The Little Friar

I observed in The Fire and the Rose that I don't preach universalism.  And for good reason.  The world needs to hear the judgment of Gospel -- that God, in Christ, is setting the world to rights, and that means some of the things we really do to one another (poverty, war, abuse, neglect, etc.) really aren't going to stand.  The Gospel is good news proclaimed to the poor, imprisoned, forgotten of the world.  But that good news, when heard from the vantage point of the oppressor, isn't good at all.  It's bad news.  The rich guy, to paraphrase Jesus, has the same chance getting into the Kingdom as the camel has getting through the eye of a needle.  It can happen -- with God, all things can -- but it's probably not going to be comfortable on either the camel or the rich guy. But what of predestination?  Why don't I -- and more generally, why won't other preachers -- preach the Gospel as it's proclaimed in Paul? When treated abstractly, as an explan...

I've been thinking quite a bit recently about preaching -- particularly as I've worked through sections of Willimon's commentary on Acts and Oden's commentary on the Pastorals .  Here are some notes I've made in those reflections. Preaching is an audacious act.  It is strange that a person might claim to speak about God.  It is exponentially presumptuous to proclaim, "Thus saith the Lord".  It is an audacious act.  Yet, when we speak under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, it is a faithful act.  And, it says far more about God's character and nature than it does about the character and nature of the human mouthpiece -- after all, God spoke to Balaam through an ass.  God speaks, which is to say, God acts and interacts directly with and in this world.  But, God always empowers and acts through agents.  That God entrusts us with such a great gift suggests that God is less concerned about getting something accomplished but is concerned ...

One of the most painful yet gratifying tasks for my pastoral ministry has always been preaching the funeral sermon. It's painful because of the deep work that goes into walking with a family through the valley of death.  It's a complicated time, because pastors always bear their own griefs, too.  So the wounds that come to the living in the death of the deceased are carried not only by family and friends, but also by the clergy who speak the names of the deceased and speak the loving truth about their lives. On the other hand, it's gratifying because in death ministers are able -- at really the only point in their ministry -- to see the flowering of their pastoral work.  We are typically not only graced to be the last who will speak the name of the deceased in community.  We are also able to see, first-hand, the fruits of our pastoral labors in the grief of the living. So preaching a funeral is something that pastors should always think about -- what they are d...

Doubtless by now, so many folks have heard Bishop Curry's royal wedding sermon.  If you haven't, you can see it here . As a preacher, I can't recall the time that a sermon had so many talking about it.  By all accounts -- including mine -- it was a wonderful sermon precisely in what it did:  It treated preaching as if it mattered, and that gathering as if it were a congregation and not a wedding. Why did so many connect to that sermon?  As Curry and his friend, Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, both mentioned in  this fascinating interview , it was "after all, just the Gospel". And yet, when something connects so well, it's important to ask why it connected so well.  Especially for preachers, who regularly practice the craft we saw Curry practicing last Saturday. Here are some of my thoughts.  In addition to preaching the Gospel during that message, Curry did at least five things that really connected with people in the room and around...

I hear often about what a "great" job I did preaching.  Knowing myself as well as I do, I'm always skeptical.   Good preaching , I think, is hard to be judged in the short term.  You probably won't know it when you've heard it.  Instead, you know good preaching when you see it Monday morning.  What gets said on Sunday are just the seeds.  The growth that comes in God's kingdom, that's when you know if it took hold and accomplished anything to call as good. In truth, I've sat down after preaching and wondered often whether I owe God an apology for having wasted his time or my breath.  So, I thought it might help parishioners to see a few of the rules I've developed and shared over the years with those who've learnt preaching with and from me.  Also, reminders like this can't hurt preachers, either.  1.  Don't assume you always speak for God.  It takes lots of humility to stand and preach.  And if you're cocky ...

The literary theorist Umberto Eco has a theory about readers.  Every text calls for an ideal reader .  The ideal reader of any given text is the person receptive of its content and formed to follow its patterns (see, The Role of the Reader, 1979 ).  In other words, the person who is willing to "see" as the text sees (this is how the world is) and then live accordingly is the ideal reader. Consider the following picture: That guy is not the ideal reader of Nazi propaganda.  He refuses to buy into the Nazi's picture of the world -- choosing not to "see" as they see.  And he won't live accordingly by offering his salute to Hitler and all that his regime stands for, despite the very obvious social pressure.  "Nope", you can hear him saying to himself. I think the task of the twenty-first century preacher to congregations has to be this:  "Be that guy".  Refuse to become the ideal reader of Nazi propaganda, and if you find that eas...

One of those remaining questions in Bonhoefferian scholarship is what Bonhoeffer meant in his Letters and Papers from Prison , toward the end of his life, when he wrote that Barth was unable to address the concerns of modern people.  Theologians like Rudolf Bultmann, Paul Tillich, and even Bonhoeffer concerned themselves with the question of how we can proclaim the gospel in an age that cares less and less about God, the church, or theology.  They searched in vain for an answer to this in Barth's works -- or, rather, they were disappointed with the answers they found .  Some years later, Barth had written a letter to Bethge, after the publication of the latter's magisterial biography of Bonhoeffer, asking Bethge what Bethge thought Bonhoeffer had meant in accusing Barth of a "positivism of revelation". The problem Bonhoefferian scholars have in appreciating Barth is that, if we take some of Barth's earliest writings alone, we can be left with the same impressio...

Someone thought it'd be a fun idea to offer, as a Friday series for a while, pictures of books in my personal library. My criteria are fairly simple:  I'll post every Friday a different picture -- either of a collection of books on the same theme, or one book that has had unique impact on me.  Then I'll offer something of a personal reflection on the picture. The goal here, of course, is that folks get a window into those books that have made me who I am. Today's selection begins where I probably should begin here at The Little Friar -- with the shelf of my preaching books.  Of the shelf, if I had to pick the most important book, I'd have to say it's Bonhoeffer's Worldly Preaching (in the second picture, third book from the left).  Worldly Preaching offers a translation of Bonhoeffer's lectures on preaching to the seminary of the Confessing Church in Finkenwalde and a lengthy introduction to both Bonhoeffer as a preacher and his theolog...

How Odd of God to choose human beings, like me, to share the word of God with the world.  Or perhaps putting it a bit differently, what makes me think that my words from the pulpit can be a vehicle for God to speak to a congregation?  The fact is, the effect of my words on a congregation isn't in my hands.  That doesn't mean I don't prepare or work hard at my craft.  It simply means that once the words leave my mouth they are no longer mine. Those are the kinds of things Willimon ponders in this excellent little book.  The book  How Odd of God is the published form of Willimon's 2014 Macleod lectures on Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary.  Willimon writes in the opening paragraph of the book's introduction that "election is God's act whereby our lives are wrenched out of our control and we are commandeered to witness, thereby enabling the joy of talking about something more important than ourselves, our families, or our churches...

Martin Luther regularly collected and published his sermons following the calendar of the church year.  They were known as "postils", and during his life they were some of his most read and beloved works.  Luther himself was pleased with them but lamented that some "lazy" preachers read them word-for-word from the pulpit: There are some lazy, no-good pastors and preachers who depend on these and many other good books that they can take a sermon out of.  They don't pray, study or read, pondering nothing in Scripture, just as if we need not read the Bible, using such books as a template and calendar to earn their living. I appreciate Luther's point, but I'm conflicted. Let me explain. On one hand, preaching verbatim another person's sermon detracts from the essence of preaching:  The pastor stands among his or her congregation and in the power of the Holy Spirit speaks the Word of the Lord as it is refracted through his or her unique h...

This morning, as I prepare to preach Hosea 11 (a text from the prophets that always makes me nervous to preach, fearful I won't say as much as it already says), I'm reminded of a passage from Barth's Gottingen Dogmatics -- probably the best theology of preaching I've ever read: But, some might say, how can we theologians come to speak God's Word in our words?  Or, some congregation might say, how can we come to hear God's Word in the words of this or that pastor who has nothing to offer us, or in the words of all pastors, none of whom we trust? ...  If we expected to hear God's Word more, we would hear it more even in the weak and perverted sermons.  The statement that there was nothing in it for me should often read that I was not ready to let anything be said to me.   What is needed here is repentance by both pastors and congregations....  This does not mean that congregations must say Yea and Amen to all the words of their reverend pastors. ...

In light of some conversations over the weekend about preaching, I'm thinking this morning about my preaching. I want to begin with where we "are", with the reality that confronts the Church:  Nearly 10% fewer people identify as "Christian" now than did only a decade ago.  That makes me worry about the nature of our preaching in the Church.  Preaching, after all, is the most public act of the Church that proclaims the Gospel.  So what are folks learning -- or more accurately, not learning -- from preaching? Nearly every advertisement I read for churches in search of a senior pastor speak of the ability to preach sermons that "connect" with people "where they are".  So if that's the goal of preaching, it's hardly a surprise that folks just aren't all that interested ... I've seen and heard lots of folks -- especially former preaching students -- talk about their preaching.  "I want help in making connection with ...

In light of some conversations this week about preaching, I'm thinking this morning about my preaching. In light of the recent Pew Survey results -- that nearly a full 8 percentage points fewer of the survey respondents identify as "Christian" -- the primary thing I think we pastoral types should worry about is the quality and nature of our preaching.  Preaching, after all, the most public act of the Church that proclaims the Gospel. That, of course, isn't all that strange an idea to those in the Church Growth Movement.  Nearly every advertisement I read for churches in search of a senior pastor speak of the ability to preach sermons that "connect" with people "where they are".  I've seen and heard lots of folks -- especially former preaching students -- talk about their preaching.  "I want help in making connection with my listeners, relating the gospel to their everyday lives."  "I want to preach sermons which really...