Interpretation–of our newspapers, our friends’ words, and our Bible–is (by its essence) a cultural act. We read any text through the lenses of our upbringing, life experiences, and the tradition we’ve been taught.
When we sit down to write a sermon, we bring all of these lenses into our view of Scripture, along with the perspectives of over 2,000 years’ worth of readers who have come before us. With all these lenses, then, how can we listen with fresh ears and partner with the Spirit in helping Scripture be a “word from God” for today–for the various lives of those who sit in our congregations?
As we seek to listen to the text, here are a few obstacles we often encounter:
- “What’s Water?” Syndrome: Many of us have heard the story of the fish who–swimming along with the current–was asked by a dolphin, “How’s the water?” to which the fish replied, “What on earth is water?” The story reminds us that it’s possible to be so immersed in a thing that we fail to see how it surrounds us. We often do the same in preaching. Because we are deeply rooted in our own tradition, our own life experience, our own pastoral context, or our own familiar readings of the Bible, we can easily fail to be aware of how our experience may cause us to miss substantial parts of God’s work in the text.
- Example: Our implicit trust of our favorite “version” or Bible translation can cloud our vision of how that translation may curb the role of women in the text, or emphasize the language of “justification” at the expense of the language of sanctification.
- Fast Reading: Because of the too-often compressed process of preaching preparation, it’s possible to spend such a meager amount of time with the text that we only use the Scripture as a springboard for saying what we wanted to say anyway. We need to bring our preliminary assumptions into our process of preaching, while at the same time realizing that they are just preliminary. Our pet interpretations, phrases, or sermon titles may be very clever (and may even be useful to our congregation), but may also have very little to do with what the text is trying to say. At this point, it’s helpful to remember that preaching is rooted in the message of God through Scripture. However clever our wording may be, if the message delivered is not in harmony with the passage preached, the sermon has missed the mark.
- Monolithic Commentaries:
As mentioned above, life experiences and traditions bring different “angles” that help us approach familiar texts with new understanding. But as we survey our pastoral libraries, many of us see that the writers on our shelves are less diverse than most of our cities are. Having a pastoral library that favors a narrow slice of the demographics of biblical scholarship (e.g. having primarily white male writers in our libraries, or only mainline Protestant writers) can also narrow the breadth and depth of our insight into what the passage actually says, and how it might be heard by various parts of our community.
Below are a few Gospel-centered ways of becoming better hearers, listeners, and interpreters of the Word of God through Scripture.
- Make a Map, Find a Balcony: Cultural blind spots usually hide behind a lack of awareness about the places/people who have formed up. One of the easiest ways to overcome that blind spot is to make a “map” of formative people and institutions in your life. As you think of those who have developed your way of being with God, write down the top 10. What characteristics do they have in common? In what ways are they different? What has been their contribution to your life? After mapping out the individuals/families that have formed you, write down the top 3-5 institutions that have shaped you. What types of institutions are they? What common tenets of faith (if any) did they share? How have they added texture to your faith? After mapping these out, create a sliver of “balcony time,” in which you try to see how these people and places affect your way of interpreting Scripture. How might one of these formative people read the text? How does that differ from your way of reading it? What part of this Scripture did your institutions emphasize? What part might they ignore? By identifying (on the “balcony”) some of what’s at work “on the stage” of interpretation, we can hone our hermeneutic to be more faithful and knowledgeable about God’s invitation.
Action Step: In the next two weeks, make a map of the top 10 individuals and top 3-5 institutions who have formed your view of God, and identify what blind spots these formative people/places might have that will influence your way of looking at Scripture, ministry, and social issues.
- Sermon as “Scripturing”: A friend of mine who worked as a trauma therapist often says, “The slower you go, the sooner you get there.” While there is a time-crunch on sermon preparation (Sunday doesn’t wait until we have something to say; it comes every seven days), we need to linger with the text for a bit in order to preach from it. Like a large and unfamiliar house, Scripture will continue to surprise us with surprising corridors, side hallways, and little nooks that are left unexplored. Our job is to be in prayerful contemplation of the text, keep exploring, allow the Bible to surprise us, and help our congregations embark upon that journey in their own time with God. Below is a small (and incomplete) list with steps that may help you in exploring the text:
- 1) Writing down presuppositions. Be honest about what you think this passage says, or what you hope this passage will allow you to preach.
- 2) Put aside those presuppositions. Before you preach your own opinions, put them aside and move on to seeing what the text has to say.
- 3) Exploring the world of the text and its relationship to our world. One of the best ways to do this is to ask cultural questions about the text, like “How did the original hearers receive this text?” or “How might people in my context receive this text?” “What assumptions, cultural norms, or obstacles to obedience were in their context? How about ours in the present day?” Lots of other questions may arise here, too. Be playful and inquire deeply!
- 4) Engage resources that help you get in touch with answers to those questions, and ones that help you dive more deeply into the meaning of the passage.
- 5) Let Scripture shape the sermon form. Every passage–Psalm, Proverb, gospel, epistle, wisdom literature, apocalyptic literature, prophetic books–comes with its own structure for conveying its message. We can use that structure to help us deliver the sermon. Ask questions like, “How does this passage start and end? What seems to be its focus? How might my sermon mirror that?
- 6) After crafting the sermon, re-engage with some of your pre-assumptions. How did they weave into the sermon? Which ones were left behind? What did you learn?
Action Step: Pick a date on the calendar to do an “exegesis tune-up.” What parts of the six-step process above were helpful? Which parts will you discard? Which will you add to make it your own?
- Diverse Conversation Partners: If you look over your shelves and find that your commentaries, preaching resources, and formative voices tend to reflect only a small part of the neighborhoods your church is within driving distance of, it might be wise to reach out to pastors, church members, professors, or authors who are outside of your demographic. If you notice your writers are largely Protestant, reach out to a Catholic priest who has a reputation for thoughtful preaching. If your pastoral mentors are largely male, reach out to a woman in ministry and ask for help in an area they are especially capable in. If your conversation partners tend to be primarily of one ethnicity, reach out to an authority figure of a different ethnicity who might disciple you in a subject you need growth in.
Action Step: Do a “formative audit” of your shelves and your calendar. Reach out to others for book lists, mentors, and conversation partners who might expand your cultural, theological, and pastoral horizons. (hint: theology and ministry professors at our Wesleyan institutions of higher education often love receiving emails like this, and often have many resources to suggest).
For more information on pastoral listening, stay tuned over the next months for more posts in this series!
2019, Ethan Linder
Ethan Linder is the Pastor of Hospitality, Collegians, and Young Adults at College Wesleyan Church in Marion, Indiana, and the Editor of The Wesleyan Church’s Education and Clergy Development writing staff.