The Need to Restore the Pulpit and Preaching: Imperative or Indicative

Having come to a norm of reading four scriptures and focusing especially on the gospel reading for the day, TEC preachers are mainly led to explore the gospel reading, explain what this means, and apply it for today.  As I observed in my last blog, I notice that even when the gospel does not contain a parable or teaching the form of explore, explain, and apply still dominates. What is wrong with this?

First, overuse of one form of oral communication becomes predictable and redundant. Engaging our listening members becomes harder. That is what happened in the 19^th century with the very predictable use of the three-point sermon. This form had an introduction, three points, and a conclusion. The rationale was that people could not remember more than three points. The mistake was that not every reading from scripture, be it narrative, teaching, parable, or other can be reduced or expanded to three points. Notice that this form like the Explore, Explain, and Apply form stretches or shrinks a passage to fit the form.

In his excellent book “Preaching” by Fred Craddock, he explores the forms of oral communication that have been effective throughout history. He lists eight not using rhetorical terms, but with helpful descriptive ones. They are:

What it is? What is it worth? How does one get it?

Explore, Explain, and apply

The problem, the solution

Either / or

Both / and

Promise, fulfillment

Ambiguity, clarity

Major premise, minor premise, conclusion

Not this, nor this, nor this, nor this, but this

The flashback (from present to past to present)

From the lesser, to the greater

Craddock than observes that “No small amount of biblical, theological, and pastoral instruction, encouragement, and urging can be framed on these forms with a minimum of distortion, reduction, or dullness.” Then he points out that a feature of using these different forms is “the guarantee of variety.” Then he adds “No form is so good that it does not eventually become wearisome to both listener and speaker, hence the problem of the overuse of the Explore, Explain, and Apply method.

I recommend that preachers write down these forms and keeping the list with your preaching resources. When we finish studying a passage, we can ask ourselves which of these forms would best serve our preaching? With great insight, Craddock suggests that a key would be to use a form that is closest to the form of the original text!  Explore, Explain, and Apply is one of these forms. Craddock also notes that it is often the most overused.

But what about the themes and topics of today’s preaching. Why have we abandoned both Biblical Theology and Doctrinal Theology? Why have we so narrowed our approach and focused so closely on gospel texts to the exclusion of all the other texts which are also the Word of God?

To answer this question, I turn to an important moment in TEC’s history. And I turn to a remarkable leader and teacher. This was Theodore Wedel, most known as the Warden of the College of Preachers at the National Cathedral. The College became under his direction a significant force in the improving of Episcopal preaching. For almost 30 years, Episcopal clergy would receive and invitation to the College three to five years after graduation from seminary. Then every five to ten years after.  For one week, attendees would be exposed to the best preachers in the Episcopal Church and often beyond. Mornings were lectures and afternoons were used for small groups where the students would share and critique sermons on both their content and delivery. Wedel wrote the book that guided most of my critique of preaching today. “The Pulpit Rediscovers Theology” was published in 1956. I bought and re-read a copy of it for these blogs. What is amazing is how contemporary it remains.

Writing in a period caught up in the third Quest for the Historical Jesus, Waddell described the results of such theology and its affect upon the preaching of his day.

“If we should be forced to find a theological category for many, if not most of our sermon – those at least, that preach the perfectionist moralism of our “historic Jesus” Christianity – we should have to confess that the category would be law, not grace. We have been placing burdens upon our people. We have preached to them in the imperative, not the indicative mood. Our sermons are ought sermons, discipleship presented as unadorned demand for performance, is an ought, not an is. It is law, not grace. It is command, not gospel.” (Theodore Wedel, The Pulpit Rediscovers Theology)

Let me bluntly elaborate on our situation as his words apply today especially as they apply to moralism and works. Of course, we are talking about the Episcopal Church, not the moralism of the right be they fundamentalist or American Evangelicals. It is the moralism of the left. We are to love everyone. We are to be accepting of everyone and inclusive of all people. We are to fight for justice and against oppression. We are to set right the sins of racism, sexism or any other ism that divides humans and to make restoration to those who have be afflicted in the past and in the present by these.

An ought is an ought by any color, or we could say by any political spectrum. The theological virtues are faith, hope, and love. These are not behaviors, but virtues instilled in us by the sanctifying power of God’s spirit, not by human intentions no matter how noble they may appear.

We have gone from proclamation (the indicative mood) to the imperative. We have moved from salvation by grace through faith in the Son of God to bringing in the Kingdom by our own works. We have moved from the risen Christ of God’s Word to an imagined Jesus concerned with social justice and whose own point of view was cynicism about religion and truth according to the fourth quest of the historical Jesus.

In my next blog, I will point to a way of proclamation that would transform our repeating of cliches as a substitute for God’s Word as found in scripture and in the risen Christ.