The Peripatetic Preacher: Reading the Bible (4)

If I were more perfectly accurate, perhaps I ought to have entitled this series; “Reading the Bible for Preaching and Teaching.” I assume that any of you who have been reading have already drawn that conclusion from the first three installments. In those essays I tried to address, in however rudimentary form, what the Bible is (and is not), who it is who is reading the Bible, and with whom we are doing that reading. Today, I wish to explore the hearers of our teaching and preaching. Just who are the ones who sit in our pews and classrooms and what effects do they have on how we read the Bible?

The simple answer is that as many people there are who listen to us, each one brings unique backgrounds, current needs, and future hopes to the tasks of hearing. I used the word “simple,” but of course what I have just said is about as complex as it can possibly be! No single example of a hearer can begin to serve as a general case of those who hear. However, it might prove helpful to create a hearer or two to examine more carefully just how they can affect what you have read and what you are saying about that reading.

Janice is a 35-year-old mother of two who works from home as a computer programmer for a large IT company. One of her children, Bill, is in the first grade, while her daughter, Lila is four, and goes to a preschool three days a week. Janice is well educated with both undergraduate and graduate degrees, the former in philosophy and the latter in computer technology. She is a life-long churchgoer, and has been a member of your congregation for five years, since she and her wife, Alicia, moved to the town. Alicia was not raised in a church, and since she came out as a lesbian, and subsequently married Janice, she has been very leery of churches, hearing a great deal about their discomfort with or complete rejection of who she is. Janice was married to a man for some seven years, having both of her children with him, but eventually came out as lesbian and married Alicia.

How does Janice hear what you are saying, as she negotiates the multiple facets of her life, wife of a woman, mother of two, highly capable professional, long-time participant in church life, generally progressive in politics and social causes? All of those overt characteristics, along with those things I explored about the reader—ways of appropriating knowledge, the regular approach to life and learning, etc.—will all profoundly effect how your words are gathered into her consciousness. You can easily add many facets of her life that will come into play as she listens to you.

Down the pew there is Randall, a journeyman carpenter, highly skilled at construction, moving from job to job and site to site as he makes a good living, albeit a living that has decided highs and lows. Right now, building is booming, so Randall is financially comfortable. And he is a single man, aged 42, whose first marriage collapsed due to his excessive drinking. He now attends the church’s AA chapter regularly, and has been sober for over a year. He sees his three children about one weekend a month and for three vacation weeks each summer. He is not a regular churchgoer, as his job often requires Sunday work, but he likes this church and its openness to all sorts of folks, and comes when he can. He went to college for two years, but did not find it much to his liking, and dropped out after his grades slipped. He does, however, read voraciously, especially in politics and current events and greatly enjoys discussing these things with others. He is a very attentive listener, and eagerly engages you after each one of your sermons and classes. He has great energy and volunteers for Habitat for Humanity whenever his schedule allows.

Each one of the other 200 or so listeners has a story to be told just as I have narrated the stories of Janice and Randall. Well over 60% of the congregation is women, as it is in nearly every church, and the average age approaches 60 years. There are few young people; Janice may be the youngest person in the sanctuary on most Sundays. What do these folk watch on television, and which channels consume their time? Do they go to the movies or simply watch movies on their TVs or their streaming services? What do they read? Do they still read newspapers or do they get all their news from social media platforms? Do all of them have smart phones, and do they consult them before and after the service, if not subtly while the service is happening? What kind of music do they listen to? Questions like these, among many others, are very important to determine just how what you are saying is being heard.

Every preacher has had the wonderful, or terrible, experience of ending the service, and while greeting the parishioners at the door, had a discussion with a listener who has been greatly moved by your sermon, focusing squarely on something you did not say, or surely had no intention of saying. Clearly, this hearer needed to hear something that was not in your sermon, but heard a few of your words that somehow triggered the sermon they needed to hear. A work of the Spirit? Perhaps. It can certainly be said that the “noise” that always exists between word and ear turned your words into something that was not part of your preparation. By “noise” I mean all those things I have enumerated above, the makeup of each listener, the complex of emotions and history and desires and current health that constitute each of us each day.

What should all this teach a preacher/teacher about the task she has been called to do? No sermon, no lesson is merely one-way communication, though most sermons are spoken by one person and many church school lessons are lead by one person. I would suggest strongly that every preacher and every teacher needs a regular occasion where he/she can receive honest feedback about what has been said. If that occurs, it will be quickly apparent that what the leader had imagined was said was more often than not heard rather differently. Janice and Randall must necessarily hear with their particular ears, and those ears are often determinative about the message spoken or proclaimed on any given day. I do not mean to imply that a preacher/teacher can never expect to be understood well by her attentive listeners; sermons and lessons that are well delivered and carefully structured can be accessed by good listeners. But it always must be recognized that those who listen are the final arbiters of what they hear.

I had a great colleague who taught Christian education in my seminary for many years who used to say: “No one finally knows anything until they have corrupted it for themselves.” That is to say, words have no final power until the hearer has listened to them and has made them a part of the fabric of their lives. None of we preachers and teachers can afford to forget that truth for a single moment.