“…And empty words are evil” – Homer
For the women and men who have been blessed with the call of Divine upon their lives to preach, there is an invisible, unnoticed burden that all of them must carry. A two-fold weight that all who fancy themselves preachers will bear for the rest of their natural lives. Whether seasoned in the ministry or scribing the first sentence of their first sermon; there are two principle, perpetual tensions we all have to deal with.
The first tension we bear is the weight of our imperfections. We who presume to be called to preach wrestle with the truth that we all are flawed beings used of God to proclaim God’s message to humanity. Our issues and struggles often leave us feeling unfit to serve in the way God calls us to. You may critique the homily you just heard, but you cannot conceive the amount of unworthiness that homiletician had to work through in order to preach it.
The second tension, a burden of equal gravity and impact, is the need of those who preach to be affirmed in what it is that they do. To be clear, all human beings have a basic need for affirmation in order to feel whole. But, in the life of the proclaimer, the loneliness and isolation that are commensurate with God’s call to the ministry amplify this need exponentially. The danger within this is not the phenomena itself but instead what it produces. This heightened need for affirmation prompts many (not all) to resort to lower, less integris behaviors in to order get it.
These two tensions bookend much (not all) of what we see and hear today. I can’t tell you how many times I have been privy to sermons where the minister is clearly saying and doing things for entertainment as opposed to evangelism; espousing everything from pop psychology to untreated personal trauma just to get a round of applause. From sermon closes with no substantive content to high emotionalism and low (if any) exposition of the biblical text, there seems to be a higher priority on acting in the name “the anointing” than biblical accuracy and authority. Being more concerned with performance than being prophetic (in the biblical sense of the word) has weakened the witness of countless clergy & the churches they serve in. We even find ourselves in a moment where shallow souls hide behind the plagiarism of deep ideas that are not their own (aka “sermon stealing”) with no compuction about it. And, God forbid, that there is any mention justice or righteousness in a message.
When this happens, the wisdom and way of God go undeclared to God’s people. Poor preaching gives the impression to those within earshot that God has nothing to say regarding the happenings in both our lives and the world. It is the heaviest of human hopelessness to have your life occur in such a way to where you are need of hearing what “thus sayeth the LORD” only to arrive at the end of a sermon unfilled and uncertain. Poor preaching leaves people able to tell their neighbor that they shouted in service while, simultaneously, unable to tell that neighbor what was stated in the sermon. How dare we, in the name of God, attempt to evangelize with empty words? Seems like there are so many (not all) who are responsible for spiritual guidance willing to preach everything but the Bible with no regard for the damage their heresy does.
Now, in the name of equitableness, it is fair to note that, at the end of the day, those who minister by proclaiming the Word of God have the liberty to preach their core convictions; the right to preach predicated on their interpretation of the Biblical text. That said, it is the overreaction to this right that lends to the problem. Nothing can be deemed as wrong if everything that is preached is right. The seriousness of what it is that we attempt to do, must leave room for principled critique. We who believe must be able to discern the difference between sound & unsound doctrine…Between the Gospel & grandiloquence. It is not judgement or indictment to do this. Comparatively, it is the result of the seriousness and sacredness that effective ministry requires.
Perhaps it is a lack of meaningful training or mentorship that causes this. Or maybe it is a lack of education that leads to this solecism of the scriptures? It may even be the case that there are those who are operating outside of God’s highest will for their lives and, as a result, are unequipped to do what it is they attempt to do. My heart grieves in the belief that it is actually all of the above.
We do good not to label all preaching bad because of the bad preaching we hear or may have heard. No matter the reason, the body of Christ cannot be healthy if we are not willing to address the illness within it. We address the phenomenality by being honest about it. We address this issue by doing all that we (clergy & laity) can to be students of the Bible and not just readers of it. The Bible is a gift to all of us; God’s loving and leading language to humanity. Allowing it to be the definitive source of our preaching (and not the side piece of our sermons) shows our hearers its value.
If we are not careful, we will suggest to the generations that come after us that what God is saying is not as important as what we have to say. No matter our denominational dispositions, theological orientations or hermeneutical positions, may our preaching always assert that the Bible is enough.
“_________ ain’t telling the truth enough/Ya’ll don’t look like the truth to us” – Nas
