An update on what I'm doing

 An excerpt from the newsletter I've sent today - if you'd like to get regular updates, please let me know and I can add you to the distribution list.

At the beginning of February, I officially started a full-time PhD with Union School of Theology. The project I am undertaking looks at a systematic theology of preaching.  There are lots of books out there about how to preach, but I want to look more carefully at the why and the what of preaching, starting from the doctrine of the Trinity and the Word of God as the second Person of the Godhead, and working through the earthly ministry of Christ as the supreme Prophet of Israel, the Scriptures and their role as God’s word written, and finally the situation of the preacher in the local church today.  I want to think carefully about how God communicates himself to his world and particularly his assembled people, and how preaching fits into that.

I’m excited about the project; it’s something that has come out of my experience of preaching weekly, and feeling the need to understand more deeply just what it was I was doing, or trying to do.  I’ve also had a chance to run my ideas past some people who really know what they’re talking about on preaching and on theology, and it’s been encouraging to hear that they also think this is a worthwhile piece of research.  There is certainly a gap in the market, so to speak, and it seems like one worth filling.

In the evangelical church generally there is, it seems to me, a need to recover a vision for preaching which clearly links it to God’s activity and communication.  We need preachers with confidence and authority.  The New Testament calls those who speak to do so as if speaking God’s own words (the very oracles of God!) - but how do we do that when we know our weakness as preachers?  We also need preachers who step up into the pulpit with fear and trembling, understanding the awesome weight of their task, knowing that they are called to speak from and for God.  No method or formula can bring God’s word to God’s people, and if our confidence rests in those things perhaps we need shaking up!

I hope this project might be a small contribution to a deeper understanding of what preaching is, and therefore to a greater expectation of what God is able and willing to do through the preaching of the gospel.  At some point I hope the research will turn into a book, but even before then I am looking for opportunities to share what I’m learning, particularly with pastors.

Right now, day to day study looks like trying to read everything I can get my hands on to do with preaching, especially anything that approaches it from a systematic theology perspective.  It is important to get a solid understanding of the current state of research in the field, and this will form part of the literature review at the beginning of the study.  So far I have been confirmed in my initial impression that there isn’t that much material out there which tackles preaching in a systematic way from a theological point of view.

Books about corporate worship

These are the books I've found most helpful on the subject of corporate worship - with the caveat that this is not at all meant to be a list of the best books on the subject, just the ones I've meandered through in my idiosyncratic reading and found helpful.

Peter Leithart's Theopolitan Liturgy is the most recent addition to the list - the only book from my Christmas haul that I've finished reading so far.  It's helpfully slender, and makes a strong biblical case for the importance of corporate, liturgical worship.  Creation and culture exist for worship; in the liturgy, far from using created things and cultural forms in a strange way, we restore them to what they always existed to do.  Reality is liturgical all the way down (you could also consult James Smith on this one), and human life is inevitably shaped by sinful, idolatrous liturgies or by Christian worship.

Alexander Schmemann's book For the Life of the World comes from a very different theological and ecclesiastical context than my own - he was an Orthodox Priest - and consequently there are some things in this book which I find off putting.  But the flipside is that it opens up a very different perspective.  Schmemann more than anyone has taught me to value the sacraments.  I could have learnt that from Calvin, if I'd been paying attention, but perhaps it took someone speaking from slightly further away to get through to me.  The liturgy matters at least in part because sacraments matter.

On the practical side, Hughes Oliphant Old's Leading in Prayer has been invaluable for shaping prayer as a substantial part of corporate worship.  The idea of a service of prayer - of corporate worship as substantially a conversation between the congregation and the Lord - is largely absent in contemporary evangelicalism, as far as I can tell, which adds to the general impression on approaching this book that it belongs to an earlier era.  (The cover design and language trend in the same direction, to be honest).  This book springs from years of pastoral experience, and gives a large number of written prayers which the author has used in worship - not with the idea that they would necessarily be used as printed, but as worked examples.  The whole assumes a more formal structure to worship than I could get away with regularly in my context, but it's nevertheless helpful for thinking about the shape of worship and the nature of public, led prayer.

Karl Barth's Homiletics can stand here for more extensive engagement with Barth's theology of preaching - probably I'd have to include large chunks of Church Dogmatics I/1 and I/2 to get the full effect, as well as some of the essays from The Word of God and Theology.  If Oliphant Old helps with the human side of the dialogue that is corporate worship, Barth has really helped me to see preaching as the other side.  Of course, in preaching a human being stands up and speaks, but what Barth sees so clearly is that the church counts on the fact that the Lord himself is speaking as his word is preached.  Preaching is encounter.  I dare say I could have learnt this from many places, but I actually learnt it from Barth.

I'm sure there are others that I've missed here, but there's a few that I've found useful.

Particular text, particular context

On special occasions we often reach for doctrinal preaching - it's Good Friday, let's preach on atonement; it's Easter, let's preach on resurrection - and that's all well and good, but I was reminded this past Friday of the advantage of preaching through books of the Bible.  I'd arranged it so that our series in Luke's Gospel would reach the crucifixion in Holy Week and the resurrection on Easter Sunday, and I'm glad I did.  I noticed on Good Friday particularly that preaching Luke's account in the context of the series helped me to see some things I might otherwise have missed.

For example, Luke - in common with the other Synoptic Gospels - records the three hours of darkness which accompanied Christ's execution.  Maybe it's because I've run a few Christianity Explored courses, or maybe it's just because I'm a veteran of the Substitution Wars, but I instinctively read this darkness against the backdrop of the darkness in Egypt - as an expression of the wrath of God against sin.  I think that is, in fact, in the background, but the more immediate framing in Luke's narrative is rather different, determined by the saying of Jesus to his captors, recorded in Luke 22:53.  The darkness represents, then, the (Satanic) power of the opposition to Jesus, risen to its final terrible height at the crucifixion.  To know that Christ endured the weight of all the forces of darkness in the hour of their power is actually reassuring in a different way, particularly at this hour of darkness.

Then again, preaching from a particular passage helps to avoid the danger of reductionism in doctrine.  It is very easy to get to a position where your whole understanding of a certain doctrine - or at least, your way of expressing it - depends on one particular strand of the biblical witness.  For example, the cry of dereliction easily becomes the dominant way of explaining the cross and the atonement.  But if you're preaching the cross from Luke, there is no cry of dereliction.  Rather there is an expression of faith as Jesus resigns his spirit confidently into the hands of his Father.  Of course the Gospel accounts are selective - it is entirely possible for Jesus to have said both things - and there is no contradiction.  But taking the particular perspective of this particular text in preaching the cross means that you may have to reach beyond your normal shorthand for explaining the atonement and look at it from a different angle.

There is definitely a place for synthetic doctrinal preaching - preaching that tries to give a rounded theological account of the whole witness of Holy Scripture on a particular doctrinal point.  But I am more convinced than ever that it needs to play second place to consecutive exposition of Biblical texts.

Our problem

Everything I'm about to write might be completely wrong, and nobody would be more happy about that than me.  But I think I've observed this one big problem with my lot, that is to say evangelical Christians of a relatively conservative persuasion.  The problem is that we misidentify our problem.

Specifically, I think we often assume that our problem is with our borders, and that our centre is sorted.

For example, we assume that we're basically sorted when it comes to Sundays - preaching, worship, that sort of thing - and that the real issue, the thing that is holding us back, is our difficulty with evangelism or apologetics or general engagement with the world.  Or perhaps in the realm of ideas we assume we've basically got a handle on theology, but that we need to work hard at understanding the culture.

Two qualifications.  Firstly, I don't mean that anyone out there is saying, 'hey, I've nailed preaching, no need to work on that anymore'.  But I suspect that most of our work on preaching is basically tinkering.  The same sort of thing, mutatis mutandis, could be said about worship or theology.  Fundamentally we know what we're doing, or at least what we're trying to do.  Second, I don't mean that evangelism and apologetics and cultural engagement aren't important, or that we're doing okay at those things.  They are, and we're not.

But here's the thing.  The church lives from its centre, which is Christ.  In particular, the church lives from the proclaimed word, in which Christ comes to it again and again in the gospel, and draws his people again and again to himself.  That is where the life of the church begins, and begins again and again each Sunday.  Then again, that life of the church flows directly into liturgy, into prayer and praise and adoration.  That is both the immediate outworking of life in Christ and its ultimate goal.  That is the expression of the life of the church.  Then again, theology is the crucial rule of the church, the direction of its life, the mirror in which the church sees itself as a people shaped by union with Christ.

So if there's a problem in the life of the church - specifically, let's say there seems to be a problem with our ability to evangelise the world around us, for that certainly is the great challenge we face and it is a challenge in which we are making remarkably little headway - I would suggest that we ought not to immediately look to the presenting problem, but to the centre.  Is the life of Christ evident in the church?

Practically, do we really know what we intend to do when we stand up to preach a sermon, or sit down to listen to one?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why is so much of our preaching tediously didactic, or dully sentimental?  Where is the power?  Why do we find the sermon over-long when we sit to listen?  Why are we glancing at our watches all the time?

Practically, is our worship an expression of Spirit-fuelled joy, as the Spirit-filled community with Spirit-unveiled faces perceive the glory of Christ?  Do we know what we are doing when we stand up to sing, or sit to pray?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why have we ended up with so much thin liturgy, so little seriousness?  Why does the joy look more like froth, that evaporates quickly into the air, than deep seated contemplation of the beauty of the Lord?  Where are the holy hands uplifted?

Practically, are we sure we've grasped what theology is all about?  Do we know what we're going about when we seek to read and study or to teach?  Are we sure?  If we are sure, why does so much of our theology seem either totally untethered from what the church of all ages has believed, or alternatively to be a mere repristination of thoughts someone had in the seventeenth century?  Where is the creative engagement with Holy Scripture?  Why is there such impatience with theological questions, the rush to pragmatic solutions, the inability to see the links between different theological loci and practical church life?

Maybe I'm wrong.  But I do wonder whether instead of looking to our borders we ought to be crying out for renewal from the centre.

Preaching everything

The FIEC recently published an article with an interesting look at which parts of the Bible we (meaning 'conservative' type evangelicals) typically preach - and which we typically avoid.  There is apparently not a lot of love for 1 and 2 Chronicles, or 2 and 3 John.  Jonah, on the other hand, attracts attention out of all proportion to his canonical importance.

So how do we decide what to preach, and when?  Karl Barth suggests that you can pursue three methods: you can follow a set lectionary, you can preach through whole biblical books, or you can just select passages as you go.  He doesn't recommend the latter, because it gives you - the preacher - too much control of the agenda.  Most evangelicals, of course, will go for the consecutive-through-books approach, but that raises the question: which books, and when?  It's still possible that the preacher rather than the Scripture is setting the agenda.  So what to do?

My guess is there's no perfect method.  Here's what I do.

1.  I maintain a spreadsheet which breaks down all our sermons by testament and genre (or sub-genre; it is useful to separate Paul's letters from others, for example).  That means I can tell you that in Cowley Church Community between January 2016 and August 2019 (for my spreadsheet extends into the future), we will have preached 32% of our standard sermons from the OT, and 55% from the NT.  (That leaves some others, to be explained below).  Fully 25% of our sermons have been from the gospel of Luke!  A glance at the spreadsheet helps me to see if we're preaching the balance of Scripture.

2.  The 'balance of Scripture', however, does not mean treating all books equally.  I think we have to take a theologically informed approach here, getting ourselves into that virtuous cycle of allowing our reading of Scripture to shape our theology and then allowing our theology to shape the way we approach Scripture.  So yes, the New Testament predominates.  I'm okay with that; I think it reflects the theology of revelation which is made explicit in, for example, Hebrews 1:1-2.

3.  Sharpening that up a bit, I think the understanding of revelation in the NT means that we should always have one of the four gospels on the go.  Jesus is the Word of God, to whom the OT points forward, to whom the NT points back.  The way we do it is to return regularly to our series preaching through Luke; when (if??) we finish Luke, I'd be keen to move on to another gospel.  (Incidentally, odd that the stats seem to show Mark as the least popular gospel for preaching; why on earth would that be?  Makes me want to preach it next.  Would take less time than Luke, anyway.)

4.  Having said that, it's useful to recognise that you, the preacher, like preaching some things more than others.  Perhaps you enjoy preaching an argument rather than a narrative, or vice versa.  Keeping an eye on the balance helps you not to fall into a pattern that just reflects your own preferences.  I suspect it also helps to keep preaching more interesting - preaching narrative as narrative and argument as argument, for example, makes for a much more varied approach; and that's before you even throw in the Psalms etc.

5.  At CCC, we also try to shape the preaching around seasonal celebrations; taking time in the Christmas season to preach about Christmas, taking a couple of weeks after Easter Sunday to reflect further on the resurrection.  That seasonal preaching makes up slightly less than 10% of year, and has the advantage of keeping us further focussed on the central things of the gospel.  We would also usually try to make some of our more 'standard' expository preaching fit the mood of the seasons; we're heading into Jeremiah at the start of Lent, for example.

6.  One problem with the setup of churches nowadays is that the preaching has to do quite a lot.  When I were a lad, everyone went to a 'bible study', which was in reality a biblical or theological lecture, every Wednesday night.  That was a place to do some catechesis.  Nowadays, most of the teaching has to happen on a Sunday if it's going to hit a decent proportion of the church.  So sometimes we feel the need to interrupt our expository preaching to preach some doctrine - still sticking very close to Scripture, but taking a more theological tack.  We did a series on sacraments recently.

7.  There are some issues with our approach.  A series tends to be broken up, with only 6-8 weeks or so given to each part.  That can make it easy to lose the thread of a big book (like Luke!) - but to be honest, patterns of attendance mean you have to regularly recap anyway.  We don't always go in for preaching through a book consecutively; we did I think five weeks in Leviticus, for example, getting an overview of the big themes; I think it was good, but obviously there is stuff you've missed.  I wonder, as well, whether we always help people to read the Bible for themselves, or whether we give the impression that you need to get it all cleared up for you by a professional.

I dare say it's not perfect, but overall that's my approach.

So, how do you do it?

Preaching checklists

The other day I was re-reading Peter Adam's book Hearing God's Words, and came across this which struck me as an insightful critique of much of evangelicalism:

Their question is often 'What is the irreducible minimum of the gospel the unbeliever needs to hear?' rather than 'What is the fullness of the Gospel God has revealed?'

Yes, we do that: we try very hard to boil the good news down into one, easily deliverable slurp of salvation, and in the process we lose so much of the richness.

With that in the back of my mind, I've been thinking about some of the criticism I've heard of the sermon at the Royal Wedding on Saturday.  Quite a lot of it was along the lines of 'he left a load of stuff out!'  Which is true.  The Bishop said very few of the things which might have been said.  He left a lot out.  Specifically, some evangelicals were unhappy that he left out substitutionary atonement, the wrath of God, and the call to repentance and faith.  (Some of those, of course, he would have been unlikely to include, given his doctrinal background.  See below.)

I feel like there is a connection between the two things.  I think many of us evangelicals work so hard at coming up with 'our irreducible minimum of the gospel' that what we end up with is a checklist of things that must be said.  And then sermon critique is easy: he mentioned 6 out of the 10 things on the checklist, so this was 60% of a good sermon.

If the gospel is richer than that - if there's more going on here than our depressingly thin gospel outline - then of course any sermon will leave a whole lot out!  That should be okay.  Our checklist approach to preaching and gospel presentation so easily leaves us just listening out for the shibboleths, just repeating the same words over and over.  We should be able to recognise that the riches of the gospel mean that it is possible to dwell on one particular aspect of divine truth in a sermon or address.  In fact, if we understand even a tiny bit of those riches, we will see that it is inevitable that we should leave stuff out - there is more than we could possibly include!

If you wanted to critique the sermon on Saturday, what you should have spotted was that all of the truth spoken - about the love of God, about our being created in his image for love, about the redemptive quality of a life lived in love - was cast within the framework of an old-school liberal theology, in which the emphasis falls squarely on human ability to build the kingdom of heaven in the here and now through divinely guided and inspired effort.  And I did hear some of that critique too, and it was valid and important.  But that these things were said about the love of God, on live television, to so many people: if you can't find a little bit of joy in that, I would be concerned.

The church's greatest need

I stumbled across a website the other day which proclaimed that the greatest need of the church today is a recovery of the historic creeds and confessions - I imagine meaning here primarily the Westminster Confession (it being a Presbyterian source).

Can I just go on record as saying that this is incorrect?

I am a great fan of creeds and confessions.  I have pushed to see the catholic creeds especially reintroduced into church life.  I think that there is much that the present day church can learn from the sixteenth and seventeenth century confessions of faith.  I am excited by a growing emphasis in certain streams at least of evangelicalism on historical theology.  So this is not the cry of a 'no-creed-but-the-bible' sort of person.

But really, greatest need?

The greatest need of the church today, just like the greatest need of the church yesterday, is to hear the living voice of God.  That is to say, what the church really needs is for Christ to be preached from the Scriptures in the power of the Spirit, such that in God's grace the church finds herself addressed, unmistakably, in the here and now, by the eternal God.  The greatest need of the church is to hear the voice of her Lord.

When we read creeds and confessions, we are encountering the church's record of what she thinks she has heard God saying to her.  That is valuable.  It is valuable because the church is made up of sinners, and one thing that sinners consistently do is exalt other voices - and not least the voice of their own hearts! - into the place of God's voice.  Listening carefully to the report of yesterday's church about she heard from God can help today's church to be discerning about whether the voice she is hearing today is really that of the Lord.  It is valuable also because every age tends to absolutise the questions and the concepts and the forms of thinking of that age - and it is a good reminder that God is beyond these things, for has he not spoken to the church of yesterday, with other questions and concepts and forms?

But listening to the report of yesterday's church is not listening to the living voice of God.  And in fact, where it is substituted for that - where study of the Confession takes the place of study of the Scriptures - there we are in danger of elevating the voice of the church to the place of the divine voice.

What the eternal God says is always the same, because his Word is Christ Jesus.  The creeds and confessions help us to evaluate whether we are truly hearing that same Word.  But they can't take the place of that Word.  Because what the eternal God says is also always absolutely new, the Word we can never take for granted, or imagine we have heard sufficiently, or be content to hear second-hand  We need Christ, Christ preached and Christ present.

That is the greatest need of the church.

Preaching with precision

One for the preachers today.  A thing I've noticed as I've been preaching more regularly is that it's easy to get a bit sloppy in certain areas, and one of those areas is precision.  "Broad brushstrokes" preaching becomes more common, every sermon prefaced with 'we won't be going into all the details today...'  Giving the gist of it rather than getting to the heart of it.

I think maybe it happens in a couple of different ways.

You're reading the text.  You read it a few different times, and although you think you've got the broad outline, there are some prickly bits that don't seem to fit.  You turn to a couple of commentaries; they are less helpful than you might like.  You read the text again.  But time is ticking, and at some point you're going to have to stand up and say something.  So you take heart in the fact that you understand the main point, and you go into the pulpit to preach that main point, brushing the tricky parts of the text under the carpet.

But can you really be confident you've understood the main point if the point you've grasped doesn't make sense of the details of the text?

You're reading the text.  At first reading, the point the inspired author is trying to make seems blindingly obvious.  You follow the argument, understand the imagery.  The text makes sense.  But as you think about standing up to preach, you can't immediately see any connection between this text and the people you need to address.  The problems of first century Galatia are not their problems; the sins of 7th century (BC!) Judah seem irrelevant to them.  But then something strikes you: this in the test is a little bit like that in the world of today.  Here is the hook.  Paul's words, or the prophecy of Isaiah, can be applied to the present day through this channel.

But are they really the same thing?  Are you confident that you're hitting the targets that the text was intended to hit?

You're reading the text.  The more you read it, the more it reminds you of something you read in your devotions this morning.  They're not about exactly the same thing, but there are definite links.  In fact, that text really spoke to you this morning, in ways that this text which you have to exegete probably wouldn't have done by itself.  Thankfully, with the devotional text in your mind, the preaching text seems to make much more sense.  Perhaps that's the way into the sermon - to illuminate the one text by the other.

But which text are you really preaching, now?  Are you sure the point of the original text hasn't been lost?

I don't think there's any easy answer to these problems, but I note that they mostly relate to the need for more time.  More time in the text to be preached, listening to the distinctive witness to Christ which it brings; more time wrestling in thought and prayer over and for the congregation, trying to understand the deep roots of their situations.  More time doing the stuff that isn't immediately productive - and that's the challenge.

Schleiermacher and preaching

But what of the ministry of the Word?  Here we come to the heart of Schleiermacher’s theology of preaching.  Preachers, like Christ, exercise an efficacious influence on their hearers.  Their speech arises, as did the Redeemer’s, from the disparity in the strength of God-consciousness in themselves and others.  They are active in communicating, and others are receptive in being influenced by, their self-presentation.  While preachers truly speak of themselves – their own inner experience – they do no preach themselves or attribute the gifts that they communicate to themselves.  Rather, their communication is the transparent medium through which their hearers encounter the living Christ…  Christ, through his servants, communicates himself – the Word made flesh – through the efficacious influence of their self-presentation.

This is how Dawn DeVries characterises the theology of preaching held by the great 19th century liberal theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher, in a fascinating study of Jesus Christ in the Preaching of Calvin and Schleiermacher.

It is terrifying.

Why, according to Schleiermacher, does the preacher preach?  Because the preacher has a stronger consciousness of God than the other members of the congregation.  This is what qualifies, and presumably motivates, the Christian preacher - the awareness that his own God-consciousness (note that this has a technical meaning for Schleiermacher, but basically is the awareness of dependence) outstrips that of his congregants, and that he is therefore able to help them my mediating God-consciousness to them.  Note that the preacher and the congregants all stand on a continuum with Christ here!  The preacher with his greater God-consciousness is just a bit closer to Christ as the ideal of total God-consciousness than are the congregants.

What, according to Schleiermacher, does the preacher preach?  His own inner experience.  This doesn't mean he shouldn't preach from the Bible; in fact Schleiermacher thought he certainly should.  But he must not preach anything from Scripture that does not resonate with his own God-consciousness.  It is not the Christ recorded in the Bible who really matters; it is the Christ present in the preacher's own heart (and therefore potentially in his hearers' hearts) that is important.  What this means in practice is that really the Bible illustrates Christian faith, rather than the latter resting on and deriving from Scripture.

This is terrifying to me as a preacher because it is both so possible and (therefore) so impossible.

It is, of course, possible that I have a deeper knowledge and experience of God than the people to whom I'm preaching.  It is possible that in my experience and understanding of faith there is something worth saying, something that will impart something of Christ.  It is possible that I might stand in such a position vis-a-vis the congregation that I can preach.

But then again - on any given Sunday, can I be sure that I stand in this position?  Am I definitely further up the continuum than all these people?  Aren't there weeks when I'm just empty?  Aren't there times when I have nothing useful to drawn on in my own experience of faith?

Far better to realise that the job of the preacher is quite impossible and therefore possible.

I don't stand in any different position than the congregation in front of me.  There is no continuum; there is just Jesus on the one side and all the rest of us on the other.  Whether I have greater spiritual experience or not is irrelevant, because what I am called to bring forth is not my own faith but Christ himself, with all his benefits offered in the gospel.  I am to deliver to the people the Word of God, which is to say the Lord Jesus.  And I cannot do it.  The congregation stands in front of me in need of Christ, and I am just the same.  I have nothing to offer.  It is impossible to preach.

And because it is impossible, I must rely on God, and in so doing I find that it is perfectly possible - in faith.  Christ must communicate Christ, and my preaching can only be the vehicle of this if and as he so wills.  But because he has promised, I can confidently attempt the impossible...

A final alarming thought: how often do we veer towards Schleiermacher, when we say things like 'the preacher can only truly proclaim what he has experienced?'  I mean, I get what this is trying to do, but it is so crucial that our confidence not lie in ourselves as preachers but in the Word who wills to be preached...

No competition

Here is a question Barth faces in his discussion of preaching (and by the way, there is likely to be quite a bit of stuff forthcoming on Barth and preaching; dissertation reading, innit): when preaching in the Church becomes the Word of God (let's just assume for now that this is a sensible description of what happens), does it cease to be human activity?

Barth is clear that when the preacher stands up to speak, all he has is human words to say, in a very human way.  He aims, if he is a faithful preacher, at proclaiming the Word of God, but he can't do it.  He does his human thing, says his human words, and it is up to God whether this discourse actually is the Word of God, God himself addressing the Church.  But if it is, what then happens to the human element?  Is it displaced?  Or is hollowed out, leaving just a thin veneer of humanity around a basically divine event?  (Is it, then, transubstantiated?)

Nope.

"God and the human element are not two co-existing and co-operating factors.  The human element is what God created.  Only in the state of disobedience is it a factor standing over against God.  In the state of obedience it is service of God.  Between God and true service of God there can be no rivalry...  Where God is truly served, there - with no removal of the human element, with the full and essential presence and operation of the human element in all its humanity - the willing and doing of God is not just present as a first or second co-operating factor; it is present as the first and decisive thing as befits God the Creator and Lord."

(That's CD I/1, 94 for those reading along in their own Dogmatics at home.  You know who you are.)

Here is a thought which extends beyond preaching, and now seems so blindingly obvious, and yet I've never thought it before.  The question of the interaction of divine sovereignty and human freedom is only a question because of sin.  Take sin out of the equation, and there just isn't a problem.  So if we're wrestling with the dynamics of sovereignty and freedom, what we are really wrestling with is the most mysterious factor of human existence as we know it: sin.  In fact, sin might be considered to be the very act of raising the question: can my freedom, given me by God for use in his service, which service is perfect joy and freedom and leads to life - can that freedom be used contrary to God's will?  And so sin is exposed as a rebellious nonsense.

But between true service of God and God's own sovereign rule, there is no competition.

Preaching the Passion

Some pointers on preaching the passion narrative, mainly for my own benefit as I prepare for Friday...

1.  Tell the story.  Ideally read a decent chunk of the Biblical narrative, but then in the sermon make sure that what comes across is that something happened.  We can hardly dwell too long on the fact that the crucifixion of Jesus Christ was a real thing that took place in real space and time.  All the theological and soteriological significance of this event depends on the fact that it was an event.

2.  Don't forget the resurrection.  None of the really important things about the cross can be seen except from the viewpoint of the resurrection.  Okay, that is an overstatement - some people did see (thief on the cross, centurion by the cross), and other people ought to have seen (because of the Old Testament - cf. Road to Emmaus) - but in general it is a mistake to preach the cross as if we didn't know the rest of the story.  The resurrection reveals that the one hanging on the cross is the King, reigning even in his death; the resurrection reveals that this sacrifice is acceptable to God; the resurrection reveals that God has vindicated himself in his justice and grace at the cross.  Even the identity of the sufferer is not truly revealed without the resurrection.  So, preach Friday with one eye on Sunday; or perhaps better, preach Friday as if it were already Sunday morning.

3.  Avoid painting Jesus as a victim.  The Jesus of the gospels is a sufferer, and indeed an innocent sufferer.  But he isn't a victim.  Reading the gospel narratives, at what point is Jesus not in control?  Even when bound and flogged, isn't he the King?  Doesn't the ironic crown of thorns actually mock the mockers?  There are all sorts of reasons, some of them apparently good, to present Jesus as a victim; there are lots of victims in the world, and we want to bring home that God is with them in their suffering.  But there is no way we can make the gospel narratives portray a victim.  He is a co-sufferer, but he is this as the Lord.

4.  Don't give the impression that God was at the end of his resources.  The cross of Christ was not a fall-back position, or a last ditch attempt to redeem a terrible situation.  God didn't give himself away at the cross; he didn't empty the tank to save us.  The cross was always the plan.  If there are aspects of the gospel story which do seem to point in this direction (e.g. the parable of the tenants, with its sequence of servants ending finally in the sending of the son), read in the context of the whole gospel we have to say that the giving of the Son represents not an exhaustion of God's grace - not the final last effort of God - but the fullness and wealth of God's grace.  It as at the point of his death, when he gives himself for us, that God shows the inexhaustible riches of his love for fallen humanity.  He's rich, not broke.

5.  Don't put the ball in our court.  We can easily give the impression that the cross of Christ only has significance if we respond to it - as if God in Christ has done everything that he can, and now it's up to us to react appropriately.  Of course we should preach with an appeal; of course we want people to respond to the cross of Christ.  But the point is that when we preach Christ crucified we preach the sovereign Lord.  In him, sinful humanity is put to death; in him, God's judgement is taken from us, falling instead on the willing Judge.  This is true in him.  Our appeal is not: please complete in your own heart Christ's unfinished work!  Our appeal is: accept the truth about yourself as it is in Christ Jesus!  The cross of Christ does make an appeal, but it does so in the form of a claim: you are no longer free to wander on your own way; Christ's death is for you, in your place, and therefore it is death pronounced on your sinful existence.

Preaching Eucharistwards

One of the things about Cowley Church Community that I'm really pleased about is the commitment to regularly celebrating Communion together.  For us, that means about every other week - which I realise may not seem that regular to folk from some other church traditions!  It's also important that our celebrations of Communion are an integral part of our worship - not just an add-on, and not a separate service.

I've found it particularly beneficial in terms of preaching.  We don't have an elaborate Communion liturgy, so the transition between the end of the sermon and the distribution of the elements is often not that protracted.  So the sermon has to lead naturally into the celebration.  That context really brings it home for me whether what I'm preaching is the gospel or not: if it is, the transition will feel smooth and natural and right; if I'm not preaching the gospel, the transition into Communion will feel like a gear change without the clutch.  So my sermon prep changes - I'm preaching towards the celebration, towards the commemoration of the cross.

I genuinely can't think of a better way to keep the gospel central in preaching and worship.

Preaching God's commands

A checklist for preachers, based on part of Psalm 19.

In preaching the commands and requirements of God, am I:

• presenting the commands without apology or embarrassment, as the expression of absolute perfection in moral conduct and good living?
• wearying my hearers with a burdensome command, or refreshing them with a commandment which is good news?
• delivering the commands in a way which shows their logic, so that they shape the hearers into people who can make wise decisions in other ethical areas?
• showing how right living is a cause for rejoicing?
• opening people's eyes through the commands to see the big reality that lies behind them, rather than presenting isolated and abstract demands?
• provoking a hunger for God's good commands and a savour for obedience?
• warning the listeners of the consequences of disobedience, and holding out the prospect of eternal reward for obedience?

To the preacher

I hope the sermon preparation  has gone well; I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to say (although this week it will have to be the recording, as I will be spending this morning teaching eleven year olds from Ruth 3 - awkward).  I just wanted to let you know what I need today.  It's the same as all the other weeks, but I know we're all forgetful and these things easily slip our minds.

I need Jesus.

I need Jesus, not as a slogan or a theological idea, but as himself, in person.  I need the God-man, who walked on the same globe on which I walk, and breathed the same air I breathe.  I need Jesus, not as an untouchable high and exalted deity, but as God-with-us, humbled to the dust - yes, even to the cross.  I need Jesus, not as a model of how to live, but as the giver of life, the conqueror of death, the one who spreads his righteousness over me.

For God's sake, and for mine (and for yours, for you shall be judged for what you say), don't explain the Bible to me.  Don't teach me some lessons.  Don't apply any moral principles.  For God's sake give me Jesus.  It is your sole commission to proclaim him as food for hungry souls, light for those in darkness, healing for the spiritually and physically sick, a Shepherd to those wandering alone, Lord and King to those adrift on a sea of their own contradictory desires.

For God's sake, and for mine, remember that I might die today.  I need comfort for death.  And remember that I might have to live tomorrow.  I need comfort for life.  Nothing can give it but Jesus.

For God's sake, and for mine, if the message you have prepared for this morning is not Jesus - if he is not the heart and soul of it - screw it up now.  Don't worry about preparing something else; there isn't time.  Just stand up and tell us all that Jesus died and rose for us.  Say it like you mean it, and that will be okay for us.

Me and the Holy Spirit

On Sunday I preached a very poor sermon on Acts 2:37-41.  I really shouldn't bother listening to it if I were you; you have better things to do with half an hour.  To explain why it was so poor, let me give you a bit of background info about how I write sermons.  On the whole, I don't spend a whole lot of time sitting down studying.  I read the passage towards the beginning of the week, maybe take in a couple of light commentaries, and then put it to the back of my brain to turn over and over during the week.  If something tricky comes up, I'll go find a more technical commentary; if something interesting pops into my brain I make a mental note.  Sometimes whole paragraphs of a sermon are written and committed to memory whilst I am walking up the hill to work.  On the whole, I find that I spot structures to passages, and craft structures of sermons, pretty early on in the week; the flesh to go on the bones might not come until Saturday.  Or, let's face it, Sunday.

Anyway, the structure for this passage seemed clear.  Peter mentions two conditions: repentance and baptism.  Then he mentions two blessings: forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit.  In between stands the name of the Jesus Christ, through whom all these things are possible as in repentance and baptism we identify with him.  Simples.  Conditions, blessings, Jesus.

But when I came to put on the flesh, I got stuck.  I can talk about repentance, goodness knows I can talk about baptism, I can and will wax lyrical about the forgiveness of sins.  But I don't really know what to say about the gift of the Holy Spirit,  Oh, don't get me wrong: I have a fine pneumatology.  My doctrine is straight.  I could lecture on the subject of the Holy Spirit.

But from the pulpit - as God's word to his people about his Spirit - I don't know what to say.

And that one failing became a black hole which dragged the whole sermon down into it, in my mind at least.  Because it seemed to me that the central question had become 'where is the answer to this promise?  Where is the gift of the Holy Spirit?'  Shouldn't we be able to see that more - if God were here, amongst us?  Shouldn't I have something to say about this?

So this is where I got to: I am not satisfied, not satisfied at all, with my current experience of God.  I was saying to a friend on Monday that my dissatisfaction is almost at a level where I feel it might overcome my laziness and fear.  Laziness because I know that, although I cannot work my way into a deeper experience of God or strive my way into his favour, I will need to seek him with my whole heart, and that sounds like hard work.  Fear because as long as I can blame my lack of zeal, God himself is not put to the test, but if I really seek him and he is not there...

I guess I'm praying, in so far as I can be bothered and in so far as I dare, for more dissatisfaction that can be satisfied with this gift of the Holy Spirit.

And in the meantime, I will try to write a better sermon for next Sunday.

Must preach

Krish Kandiah wrote a couple of posts on preaching last week, which are well worth reading - it's debate prep, so he gives both points of view: is preaching dead or alive? It has got me thinking about preaching, so here are a few of my somewhat disjointed and unpolished ponderings.

1.  Preaching is liturgical before it is educational.  If you take a glance at Krish's piece against preaching, many of the reasons have to do with educational theory.  Now, I don't have much time for that sort of thing anyway, but I especially don't want to see it applied to preaching.  The primary point of preaching is not the education of the church, not the impartation of knowledge.  The main thing is to lift the eyes of the congregation to Christ.  It is about speaking, and hearing, the Word of God - which means more than explaining the Bible.  It means speaking as if pronouncing the very oracles of God.  This is part of worship, and only secondarily is it a matter of catechesis (something which the church needs to do elsewhere).

2.  The gospel is news.  News is announced, not discussed.  One of the most frustrating things about the contemporary presentation of television or internet news is the apparent feeling that it would be a good idea to democratise the news by inviting comment from the ignorant public.  This is not the way news works.  News is not a conversation, it is an announcement.  Preaching is the only form that matches up with the content in this sense.

3.  The gospel is a monologue.  It is not that we are not invited in or involved - we certainly are.  But only really as hearers, as recipients.  In so far as we are doers, it is because we are hearers.  This is what grace means - God does it all.  Not only does he achieve salvation by himself without us, he announces salvation without us.  Preaching in the church is a sign of that - we listen to the preacher, who trusts that God takes up his preaching and makes it a genuine announcement of the gospel.

4.  Preaching is the centre of the church's life.  What else could it be?  The gospel announced calls the church together, and drives the church out to announce the gospel.

5.  God accompanies the faithful preaching of the gospel, and makes it powerful.