The Homiletical Question

An Introduction to Liturgical Preaching

Brosend

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781498294782
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

The Homiletical Question offers preachers, from beginning students to the most experienced, a concise introduction to lectionary-based preaching in liturgical contexts familiar to Anglicans, Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists, and others. The book demonstrates how, by answering a single, simple question each time a sermon is prepared, preachers can respond fully and faithfully to the biblical text, the needs and issues of the audience, and the challenges of a changing world. Chapters explore the practice of homiletical exegesis, creation and illustration of the moves that shape the sermon, crafting introductions and conclusions, and preaching baptisms, weddings, funerals, and other special occasions. As Thomas G. Long writes in the foreword, "That the homiletical question should yield answers that are beyond the reach of the preacher, answers that manifest preaching as an event of surplus and abundance, answers that point toward the mystery that is the Holy Spirit, answers that take us to our knees in prayer before they take us into the pulpit, would come as no surprise to Brosend. That very mystery, that very abundance, is at the heart of Brosend's theology of preaching, and, therefore, at the heart of this book."

Chapter One

Homiletical Exegesis

The truth is found somewhere between “The Bible is just the Book of Common Prayer taken out of context” and “We therefore have no Word of God but the Scripture.”2 But this truth also concedes that Anglican attitudes toward Scripture are just as complicated as in any other high liturgical communion. Which is to say these attitudes are complicated indeed. Yes, we do read more Scripture than many another church when we gather to pray and celebrate Holy Communion, but the multiplication of biblical passages only adds complexity, and one dare not brag about that to which one does not attend.

How does the preacher find a way through these complications? By asking, each time she or he is called on to preach, the homiletical question—What does the Holy Spirit want the people of God to hear from these texts on this occasion?

I argued in the first chapter that our best preaching begins by holding all four parts of the homiletical question together, and considers what this means liturgically, spiritually, pastorally, and socially. In doing so we have delayed unnaturally what we all do as preachers within moments of receiving an invitation to preach or our assignments in the coming preaching calendar: we look at the biblical texts. It is time to look at the biblical texts.

In the history of the last 500 years of preaching fashions ebbed and flowed, but one trend has been inexorable. Over time sermons have decreased in length, significantly reducing both the amount of attention paid to biblical texts and truncating the kinds of attention paid to biblical texts. There are always occasional exceptions, but when the typical sermon was an hour or more and is now fifteen minutes or less, there is less of everything, including Scripture. Nor is it only the length of sermons that has changed; so too has the ratio of biblical to non-biblical material in the sermons preached in liturgical traditions. It is impossible not to notice as one reads across the history of Anglican, Lutheran, Roman Catholic, and the preaching of other traditions. The greatest change has been in the last two generations, the shift from a focus on the text to a focus on the listener. One could blame this on Dr. Fred B. Craddock, but his sermons are full of Scripture while still being focused on the listener. So something else is at work here, and in the next chapter it will be argued that it is misguided and counterproductive. For now one notes that while Scripture is still important to liturgical preaching, it has a less prominent place in sermons. Which causes one to wonder which came first, the supposed increase in biblical illiteracy or the decrease in the focus on Scripture in our preaching?

Preaching is not biblical because it is preceded by three readings and a psalm, nor is it biblical because preachers begin their sermon preparation by studying those readings. It is biblical because the fruit of that study grounds and shapes the sermon as the preacher works out the answer to the homiletical question (HQ). Significantly, the preliminary answer to the HQ comes before detailed exegesis, and is based on a general knowledge of Scripture and on initial reactions to the readings in the multiple contexts of prayer, listeners, and occasion. Detailed exegesis allows the preacher to test, revise, confirm, and sometimes discard the preliminary answer to the HQ. This exegesis is distinctive, and while related to and informed by critical exegesis of scripture, it is attempting to answer a different set of questions for a different audience. Critical exegesis explores Scripture in light of textual and tradition criticism, historical and social-scientific study, and similar disciplines. Homiletical exegesis takes all this into account and asks one more question, the homiletical question.

Theory

The lectionary giveth, and the lectionary taketh away. Some weeks the preacher is overwhelmed with the ideas and possibilities of each text, other weeks the preacher will curse the creators of the New Revised Common Lectionary and the person who assigned these readings, even if the preacher was the one who made out the Rota. As long as the preacher does not complain about the readings from the pulpit, that is fine. In fact, most opportunities to preach come with more possibilities than the preacher knows what to do with. On Sundays one has a reading from the Old Testament and a psalm, the epistle and the Gospel, on average more than thirty verses of scripture. In the first hour of preparation these passages have been read and prayed over, and a few basic facts checked. A tentative answer to the HQ has been given. Now it is time to discover if that answer holds up to more detailed study of the texts. How much time? The specific amount depends on the total preparation time available, but the guideline is not more than 25 percent of that total.

A common mistake made by preachers at all levels of experience is to devote more time than is really available to exegesis. Mea culpa. There are a number of reasons for this—early on knowledge is limited, later one gives in to the love of exegesis and study, and sometimes the preacher is putting off the hard work of shaping and enlivening the sermon by the holy procrastination of exegesis. But the preacher is also burdened by an understandable desire to get it right. Preachers do not want to misinform or mislead listeners on a point of interpretation, and want to have the best possible answer to the HQ, the right focus for the sermon. All well and good. Preachers can still only devote 25 percent of the available sermon preparation time to exegesis. As many already know and pray to God will eventually have enough experience to confirm, the crafting of the sermon takes more time than is generally allotted to it. So if one has eight hours, then no more than two hours should be given to study.

Seven steps to a successful homiletical exegesis

The goal of homiletical exegesis is to test, confirm, refine, and if necessary redefine the preliminary answer to the HQ, and begin to sketch how that answer will take shape as a sermon. Over time each preacher develops a preferred method for accomplishing the task. Here is mine:

Step One—Pray, then reread the passages aloud.

Stop right there.

Stop.

If you are like most of us, you have already unconsciously decided to skip this step. You are busy, the texts are demanding, Sunday is looming. Who has time to pray? Good preachers. When discerning what the Holy Spirit wants, prayer is a constant part of the process. Moreover, reading the passages out loud is a reminder that people are not going to read the sermon, they are going to listen to it, and so as much of the preparation process as possible should be oral (later you will be advised to try talking through various moments in your emerging sermon). What one is listening for is confirmation that what struck the ear as interesting/important/confusing the first time through remains that way. One also listens for relationships—where are the texts moving in the same direction, using similar images, echoing one another? The converse is also true—where is there a disconnect, a tension, or an outlier?

Step Two—Study the passages, i.e., “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.”3 Choose one or two passages that are especially striking and begin making notes. Here one may have to make the first in a series of difficult choices, because it is not possible in the time available to do sufficient study of four biblical passages. So which passage or passages figured most prominently in the provisional answer to the HQ? The study should center there. For example, in the summer of Revised Common Lectionary Year A some may find that the childhood love of singing “We are climbing Jacob’s ladder” leads to interest in the Old Testament readings from Genesis. Rather than trying to remember what verse follows “every round goes higher, higher,” dig into a good commentary on Genesis. Study of Genesis will likely lead to the conclusion that Isaac, Rebekah, Jacob, and Esau may constitute the single most dysfunctional family in human history, unless it is Jacob and his twelve sons. While thought had been given to discussing how the angels got to earth in the first place since Jacob saw them “ascending and descending” (Gen 28:12) and not the other way around, close study reveals that there is something much more important to talk about. Alternatively, one might, on the Sunday closest to July 13 in Year A, be attracted to the Gospel from Matthew 13, the story usually referred to as the parable of “the Sower” although the sower disappears from the story after the first verse. If this is so you would choose the Old Testament reading from Track Two in the New Revised Common Lectionary, from Isaiah 55.

For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isa 55:10–11).

The problem is that when one pairs Isaiah and the story of the sower one realizes there is a significant tension between the parable, where so much of seed fails to yield fruit, and the prophecy, in which this cannot happen. Now you are getting somewhere, your study raising real exegetical questions and making possible truly biblical preaching. It is time for a break.

Step Three—Take a deep breath, go for a walk, make some coffee, stand on your head, but do something, and then return to the texts and ask, “How will these words be heard by those in the congregation?” How do the preacher’s questions, and issues, coincide with the questions and concerns of those who will listen to the sermon? What is going on in their lives, the church, the community, and the world that will impact their hearing? This is a critical component of homiletical exegesis, asking not only scholarly questions, but pastoral questions. And note again, this is not “instead of” but “alongside of.” Preachers ask both kinds of questions. Is there enough convergence between the developing answer to the HQ and the concerns of the community, or is one in danger of preparing a sermon only an Old Testament professor will want to hear? As Harry Emerson Fosdick famously wrote almost a century ago, “Only the preacher proceeds still upon the idea that folk come to church desperately anxious to discover what happened to the Jebusites.”4 Just as preachers balance the spiritual, liturgical, social and biblical in the first hour of preparation, so here they balance the scholarly and the pastoral.

Step Four—Focus! Begin to look for patterns, overlaps, or disjunctions among the texts. Remember the old SAT questions that gave three or four words or word pairs and asked which one did not belong? Do that with the texts, and with both points of interest around and questions about the texts. When Sunday comes most preachers will have twelve to fifteen minutes, give or take. Some things are going to have to give. Ask, a la the SAT, “Which passage does not belong?” Ask, “What themes are most prominent?” Sharpen the answer to the HQ. One cannot, to return to the Jacob Cycle from Genesis, explore what kind of relationship Isaac and Rebekah may have had that led her to initiate the deceit in Genesis 27 and explore the idea that Jacob is depicted as a “trickster” well known in legends and folklore and detail the dynamics of “blessing” in ancient Semitic cultures. One finally has to choose.

Step Five—Really, really focus! Ask, as if one had not asked the question before, “What does the Holy Spirit want the people of God to hear from these texts on this occasion?” If the answer is the same as at the end of the first hour of preparation, congratulations. If it is not, that’s okay too, because either way one is well on the way. Another for instance may help.

One is preparing a sermon for Proper 17, Year C. There is a lot of sin. The golden calf in Exodus 32 or those “skilled in doing evil” in Jeremiah 4, with more sin in the accompanying psalm; the affirmation in 1 Timothy 1:15, “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost”; and the twin...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction – The Homiletical Question
• Chapter 1: Homiletical Exegesis
• Chapter 2: Invention and Ideas
• Chapter 3: Illustrative Material
• Chapter 4: Arrangement
• Chapter 5: Introductions and Conclusions
• Chapter 6: Special Occasions
• Chapter 7: Style, Delivery, Practice, and Evaluation
• Bibliography