that is very practical and maybe addressed to a particular demographic within the church that have specific needs or concerns, or maybe of a particular age or stage in their development. Or you might think about the process of evangelism or apologetics, those are all different forms of the ministry of the word. And for me, the concern is that people have placed a lot of weight upon the sermon as that which has to be the jack of all trades in terms of the ministry of the word. And I'm just not sure that I see that within Scripture. It is that within the modern Protestant church. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_00 18:28

No, no, no. I think for me. So I'm just gonna The sermon, I'll just say this the sermon is for me the quintessential theological genre of that crosses it's the most unified genre. It it draws on everything. If you're preaching a good sermon, you are gonna have to have exegetical skills where you're able to cross all the time.

SPEAKER_03 18:49

You might need to be a jack of all trades to do a good to preach a good sermon. Trevor Burrus, Jr. You do. Trevor Burrus, Jr. The jack of all trades as regards the preaching, the ministry of the word.

SPEAKER_00 18:59

I think look, I I I do one-on-one counseling. I gr I grab coffee with students, I do in-depth Bible study, I do all those other kinds of things. I think absolutely the case. So I don't think the sermon should be the only thing you're doing, but again, it it is often the entry point for most people, and it's often the only hour and a half you get. And again, in terms of I I think of I should think of reading old Augustine, uh, old our sermons by Augustine. And in a ser in a single sermon, he'll exposite the text, he'll do, he'll do systematic theology, he'll he'll beat on the stoics who are sitting in the congregation, he'll um he'll poke at the Platonists, he'll talk about your sin nature or your your like how this should be moving you to love of God and leave the flesh of the world. He's doing all the stuff in there. It's all in there. And I don't think I don't think Augustine was a slave to modern contemporary pragmatic concerns in the contemporary moment that's elevated the lecture or whatever it is. I mean, I'm not Augustine, sure, but I'm just saying I don't think that somebody doing all that in a sermon is indicative of that. And I think we have plenty of models in the past in history that the sermon did function in that way.

SPEAKER_03 20:08

Aaron Powell If we do read patristic sermons, I do think the contrast with modern sermons will be instructive.

SPEAKER_01 20:14

Aaron Powell Yeah. Well, so I think partly I think partly I mean, uh for me, I'm kind of split between y'all, but I think we can resolve at least some of it. So part of this is terminological. Make the right choice, Brad. We need to, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm literally on the riverside screen in the middle between the this day. Um I really think that part of this, not not not all of it, but part of it is terminological, right? Like everything I was saying and everything Alistair was saying was describing a Sunday morning proclamation with nested in a liturgy that leads to the Eucharist. Like that's a pretty specific context. And of course, we're speaking as as you know, 2020, 21st century Westerners, you know, who speak English and often live in the United States, if not always in the case of Alistair. But uh, Derek, and I heard you describing a different context. And the context question, I think, and the context and audience question decides a lot for me in addition to the to the terminological question. I think you could go either way in saying, is it a sermon or is it not? Do we want to make sermon the genus and there are various species? Or do we want to say that proclamation is the genus and there are forms of proclamation? In other words, to Alistair's point, there are forms of the ministry of the word. But against you, against Alistair, I see no reason, none whatsoever, to think. And I don't know how hard you're gonna, you're leaning on the time thing, but I think that I think the length is 100% culturally determined. Culture and context. Uh are we are are are you living in California with Derek? Are you in in a frontier revival setting in the 19th century? Are you in North Africa in 415? Are you in an African American church? Are you in Latin America? Are you in East Africa in a tribe? And you've got multiple preachers coming. Like, I just think like we there is no one size fits all. Um, I have been present for sermons that hit 40, 45 minutes. They were not trying to teach us and they didn't waste any sentences because they needed that length of time to preach the good news. And but I've also but I've also been present for 12-minute homilies, you know. Um, for me, it's it's entirely determined by ecclesial culture, the s the surrounding culture, the needs of the audience, the the the the the where folks are coming from. Like so those kinds of questions for me are entirely pragmatic in the pastoral, spiritual sense of discerning the needs and expectations and so on of a given context, culture.

SPEAKER_00 22:51

So I'll just throw in there, I mean, grew up in Hispanic churches, and that's a different kind of preaching. You watch you you you hear people talk about historic black churches and the length of preaching there, and that is like not preaching as long lecture. That is preaching as a lot more going on there. I I remember sitting in a Christianity in uh in China class at UCI. There was a lecturer I had there on the history of Christianity in China, and he had a video of this church out in the sticks, out in like one of those villages that had I mean, it it was packed to the gills, it was outside, there's a few hundred people there. And these services would last two, three hours because they'd be doing all the all the worship, all the praise. But then there's just be long stretches of teaching. And I don't know how many every time not every time, but so many times you'll hear about a pastor going overseas, doing missions work, and like, yeah, I got up there, I preached for a long time, and they're like, cool, you're not done. Like, you need like just I mean, get back up. Like, that was only one hour. What do you like? That's a good warm-up. We need two, three. And that's like in in those cultures and places where they're hungry for it in a different way. They're expecting like the Sabbath is set apart to learn and to grow and encounter. So again, I really do think I'm not pushing for that. I'm pushing for like a 35-minute, you know, little Southern California, nice clean PCA. Uh, we get the we get the ministry of the word, we get a few hymns, et cetera, and you're out for for a good afternoon of of resting and and and relaxing in the Lord, and maybe come back for an evening service if if you guys own your building. But so I'm not, I'm not pushing, but I do think I do think we go, if you go outside of the States and you go outside of a like a like a context that has had Christendom, uh, the possibility of it, and again, I'm not a Christendom basher, but the the demands of the people for more, it's not it's not pastoral arrogance or pastoral um hunger to be up in the front all the time driving it. So, anyways, Alistair correctly.

SPEAKER_03 24:50

I think the one of the main things at the outset is the distinction between the Ministry of the Word and preaching is such that I want the Ministry of the Word to take at least at least an hour on a Sunday morning, at least an hour. But I don't want that Ministry of the Word to be predominantly preaching. I want the preaching to be something that's a lot more focused, and because it's a lot more focused, to be able to do its task in a a far more pointed and direct manner. And I think the danger in many Protestant churches is because the sermon has been attempting to do everything to uh cover all the bases of the Ministry of the Word, it's actually been relatively poor as preaching goes. It can be so often repetitive. It is trying to do the exegesis and the application at the same time, it's not able to engage with the text to the same degree of imagin in the same imaginative way that you'll often encounter in the patristics, for instance, because it's so concerned about faithful exegesis. And there's something about the um ministry of the word that I think when it's all pressed upon the sermon, it makes it difficult for us to do it well. And so my sen and it also it tends to squeeze out other things within the liturgy, and so it becomes such a central thing within the liturgy that its relationship with the celebration of the supper, etc., it breaks up the movement. And so my sense is that having a lot more teaching in the broader context of a Sunday morning gat gathering, but a far more focused liturgy with preaching that is addressing the conscience and the heart at the very centre of it, that actually allows the liturgy to have its proper pace of movement to be directed towards the celebration of the supper and then the sending out, and it also just gives a context for everything else that I think allows for more expansive teaching to take place because you're not expecting the sermon to bear that weight. Then you can set apart an hour in a Sunday morning gathering, and I'll prefer not gather in an evening, just have a very long Sunday morning gathering and then eat together in the context of that too. So that allows, I think, for a lot more ministry of the word to take place, but also a lot more distinction between the forms of ministry that are occurring.

SPEAKER_01 27:28

So when I hear that, what I hear you the you're arguing not about length, even though you mentioned length a number of times, you're arguing about proportion. But you can imagine you can imagine instead of folks gathering for 65 minutes on a Sunday morning and then you're working with a lot less, like the pie is much smaller. If the gathering is two, three, four X that, then the sermon proportionately could be the desired, the desired proportion, but it would be longer. Right? Uh it would be longer in absolute terms.

SPEAKER_03 27:58

A lot of this is about prudential and preferential issues. When I am actually preaching, almost invariably I'm preaching about 35 to 45 minutes in length, because that is the custom of the church I'm preaching in. And that is something that I will I work with what's actually there. But my preference if I had complete uh control of a new situation would be for that more extensive ministry of the word and more differentiated ministry of the word. And the thing about the sermon is it's a distinctive form of address. It is something that can exhort and encourage in a way that's a bit more focused if it is placed within the uh frame of the liturgy and is very much distinguished from more general exegesis, more general teaching, catechesis, etc. And so that is what I'm hoping for.

SPEAKER_00 28:58

I I hear that and I get what you I mean look, none of this, no nobody, nobody ought to get the impression that Alistair Roberts wants less Bible uh for for the people. So like I'm I'm obviously not taking it that way. Um But I do think I do think thinking about thinking about the way like a like a 45-minute sermon works, uh, you know, there's there's several there's several ways that works or a 35-minute one, depending on how you're moving. You get a three-point sermon. Well, you've got what you could have is essentially three interconnected homilies. Uh is is kind of what happens that that are on on on point, or uh a very long extended one that has three sub-movements. But um I I and there there's advantages and disadvantages to that. I just don't think that um I do think we're we're we're we're heavily in the realm of of preference here. Um that that so I mean look, if if you come in and I can I will say this, if if I come to your church and I get like a 15-minute sermon and that's the only thing I'm getting of the ministry of the word, that would be that'd be a serious problem. Right. And I have seen and sometimes I'll I'll see the preference for the 15 the sh the the sh the short sermon from folks who are um honestly already pretty well soaked in the word. And so they don't need. They don't want more. They like like you said, uh Brad, I I read the I read the Bible all week. Like I'm learning all week. I'm and I get I so I get that. But your average congregation your average congregant is not. Your average congregant needs more, and your average congregant perhaps doesn't have the bandwidth in their schedule to do all to be exposed to all the various forms of the ministry of the word.

SPEAKER_03 30:45

But they do have And that's why I'd argue that you do need dedicated time of teaching on a Sunday morning that is distinct from the sermon, because you actually need intense, focused, dedicated catechesis time.

SPEAKER_01 31:00

Let's let here let me let me transition us uh with a little bit of a segue to both a couple statements, but also I want to ask about when and where preaching goes wrong. When and where do preachers go wrong, minus the minus the length question which we've established.

SPEAKER_00 31:15

We've beat to death, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:17

I'll give you I'll give you uh my sense, both positively and negatively stated. So again, my inner my inner Lutheran pietist says that the word is not the meaning, the proclaimed word of the sermon or homily is not primarily exegetical expositional. It is a vehicle for the power and presence of God. That when a sermon is faithful, when a sermon goes right, God is the primary actor and God is the primary speaker through the human words so that people can leave, they can be sent saying, and they can say to themselves on their walk or drive home, God spoke today in our presence. And one way this goes wrong, in my observation, is that preachers sometimes describe the gospel in a third-person way rather than preach the gospel as a as a um first person to second person address, meaning I, the fellow sinner in need of grace, proclaim uh to you what I have what I have seen and heard in this text. And one simple way I put it to my students, which of course this is not original to me, is that you need a lot of verb, you need a lot of grammatical constructions in your sermon that have God as the subject, the grammatical subject, and some verb. And then it's either God's doing bad stuff to bad things like sin, or is doing good things to you. Uh and I I've just sat in my life, I've sat through too many sermons that that that do just ended up ended up failing to even attempt to proclaim the living good news of Jesus. They describe maybe something that's going on in the text, and they may come closer to that, to a good exposition, or they may be far from it. But if I searched through their manuscript or recording and looked for God and God's action, God as the subject, not us, not we and I, um, there would be they would be few and far between. That's where I see it going wrong. What about y'all?

SPEAKER_00 33:32

I am broadly sympathetic to that. I I do know that I don't yell in my sermons, but the closest I come to yelling is usually towards the end when I start talking about God. Um, or if if God's at the end, I mean he's all he's always all through. But I I do find that is a theme for me, and pr I've not I I think it's a theological principle and maybe a derivative of the fact that my whole dissertation was on God, but I do I'm I'm with you. I I do have more of a sacramental view of of the preaching of the word, and that like you are supposed to be encountering God in Christ. Like as the word presents Christ to you in the Old and New Testaments, as you encounter him his claims on you, as well as his work on your behalf, um, there is there is uh the possibility of communion, right? There's the possibility of transformation. There is the possibility that the Spirit is making the work, the, you know, the Word of God in flesh present to you through the Word of God inscripturated. And and that's what's happening. This is why, you know, for for for reform folks, the the Word of God preached and the Word of God administered to you in the Lord's Supper, it's two different forms of the same word, right? So like the you're you're the the sacrament, you're eating a sermon and you're you're you're you're uh as it were, and and and when you're when you're hearing a sermon, or what you put it this way, you're eating the word and you're hearing the word, and it's just two different modes of receiving that same word. So yes, yes. That said, I I worry about requiring specific types of linguistic constructions because I have seen sermons that are preached not like I would preach them. And I if I had my if I had my my preferences, there would have been a more clear gospel turn moment, et cetera, et cetera. And somehow at the end of that, people received it as if it was the word of God, and they walked out and the spirit ministered, and they were like people were assured and convicted and called to repentance and all sorts of other things. So like I I'm I try to be a little bit more pluralistic about, man, how I wouldn't, I wouldn't have written it that way. I think there were some misses, but I yeah, I was a sermon. Like I it was a sermon. So I'm a little bit more wary about that just because I know what my 24-year-old self thought good sermons were. And it was a very rigid, um, kind of narrow thing that was a feature of being being 24.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah, and to be clear, it's more of a theological point that the sermon needs to be about God and God needs to be an act the principal acting agent throughout. Uh and but you can kind of catch yourself grammatically as a rule of thumb, hey, like did my last six sermons just never really get around to describing the action of God uh gr in a literal sense, because the literal sense will the grammatical sense will at least be a be a be a pointer in the right direction. Uh but yeah, it's not a strict rule.

SPEAKER_03 36:41

I find that a generally a helpful approach. I've heard far too many sermons that have told us how Christians ought to think about certain things and our attitudes about certain subjects and have given us no sense of Christ addressing us or the text looking at us in the eyes. There is a way of treating the text in expositional sermons, for instance, that never actually encounters the congregation in a way where the text meets their gaze and looks pierces through them. The text is living and active, it's sharper than any two-edged sword. And when people hear scripture preached and hear scripture read as well, they should encounter that. And so, in some ways, it's less like when you're preaching, it's less like you are a literature professor teaching um Shakespeare. You're more like someone performing maybe a modernized uh representation of Hamlet before an audience, and you need to communicate the force of that character in a way that is able to capture their imagination, to bring the force of Shakespeare to bear upon the questions and the um ways that they perceive their own world. And to do that, you need to have engaged in a lot of exegesis beforehand, a lot of engagement with the text. But the actual performance, the actual interpretation is not um just an act of exegesis. The exegesis prepares you to present something that involves a degree of creativity and imagination that goes beyond what most people think of exposition. Um and so I think what we encounter, for instance, in patristic sermons, it's bad exegesis much of the time. But it's really good.

SPEAKER_01 38:44

Oh, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 38:45

No, good, it's bad exegesis in the way that we would think about it. It's not the way exegeses. In the way that modern exegetes think about it. Okay, that's the right thing. It's not technical exegesis, it's not academic.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

It's bad exegesis according to bad exegetes, as long as that that's the word.

SPEAKER_03 39:02

But this is actually faithful interpretation in the way that that performance of Hamlet by the gifted actor who's really understood and wrestled with it, is a more faithful interpretation than that of the literature professor.

SPEAKER_00 39:16

Yes, good. Relatedly, one of the things that is kind of become a conviction for me is, and we've probably talked about it before, is the reading of scripture as a part of the preaching of scripture. Um if you read it well, so this is where I'll agree, if you read it well, you can probably write a shorter sermon. Um, in the sense that uh reading it with the proper force, uh there's power there. And the sense is given in a way when it is performed, as it were. Uh and then and then you're offering commentary on your performance of the scripture, as it were. So that's a significant component. I will say I'm curious what you guys think about this. Uh I've heard one of the dangers I have, one of the dangers I'd I'd be wary of is there are sermons where one danger that you guys have been alluding to is the fresh out of seminary kid who wants you to make sure that you know that he read three or four commentaries before this to let you know that he knows about the scholarly debates and you should be aware of that. And here's why I actually don't think Pisteo is in the optative or whatever it is. So that's one danger, right? So I'm nightmare. That is a nightmare. I used to have to turn in my papers to Dr. East, and I need you to know that this would pass muster in his class. That's one danger. The other danger is where you have such a hyper-constructed, interpreted, um uh highly digested form, such that your people don't know how you got it out of the text. And that's not really important because I am telling you the sense of the text and uh you need to hear it from me and not don't think about it too much. Let it wash over you in this mystical um experience of the spirit anointing you with this interpretation, as it were. Um basically there's the spectrum of showing your work versus why would you why would anybody ever take notes in one of my sermons? You're supposed to just experience them. Right? So um that because the danger is there because the sermon then becomes like a mystical performance that's working purely ex opera operato, almost bypassing the understanding and any any like the the linking of where your authority is coming from from saying this. One of the things I think is very important for me, I tell my students all the time, why do you come listen to me? I hope it's only because you think I'm pretty good at telling you what the Bible says. If it's just Derek's story time or idea time or vibe time, then I'm just like a knockoff influencer with like who you should go on Instagram. You should care what I'm saying because I'm telling you what the Bible's saying. And what the Bible's saying is what God's saying. And let me try and show you that I'm not I'm not messing with what the Bible's saying. So some so I want to hear from you guys how much homework should you be showing, as it were, because I think showing the homework is instructive about the authority and the nature of why you can trust what I'm telling you.

SPEAKER_01 42:30

I think that's a really, really good question. And it doesn't admit of a kind of it not only doesn't admit of a hot take, it it requires so much nuance. I mean, what m my what I would say on first at at a first Should you ever quote the Greek? Well, uh yeah, that's a great way to put it. My so I will give you just like Alistair was stating a sort of principle, then granting prudence. My answer right now in response to that is no, do not give me Greek words. What but I want to agree with your argument or your point, which I take to be Meo Genoito.

unknown 43:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

I which I take to be I probably mispronounce it. Uh show your like show your work and show your work. Like this is a listening audience in my context, minimum 20 minutes, sometimes uh 30, and occasionally 40 minutes. You can show your work artfully without boring anyone, but you don't like but without resorting to anything scholastic or jargony. Every single term of jargon that enters a sermon, you have like lost a soul. Like there is a soul in the audience in the audience that has now tuned you out. Jargon is the enemy of proclamation, in my view. And 99 times out of a hundred. You're just gonna keep feeding the most famous Greek phrases from Koine. Um uh uh my number one uh approach, both when I am preaching, but also with the way I try to tell my students. Students is not only your point, Derek, don't try to impress your professors, but you need to speak to everyone in the room. And everyone, not everyone in the room has a college degree, not everyone in the room knows everything about the Bible. Like you need to speak in such a way that a 16-year-old in high school who has a B minus average could understand what you are saying because God wants that person to hear his word. He wants that person to hear the good news of Christ. And if you're trying to impress master's degree holding up aspiring upper middle class people, like you have already failed before you have begun. But and then in turn, that also connects, in my view, Derek, to things like stories and pop culture. Stories uh are better, though I am wary of too much storytelling. It becomes it can become story hour, it can become stand-up comedian time. But but pop culture, you know, my students all think, and if that, you know, they've just come out of youth groups, uh, it's understandable, but they think that pop culture references somehow bring an audience in. And what they don't realize is the even the most popular thing on this continent, in this country, is watched by a minor watched or experienced, consumed by a minority of people. So the moment you reference something that quote unquote everyone knows or everyone has seen or heard or read, you have immediately excluded between 50 and 90% of the room. And it's hard for them to grasp that, but they're not thinking of the 77-year-old retiree who literally doesn't watch television, right? And who doesn't have a TikTok or Instagram account. And uh that's that's my a jargon and pop culture references are my two bugger bears here.

SPEAKER_03 45:47

I think a few things that really are important for me. The sermon, as with the reading of scripture, should be a collective encounter with the word. It's not just you sharing your individual encounter. If you are prominent in that setting, if your personal experience, if your um personal study, whatever it is, are in the foreground of people's minds, you're probably going wrong somewhere. Ideally, people want you want people to have a sense that as a congregation, we are encountering scripture together with um the person who's preaching it. That person has wrestled with this text and we are now engaged in that wrestling with them. They're leading us by the hand through this encounter. One thing that's also helpful is in preparing for this, it's helpful to get people together to be part of your preparation, to see how you go about that process. So um, one thing I've found very helpful learning from Peter Lightheart is having what we used to call Pesha groups, and we still have these as Theop for Theopolis fellows, gathering together and talking through a text for about an hour. And a group of people who've spent time looking over the text, just sharing their thoughts and questions and collectively coming to an understanding of it. And then someone of that group is going to be preaching that text, and they're taking on board some of the insights of the group, but it is a sense of a collective encounter with the text that's with gifted students and servants of that text, but together we are encountering this. It's not the paradigmatic encounter with scripture, it's not the private scholar in the study, it is the gathered assembly of the Lord's Day um service, and then behind that, this gathering of servants of Christ who are wrestling with this text in conversation with each other as part of a longer conversation with the text that has been sustained throughout history. And so the paradigm that we often have is that of the individual scholar who then can stand as the intermediary between us and that text. And that in the very process of preaching the sermon should be something, a conception that's popped very quickly. People should have a sense, the text is present in our midst. And the person who's preaching is a mouthpiece for that, but they are in the process of preaching it. That text is taking possession of them. They are a mouthpiece of something that is standing that they are standing under. And as they are presenting this to us, we are collectively wrestling with this text. This is not just a private thing that each of us are doing individually. This is a collective encounter, and this is emblematic of our communal relationship with the text. The scripture and the church are related together, not just as a gathering of individual Christians, but as a body, an assembly of those who are performing and placed under conscripted by the scriptures. And that I think is something that any good sermon should be able to communicate by the way it's preached.

SPEAKER_00 49:21

Yeah, I I so first off, somebody should write a book about the relationship between the scripture and the church. Second, um uh I I am on the record several times. I think one of the best things a pastor can do is have some friends that he talks through. The whoever's preaching, you know, talk through your sermons as much as you can. I've had seasons where I've had that and seasons where I where I haven't, but I mean my very first preaching intern, my very first internship was actually being my my uh my my boss's sounding board where we'd get together once a week for an hour and just think through the text, think through nuts and bolts, structure, form, whatever. And then I'd I'd walk away and I'd show up and it'd be a it'd be a surprise what happened that week in the pulpit. And I it was still ministering to me, but it was strengthened every time, and vice versa. When I I I one of my blessings, I share office with the guys at the local church I go to. And we'll often just uh walk into each other's office, chew on a text for a half hour, all right, cool, I'm gonna go work on that. But that just having people like that regularly is 20 times better than plugging in the ChatGPT chart uh search, right, and and whatever it is. Um, because especially if you're talking to another believer, you know, just to rip a text out of context for fun, where two or more are gathered, right? You you're you're actually you are engaging, though, with somebody else who's gifted by the Spirit of God in conversation around the word, like what you're saying. We're both under the authority, but we're trying to figure out what the heck is it saying to me and what is it, what am I supposed to be saying to them as we all hear it said to us.

SPEAKER_01 51:06

And that's a and Derek, that's a that's a really good um exhortation or admonition for the preacher or pastor tempted to use AI in that way, that i if if such a person were to say, well, I I don't have the Pesher group, I'm not, I'm not at the opulis, then like then make one, like form one, you know? Like if you're at a congregation, there are other Christians there. Uh if you're in a town of of of more than X size, there are other churches and other pastors in town. Uh even and if you must use digital tools, but do it with other living human beings who are baptized sisters and brothers in Christ. Like it this can be a call to action rather than, well, I lack that, therefore I must lean on the technological crutch.

SPEAKER_03 51:52

I should add that that's one of the benefits of the lectionary, that lots of people at the same time will be dealing with the same text. And also in the lectionary, it's a naturally intertextual um way of engaging with scripture. And so I think having that context of engagement within the lectionary, it encourages that process of learning from other um pastors who are going through that same text and thinking about how to apply it to their congregations. And the variety I think is also instructive, the different ways in which they'll treat the same text, but all faithfully interpreting it within their specific context.

SPEAKER_00 52:32

Yeah, I do think I think thinking just just as an encouragement, if you don't have that and you're thinking about doing these things and you don't want to use a lectionary because you're not, you know, whatever. You you want to just preach through the passages as they come because that's how the Word of God arrives at us. Um, but but uh the that the that hour that you'll spend with somebody all over Zoom or in person, whatever, that is a that is a multipli that's a force multiplier. That's actually that is an investment that pays off in in multiples. And so you're like, oh, I don't know, it's that, or like three or four hours looking through comics. I mean, two or three hours, depending on how how how difficult the text is and how new you are at it. I will say this if you are a young pastor, uh young preacher, um, that is one of the best shortcuts you can have towards becoming a much better preacher, much quicker, uh, and you know, a service to your people. Um that's what I'd say on that point.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

Um Brad Alsher, was there any uh other people I had at least one one one more thing, uh, but I'm open open to it's not a big comment, it's just a small one. But one is that I have a friend who preaches and he doesn't reference anyone he quotes or learns from, but he will say, one scholar says this, or one ancient church pastor wrote the following. And then it's an invitation to the studious who are really curious to track down references. He has the footnotes in his literal manuscript and he just hands it over to them and says, Here, track these down. I don't think that's the only way to do it. Uh, you can do, I think you can be artful and delicate in saying Saint Augustine says whatever, because you want to populate Christian history, you want to populate the Christian cosmos, you want to populate heaven. So there's a way of doing it rightly, uh, I should say wisely um and delicately and not drawing attention to your magnificent learning in many degrees. Um but I I I will confess that I am more um wary of over of name-dropping. That is that I am more wary of that than the opposite. And I'll just add as a coda to this that there I I I'm someone who thinks that whenever we listen to sermons, there should be nothing in front of us, uh, including our Bibles, because it is a is it it is an event of listening. We're using ears, not eyes. But I grant that there have been contexts in the past where that was a form of deep piety. I mean, my mother, past and present, uh growing up, my mother always had her Bible open while the preacher preached. And I think that's that's something to honor. But in today's day and age, you should not invite people to get out. What are they gonna get out? Not Bibles. They're gonna get out their phone and their Bible app. Do not say get out your Bible or Bible app because you have them lost them into the screen. They have been sucked into it like the genie, uh, and you won't see them emerge for 15 minutes because they see this, that, and the other updated notification. And everything seems urgent or interesting, and they're not reading along, and they shouldn't even be reading along because they should be listening. So that's that's a a word about just literal practic the practice of listening and preaching in a congregational context.

SPEAKER_03 55:39

One the one thing I would add is that when you're preaching, there's no need to exhaust the text. The text has inexhaustible ways in which it can be expounded. But what you need to do is get a clear message across that moves those who are hearing. Um that moves them to greater love for Christ, greater service of him and love for neighbor. And if that means missing whole aspects of the text and feeling that you've just covered one specific element, that's fine. The important the important thing is not giving them a comprehensive Bible study and exposition. And then as you do that, you have the effect that the word is supposed to have. And they'll come back and they'll hear that text preached another time and another aspect will be brought out. That will also help to teach them just how inexhaustible scripture is and how much it rewards rereading. But don't try and say everything.

SPEAKER_00 56:42

So a couple points. One, on the on the quoting uh scholars, that can absolutely be a temptation. Um I verge on having sermons where I quote nobody at all and then some where I have where I have several quotes. Um, like right now, I'm going through the creed, and I've just ripped different uh quotes from different theologians. There is, again, my university context shapes some of that to some degree, showing that you've it is educational for my students to know that this is a faith that people have been thinking about for 2,000 years, and that people with PhDs and degrees and so on and so forth can give it the same level of thought, if not more, that all of their professors and all of the all of their secular disciplines do. So it's something pedagogical at times that can be done that way. Other times it's just wanting to give credit where credit's due. Um right, so there's this level of of that, or you might want to communicate a sense of church history. Uh, you know, Calvin said this, Athanasius said that, uh, especially if you're going to read the quote. Um so giving, you know, and and there might be a pedagogical point for even especially Protestant pastors who want to quote the fathers or even some medieval or whatever, and just to tell people this is our patrimony as well. Like I have a right to quote these people, and they are our people, they are your forefathers. And so there the the continuity of recognizing, teaching people that I am reading scripture, we are hearing scripture, in we are receiving the same words and reflecting on the same words and acting on the same words that saints long dead. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_01 58:16

And the great cloud of witnesses.

SPEAKER_00 58:17

The great cloud of witnesses and so on and so forth. So again, checking your heart on that's important, same, you know, every kind of thing. Uh but there I think there's plenty of pedagogic, good pedagogical and spiritual uh um purposes that can you can have for quoting uh in your sermons. And so I I would not be too self-conscious that like, oh, I hadn't thought of it that way. Okay, fine, just keep doing what you're doing. But I do think that there is absolutely a t uh a danger in just check yourself. Like, is that thing, is that thing, is it really necessary? Is that quote necessary? Again, a lot of sermons, I just don't quote anybody at all because I just want to make the point and move on and speak it in my own language. Unless, unless the quote is so much better than I would say it myself uh or like in a clearer um then I often don't. So those are those are that's a that's a thought there. As for the Bible thing, again, I just I go back and forth. The phone thing, I completely agree. Um and I'm I'm trying to like consciously move away from like and we we we post we post the text uh on a on a slide behind me every time anyway, so the kids uh half the kids don't have Bibles or whatever. And so it's just here, you can you can know I'm not making up the words. Like you can, you can I want you to be able to know that I'm under authority, you can check what I'm saying. Um but uh yeah, I I am more sympathetic now than I used to be when it comes to like, okay, maybe you don't maybe you have it, maybe you don't. My my one thing I'll push on that though is the older form of piety that your mom and my mom, um all our moms probably uh had. You have your own dang Bible and you you you have it and you read it and you open it and you take notes in it and it's highlights, you highlight it, and you um you that is your Bible. It's your copy of the Word of God that's been given to you, and it's it's it's and you work with it and you study it and you it's the whole Berean uh faithfulness of like, hey, they they checked what are you saying, right?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:19

And that's that but you know instead of like destructive to reflect upon what were the Bereans doing. They didn't have their own Bibles. This was presumably like a Pesha group with a send out their own personal Bibles.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:35

Right. So that's right.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:37

Yeah. No, I get it. Uh so th those are a few things. Um, um on that note, I think we are gonna wrap up this Pesha group today. Uh and and uh and you know, see what you guys think, feel free to email us. We like what we said before, we read all your emails, we don't respond to all of them. They they go to a group thing, but but we take it into account. If you have questions, thoughts uh with things, feel free to do that. Uh and if this episode, uh this show is helpful to you, please go to iTunes and Spotify, rate and review us, uh, share it with your friends, that sort of thing. And if you want to join Mirror Orthodoxy, uh support the whole and whole panoply of of things that they're doing, uh, includes uh Mir Fidelity, that'd be really helpful. Uh but for now, this has been Mir Fidelity. Thanks for listening.