Preaching

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers – Part 2

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

97LutherContinuing my pondering of Luther’s less famous 97 Theses and what difference they might make to our preaching:

5. It is false to state that man’s inclination is free to choose between either of two opposites. Indeed, the inclination is not free, but captive. This is said in opposition to common opinion.

Everyone assumes they are self-moved and free to choose in any situation.  Luther argues that this is not the case.  The will is not free, but captive.  So as a preacher, I need to ponder deeply what the state of the human will actually is.  If it is free then that will result in one approach to ministry.  If it is not free, then that will result in another approach.  As humans, we make choices all the time.  We can call that liberty of choice.  But those choices are not made by a free will, but by a will held captive.

6. It is false to state that the will can by nature conform to correct precept. This is said in opposition to Scotus and Gabriel.

Luther reinforces the point by denying that human wills will obey clear and compelling application by their own nature.  So when we preach, are we indulging in an exercise to convince people to move themselves to what is right?  Luther says no.

Theses 7-9 – The will may be neutral in itself, but it is captive to a non-neutral dictator.  God’s grace is needed so that the will can do anything other than always choose evil.  When we preach, we aren’t speaking to neutral folk, but to a captive set of wills.  Lest you assume some sort of heavenly puppeteering here, let me tip you off that Luther is not saying the will is captive to God’s direct control.

Theses 10-12 – Just because we proclaim that something is good does not mean that people will strive in that direction.  It would be good to ask Luther what he thinks of moralistic preaching, for instance.  Is our role as preachers to call everyone to live in a godly way?  Seems slightly misdirected if no natural will is able or free to strive toward what we declare to be good.

97 Luther Thoughts for Preachers

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97LutherMartin Luther is famous for his 95 theses against Indulgences, which he nailed to the door in Wittenberg on the 31st of October 1517.  His less well-known 97 Theses were posted a few weeks earlier.  Later, when the eyes of the church world were on him, he looked back beyond the 95 Theses and went back to the issues raised in the 97 Theses to make his defense.

Every time I look at the 97, I am struck by how on target Luther was about some very foundational issues.  So I have pondered blogging through them for the sake of preachers today.  I won’t go at a rate of one per post, but rather will summarise where the content feels too distant and requires too much explanation (you can see the full list here), then state specific theses and converse with them from the perspective of preaching today.

The 97 Theses Against Scholastic Theology.  Luther pulls no punches in his critique of the prevailing theological training of his day.  Get foundational theological questions wrong and everything else will follow.  As a preacher I am struck by that reality today.  Good Bible interpretation, explanation and application built on flawed assumptions will make for potentially unhelpful or even harmful preaching.

Theses 1-3 – Luther launches by affirming the widely respected Augustine as over against Pelagius, the heretic, who denied the full impact of original sin and asserted that humans have the ability to be righteous by the exercise of their free will.  How humans operate is a critical issue for preachers and one we must ponder deeply.

4. It is therefore true that man, being a bad tree, can only will and do evil [Cf. Matt. 7:17–18].

As preachers we have to grasp the depth of the human sin problem before we can hope to offer any sort of solution.  Do we really get how pervasive sin is and how fruitless the human life is “by nature?”  I tend to think of the story of the Lost Sons to illustrate this . . . both sons were lost, but their sin manifested with different fruit.  One bore the red apple of riotous living.  The other bore the green apple of self-righteous living.  Both were 100% wrong in their response to a loving Father.  Too often we see sin on the standard sliding scales and therefore evaluate who is more of a sinner versus who is less of a sinner.

But if we preach only a shallow view of sin, we will be affirming a lot of “older brothers” who need to see the bad news of their situation too.

Three Versions of Divine Marriage

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divine-marriage-300x300The Bible’s favourite analogy for the relationship between God and His people is marriage.  We have certainly mentioned this before on this site.  God’s great plan is to call out a bride for His Son from a fallen and sinful humanity.  God’s great promise throughout the Bible is that you shall be my people, and I will be your God.

It is a beautiful image.  I want to ask, though, what image comes to mind when we consider the Christianity we are presented with and experience?  I want to offer three human level pictures to highlight the variety of versions of Christianity . . . click here to see what they are.

Worldly Church

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Worldly-Church1-300x225Another recent post on the Cor Deo site:

On a normal street in a town near somewhere, there is a church.  I won’t describe the building in any detail because this may cause you to either disassociate yourself from it and start pointing the finger at others, or to feel like I am pointing my finger at your type of church.  Let’s just say it is a church not unlike yours or mine.

This post presents an analogy that may be more than a bit relevant to how we preach on sin in our churches.  Click here.

Jesus the Nazarene

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Jesus-the-Nazarene-300x252Just catching up on Cor Deo posts, in case you missed any:

Why does Matthew end his great Christmas narrative with a whimper?  Other sections of his gospel finish with strong summaries, so why not the first two chapters?  Why have a great story end with some geographical details, an obscure reference to an unidentified prophecy and a comment about Jesus being called a Nazarene?

 This post ponders the impact of this great enigma of biblical interpretation in the gospels.  Click here to go to the post.

The New Normal

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The-New-NormalThis week I am catching up on posts I have written for the Cor Deo blog in the past few weeks.  Just in case you missed one . . .

Everyone assumes their perspective is a healthy and balanced one.  If we can see one person off in one direction, and another off in the other, we must be the one holding the privileged position of balance.  But maybe we need to take an often-overlooked factor into account.

This post ponders the impact of living in a post-Genesis 3 world . . . a reality that should impact every sermon we preach!  Click here to go to the post.

Don’t Stain Glass the Bible Folks

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StainedGlassLots of Christians have a habit of “stained glassing” Bible characters.  Sometimes it seems like pretty much anyone other than Jezebel and Judas Iscariot will get a free pass and find their actions vindicated by believers.

Why does this happen?  Perhaps it is the result of Sunday School training that can sometimes turn the biblical narrative into myth-like stories with morales based primarily on character behaviour.  Perhaps it comes from too easily assuming that faith in God is a binary reality whereby any faith in an individual equates to full faithfulness, rather than recognising that God patiently works with people who are in the process of learning to trust Him rather than themselves.  Perhaps we are just nice people who assume almost everyone in the Bible is a nice person too (i.e. you have to be overtly evil to be anything other than laudable).  Perhaps it comes from forgetting that the primary character to focus on in the Bible is God, rather than the people, so that the people become models for our actions where perhaps they shouldn’t.

So where does this happen in the canon?  There are countless examples, but let me prod our thoughts with a few characters that tend to get “stain glassed.”

The Patriarchs – Abraham responds to a call from God, but when does he really trust God’s promise?  Sure, he moves with his family a long distance, but it is only after he separates from his family that God follows up with him.  Then it is another while before Abraham seems to finally trust God’s promise about his seed.  So between his initial call and his being declared righteous by faith there is the bizarre incident with giving his wife away in Egypt.  Abraham is on a journey, a faith journey.  And if we try to sanctify his decisions and affirm it all, then we may upset the wives in our congregation, and misrepresent the text.

Other OT Characters – Ruth was amazingly godly, but was Naomi acting by faith when she setup a very compromised situation?  Do we want to affirm everything about Mordecai and Esther?  Heroic and courageous?  Certainly.  But deeply faithful?  Worth pondering.  Nehemiah always gets lauded as the ultimate leader, but what legacy did he leave in respect to the hearts of the people, as well as the building project?  Was Jonah just reluctant, or was there a heart issue with him, in contrast to the character of the God he ended up somewhat representing?

Disciples – This is an interesting category.  Perhaps it is an anti-category.  That is, often I hear the disciples being treated like dunces when we treat them as if they should have fully grasped the content of all four gospels before the gospels were even written!

The Bible is full of real people with real issues and real messy mixed up faith responses, and for that we should be profoundly thankful.

Courage and Preaching Tone

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ToneHead2This series of posts has pondered the issue of preaching tone.  I’ve suggested we should understand the tone of a text and consider carefully the tone of the message.  Communication between people is rarely, if ever, purely informational.  Communication from God is never dispassionate.  He cares about people who will listen to our preaching.  So as well as considering the tone of the text, the situation of the listeners, and the tendencies of ourselves as preachers, we also need to pursue God’s heart in respect to the sermon.  What does God want to happen?  What tone would reflect his concern for the situation?

So to finish, let me highlight a danger and then two things to pray . . .

Danger: Considering the tone of a presentation is vitally important, but it does open up the dangerous possibility of inauthenticity.  If I am going to say something important to my wife, I would be foolish to not consider how the tone will come across.  But once I start thinking about tone, there is always the danger of faking something and launching into a performance.  When it comes to preaching, a performance never represents God well because God does not pretend.  God does not fake emotion.  When God speaks, God speaks with pure and authentic passion.  If we pursue “effective preaching” by looking at matters of tone, then we are in danger of inauthenticity unless we are gripped by the conviction that we must represent God not only in what we say, but by our character as we speak.  Though flawed and broken, somehow we get to speak for God.  Ambassadors.  We represent.  This kind of danger demands that we be prayerful about the privilege of preaching.

Prayer Point 1: Discernment.  Pray for God to give you discernment.  To be able to discern the intent of the biblical author and the need of your listeners.  And to be able to discern God’s heart for them, as well as God’s perspective on you.  Instead of asking God to be able to discern the state of your own heart as you approach a preaching engagement, better to ask him to do the searching and trying and weighing and to lead you into a place where you can preach in a way that represents his heart most effectively.

Prayer Point 2: Courage.  It is much safer and easier to preach dispassionately as if preaching were mere presentation of material.  Arms length.  Uninvolved.  But preaching calls on us to love people enough to be real with them.  It calls us to preach as one who represents Christ the Word of God.  Just as Christ was not universally loved by the lost and by the religious, so we might find our hearts trampled as we give ourselves away in preaching ministry.  That takes courage.  Pray for it, because the Lord knows what its like to represent the Father well and to suffer as a result.