The Peripatetic Preacher: Reading the Bible (3)

In the previous two essays of this series, I have addressed two elements of Bible reading: just what the Bible is (and by implication is not) and just who the reader is who actually is reading the text. Today I want to think about with whom we read the text, that is, who accompanies the reader on the journey of reading. The possible answers to that question are both complex and much contested, precisely as the answers to our first questions proved to be.

As I have said more than once in these blogs, I have a PhD in Hebrew Bible studies and taught homiletics for 28 years at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas. I thus have a somewhat unique perspective on this task of Bible reading, since my students— about 1000 of them or so—were tasked with the job of both reading the Bible and constructing and proclaiming sermons based on that reading. Thus, I asked them first to think carefully about what they were reading, and second who they were as readers, the two issues I have so far tried to address in the series. After they had thought about these first two questions, invariably one or more students would ask, “Well, John, what about the place and work of the Holy Spirit in this preaching process?” More traditionally religious students tended to ask this question, and since I am not and never have been very traditional in my theological proclivities, I admit to being slightly uncomfortable with this question. A colleague of mine had a rather smart-alecky reply when he got this question. “Sometimes the Holy Spirit says to go back to the library!” This retort, I assume, was to short-circuit those very traditional students who imagined the Holy Spirit would guide their words so completely that the work of careful reading was simply not needed. Just leave it all up to God, they imagined.

This reminds me of one of the great stories of my early ministry in Lake Charles, LA. An elderly member of my church, Allie Haggart, was at least 95 years old and was a native of Mississippi with a thick and glacial accent of the very deepest south. Ms. Haggart told me a story of a dear friend of hers who invited her to a revival at her church, a small Wesleyan Covenant Church in town. Allie did not much want to go, but she was a dear friend, so she did. The visiting preacher before he began his sermon announced, “Friends, I never prepare for my sermons; I simply open the Scripture and wait for the Holy Spirit to strike!” Allie paused grandly, and said to me, ‘John, one hour and fifteen minutes later, the Holy Spirit had not shown up!” I love that tale, and used it again again as a potential antidote against any student who dared to preach in my class unprepared by careful sermonic work. As cute as that story is, and as much as I believe in careful preparation for preaching, I do not think that fully answers the question my students regularly asked: just where is God and God’s Holy Spirit in the process of preaching and reading the Bible?

I urged my students to begin their sermon preparation with prayer. I personally remain ambiguous about prayer. I do not for one moment believe that any prayer of mine can manipulate or coerce the God of the universe to act in ways that I desire or hope. Yet, prayer surely can be a serious motivator for the one praying, can focus attention on the importance of the task at hand, can remind the prayer that she is not alone in what she is about to do. As I quoted in the previous essay, Is.55 promises that God’s word will not return to God empty but will accomplish something that God intends. I do not take this claim as the absolute certainty that what I say God will do, but rather the absolute certainty that God is involved in what I am trying to do. God is present with me; I am not alone. The Spirit is active with me, however one wishes to characterize that Spirit. I think this truth is born out over and again, given the numerous times that I have experienced persons coming to me after my sermon thanking me for things my sermon did not at all intend to say! In short, they created the sermon they needed that day, loosely using my words to do so. If that is not the work of God’s Spirit, I cannot say what it is.

Still, the issue of with whom we preach is hardly exhausted by concern for the presence of the Holy Spirit. We also preach on behalf of many who are not in attendance with us, but who are, or ought to be, active participants in what we say. I speak of those who cannot be, who are not, with us in our pleasant and comfortable sanctuaries. They are the homeless in our city—over 50,000 in my city of Los Angeles–, the undocumented persons who work around us from the shadows, daily fearful of discovery and deportation, those who came from other lands long ago but who also fear being sent back to places they know little to nothing about, since the USA is their home, those of other ethnicities, unrepresented in our pews. Also, there is the planet itself, under siege by our onslaughts of fossil fuel waste fed by uncaring actions and attitudes, along with those energized by greed who would use all people and things to garner more and more wealth and power and who find the call of God stupid, nonexistent, and weak. Another colleague of mine called these persons and places his “gallery,” a group that peered over his shoulder as he read the text and created his sermons, who asked questions of his sermon choices and content that he alone would not think to ask. We preach not only for ourselves, not only for our congregation, but also for those countless ones not with us who have no voice among us, or whose voice is weak and unheard. Unless we have these in mind while we prepare, our preaching will be too narrow, too unconcerned with the word God has called us to proclaim, that command to preach “release to the captives” that Jesus announced to his own hometown, basing his sermon that day on Is.61, a 600- year-old oracle that God had given to the prophet but that Jesus now claimed was “being fulfilled in your hearing.” Only when we preach also on behalf of those others can we imagine that we are in fact preaching the word of God in our time.

I said that this issue of with whom we preach is a complex one! I hope these few thoughts of mine may energize and challenge you as you prepare this week’s word. In the next essay in the series I will turn to those who hear, the congregation. Knowing them well is crucial for your reading and proclaiming of the Bible.