On "the glory of preaching"
I spent part of a recent week reading a book about preaching. It had an impressive sounding title that included the words “the glory of preaching.” I bought it on the recommendation of someone from my grad school days who had spent ten minutes or so listening to me going on and on about my what an unobvious choice I was for the vocation of “pastor.” Zero homiletics courses, zero counseling courses, a whole string of academic classes on systematic theology, philosophy, postmodern theory, etc., an almost pathological fear of public speaking, a history fast-talking, stuttering, introversion, etc. ”All in all, not the most obvious candidate to be behind a pulpit on Sunday morning,” I nervously half-joked. “You should buy this book,” she said. “It will be a great help to you.”
And so, I bought the book. I even read parts of it. But somewhere around Thursday that week, I had to put it down. Maybe it was the almost impossibly lofty conception of the task of preaching (nothing short of a “weekly encounter with the God of the universe,” the author said, “one of the primary means by which personal transformation occurs!”). Maybe it was the formidably regimented structure and schedule laid about by the author, with original languages and word/syntax analysis, followed by reading in multiple translations (six or so will do), followed by sentence diagramming/mapping, followed by commentaries (no fewer than three), followed by finding relevant illustrations and examples, and then attention to oration. Ideally, all of this should be done by Friday so that, time permitting, part (all?) of the sermon could be memorized on Saturday. Maybe it was just that I was feeling unusually lousy about the status of my sermon for the week. Maybe it was all of the above and more. But far from being inspired by the vocation of preaching, I mostly felt tired, guilty, and inadequate.
It was hard to see past the yawning chasm between the ideal I saw on the page and the reality of what my week looks like. To say that my week-to-week rhythm of writing sermons bears little resemblance to the preceding would be the height of understatement. While I am obviously reading and reflecting on chosen texts throughout the week, often I will not begin to write until Thursday or Friday. I’m lousy at diagramming. Whenever I do a word Greek/Hebrew word study I seem to end up at the unremarkable conclusion that the range of meanings for the word in question is more or less captured by the way in which the various English translations render it. And memorization? Um, right. Often I am beating my head against the wall for a good chunk of Saturday, scrambling to finish, modify, revise, cut, etc. over breakfast on Sunday morning, and desperately hoping the church printer is working half an hour before worship begins. I wonder how this “preaching rhythm” would sell in a book? Not exactly glorious or worthy of emulation.
