I heard a sermon recently on a Gospel text about the "rich young ruler" in which the preacher did three things: (1) He recounted the basic story. I had my usual response here. I get nervous each time I hear Jesus' words. Because each time Jesus speaks, the earth shakes. Here's a guy out to change things, including me. Then, (2) proceeding with great warmth and sensitivity, the preacher told a balanced moral story that comforted my fears and warmed me from the inside out. Until, finally, (3) we were assured Jesus wasn't teaching about possessions but about the state of our hearts.
This kind of preaching always irks me. It leaves me cold.
My own psychological response to his sermon goes like this: First, the parable would be told in all its starkness and simplicity, and I would feel my heart pounding in dread and anticipation at the challenge of Jesus' words. Then, by the end of the sermon, all my fears would be alleviated -- no need for alarm; God's command isn't so uncompromising; Jesus really demands nothing of me after all!
All this reminds me of Bonhoeffer's warning not to "interpret" the teaching of Jesus in a way that leaves us safe, comfortable, unchallenged. Referring to typical interpretations of the story of the rich young ruler, Bonhoeffer remarks: "Everywhere it is the same -- the deliberate avoidance of simple, literal obedience. How is such a reversal possible? What has happened that the word of Jesus has to endure this game? ... Anywhere else in the world where commands are given, the situation is clear. A father says to his child: go to bed! The child knows exactly what to do. But a child drilled in pseudo-theology would have to argue thus: Father says go to bed. He means you are tired; he does not want me to be tired. But I can also overcome my tiredness by going to play. So, although father says go to bed, what he really means is go play".
This is why I'm always surprised to hear folks say that preaching texts like the Sermon on the Mount is hard. It's surprising because the only thing hard about the Sermon on the Mount is how straightforward Jesus is. It's so simple that we have to make it complex to avoid Jesus' piercing glaze. It's like we have to guard our congregations from the demands God makes -- things like "Love your enemies" and "Do not judge" have to be watered down to make them less stark.
I've heard someone recently issue very judging tones in order to highlight justice for victims. If you're dividing the world up into groups, you're missing Jesus' radical word of grace.
After all, it is God himself who bursts through these texts into our world. He comes through to us with a strange command that really does rock our world.
By removing everything offensive from the teaching of Jesus, we might succeed in making it easier to enter the kingdom of heaven -- but in this very act, the kingdom is turned into a bland mirror image of the status quo. If we want to preach the words of Jesus faithfully, perhaps we need to lose some of our cleverness, our talent for interpretive evasion, and work instead at making our proclamation simpler -- not easier, but simpler.
If you're sounding comfortable notes, you're probably doing it wrong.