A sermon in five pictures
When I am teaching groups on preaching, I generally confront them quite early on with opposing view of what it is all about. Consider, for instance, these two very different definitions:
‘To preach: to give advice in an offensive, tedious or obtrusive manner’
– What am I doing here? Hilary Brand
A sermon is: ‘the most fruitful and powerful form of public discourse.’
-Leslie Griffiths in The Preacher
We generally move on from that to looking at different ‘pictures’ of the sermon.
In some traditions. with the pulpit built off to one side, the sermon serves as a ‘comment’ on the main event, which is the liturgy.
Recycling
In others, the sermon may be seen as an opportunity for the preacher, or indeed other members of the congregation, to pass on (or recycle) insights they have gained from the Word in their daily living.
Meeting point
In some traditions, especially the Black Majority Churches, the sermon is the meeting point where dynamic word and needy people encounter each other in a moment of powerful interaction.
Authoritative
In some traditions, with a solidly constructed pulpit built front and center in the church, the Word is delivered from on high to the waiting congregation.
Which is it in your church, I wonder…and which would you like it to be? Reading from Romans 10 v. 8 – 17, we went on to look at the role of the Word in worship.
It is an intimate word: close to the beat of our hearts, the conflicts of our minds, and the messiness of our lives, which so often seem far from God.
It is an indispensable word, without which worship is denuded of its power. It is the word of God which brought the universe springing to life in Genesis 1, and it will be the word of God which brings down the curtain on the apocalyptic chaos as described in Revelation 21.
It is an incarnate word, for in the end it is all a ‘word about Christ’ (Romans 10 v.17)
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Behind the colossal statue of Martin Luther King erected in Washington DC in 2011, there is a granite wall bearing 16 of his most famous quotes. They ring with the tone of God’s word and echo its timbre with every syllable. The man who famously said ‘I have a dream’ said so many other truly prophetic things. We often mock somebody by saying that they sound like they have ‘swallowed a dictionary’. A Christian should sound like she or he has swallowed the word. This is not because they quote it all the time, but because it has invaded their very soul until they sing with its hope and speak with its poetry and breathe with its promise. I have a bit of a dream about that, as you can probably tell!
Image: wikipedia
