Speaking the truth is a lot harder than it used to be. It’s not that I consciously want to lie. But there are times, as a preacher, when the truth I intend to speak falls victim to subtle abuse. In reflecting on my own preaching, I’ve noticed six ways I have unwittingly abused the truth.
Misusing popular terms
One morning as I opened the mail, I came across a letter from a member of our parish. I felt the blush rush to my cheeks as I read it. The writer explained that I had used schizophrenic inaccurately. This was particularly disturbing to her because she suffered from schizophrenia. Reading her gentle rebuke, I remembered the sermon in which I had committed this gaffe.
I had preached what I thought was a clever sermon about the love of God, saying, among other things, that we must discard any notion that sets the holiness of God against the love of God. “God is not,” I said, “schizophrenic.”
Thinking back to the preparation of the sermon, I recalled feeling a slight twinge of doubt about using schizophrenic in this context. I knew the technical meaning of the word was different from the popular meaning given it. But I had shuttled this doubt aside because the line was too memorable to discard. So it was: memorable, and wrong.
Holding the letter in my hand, I began to consider how I should answer it-with all the sensitivity I could muster, of course, but more, with gratitude. This woman had, in the midst of pain I had caused her, lovingly and thoughtfully rebuked me. She reminded me that preaching is not designed to entertain or provoke interest at the expense of truth. Were it not for the matter of confidentiality, I would frame this letter and put it on the wall above my writing table as a continuing reminder.
Oversimplifying complex ideas
Not long ago, I met a man who told me he gave up on the Christian faith because, as others have said, it is promoted by charlatans and indulged in by fools. He thinks he has rejected the gospel, but he has rejected only someone’s clumsy, self-serving, or half-baked explanation of the Christian message.
Clarity, not simplicity, is the key to interesting and truthful preaching. My task is to clarify, not to oversimplify to the point of distortion. My job is to help the congregation perceive the gospel as truly as possible.
A few weeks ago, I was reading through the Nicene Creed, when my son crawled into my lap. He wanted to read along with me. When I came to the passage that says the Father and the Son are of the same substance, I told Jeremy the word could also be essence. Of course, I had to clarify this for my young son. So I said that the Father and the Son share the same being, the same quality of life. Then he turned, put his arms around my neck, hugged me, and said, “We are of the same essence then, too.”
Aha! I thought. We have connected. The mystery of the truth was not reduced or explained away. But clearly the message had come home-for both of us. (And, Daddy’s little illustration maker had come through again, and just in time for Trinity Sunday.)
Intellectualizing
I easily become mesmerized into using technical jargon and high-sounding vocabulary. But when I’m honest with myself, I often use jargon not because it’s more accurate, but usually because I have become mentally flabby and have resisted the intellectual diligence that clear speaking demands.
One woman said, after hearing a preacher who was particularly adept at this sort of “impressive” preaching, “I didn’t understand a word he said, but, ah, what a great mind he must have!”
When I have preached sermons designed to convince my hearers of my intellectual prowess, I have droned on, to paraphrase Chesterton, with long words that rattled by the congregation like long railway trains. “You can go on talking like that for hours,” says Chesterton, “with hardly a movement of the gray matter inside your skull.”
Some people, of course, see through our pretenses. One sermon I preached many years ago was entitled, “Wandering in the Land of Nod: A Hope for a Transubstantiation of Faith.” I went on for thirty minutes exploring “the loss of faith against the backdrop of nihilistic self-absorption.” At the end of the sermon, more than one person in that urbane, suburban congregation asked me if I had the slightest idea what I had preached about.
Chesterton laid down a test for those who are tempted to sound intellectual at the expense of clarity: try to express your idea in one-syllable words.
Speaking without love
Before college, I accompanied a friend to a small Baptist Church in east Texas where he was to preach, I listened in utter amazement as he bombarded the congregation from the Book of Revelation, preaching about God’s unwillingness to swallow lukewarmness.
As it happened, my home church asked me to preach not long after I had heard my friend’s impassioned utterance. So impressed was I with my friend’s approach, I decided to try it myself. At the time, I was nurturing the rebelliousness peculiar to an active church-going young person. With the wrath and gracelessness of a minor-league prophet, and in the name of truth, I released my pent-up hostility and battered the congregation with waves of stormy indignation.
Over that Sunday’s dinner, my father quietly said, “Son, I’m sure you spoke sincerely today. And I know that the folks appreciated what you had to say. But I can’t help but feel you could have been kinder in saying it.” Love, I learned, is not an option I can supply or withhold when preaching. If I don’t preach the truth in love, it’s not the truth I’m preaching.
Posing as a resident expert
Elias Canetti, the Nobel laureate, warns against the “misspeaker.” The misspeaker is a kind of oratorical quack who wishes to vent his ideas on the gullible and ill-informed. He feels inferior, Canetti says, in the company of people who can critique him intelligently. But in the presence of those unfamiliar with his subject, “ideas galore come pouring in, arguments that would never have occurred to him are available now in abundance.”
We do not serve our congregations well, or the gospel, when we play the role of a psychological expert or foreign-policy adviser. We do not know what we are talking about just because we speak confidently with a deep, well-modulated voice.
Some ministers possess the courage and humility to delve into subjects outside their expertise, subjects that demand careful study and reflection. These ministers put themselves on record in the presence of people who can critique their views. The result is better preaching. The rest of us do well to stay within our limits.
Preaching the ideal without the real
C. S. Lewis had been invited to lunch one Sunday by a vicar and his family. The lunch was punctuated with sniping and petty criticism as family members played the rough-and-tumble games of intrafamily rivalry.
Lewis was not scandalized by the realities of family life in the vicarage. He accepted that the minister is human and that anyone’s family is subject to periodic frictions. However, Lewis was galled that very evening when the vicar preached a lofty sermon on “The Home” as “the foundation of our national life.” The home described in the sermon bore no similarity to the real home that Lewis had witnessed at the vicar’s house.
In a later article, Lewis urged vicars to “stop telling lies about home life and to substitute realistic teaching.”
Several years ago, a member of a congregation I was serving agreed to provide specific feedback on my sermons for several weeks. Among his most helpful tips was this: describe as accurately as possible the real life we share, and only then state plainly the goal we want to achieve. Then, our ideals will be grounded in reality.
Recently my daughter, a school-age expert in storytelling, questioned me after the Sunday sermon. I had preached a sermon titled “Keys without Locks” and had begun with the story of a key I saw lying on the pavement one day as I was crossing the street in downtown Aberdeen.
“Was that a true story?” she asked me. “I mean, did it really happen? Did you really cross the street one day and really see a new key lying on the street?”
She was not terribly concerned with how I related that particular story to my text. But she had fastened onto something just as important. Was I telling the truth, or abusing it?
You can imagine my relief when I was able to tell her, “Yes, Jessica, that was a true story.”
– Michael Jinkins
Beechgrove Church
Aberdeen, Scotland
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