42 FEATURE
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE PREACHER AND THE BIBLICAL TEXT
A preacher today must recognise and engage the distances of time, translation and context. It’ s about 2000 years since the New Testament texts were first written; longer in relation to Old Testament texts. They were first written in languages now not spoken or written as they once were, and they’ ve been translated a number of times in order that we, the preachers of today, are able to read them at all. The original hearers of these texts lived in a world almost incomprehensibly different to our own.
How do we go about beginning to overcome such distances? I’ ve found it helpful to simply acknowledge that these distances exist! It sometimes prompts me to discover what an original word or phrase meant. I do look up what the little‘ a’ and‘ b’ footnotes refer to in the passage I’ m reading, and this often suggests an alternative for a hard-to-translate word that opens up new thinking for my sermon.
To help me in this endeavour I’ ve invested in and relied heavily upon resources. I have commentaries and use them. Thank the Lord for good biblical scholars who can write! In more recent years I’ ve signed up to some of the many decent websites containing articles and sermon ideas, and subscribed to resources like Preach: good preaching has always included the practice of borrowing!
But not just commentaries: theological and devotional resources too. All sorts of insights that help reduce distances of time, translation and context appear in resources about mission, pastoral care, discipleship and studies on the Trinity, etc. When a writer employs a biblical quote or reference I ask‘ How are they using it? Why here, in relation to this topic?’
Then there’ s the biblical text itself. Because only reading about a text, however helpful the source, isn’ t enough for effective preaching. Remember that a good deal of scripture, particularly the New Testament – and especially the Gospels – is itself‘ preached material’. It was preached before it was written down. And it’ s often written down in a way that hints at how it was preached. So approach and explore a text as being itself a sermon as well as‘ scripture’, and sometimes things appear. Let a text speak to you before you think about speaking about it. If you discern a shape, or a progression of thought, or a repeated phrase in the text, faithfully preach the sermon that you discern in the text, not another one!
Of course we can’ t always know the original meanings or contexts, but that of itself doesn’ t mean a faithful and effective sermon can’ t be preached from that passage. Scripture is multilayered and multi-vocal, and the Holy Spirit is helping us. I often read the passage aloud several times over several days. I emphasise different words, read it in different versions. If there’ s speech in a passage I play around with how it might have been spoken. How I imagine Jesus saying‘ as the Father sent me, so I send you’ in John 20, and how Peter might have said,‘ I’ m going fishing’ in John 21 – and where I put the emphasis, and what mood I impart – yields all sorts of insights.
THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE CONGREGATION AND THE BIBLICAL TEXT
Many preachers, myself included, thoroughly enjoy the processes I’ ve outlined so far. And that’ s fine, sermon preparation is meant to be exciting and rewarding. But of course the essential object is that a particular congregation and the word of God are brought closer together and worship and discipleship deepened, causing the angels in heaven to rejoice. The preacher is( merely!) the chosen vessel for that critical task and holy privilege.
I believe preaching which reduces distance between people and text finds its best and most fruitful environment in the Christian year. The Christian year – Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Trinity – is the cyclical rehearsal and remembrance of the Christian story. It’ s the huge redemptive tapestry in which sermons that reduce distance locate themselves.
This mustn’ t be heard as an appeal to slavishly follow the lectionary on, say, the evening of the twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost! There’ s plenty of space in the Christian year for topics and themes a preacher feels they have been given by the Lord to preach to God’ s people. But it is an appeal to let the key themes and moods of the main Christian seasons shape and colour our sermons. A critical question for an effective preacher is‘ what time is it?’, meaning,‘ where are we in the metastory of our faith?’
There are times when the actual example recorded in a biblical text appears very distant to a modern congregation. Before deciding to preach on something else, an effective preacher will pause and ask whether there is a principle lying under the example: a piece of teaching which is actually hugely applicable.
An example: in 1 Corinthians 8, Paul talks about eidolothuta, food offered to idols. It’ s perfectly proper for a preacher to explain something of the practices of the ancient world, perhaps allude to the significant scriptural themes of sacrifice and offering, and remind people that meat offered at idol shrines was sometimes given to the poor – like early foodbanks! But the fact is that most of us today buy our meat already dead, from butchers or supermarkets, and the actual practice spoken of here is distant to our experience and lives.
But the principles for living Christian life together that Paul goes on to teach are very near to home. To a congregation disagreeing and divided about whether it’ s sinful to offer food to idols( after all,‘ Thou shalt not worship idols, for the Lord your God is One’), or just pointless( because as there is only one God, the idols are without power or force), Paul reminds