Ways of the Word by Sally A. Brown & Luke A. Powery

Author:Sally A. Brown & Luke A. Powery
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fortress Press
Published: 2016-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

Choosing the Preaching Text

The first interpretive step a preacher takes is to choose the Scripture text that will ground the sermon. To get a sense of the many ways this can be done, let’s step into the fellowship hall of Resurrection Baptist Church where about a dozen pastors of all ages, ethnicities, and denominations are just sitting down for their monthly preachers’ discussion group. The moderator for the week, a slight, energetic woman with an Asian accent, breaks into the buzz of greetings and conversation to get things started.

“Fellow preachers, last month we decided to talk this time about how we choose our preaching texts. Who’d like to begin?”

A woman in a clerical collar smiles broadly. “I don’t have to choose a text; it chooses me. Nearly all Episcopalians use the Revised Common Lectionary. Trouble is, in my parish they expect you to touch on all the texts—Old Testament, Gospel, Psalm, and second New Testament reading—and all in twelve minutes and seventeen seconds or less. But I like preaching narrative material, so I’d have to say the Gospel gets most of my attention, with the Old Testament a distant second. Those Old Testament stories can be long and strange!”

Around the room, some Lutheran, Presbyterian, Methodist, Reformed, and Disciples pastors chime in that they, too, like to follow the lectionary. But most typically choose just one of the suggested texts, and some stress that they don’t follow it all the time.

“You don’t always follow it?” asks a newcomer, fresh out of seminary. “How do you decide?”

A thirty-something pastor in black jeans and t-shirt speaks up: “I’ve got a lot of seekers in my congregation. They don’t know the Bible, really. So if I see that the lectionary is going to stay in a single book for a while, I follow it. Sometimes it’s one of the big Genesis narratives, or the story of the exodus out of Egypt, or one of the Gospels. But sometimes I choose a book that the lectionary only touches on; then I leave the lectionary aside for a while. Last year I preached through Galatians and Philippians, but each week had a theme. I based each sermon on one major theological question people are asking these days.”

A preacher from a lively Hispanic church downtown looks puzzled. “Why a lectionary at all? Doesn’t it just repeat over and over and get boring?”

The Episcopal priest speaks up again. “Not really. Over three years, the lectionary gets you all over the Bible. And the realities of your listeners’ world are always changing, and that shapes how you see the text. But I’ll admit there are big sections of the Old Testament that the lectionary bypasses.”

A couple of pastors who head large independent churches have been quiet so far. One of them, an amused smile playing across his face, finally speaks up: “Well, thank God I don’t have to worry about any of that. Here’s what I do: I think and pray with my congregation in mind. I boil it down to one question I sense coming up from the pews.

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