Conversations on Stinking Sermons

Recently Peter Bogert, (a pastor of Faith Community Church in Roslyn, PA) had a post on his blog on "Stinking Sermons", sermons which did not communicate the author's intention. He wrote:

Ramesh Richard, who teaches preaching at Dallas Seminary, has authored a book entitled Preparing Expository Sermons that is quite good. He talks, as do most other books on preaching, about paying attention to the author's intent. Then he shares an example of a sermon he heard where this was totally ignored. It would be humorous if it was just facetious, but it is sad knowing that someone spent time preparing this and felt it was acceptable to preach.

Luke 19:29-40 - Jesus & The Donkey

1. You are like the donkey (29-30)
• You are tied to someone other than the owner to whom you really belong.
• You are still young - no one has sat on you.
2. Jesus commands you to be set free (30c)
• He sets you free through his disciples. (31-32)
• There will be objections when you are being freed to serve Christ. (33)
• But he has need of you. (34)
3. Are you Christ's donkey? (35-40)
• Is he riding you?
• Are you bringing praise to him?

A couple of thoughts.

1. Someone probably worked hard, did some study, prayed about it, and came up with this. But effort alone does not make good preaching.

2. There are biblical principles reflected in this sermon. But principles separated from context is not good preaching.

3. People probably "got something" from this message. But the fact that someone was challenged does not make this good preaching.

Obviously these are factors that enter into a good sermon. But without being rooted in the intent of the author (and Author), the Bible becomes fodder for anyone's seemingly sanctified ideas - even mine. I try to continually ask myself "Is this what the author had in mind?" That at least provides me with a foundation to begin good preaching.

And I started pushing the envelope a bit, commenting...

But God could use our stinking stuff eventhough it shouldn't be an excuse to produce them...

I also observe that in personal devotion, we could be benefit from all sorts of angles...

One more thing.

Assume that you are preaching under the lectionary tradition, you are bound to hit this story once every year (or the Lukan angle once every three years). So what are you going to do (assume that breaking away from the denominational/church's lectionary tradition is not an option)? Wouldn't the minor angles be allowable if you stated clearly that it's a minor angle of the text? Wouldn't it be allowable if scripture elsewhere could be brought in to reinforce the point? I think sometimes we exalt the historical/grammatical method of study Scripture a bit too much to the point that it becomes the ONLY method.

What do you think?

Peter graciously responded...

Bumble:

I understand the dilema, but in the final analysis the meaning of the text has to come from what it says, not what I think it means. It may be hard to come up with something unique each year, but I can't sacrifice the integrity of sound interpretive skills on the altar of what MIGHT end up simply being a lack of working hard to present the text in a different manner. I guess that I feel strongly enough about this that if I were in the "you have to preach this text each year" mode, and I couldn't come up with a legitimate alternative approach, I'd use the same sermon. Quite honestly, in our day, most people wouldn't remember the original anyway. But I'd rather they get something that came from valid interpretation repeated to them than branch out to the point where my supposed insights becomes the interpretive rule rather than the original meaning of the author.

Thanks for your comments.

I am a bit more stubborn and wouldn't want to take his explaination for an answer:

Well said, Peter. Wish I could be that consistent. I strive to preach the intention of the author; but sometimes I believe that I strive to preach the intention of The Author instead. (Especially when I had a hard time second guess what's the author's intention - like when I run into obscured places in the OT with the contradictory takes from my trusted commentaries...)

At this point, I think Peter misunderstood what I meant by "obscure", so he wrote:

Bumble, I understand. But I can't see that it is more in tune with the Spirit to derive something obscure from the text or something that is not there. You might find the book The Modern Preacher and the Ancient Text by Greidanus of interest.

So I tried to clarify what I meant by "obscure":

Peter, thank you for your understanding, and please forgive my stubborness. I didn't mean that we should get an "obscure meaning" out of the text; just that it may be impossible to derive the author's intention out of some "obscure text".

Let's take the case of Esther marrying to the king. Would it be possible to determine the author's intended application? At the book level, it's a call to observe Purim, which Christian won't do; so we talk about God's providence. But at the chapter/segment level, did the author intended to portray Esther as a positive example, or negative example?

So what do I do? I take a look at the current onslaught from the culture on the people of God. And I brought in the fact that the king was a pagan, the fact that the beauty was just focusing on physical attributes, then I enlisted other Scriptures against those behaviors to build a case against it.Or I could study a different set of commentaries, discuss it with a different set of people/tradition, and come up with the opposite intention...

This is more true for the OT than the NT. (And I think that's why people preached more NT).

At this point, Peter understood what I meant (I think), so he want to think some more on it:

Bumble: I understand (and sympathize!!) I would have to think for a bit on how I would handle that specific situation!

Three days later, Peter clarified his thought on why that sermon was a stinker on a follow-up post:

A few posts ago I used an illustration from Ramesh Richard's book Preparing Expository Sermons. On page 22 he provides a sermon outline that apparently was something he actually witnessed. The sermon involves nothing about the original meaning of the text, how the author would have intended it to be understood, or how the original readers would have understood it. Richard states that it is simply moralistic preaching, disconnected from any textual authority.

I don't believe that this kind of treatment of Scripture is that uncommon. Especially in devotional-type preaching or speaking, we are inclined to look for "deeper" insights. Such insights often convey good moral lessons, even ones that sound very spiritual. But as Richard points out, they lack textual authority.

So what's the problem? Doesn't the fact that a message emphasizes a good spiritual point - the lordship of Christ in our lives - justify the approach?

There are a number of reasons why this kind of interpretation/application of a passage is problematic. Some of them are technical, but let me note one thing in particular that we need to keep in mind when we preach or teach: We model how to read the Bible to our people.

If this is the approach we use for a text, what are we teaching them? We are modeling a highly suspect subjective approach to Scripture that makes "what I think it says" or "what it says to me" or even the highly pious-sounding but still dubious "what the Spirit led me to think" the authority rather than the text itself. How can we encourage our people to deal with the objective truth of Scripture when we model subjectivity?

Some may protest that it is the right of the Holy Spirit to reveal these "insights" to us. Right? Sure, I'll go along with that. But I don't think he uses that right. Despite what our "every promise in the book is mine" individual-American mind thinks, the Bible is not a personal love letter from God. It is a book written to a community, teaching the same thing to every individual of the community. Certainly there are applications to a passage that strike us differently, but let's realize that what we are reading is already the product of the Holy Spirit. Frankly there is enough there to hold us accountable and guide our lives and thinking without having to bend the meaning of the text to "get something personal" out of it.

Then this time I responded with avery long winded comment - probably the result of just finishing the reviews for the WBC's Ruth/Esther Commentary and the book "The Dead Sea Scrolls and the Modern Translations of the Old Testament" by Harold Scanlin:

Thank you, Peter, for pursuing this topic some more.

But before I go on, I need to qualify my position that I am wholeheartedly agree with your statement that as preacher, we need to preach what the text mean, and not what we think what the text mean.

But I want to expound some more that it's not easy to know what the author's intention for the text. I often study between 20-30 hours for a typical Sunday's sermon. And I mean I studied: going through the text, combing through various nuances of the original languages, comparing the various readings from the extant manuscripts, reading all I can on the historical backgrounds, how that passage was interpreted through out the history of the church, etc.

And the minute that you engage in serious study of the text, you realize right away that it's not easy to determine the meaning of the text because that result depends greatly on our understanding of the textual evidence in its historical context, and both items in themselves could be interpreted very differently. (My homiletic professor once said that my problem was that I studied too much. And may be that's why it's harder for me to deal with this issue).

But back to the point of wrestling to find the author's meaning of the text. With the myriad of variants we are presented with in the course of studies, eventually we have to trust that God is leading us to discern rightly in our preparation, and so when we preach of "This is what the text means", what we really mean is: "This is what I think the text means, according to the leading of God's Spirit, after consulting the community of God's people, who are also committed to the authority of God's Word."

As our understanding of God's Word changed over time, our conclusion of "What's the author intention" will also change over time. Otherwise, preaching will become static. Granted the major themes of Scripture will be solidified over time, like the Redemption of the Lord Jesus, but many of the minor issues will be working out as the people of God wrestled to answer the questions of "What did the text means in its context?" and "What does it mean to us now?" (Like the church had worked through the theology of slavery a few hundred years, but it's no longer an issue to our theology now).

Perhaps, it's time for some clarification as well. I would suggest that the sermon must not only answer the question of "What did the text mean?" (The author's original intention to the original readers, to the best of our study, and to the maximum of discernment as allowed by God). The sermon must also answer the question of "What does it mean to me?" (Not in term of individualistic thinking of "getting something personal" out of it, but in term of what the Scripture's demand of my practical life)Honestly, I don't think that we are differing in our opinions at all; I think I was just clarifying the nuances of your general big statement: Expository preaching must preach what the text intended to do! To that, I said "Amen!" and offered a brief prayer, "And help us Lord, to discern what the text intended to do!"

At that, I think Peter finally got my convoluted logic, (or he was just worn out) and said:

Bumble:I think we do agree in the main. And please be assured that you were not a target in the post. It was kind of a natural followup.

I wholeheartedly agree that we need to move beyond the meaning of the text to its application. But, as I am sure you would agree, even that is governed by what the text says.

Have a great night! My Phillies are on their way to Oakland in a few nights - have your California team treat them nice, ok?

This is a great dialetic conversations - I love to be able to think things through with the people who has the same heart and mind and the high regard for the Word of God

But just now, my mind was brewing on another question for Peter...