On preaching
I need a preacher with perspective. A preacher who comes to the pulpit loaded with perspectives, each reflecting the many faces of our one God. A preacher who sees the Ten Commandments as ten perspectives on the Law. Who sees the Trinity as three perspectives on personal ethics, on personal behavior in community: Father (normative), Son (situational) and Spirit (experiential). I need a preacher who sees the first century Palestinian Jewish perspective on the gospels in their full and actual, historical context, but who can see how the text was re-contextualized for a secular Greek and hellenistic Roman audience, and has the wisdom to re-contextualize the text for our modern day with faithfulness to its primary audience and occasion. I need a preacher who understands the Narrow Way broadly.
Instead, I see too many pastors who read one verse and then move as fast as they can off the text, and onto their singular, insular, limited, patently American nationalistic perspective. How many pastors will rail about Trump’s indictment from the pulpit this coming Palm Sunday instead of directing us--or worse, in order to direct us--to our actually falsely-accused Lord in the week leading up to his crucifixion? These men don’t love Jesus. They can’t wait to drape a red, white, and blue flag over their bibles, hiding the Word under all their words, and giving themselves a pat-on-the-back, thinking they said something right because it felt good coming out of their mouths. They can’t wait to move off of the text and onto their own personal experiences and personal glories. “My sheep know my voice,” the Teacher said. I know the voice of my Teacher, Jesus Christ, and I can hear the voice of my Lord in the tongues of certain teachers today. But too often, I can hear how a preacher speaks in voices and tongues which are not endorsed by the Spirit and calls his listeners to adopt doctrines which are in one way or another contrary to the text or just simply not contained therein, and it sickens me.
Too often, the American pastor spews filth and calls it a prophetic word because it’s dressed up in eloquence of speech and delivered in pithy, tweetable one-liners. And we don’t recognize the vomitous sewage for what it really is because our appetite is so conditioned by spiritual sugar--not by a salt that has retained its saltiness--that we’ll lap up spoonfuls of turd-sermon because we think it belongs to us. That’s a word for me! Shut your mouth. Don’t take in the false teacher’s garbage. It doesn’t help that when we were kids our moms repeated that ridiculous line from Mary Poppins, that a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. False teachers use spiritual sugar to deliver shit and make us think it’s medicine.
First time I’ve ever cussed on the blog. Some people will say, “Who’s speaking foul-mouthed filth now?” Those people don’t know the voice of the Teacher, who sometimes used intentionally provocative language in order to communicate a truth. That’s what I’ve done, by adopting the imagery of sugar on a pile of dung, dressing up and masking the taste of filth. Too often, we settle for preachers who speak in wonderful words while communicating an anti-Christ gospel of their own making. Too often, we write off the man who comes in plainness of speech because of his humble affect and insubstantial diction. Jesus came teaching in parables about farmers and fields and lost coins and little birds, and we killed him. Our preachers today speak in complicated, oft-misunderstood theological phrases and a sing-song cadence, and we lap it up. White-washed tombs, these preachers are! On the outside they’re clean and pretty and white, but there’s nothing but death inside.
We have to hold our preachers and teachers to much, much higher standards. Period.