bob.blog: Preaching: This might hurt a little...

"A person emerged from our church a few Sundays ago, saying to me at the door as she left, 'I know you would not intentionally hurt anyone with what you say from the pulpit, but I was hurt by what you said today in your sermon.'

And I thought, 'Where would you have gotten the notion that I would not want to hurt you? I'm a preacher. Some infliction of pain goes with the job!"

-Will Willimon, Pastor

One of the things I hated most about ministry in more the more traditional, baptistic churches I started out in was the social pressure to preach what certain factions wanted to hear. Better give an invitation this week- it's been two weeks and so-and-so gets grumpy if I don't do it regularly. Can't say much about this verse- so and so thinks this and that about tongues and that would just get them riled up.

I think we in the emerging church might be tempted at times to think we left all that behind, but of course... that's a fantasy. You never leave that behind.

Now, the issues are simply different- it's not the pressure to include invitations and speak about charismatic gifts a certain way- it's different issues.

It's a regular emphasis on the poor. It's toning down the passages on sexual sin. It's an emphasis on God's love and a de-emphasis on the idea that God will someday judge all of humanity (except when we're talking about how we relate to the poor.)

Don't get me wrong- I'm not saying anything other than that the reality of preaching is that we who regularly lead our communities through the Scriptures will always face these issues- mainline, evangelical, emerging.

Or at least we should.

My sense is that no matter who you are or where you are at, the Bible is a challenging book and God wants

not only to comfort you in your affliction, but to do the converse as well. And when we sermonizers wake up one day and find that the idea of actually challenging our communities on the things that maybe they or we would prefer not to have to address is far down our list of priorities, we probably need to realize that all we're doing is duplicating the sins of our fathers and mothers that bothered us so much we had to leave and start all these new churches.

Yes- I heard plenty of sermons on sexual sin and few if any on the sin of ignoring the poor when I grew up.

But I'm fairly sure the answer to that problem isn't to preach a lot on the sin of ignoring the poor and leave off the messages about sexual sin. It's as easy to preach a sermon on God's heart for the poor in an emerging church as it is to preach on purity in a Baptist one. And that should tell us something.

I'm in no way advocating weekly poking people with a sharp stick. But... is preaching for the nod, and nothing but soothing and comforting, even soothing and comforting disguised as "challenging" but that's really just hitting a pet issue or two of certain people in the community any better?

If you never have to lead your community through a text or preach a sermon that leaves you quaking, that you wish wholeheartedly you didn't have to preach, you really aren't doing anyone any favors- not your community, yourself and not the God who wants to rescue and renew all of creation. I mean seriously- how could that not sting even a little?

"If you don't trust the Bible enough to let it challenge and correct your thinking, how could you ever have a personal relationship with God? In any truly personal relationship, the other person has to be able to contradict you. For example, if a wife is not allowed to contradict her husband, they won't have an intimate relationship...

Now what happens if you eliminate anything from the Bible that offends your sensibility and crosses your will? If you pick and choose what you want to believe and reject the rest, how will you ever have a God who can contradict you? You won't! You'll have a Stepford God. A God, essentially, of your own making and not a God with whom you can have a relationship and genuine interaction."

Tim Keller- The Reason for God

Update: This post comes mainly out of my experience of preaching 1st Cor over the last few months. There have been a number of times when I felt like a cowardly preaching approaching these texts and wished I had stuck with something easier- you know, like Revelation.

Another thought- whenever I talk about preaching about sexual sin, one thing I want to make really, really clear- Paul is adamant in 1 Cor 5: we don't judge those who aren't followers of Jesus. When I talk about sexual sin, I'm in no way meaning to imply I'm shaking a finger at the city around me and all their sexy, sinful ways (though at times, they pretty clearly overdue it). My emphasis is solely on those who claim to be Christians and yet are willfully choosing not to live like it. And even in that, I approach the issue with the humility of one who hasn't live a perfect life, still doesn't, and leans totally on Jesus for any sense of righteousness I might have, as opposed to my faithfulness to the Christian ethic I try hard, but imperfectly to live by.