Thoughts on preaching

Our local newspaper, The Frontiersman, published an article on its website written by a local pastor containing his thoughts on the media's response to the preaching of Barack Obama's pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

I had been thinking about this myself a bit, and his article prompted me to leave a response. One of my comments was, how strangely refreshing that a preacher is making news for what he says in the pulpit, not for his scandalous conduct!

The pastor who wrote the article argued that since preaching is an art form, especially African-American preaching, it is sheer ignorance on the part of the media to parse small snippets of his sermons as though they alone actually contain the message he is communicating to his church. If the reporters knew the first thing about sermonizing, he argued, especially in the African-American tradition, they would understand that what Wright has said is not really what the congregation takes away from his sermons.

It was an interesting article, though I disagreed with much of it. The pastor was correct to say that sermons are not lectures. A sermon does aim for the heart; preaching is not merely an intellectual exercise. And, it is true that there is a great art to preaching that goes beyond simply communicating information in a didactic fashion.

If I had more space (I was only allowed 100 words!), I would have included the following thoughts:

First, preaching is all about communicating truth. The Apostle Paul wrote, "by the open statement of the truth we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God" (2 Cor. 4:2). Now, preachers exaggerate to make a point, or even say something shocking in order to drive their message home. Jesus himself did this. He said to cut off your hand if it causes you to sin (Matt. 5:30). He didn't mean this literally, but was communicating the truth of the seriousness of sin.

Truth is the preacher's stock-in-trade. It is a sad thing to hear a preacher making outrageous assertions to evoke an emotional response. Can truth ever be dispensable in this way for a preacher? How can he preach God's truth with integrity if he is not committed to truth in principle?

Secondly, preaching, at least Christian preaching, is the proclamation of a message. Namely, the good news of Christ's death and resurrection to save us from our sins. Political sermons, whether on the left or right, use a sacred instrument for profane (as in, common) purposes. Do we have such a low view of the Kingdom of God, and such a disregard for the urgency of the gospel, that we forfeit preaching Christ in order to advance our agenda for this world? The first Christians turned the world upside down precisely because they preached the glory of the world to come (and that had come in Christ).