Revival and Renewal

In an effort to share what I’m working on, I’m going to try to post regular updates entitled “The Kiln”. Thoughts, fragments, and rough drafts mainly. Subscribe here to get regular updates.

The Art of Preaching

“The sermon is a difficult, perhaps the most difficult form of art.”
–T.S. Eliot, “The Preacher as Artist.”

I’ve been wrestling with God recently. Or, rather, he sent one of his best wrestlers to spar with me: the book of Revelation. I’ve stumbled over how to preach this book, which I love. This shouldn’t surprise me, for love, struggle, and art are inextricably linked. It is much easier to edit an essay than a love letter. And everything beautiful takes sacrifice (see the Chinese ideogram for beauty, 美, which is composed of “sheep,” 羊, and “big” 大). The greater the love, the greater the sacrifice.

This is why, incidentally, artists often avoid painting their loved ones. For the slight movement of a nose, arm, or mouth in a stranger still produces a beautiful portrait. But those mistakes make a failure if it’s your beloved. The level of sacrifice and skill makes painting our loved ones a daunting task.

What does this have to do with preaching? Well, I believe preaching is an art. It is a rhetorical art. Often preaching will be reduced to a kind of mechanical function, as though the only goal was its accuracy (like a printer). But if we think of preaching as an art, it is much more like a painting than a printer. Both printers and painters take pigment and put it to paper (or canvas). In some ways, the printer wins out, as it is always accurate. So, why paint?

Because printers do not have eyes. Preaching is a tangible art, much like painting, that requires both artist and audience. It is made, not just to be downloaded and printed out, but experienced. To be seen, heard, and felt.

This is why I call preaching an “art.” We get the word “art” from the Latin ars, which referred simply to a craft or skillful work. In the ancient mind there was, in essence, an “art” to everything. Life was made of crafts, taught by masters to apprentices, who mastered their craft through practice. Rhetoric, the art of public persuasive speech, was itself a defined craft, to which many would devote their lives as “Rhetors.” As has been argued, “rhetoric was in the air” of the New Testament world, and the tools and rules of rhetoric had a large influence on both the way the apostles gave their public addresses and how they wrote their letters.

There were some, even in the early church, that worried that all this insight into persuasive speech was a detraction, not a benefit, for preachers. Augustin, however, thought otherwise:

Now, the art of rhetoric being available for the enforcing either of truth or falsehood, who will dare to say that truth in the person of its defenders is to take its stand unarmed against falsehood? For example, that those who are trying to persuade men of what is false are to know how to introduce their subject, so as to put the hearer into a friendly, or attentive, or teachable frame of mind, while the defenders of the truth shall be ignorant of that art? That the former are to tell their falsehoods briefly, clearly, and plausibly, while the latter shall tell the truth in such a way that it is tedious to listen to, hard to understand, and, in fine, not easy to believe it? That the former are to oppose the truth and defend falsehood with sophistical arguments, while the latter shall be unable either to defend what is true, or to refute what is false? That the former, while imbuing the minds of their hearers with erroneous opinions, are by their power of speech to awe, to melt, to enliven, and to rouse them, while the latter shall in defense of the truth be sluggish, and frigid, and somnolent? Who is such a fool as to think this wisdom? Since, then, the faculty of eloquence is available for both sides, and is of very great service in the enforcing either of wrong or right, why do not good men study to engage it on the side of truth, when bad men use it to obtain the triumph of wicked and worthless causes, and to further injustice and error? On Christian Teaching, VI:2

Augustin rebukes me. Every preacher recognizes the danger of sharing the truth in such a way that “it is tedious to listen to, hard to understand, and, in fine, not easy to believe”. Augustin’s point is that the employs of the evil one are great persuaders (just look at the speeches of dictators, for example). They use these defined patterns to move, motivate, and persuade, often to evil means or evil ends. Why, then, should not Christian preachers use the tools of rhetoric to “awe, to melt, to enliven, and to rouse” our listeners to right paths and holiness?

Augustin in the same little book summed up what preachers should aim for, a word he used in the quote above: eloquence (VI:3), that is, “the quality of delivering a clear, strong message” (Cambridge Dictionary). My goal in preaching is not to preach low brow or high brow, every-shelf sermons every Sunday. Rather, it is to learn, week-by-week, the ins and outs of the craft of preaching, to awe, to melt, to enliven, and to rouse God’s people by God’s Word.

Too often, I fear, I settle simply for “accurate.” Just like with any good painting, accuracy matters. You can tell if something is off in a portrait (“A portrait is a painting with something wrong with the mouth”: John Singer Sargent). So, we might say that accuracy is a requirement, which is why modern art exhibits are often so empty. But accuracy is not the art. If preaching’s sole goal is to be accurate, why not give our people D.A. Carson’s commentary in the pews, and when we get to John 11 simply say: “please turn to page 403 and read. There will be no need to talk”?

Because preaching is the art of bringing the Word to the people. Exegesis is, to a certain extent, the measuring of proportions, making the features accurate, the sourcing of the coffee beans. But preaching is taking that accurate interpretation and grinding it down, brewing it at the right temperature, foaming the milk, and even adding some latte art to the top. Preachers are the baristas of the Basilea, the scribes trained in the kingdom of God (Matthew 13:52), the priestly painters who paint their congregations into the universe-sized canvas of God’s work in Christ.

There’s much more, but that’s enough for now!

One other Fragment:

Some more from Songs for Samuel, where Samuel tells us of his encounter with God:

I do not get to say
That which I would say.
I do not hope to speak
Those words I would speak.
I do not dream, anymore
on my bed. Instead –
I listen.

—

I hope you find yourself listening to God today. God’s grace to you!