Soul on Display - Christianity Today

He's not well known today, but in his time—the 14th century—John Tauler was the premier preacher in all of Europe. Each time he stood in the pulpit at the Strasburg Cathedral, large crowds gathered anticipating a great sermon. Rarely were they disappointed.

Tauler was described as "a learned and eloquent man [with] a loving and tender heart. He spoke from his heart, not from his head only." Who wouldn't be pleased to be described that way?

Nevertheless, there must have been a time when something—not easily discerned by a crowd—was lacking in the popular preacher. Humility, perhaps? Perhaps there was too much Tauler and too little Jesus in his preaching.

The only person who cared to speak into Tauler's life was a mysterious Christian layman known as Nicholas of Basle who, many years later, would be burned to death in Vienna as a heretic. Apparently Nicholas and Tauler often visited.

During one of these visits, Nicholas said, "John Tauler, you must die! John Tauler, you must die!" He repeated these words day after day.

He must have known what he was doing because Tauler took him seriously and asked his friend what he should do. What did dying mean?

"Get alone with God," Nicholas said. "Leave your crowded church, your admiring congregation, and your hold on this city. Go aside to your cell, be alone, and you will see what I mean."

In other words: stop trying to be a celebrity. Leave the limelight. Get to a place where God can whisper into your heart. "Die" in those areas of your life that feed superficiality and pride.

I'm not sure I would have done it, but Tauler accepted this counsel. He stepped down from his pulpit and retreated to a monastery. There Tauler sought a deeper relationship with God and a freedom from the need to be praised by the crowd.

Such a spiritual transition does not come quickly. In Tauler's case, he remained out of the public eye for more than two years. And a miserable two years it was: marked with desperate loneliness, even depression. But what Tauler learned in that time of silence changed him completely.

The day came when John Tauler was to preach again. The crowds swarmed to the cathedral in anticipation of what he would have to say.

When Tauler stood at the pulpit, he found that he could not speak. Instead of words there were only tears. He was overcome by a weeping that didn't stop. At first the people waited patiently, but when it become obvious that Tauler could not compose himself, they became restless. Some shouted that he had become a fool.

Finally Tauler was able to blurt out, "Dear children, I am sorry from my heart that I have kept you here so long, for I cannot speak a word today for weeping; pray God for me, that he may help me and then I will make amends to you, if God give me grace, another time, as soon as ever I am able."

The preacher's task: "I took men to Jesus and left them there." —George Fox

A further time of silence and isolation followed. And then Tauler returned once again to the cathedral, this time with words that were spoken with remarkable power.

Describing that morning, someone said, "Such was the power of the sermon, that as he spoke the people fell down as if dead …"

It's a strange story, but it prompts a question that we who are called to ministry must never stop asking ourselves: What does it take to mold a person to be useful to God and his people? To be able to communicate the Christian gospel so that people will absorb it and embrace Jesus as the way, the truth, and the life?

For John Tauler, it took a Nicholas.

Early in my own preaching days, a seminary professor spoke to me in the same way Nicholas spoke to Tauler. Looking back now, I wonder what he saw that caused him to speak to me as he did.

"Gordon," he said, "a congregation has invited you to preach the Bible to them twice a week. Think of the responsibility. What you say and how you say it will make a big difference in how they live their lives. So don't be sloppy in your preparation. Don't be lazy about your own spiritual deepening. Don't try to preach without the power of the Holy Spirit. And don't try to bring undue attention to yourself. Introducing these people to Jesus is your highest objective."

Regrettably, there have been times, to be very frank, when I have done exactly what my "Nicholas" said I should not do. I have come to the pulpit tired, poorly prepared, spiritually shallow, and unclear as to what I really wanted people to do. At times I've relied on my agility with words and my ability to charm people to cover the fact that I was not ready to handle eternal truths. I may have fooled some people on such days. But I'm sure there were others who, like Nicholas, knew I was not giving my best.

From the life of the operatic composer Giuseppe Verdi comes the story of a night when he performed a piano recital at La Scala in Milan. After his final piece the appreciative audience demanded an encore. Verdi, hungry for applause, chose a loud and frilly composition that he knew would thrill the audience even though it was, artistically speaking, bad music.

When he finished, the crowd stood again, roaring its approval. Verdi basked in the extended applause … until he saw his life-long mentor in the balcony who knew exactly what Verdi had done.

The mentor neither stood with the crowd nor applauded. On his face was a pained expression of disappointment. Verdi could almost hear his mentor, his Nicholas, saying, "Verdi, Verdi, how could you?"

Perhaps this was the reaction of Nicholas as he sat listening to the eloquent John Tauler. While the crowd was enthralled with a sermon delivered out of talent, Nicholas longed for one delivered from a full soul. When he didn't hear it, he told Tauler that he had to die.

What might Nicholas have seen?

Perhaps Nicholas saw that those large crowds lionizing the preacher were causing him (using St. Paul's words) to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. Did Nicholas sense that (now borrowing John the Baptizer's words) Tauler was "increasing" while Jesus was "decreasing?"

It is so seductive, this privilege of preaching. The ego swells when it is showered with praise. It craves power and success. And it is never satisfied with how much of these things it gets.

Did Nicholas detect any of this in John Tauler? Could this be the reason he urged the man to enter into a silent period so that he could deal with this force which, left unchecked, would ultimately destroy him?

The ego of a preacher must be managed (not crushed), and that can happen only through adequate prayer and reflection, the discipline of repentance, an openness to hear the rebuke of a friend, and a sensitivity—not a resistance—to the critic. It can be managed only when the preacher resists the perks that are often heaped upon a successful communicator.

In the early 20th century, a Salvation Army commissioner, Samuel Logan Brengle, preached all around the world. Brengle was a talented man who spent a lifetime managing his ego. In his journal are these revealing words: "If I appear great in their eyes, the Lord is most graciously helping me to see how absolutely nothing I am without him …. The axe cannot boast of the trees it has cut down. It could do nothing but for the woodsman. He made it, he sharpened it, and he used it. The moment he throws it aside, it becomes only old iron. O that I may never lose sight of this."

Lazy thinking

Because John Tauler was so naturally verbal and probably quite able to preach "off the top of his head," I wonder if Nicholas saw in him the temptation to lazy thinking.

Lazy thinking is evident when the preacher lacks a clear sense of what the biblical text says. Or when a sermon is poorly organized so that listeners cannot download the information clearly. Or when the sermon has little connection with that larger world in which the listener must live for the next six days.

The result? A loss of respect for the Bible, for the preacher, for the Christian view of life. Listening to a sermon that has no intellectual form is a waste of time.

I love the words of 18th-century English pastor Henry Venn: "When I come into the pulpit, it is after study, prayers, and cries for the people. I speak as plainly and enter into all the cares of the congregation as minutely as I am able." Venn's careful attention to mindful preaching was the key to a long life of pastoral usefulness.

The goal of a sermon is actionable content: Bible-based instruction and encouragement lodges deep in the heart and mind of the listener ready to be used again and again as the need arises.

Actionable content: where does it come from? From reading, exposing oneself to people who are smarter and wiser, more experienced. It comes from asking questions, being curious, freeing oneself of distractions so that the mind can work. It comes from rigorous study and reflection. In these over-busy days, the time needed to do this comes with great difficulty.

A.W. Tozer, a fierce critic of lazy thinking, once wrote: "There are preachers looked upon by their people as divine oracles, who wag their tongues all day in light, frivolous conversation. Then before entering the pulpit … seek a last-minute reprieve in a brief prayer. Thereby they hope to put themselves into the position where the spirit of the prophet will descend upon them. It may be that by working themselves up to an emotional heat they may get by, may even congratulate themselves that they had liberty in preaching the word. What they have been all day and all week is what they are when they open up the book to expound it to the congregation."

Bottom line: effective preaching requires a preacher who is intellectually conditioned, well-read, broadly experienced, welcoming to critique. A preacher who practices the communication of ideas in much the same way that a basketball player takes hundreds of shots before a game.

Personal issues reveal themselves

Maybe Nicholas saw in Tauler certain unmet emotional needs. Did he sense Tauler using the pulpit to deal with unresolved issues within himself? If so, he would not be the first (or last) preacher to do this.

The pulpit can be a great place for someone who needs to control people. It can be used by the person who can never feel that he/she is adequately loved. The pulpit can be used to deal with one's own moral defects. By preaching to everyone else about this struggle or that one, by being able to speak of sin so forthrightly in the lives of others, the preacher can be tempted to think that he has overcome his own demons.

When one highly acclaimed preacher publicly confessed to a moral failure in his life, his publisher said, "It is not unusual for someone to speak or write passionately about something with which they themselves are struggling. They think that by simply stating the problem and its possible solution, and doing it fervently, that they have cleansed themselves. But the 'cleansing' only lasts for a short period of time."

You see some preachers working through personal anger issues when they preach. They express a prophetic-type wrath over certain issues and at certain personalities, and you ask yourself, Where is all this rage coming from?

Henri Nouwen described the anger he saw in Christian leaders. Anger "seems close to a professional vice in the contemporary ministry … this is not an open, blatant, roaring anger, but an anger hidden behind the smooth word, the smiling face, and the polite handshake …. If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ."

Convictionless or clueless?

Perhaps Nicholas sensed Tauler's convictions and beliefs were not adequately defined. I can imagine him asking, "What does this man, Tauler, truly believe? What would he be willing to die for? What are his deepest convictions about how life should be lived and what consequences prevail when one disobeys God? Is he quiet here or soft there because he seeks to preserve his popularity or position?"

Did Nicholas worry that Tauler's conversion to Christ was not adequately grounded? That he was reluctant to reveal a repentant spirit, a humility that marks one who regularly kneels at the cross?

Was Nicholas in any way bothered by the possibility that Tauler loved preaching but did not love the people to whom he preached? Or put another way, was Tauler in touch with his people? Did he know anything about life in the marketplace, the struggles of his poorer parishioners, the challenges of raising a family in such an uncertain age?

Edmund Gosse once wrote a critique of the preaching of Jeremy Taylor. It must have stung Taylor to read these words: "These sermons are amongst the most able and profound in the English language, but they hardly ever mention the poor, hardly ever refer to their sorrows, and show practically no interest in their state. The sermons were preached in South Wales where poverty abounded. The cry of the poor and the hungry, the ill-clothed and the needy ceaselessly ascended up to heaven, and called for pity and regress, but this eloquent divine never seemed to hear it; he lived and wrote and preached surrounded by the suffering and the needy, and yet remained scarcely conscious of their existence."

Not quite Spirit-filled?

Allow me one further speculation on what Nicholas thought of John Tauler.

Is there any chance that when Nicholas listened to Tauler's preaching, he sensed a man whose sermon-craft was superb but who lacked what it means to be filled by the Holy Spirit. Filled with the Spirit: that remarkable, almost unexplainable power that enables a preacher to exalt Jesus Christ in such a way that people are persuaded to acknowledge their sins and seek the saving work of the cross.

How often it has been said about the preaching of Billy Graham that it lacked the polish that earns A's in the homiletics classroom, but it possessed the urgency of a man sent from God. Graham possessed an influence that brought people to the edge of their seats when the gospel was preached. It created an impatience for the invitation at the end when one could go to the front and begin the process of getting right with God.

All of us who ever heard Graham knew that there was a godly "magic" in the air as he spoke. The hardest heart was broken into submission as people clamored to embrace faith in Jesus the Savior.

Billy Graham epitomized the words of George Fox who said, "I took men to Jesus Christ and left them there."

Whatever it was about John Tauler that caught the eye of Nicholas of Basle remains a mystery. But it was important enough that Nicholas pulled out all the stops to convince this man to take a hard look at himself. "John Tauler," he said, "you must die!"

What might it mean "to die" today? To step out of all the noise and distraction that comes our way and allow God's Spirit time and opportunity to show us where we might have some growing to do.

I would have liked to hear John Tauler before Nicholas got to him. And then I would like to have seen the difference a few years later. Perhaps the change might be best expressed in the words of Bernard of Clairvaux: "Yesterday I preached myself, and the scholars came and praised me. Today I preached Christ, and the sinners came and thanked me."

If Nicholas (or someone like him) ever calls, meet him for coffee. He may have something important to say to you. About dying, for example.

MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership and lives in New Hampshire.