Using Words
There’s an apocryphal quote that’s attributed to Saint Francis, “Preach the gospel at all times and if necessary, use words.” As an introvert, I love the idea that sharing the gospel doesn’t require me to actually talk to other people. As a reader of things about Saint Francis, I have to point out that he talked and preached.
A lot.
With words.
Out loud.
I’ve spent a lot of my life at the end of that sentence, finding it often necessary to tell the story of Jesus and the kingdom of God with words. Preaching is a part of my vocation and while I try to create more and more space for our preaching team to share in the opportunities that our gatherings create, I still preach on most Sundays of the year.
I also find myself engaged in everyday conversation with friends and realize, one on one or with a small group of friends, that in my answer to a question or response to a topic that we’re all discussing, I slip into a preach. When I catch myself, when I become aware I’m really leaning into the moment with my words, I try to stop and say, “and thus ends my homily for today.” Because I want my friends to know that I know that I just slipped into preaching mode. I was using words, not just speaking words.
Henri Nouwen, in his book, the Wounded Healer, wrote, “preaching means more than handing over a tradition; it is rather the careful and sensitive articulation of what is happening in the community.” Preaching isn’t saying words, it’s not – as it’s become known – a harangue, or even a lecture. Genuine preaching, I’ve come to believe, is when people, as their most authentic self, are using words that emerge from an experiential understanding of the kingdom of God and the everyday lives of the people with whom we are sharing this life together.
Eugene Peterson wrote, “There is no way that I can preach the gospel to these people if I don’t know how they are living, what they are thinking and talking about. Preaching is proclamation, God’s word revealed in Jesus, but only when it gets embedded in conversation, in a listening ear and responding tongue, does it become gospel.” And that kind of “preaching” doesn’t look like yelling or a soliloquy or even a speech. At the very least, it’s a dialogue that’s taken place internally in which the person who is using the words is exegeting not only the sacred text but the sacred people and the times in which we are all living.
The essential question I feel like I need to answer for one of my Sunday messages to be “done” is, where is Jesus in this text? I’m also trying to be able to clearly answer questions like, “so what?” and “what do we do with this?” and “how does this inspire me to hope or trust or love?” And to be honest, there are times I come to the text I’m supposed to be preaching from on Sunday, like the passage I have for this week, and I feel stuck.
Sometimes I feel stuck because – like this week – there’s a lot of “yes, but” in the passage or chapter we’re on. “Yes, it say…BUT, we have to understand…” and there’s a ton of information needed to fill in that blank. “Yes, BUT, you have to understand Paul’s Jewish context.” “Yes, BUT, you have to understand the Roman context Paul is speaking to.” “Yes, BUT, you have to understand the influence of the patriarchy and rampant misogyny in that time and place.” “Yes, BUT, you have to understand the certainty of Jesus’ imminent return to sort everything out and make all things new with which Paul wrote that letter.”
It can be tricky because people like me have used words in the past to convince people in church that “if God said it, I believe it and that settles it.” We have peddled certainty. We’ve taught people that one of the greatest evidences of the inspiration of scripture is its univocality – way in which it uses words to say same thing about the same things over millenniums. When, in reality, the beauty of the text and one of the greatest insights we can have about the Bible for understanding how to read it is found in the way in which it argues with itself.
Right now, our church is going through Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians. As I prep to use my words, I spend a fair amount of time reading how others have used their words to explain the words Paul used. Corinthians has this interesting quality in that it offers a response to a letter we do not have. Paul answers questions we might have restated in the text or we might need to reverse engineer from the text to figure out from the answer given what was the question asked. I have been fascinated by the difference between older commentaries and new commentaries on some of the same passages where the older commentaries are not basing the use of their words on questions in quotation marks that newer commentaries assume. The older commentaries take some wonky statements that appear in the text and explain them as “the word of God” that newer commentaries reckon are wonky because they are the questions sent to Paul from a troubled, dysfunctional church.
And the thing is this – people preached from the old readings and interpretations with the same amount of conviction and certainty as preachers preaching from the newer commentaries and their different (and I would argue a better) understanding.
Which should invite a little humility on our part, we who use our words and the words of others, to make a point. John Stott, who wrote one of my favorite books on preaching said, “The Christian preacher is to be neither a speculator who invents new doctrines which please him, nor an editor who excises old doctrines which displease him, but a steward, God’s steward, dispensing faithfully to God’s household the truths committed to him in the Scriptures, nothing more, nothing less, and nothing else. For this ministry a humble mind is necessary.” If I take it seriously, it’s this role as a steward of words and hearts that makes this vocation of preaching feel so heavy at times.
The writer of 2 Timothy says to those engaged in the vocation of pastoral ministry, “Work hard so you can present yourself to God and receive his approval. Be a good worker, one who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly explains the word of truth.” Put that down next to what the writers of 2 Peter says, “This is what our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you with the wisdom God gave him— speaking of these things in all of his letters. Some of his comments are hard to understand, and those who are ignorant and unstable have twisted his letters to mean something quite different, just as they do with other parts of Scripture. And this will result in their destruction.” And using words suddenly sounds like risky business.
In 40 years of pastoral ministry, I’ve seen the harm that can be done by those who use their words as if they were the word of God. In fact, if we’re honest, when we talk about the inspiration and infallibility of the word of God, we typically mean, “our interpretation of the word of God.” I’ve had short and long conversation with people who found themselves estranged from the church because of the words someone used on them. The lie we learn in childhood is, “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” It’s not too long before we realize how untrue that is and we begin accumulating words – even in the church – that do us harm.
Here are some things I’ve found helpful in trying to figure out how to use words when I preach in a way that is constructive, hopeful and responsible.
1) Make sure you read people who aren’t like you. Listen to people who aren’t like you. Make sure you know how the text you plan to preach has landed on, been processed by and applied by and to people who aren’t the same color, the same gender or the same background as you.
2) Travel and live outside of your original context and listen closely to the perspectives and experiences of the people who don’t come from the same place you come from.
3) Use Google. Honestly, that amazing illustration that sounds too good to be true probably is untrue. Take 5 minutes and google it before you retell it as something that’s true.
4) Question those who want to tell you some theological insight that has been extracted from the ancient Hebrew characters involved in the text. Question those who want to share some deep theological insight that people share from counting letters or words as they appear in the Hebrew Bible. Deeply question those who insist that the way to say the Hebrew name for God is the sound we make when we breath in and out (spoilers: it’s not).
5) Ask for proof from anyone who tells you, “The Bible clearly teaches…” and question anyone who says about the text, “Well, we know it can’t possibly mean what it’s saying…” I’m not saying the Bible is never clear and I’m not saying there aren’t verses that can’t possibly mean what they are saying – I’m just using my words to say you have permission to push back and question those other statements, like this one, for proof.
6) Take time and read all the other interpretations of a passage. Read how it has been understood and applied in the past. Be aware that in 2000 years, the church has not always been on the same page about many of the “key” passages of the Bible. Our theology has developed over time and anyone who claims that the church has always seen this passage or this topic as XYZ, should be questioned and carefully studied.
7) Ask: does the point – the big idea – what the person is telling me this passage is all about – does it sound like Jesus? Does it sound like something that would have come out of his mouth to his followers? Does it sound like something that brings life and freedom or judgement and death?
I’ve read people argue that WHAT I preach on any given Sunday doesn’t really matter much as HOW I say it. To a degree, I think that’s true. People want to know you care about them or feel like you like them, before they care about what you have to say. But I’ve also accumulated too many stories and have had my own experiences of words that have been used in sermons preached that have done harm, caused huge wounds and made people feel unwelcome among the people of God – and even unwelcome in the presence of God - to conclude that words don’t matter much. The scripture explicitly warns those who use their words to preach and teach about God that a hard scrutiny awaits them. The wise remind us that our words have the power to create life and death – how we use our words produces consequences – intended and unintended. Which may have provoked James to tell the church to be quick to listen but slow to use our words.