The Spirit Will Have To Do the Speaking: Reflections On Preaching

The struggle was introduced in the form of an email.

The writer was a member of a church council. Their pastor, he wrote, would be taking a vacation. Would I be available to take his place for those two weeks?

The request wasn’t unusual. Years ago, I had passed my classis examination and was licensed to exhort in its churches. With deepest humility and gratitude for the opportunity, I had done that many times.

But in this cultural moment, the people in the pews come wired into varying streams of news.  Hearts are trigger-happy to discern political sides. Assumptions about the pulpiteer’s agenda are formed on the smallest detail.

The easy way out seems to be either the theological or the pietistic. Pick any theological point, find the right Pauline text, and safety beckons. Or point to deeply spiritualistic struggles, go to a psalm, and listeners stay tuned. Sadly, neither works well. Even Psalm 23’s “valley” turns into present-day finger pointing.

So, I struggled with this emailed invitation. Did I have the courage and ability to give voice to the Spirit for this time and this congregation?

As I reflected and prayed, I realized that I already have been using a framework that answered much of the difficulty. For the first time, I dimly saw how the Spirit might be working in and through me—not just for this situation but for all the other choices I’ve been making around Biblical texts.  

Two things seemed central to me: Tell the story and don’t “apply”.

By “telling the story”, I mean the choosing of a story in the text and telling it. Simplistic as that sounds, the text of the story is Scripture. It needs to be orally interpreted with meaningful voicing.   

Even then, the context of the story’s first telling influences its meaning. So bits and pieces of it need to be developed. That development almost always reinforces the ways in which the Bible is a long, long coherent story. Why, for example, is the death of the widow’s only son such a tragedy in Luke 7? Referencing the economics within the book of Ruth shows how important husbands and sons were in the economy of the day. God also mandated agricultural management to include gleaning as a way of ensuring the care for those bereft. Boaz is a righteous man because he obeys God in this economic shaping. Jesus’ audience would have known that connection. Making the same connection for God’s people today highlights a Biblical throughline: Economics is about sharing and caring.

But bringing out those connections also means treading a very grey space in today’s cultural debate. Given today’s tensions, do I dare work with the 10 Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount,  James’ letter to the churches? Even Ps. 23 talks about “my enemy”.

My second guideline, “don’t apply”, directly contradicts standard wisdom. It is said that application is required or the sermon isn’t complete. Some congregation members even demand it. But that standard wisdom leads to opposite results. How often have I emerged from church with “pray more and read the Bible more” as the application? Worse yet is the confidence that the text “applies to those people over there, not to me.”  I’ve sat through sermons that end as arguments against a subgroup in the church itself. Sometimes, I just sigh and say “that applies to people who aren’t even in church at all”.   

Meanwhile, the Spirit and the text disappear during the week ahead.

Application, after all, is not about the preacher telling people what to do. Application is about the Spirit telling people how to live in response to God’s word. And that comes about in community conversation surrounding life styles that translate the “then” of the Biblical text to the “now” of current context.

The real test of “application” then, is to tell the story in such a way that listeners with willing hearts move their hands and feet in response. Small ways help me do this, I hope. Structuring toward a final question emphasizes the unfinished nature of our discipleship. Concluding with “Let those who have ears, hear what the Spirit is saying to the church” provides a post-Pentecost reality often overlooked in our Christmas-centric faith. And always, a concluding prayer that asks for Spirit-filled living in the week ahead.  

As to the email, I said yes. All I can do, as a one-time pulpiteer, is to be is the best storyteller I can be for the brief time that I am with this group of God’s people.

The Spirit will have to do the real speaking.