Entertaining the Strange: Conversation as an Act of Hospitality

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During this past presidential election, Joe Rogan attempted to sit down with Kamala Harris for an interview. When they were unable to come to terms, the host of the Joe Rogan Experience, often described as the world’s most successful podcaster, expressed disappointment. “I hope she does,” Rogan said. “I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her.”

Whatever you may think of Rogan, he was correct in describing conversation as the art of talking to someone like a human being. Other creatures can communicate. Dogs bark. Cats yowl. Even bees dance to signal to other bees where they can find food. But humans converse. James Como has called the ability to have a conversation “the most concrete, palpable, frequent and important act of human being.”[1]

More Than Messaging

There is more to conversation than talk. The word converse comes from a Latin verb that means to dwell or keep company with. We can still find a vestige of this sense in the old King James Version, which uses the term conversation to translate a Greek word that means “way of life” (cf. Gal. 1:13). But in our day, conversation usually refers to casual communication with someone. Still, it is not the atmosphere, or what some might describe as a “chill vibe,” that transforms ordinary speech into conversation. To converse is to turn toward someone. It is to open the door and invite others to share their thoughts with us. When we converse, we entertain ideas that we might not otherwise consider. They may be notions that seem strange to us, opposed to our own, and perhaps even offensive.

Conversation is an act of hospitality. In modern parlance, hospitality is a particular form of socializing. If you invite a friend over to your house for dinner, you are showing them hospitality. Its industrial sense adds another dimension. If you work in a hotel or a motel, or even if you rent your house out to weekenders for vacation, you are a part of the hospitality industry. All of these ideas have echoes of the ancient exercise of hospitality. But in the ancient world, hospitality was something much more serious.

Three Pillars of Hospitality

Traditionally, hospitality was something extended to an outsider. By it, one offered the comfort, safety, and privileges of family to someone who was not normally a part of the household. The ancient practice of hospitality was grounded on three foundational assumptions:

In order to be genuine hospitality, that which was granted must be the actual possession of the one who offers it. This idea is reflected in the adjective Philos, the first half of φιλόξενος (philoxenos), the Greek word for hospitality. As Mary Scott explains, “Philos is used of people or things which belong to one, and with which one should be able to feel relaxed in that one is not in competition with them; so that philon is used of things or actions which are not alien, which are natural to one’s character or mood at the time.”[2] Hospitality happens when we temporarily extend the boundaries of what is ours by inviting an outsider (literally a stranger) into our circle and treating them as if they were friends or family.

Even though hospitality was widely regarded as a cultural obligation, the one to whom it was extended did not have an inherent right to what they received. The ancients did not think of hospitality as the utopian practice of an egalitarian world where everyone was free to use the possessions of another. Nor was their vision that of a possessionless society. It was instead the opposite. The virtuousness of hospitality arose from an awareness that we live in a competitive and often hostile world where others might attempt to take what is ours. But this virtue is also energized by the potential for reciprocal benefit. As Mary Scott observes further, “The relationship of xenia, hospitality or guest-friendship, is basically self-seeking.”[3] One of its aims was to create a circle of cooperative relationships. As Scott explains, “To travel in his own country and in other countries, the agathos needs a network of xenoi, guest-friends, who will provide him with the basic necessities of life.”[4] For the early church, hospitality was a means of spreading the gospel and disseminating Christian doctrine (1 Cor. 16:3; 2 Cor. 3:1).

Hospitality established boundaries that enabled those who would otherwise be competitors and enemies to relate to one another as if they were friends. These did not automatically make their differences (or even their mutual antipathy) disappear. Hospitality is a social convention, not an emotion. It imposes obligations and maintains boundaries, which result in a temporary cessation of hostilities between parties that might otherwise relate to each other as enemies. The exercise of hospitality created a temporary social structure that allowed those with strong differences to interact and perhaps even begin to understand one another better. For the ancients, hospitality was a unique category of friendship that assigned the status of ξένος to both. Consequently, in ancient Greek, the word could describe either the guest or the host since they were both strangers to one another.

Strange Conversations

All three assumptions have parallels in the practice of conversation. For example, conversation involves a kind of extension of one’s intellectual boundaries that allows us to entertain strange and perhaps even disagreeable ideas. It differs from proclaiming, which is one-sided. The gospel can still be proclaimed in a conversational mode, but when this happens, its message is expressed within a framework where there is a mutual exchange of ideas.

In the turning toward another that is at the heart of conversation, one opens the door to the thoughts, ideas, and feelings of others. Conversation implies mutual consideration. However, it does not automatically follow that one who converses abandons their convictions and positions in the process or even temporarily puts them “on the shelf.” Conversation belongs to the family of speech known as dialogue. A dialogue is a kind of encounter that involves mutual exploration and exposure. To dialogue is to talk with someone, not just at them. It is an activity that involves discussion, an exchange of reasoning, and even argument. Those who discuss do not necessarily agree. Where there are opposing ideas in play, any agreement is highly unlikely without some form of dialogue. Nor should we assume that this kind of exchange is dispassionate. Dialogue can be heated. When some came down to Antioch from Jerusalem and began to teach that it was necessary to be circumcised according to the custom of Moses to be saved, Acts 15:2 observes that this “brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them.” Dialogue was part of the toolbox of the church’s earliest evangelists. They also employed discussion and debate to refine their own understanding of the church’s doctrine. Conversation creates a safe space where new ideas can be proposed, explored, and tested. This does not mean, however, that the first messengers of the Christian faith treated everyone’s ideas as if they were as credible as their own. Rather, they employed questions, debate, and discussion in order to challenge the false thinking of their age.

In order for conversation to occur, words must be spoken and ideas exchanged. This much is clear. But what seems less obvious is that conversation also involves shared silence. As Ann Berthoff observed, “If dialogue is at the heart of conversation, at the heart of dialogue is silence.”[5] Berthoff points out that silence is necessary for the act of speech itself. As anyone who has tried to decipher a mumbled or run-on sentence can tell you, the words we say are made discernable by the spaces that the silence between words creates for them. Berthoff explains, “The polar opposition of silence is the necessary condition of speech: when we talk, the sounds are shaped and differentiated by means of silence.”[6] But it is not enough to simply hear the words or even to know their definition. Conversation is an interpretative art, and Berthoff uses the phrase “homiletical silence” to speak of the intellectual space that enables the listener to do this. Berthoff’s analogy draws on the sermonic tradition, which is also a kind of conversation between the preacher and the listener.

In the context of a sermon, homiletical silence is a three-dimensional discipline that involves listening, patient reflection, and understanding. Since most sermons take the form of a monologue, the burden for a conversational element rests primarily upon the shoulders of the preacher, who must practice a kind of “priestly advocacy.” The preacher stands between the text and the congregation and listens to the Word of God on their behalf.[7] In ordinary conversation, however, this burden is shared along with the accompanying silence, rendering the silence of conversation more than the pause that waits until it is my turn to speak. In that silent space, we entertain the strange, seeking to understand even though we may already know that it is likely that we will still be at odds when the conversation ends. After all has been said, we may remain strangers and perhaps even opponents.

Protected Spaces

Hospitality does have limits, as Jael’s story in the book of Judges bluntly reminds us (Judges 4:17–24). In the same way, some intellectual spaces are meant to be protected, especially within the confines of the church. Not all ideas should be entertained (cf. 1 Tim. 4:7). Nor is everyone allowed to give voice to their views. In 1 Timothy 1:3-4, the apostle urged Timothy to “charge some that they teach no other doctrine, nor give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which cause disputes rather than godly edification which is in faith.” Not every idea is a good idea. There are times when it is necessary to do battle with our words and, like Jael, drive a stake through the temple of an opposing argument.

The context, of course, always makes a difference. When it comes to the essential truths of the Christian faith, Scripture teaches us to set boundaries. Within the precincts of the church, the words of false teachers are not meant to have free reign. Their ideas are to be challenged and their voices silenced. Outside the church, however, it is a different matter. There, in the marketplace, anyone may say their piece. The public sphere is the realm of debate and public discourse. It is also the sphere where the art of conversation is most needed. But if the last election has taught us anything, it has reminded us that the human art of conversation is not as easy as it looks. It is not enough to open one’s mouth and let the words pour out, especially when those who engage with each other have serious differences. These are often differences not only about our views but also about the rules of engagement when talking about them.

Scripture does not provide a simple strategy to make this task easier for us. It does, however, offer a foundational rule that can create a hospitable space for those who wish to make an attempt at conversation. It is the rule of life expressed in James 1:19–20: “So then, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God.” The hospitality of conversation offers the combined grace of silent listening and acceptance to those whose thinking is strange to us. It is a discipline that is essential to the peace of any society where diverse and mutually exclusive world views coexist. But its practice is even more crucial for those whose aim is persuasion. Because before anyone can be persuaded that they are wrong, they must first believe that they have honestly been heard and correctly understood.

[1] James Como, “The Salon: Restoring Conversation,” Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, 22, no. 1 (2014), 33.

[2] Mary Scott, “PHILOS, PHILOTĒS AND XENIA,” Acta Classica 25 (1982): 3.

[3] Ibid., 6.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ann E. Berthoff, “Homiletic Silence and the Revival of Conversation,” The Sewanee Review 122, no. 4, (2014): 587.

[6] Ibid., 588.

[7] John Koessler, Folly, Grace, and Power: The Mysterious Act of Preaching, (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2011), 96.

The Trouble with Meme Activism: Sometimes to Speak is Not to Speak

Featured ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

In the past couple of years, I have noticed that periods of social unrest are often accompanied by a corresponding outbreak of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I am referring, of course, to the accompanying blizzard of memes on Facebook and Twitter that display a quote famously (and probably incorrectly) attributed to Bonhoeffer: “Not to speak is to speak. Not to act is to act.”

In most cases where it appears, the quote stands as a comprehensive indictment of anyone who has not yet expressed public outrage over some event that has captured the attention of the current news cycle. The meme is a cultural syllogism: A terrible thing has occurred. You have not said that it was terrible on Facebook or Twitter. You are a terrible person. The reasoning seems to be that if you have not publicly condemned it on social media, you are complicit in its terribleness.

I suppose we should not be surprised by such reasoning. In the age of social media, it is not enough to possess moral convictions. There are no longer any unpublished thoughts. We are now expected to leave a public record, especially of those things about which we disapprove. Public statements, especially in social media, are now considered to be a form of social action.

But in most cases where quotes like this appear, they are usually something less than meaningful action. They are merely a form of virtue signaling intended to place social pressure on those who do not hold the “right view” of whatever incident prompted the post. Of course, social pressure like this is nothing new. Nor is it necessarily bad. Public expressions of disapproval have always established the boundaries of right and wrong. The lessons begin in infancy and continue throughout our entire lifetime. In social systems, both large and small, the rules of acceptable behavior are taught by suffering the frowns and slights of others. Shame works hand in hand with acceptance to bind people together. And to get them to do the right thing.

The real problem with meme morality is its tendency toward reductionism. What is intended as a manifesto proves only to be a cliché. It is a statement of the obvious. We think we are thundering like God on Sinai when in reality we are only expressing a mundane truism. War is bad. Racism is evil. Be nice to others. Treating such assertions as a form of social activism reduces moral behavior to mere sentimentalism. It is the kind of speech that James 2:16 condemns–the digital equivalent to “be ye warmed and filled.” It makes a demand without offering any corresponding action that will address the problem.

Sentimentalized language is trite. It states the obvious but so broadly that it offers no real help to the reader or the listener. Sentimentalized speech is characterized by what Wendell Berry calls “the sickly beauty of generalized emotionalism.”[1] This sort of vagueness is a common feature, not only of social media but of bad preaching. Such preaching paints with a broad brush. Its target is so large that it aims at nothing at all. It may make us feel, but it will not help us to act.

There are, of course, contexts where the mere assertion of an idea is an act of bravery. To speak the truth aloud lies at the heart of the Christian act of preaching. Speaking can be a form of activism, but for that to be the case, it must be speech that goes against the grain. There must be a potential cost to the speaker, as well as a genuine interest in the welfare of those who disagree. Without these, it is cheerleading at best and the voice of the mob at worst.

We should not be surprised to find that many confuse sentimentalism with activism. Croatian sociologist Stjepan Mestrovic has observed that emotions are the primary object of manipulation in postmodern culture. “Today, everyone knows that emotions carry no burden, no responsibility to act, and above all, that emotions are accessible to everyone,” Mestrovic writes.[2] One result of this is something Jeremy Begbie has called “conspicuous compassion,” an emotional expression that becomes an end in itself and produces “very little in the way of positive, practical action.”[3]

Emotion can be a wellspring of action, but it is not always necessary. It is possible to act apart from feeling or even contrary to feeling, a condition that is sometimes called duty. Like Jesus, we are at times called upon to do that which we would prefer not to do (cf. Luke 22:42). Or we may refuse to do what we would like to do (Col. 3:5). Sentimentalism believes that feeling by itself is action. More than this, for the sentimentalist, emotion is an end in itself. The aim is to feel, and feeling is enough. “Sentimentalists typically resist any challenge to their way of life,” Begbie observes. “They are much more often moved by strangers than by those close to them, since the former require no personal sacrifice.”[4]

True activism not only seeks to change the situation but also aims to change thinking.

Meme activism often fails on another critical level. It tends to be coercive. The aim of such statements is not to engage, debate, or persuade but to silence. True activism is persuasive rather than coercive. It not only seeks to change the situation but also aims to change thinking. To do this, the language that accompanies activism must seek to elicit rather than impose the desired response. Speaking that is coercive throws off the persuasive responsibility of speech and employs language as an instrument of brute force. Theologian Joseph Pieper rightly calls this form of communication propaganda and notes that its use is not limited to the official power structure of a dictatorship. In his essay “Abuse of Language–Abuse of Power,” Pieper explains, “It can be found wherever a powerful organization, an ideological clique, a special interest, or a pressure group uses the word as their ‘weapon’.”[5]

An essential component of propagandistic speech is the element of implied threat. But Pieper notes that the threat can take many forms. In this category of threat, he includes “all the forms and levels of defamation, or public ridicule, or reducing someone to a nonperson–all of which are accomplished by means of the word, even the word not spoken.”[6] It is not its strength of statement, the fact that it may disagree with the viewpoint of others, or even its emotional tone that renders such speech abusive. It is the desire to squash all opposing viewpoints merely by force of statement alone and to demean those who disagree. “The common element in all of this is the degeneration of language into an instrument of rape,” Pieper explains. “It does contain violence, albeit in latent form.”[7]

Today’s public discourse is not only inclined toward coercion; it is addicted to flattery. By flattery, I mean more than the practice of empty praise. That is indeed a form of flattery. But more broadly, flattery is the habit of telling others what they want to hear in return for gain. It is speech, as Joseph Pieper, explains, whose main objective is one of “courting favor to win success.”[8] Pieper wrote his essay a decade before the birth of the internet and nearly two decades before the founding of Facebook. Yet he anticipates the era of social media, observing that this craving for approval may reduce theology to mere entertainment whose primary purpose is to gain a following. Flattery in this broad sense is the language of choice for all whose primary objective is to gain a large audience. It is especially the lingua franca of social media, where being heard is often a function of likes and shares.

The pandering that is a mark of flattery may seem far removed from the bullying of coercive speech, yet they are actually two sides of the same coin. Both are the stock and trade false prophets and false teachers. The apostle Paul criticized the Corinthians for being smitten by false apostles who sought to use them to build their platform. He observed, “. . . you even put up with anyone who enslaves you or exploits you or takes advantage of you or puts on airs or slaps you in the face” (2 Cor. 11:20). The pandering of these false teachers catered to the audience’s expectation not only in the content of their teaching, which avoided those aspects the Corinthians found offensive but in their manner and mode of delivery. In this case, the audience wanted to be treated in a demanding and arrogant way. A manner which they mistook for authority.

Whether or not Bonhoeffer said the quote attributed to him makes little difference. It is often true. To speak is to act. But it is equally true that our speaking may also be acting in the theatrical sense. We are not trying to change anything. We are trying to build a platform. We are curating an image. We are seeking an audience. We are collecting likes and shares the way we hope to collect crowns in heaven.

[1] Wendell Berry, Standing By Words, (Berkeley: Counterpoint, 1983), 33.

[2] Jeremy S. Begbie, “Beauty, Sentimentalityand the Arts,” in The Beauty of God: Theology and the Arts, (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2007), 53.

[3] Ibid., 54.

[4] Ibid., 52–53.

[5] Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power, (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1992), 32.

[6] Ibid.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid. 28.

Preaching in a Crisis

April 18, 2020June 17, 2023 ~ John Koessler ~ 6 Comments

One of my former students recently asked me how I thought the COVID-19 crisis was affecting pastoral ministry and preaching in particular. How do you preach in an environment like this? The simple answer is that you do the best you can, given the circumstances. Preaching is challenging enough under ordinary conditions. The nature of the current crisis has completely upended our normal patterns of meeting and communicating. Preachers are speaking to empty seats and recording their messages for broadcast over social media. As one popular meme observes, we are all televangelists now.

The answer to my student’s question involves more than the medium, though much could be said about that as well. The medium of delivery matters, but the content of the message is always primary. Whether we preach live or by means of a video, we are still saying something. What should we say? The Sunday school answer to this question, of course, is that we should preach the gospel. There is a sense in which preachers only have one message to deliver. Our determination, like the apostle Paul’s, is to know nothing except Jesus Christ and Him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2). Yet as true as this may be, to put it this way in answer to this particular question seems like and oversimplification. It is not.

Preaching More than the Facts

The gospel offers hope for the present life as well as for the future. It is about living as much as it is about dying. Living the Christian life is more than a matter of willpower and information. The Christian life is Spirit-driven and grace enabled. It is a life that is lived not only in response to the gospel but through the power of the gospel. Paul’s letters are proof that the saints do not need to hear a different gospel after they have believed than the one that was preached to them prior to faith. The apostle was just as eager to preach the gospel to the saints at Rome as he was to proclaim it those who had never heard Christ named (cf. Romans 1:15 with 15:20). While the saints do not need a different gospel, they do need a gospel which is explicated in terms of their experience.

This means that preaching the gospel to the saints during this season of COVID-19 demands that we do more than state the facts of the gospel. What is especially needed is gospel preaching that demonstrates priestly sensitivity. In the Old Testament priests, like prophets, exercised a ministry of God’s word (Leviticus 10:11). The priest, however, differed from the prophet because he shouldered an additional burden, serving as the people’s advocate. Priests were not only “selected from among men” but were “appointed to represent them” (Hebrews 5:1). Preachers, like the priests of the Old Testament, do not stand apart from those who hear them. The default disposition of every sermon is one of sympathy. Priestly sympathy is not pandering but a compassionate ministry that is born of shared experience. Priestly advocacy should not be confused with trite slogans, pat answers, or simplistic explanations. Unfortunately, our culture’s bent toward pragmatism makes us especially vulnerable in this area. We are too eager to come to God’s defense–too quick to fill in the silences God leaves behind and attempt to explain what he himself has not explained.

Similarly, it can be tempting for preachers to use a crisis like this to leverage their favorite rebuke. If the posts I see from pastors on social media are an indication of what we are saying in our sermons, not a few of us have seized the opportunity afforded by the pandemic to teach the church a lesson about our favorite cultural or congregational irritation. We are saying that this crisis has come upon us because of abortion or that it is God’s judgment because of homosexuality. Some suggest that God sent it to show us that we are spoiled or that He allowed the churches to be shut down because we took worship for granted. Some are saying that God has forced us out of the building so that the church could be the church. The intent of these assertions, I think, is to be prophetic. Unfortunately, such varied explanations merely gives the impression that God cannot make up His mind about why He is angry with us. He is just mad. I am not saying that God would never deal out judgment on a national or even global scale. The Scriptures show that He has done so in the past and will do so again. What troubles me is the underlying note of smugness that seems to attend so many of these kinds of statements. Perhaps before we try to call down woes upon the nation like the prophet Jeremiah, we ought to learn how to weep like him first.

Some of this comes from the pressure we feel to exonerate God. Like many others, I have had more than one person ask me what I thought God was up to by allowing such a devastating pandemic to occur. In our effort to provide an answer, we may overreach. We can make the mistake of thinking that since we speak for God, we may also speak as God. Like Moses at the rock, we speak rashly or out of spite (Numbers 20:10). We jump to conclusions about God’s intent. We make statements about God’s motives and reasoning that sound like certainties but are really only speculations. It is not wrong to address the questions that people ask. One of the preacher’s most important responsibilities is that of leading the congregation in the collective practice of theological reflection about the questions and challenges which are peculiar to their context. But they must do this with what I describe as priestly advocacy.

The key to priestly advocacy is identification (Hebrews 2:17). This means that the preacher functions as a kind of mediator, standing between the text and the congregation and listening to the word of God on their behalf. Because we stand in the place of our listeners, we ask the questions they would ask. Some of these questions are obvious. Many are mundane. If we are to be true advocates for them, we must also ask the questions our listeners would like to ask but dare not. We can give voice to the questions that plague our listeners, but we cannot always answer them. Our priestly role demands that we speak the truth, and the truth is: God does not always explain himself. Part of the priestly responsibility of preaching is to give voice to the congregation’s unspoken questions and then listen with them to the awkward silence that sometimes ensues once the words have been spoken. It is not our job to answer all the congregation’s questions. When we try to say what God has not said, we inevitably replace God’s judgment with our own.

What We Can Say

What, then, can we say? We can affirm the congregation’s questions and fears. To admit that we don’t know what God is doing is not the same as saying that God is doing nothing. To acknowledge fear, grief, or uncertainty can itself be a great relief in times like these. Of course, it is crucial that we not stop here. More needs to be said. We do not want to only point at the problem. But if preaching aims to facilitate an encounter with God, a precondition must be that we face God as we truly are, with all our doubts, fears, and questions in plain sight.

If our aim in preaching really is to help our listeners meet God through His word, then the second thing we can do in the sermon is to speak of God. More particularly, we can speak of God as He has revealed Himself to us through the person and work of His Son Jesus Christ. This may sound too simple, so let me make clear what I do not mean. I am not talking about hawking God as a product by selling the audience an airbrushed version of the Christian life. Such sermons try to resolve every serious problem within a matter of minutes, much like the television dramas and commercials that so often provide contemporary pastors with their themes. This “airbrushed” portrayal of Christianity is not preaching at all but a form of sentimentalism that trivializes the gospel. Trivialized preaching is triumphalistic. Triumphalism is a perspective that grows out of our evangelical heritage of revivalism. The revival tradition of preaching emphasizes the transforming moment, when the listener’s life is forever changed. Certainly this is true of the gospel. We are forgiven in a moment. But the redemptive process takes much longer. Triumphalistic sermons give the impression that every problem can be solved in a matter of moments simply by leaving it at the altar. Undoubtedly there have been remarkable instances where this has been the case. Sinners plagued by long standing habits leave the sermon miraculously freed from bondage. Yet for many others–perhaps even most others–the experience is different. For them transformation is progressive rather than instantaneous. These believers do not skip along the pilgrim path but “toil along the winding way, with painful steps and slow.”

Directing our listeners to hope in Christ is not a platitude.

Preachers who do not acknowledge this resort instead to clichés and platitudes. Their sermon themes are flaccid and the remedies they offer mere placebos. Such sermons are unable to provide any real help to those who hear. How can they, when truism stands in the place of truth? In order to be true to our audience’s experience, preaching must reflect the reality of living in a post–Eden world in anticipation of a new heavens and earth that have not yet come to pass. Times like these, where not only our congregation but the entire globe must deal with the collateral damage that sin has wreaked upon us, are uniquely suited to such a task. Never has Paul’s statement that creation itself is in bondage to decay as a consequence of Adam’s sin been made more vivid (cf. Romans 8:21).

Directing our listeners to hope in Christ is not a platitude. The root of our fear in this current crisis is the fear of sickness and death. Some would like to promise that Jesus will protect us from all such threats. But this is not the hope that the Bible offers us. The message of the gospel is not only the story that Jesus died and rose again. It is the good news that Jesus suffered death “so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone” (Hebrews 2:9). The gospel does not assure us that we will be able to avoid the experience of physical death. It tells us that Christ will meet us on the other side. This promise is no small hope.

A Distanced Congregation is Still the Church

A third thing that we can say, especially at a time when our normal community life has been so disrupted, is to remind the church that they are still a church. Some Christians seem to feel a kind of glee over the fact that the church cannot meet together during this season of social distancing. “At last,” they seem to say, “the church can finally be the church.” I find this reasoning odd. The language that the Bible uses to speak of the church implies proximity. This aspect of the church’s nature is best expressed by the phrase Paul uses in 1 Corinthians 11:18, “when you come together as a church.” The fact that the church comes together is not a weakness. It is not an indulgence. The church is, by its nature, an assembly.

I find it ironic that while some Christians seem to be celebrating the fact that the church cannot meet, the rest of the world recognizes the need for a sense connection. Nearly every commercial I see on television that mentions the pandemic also says, “We are in this together.” They assure me that “We will get through this.” What surprises me the most is how moved I am by such assurances. Those who record their sermons while preaching to empty seats need to remind the congregation that the bond they share with one another in Jesus Christ has not been diminished by physical separation. They really are in this together. The church will survive, and one day we will come together again as a church. But even though we are now separated, we continue to be “members of one body” (Ephesians 4:25).

The scope of the COVID-19 pandemic may be unusual but the experiences of fear and uncertainty are not. If you doubt this, just take note of how many times God tells His people not to be afraid in the Scriptures. Those who preach often speak to people in crisis. While not as massive as a pandemic, each individual crisis a listener faces under ordinary circumstances can be just as shattering. Pastors and teachers were not an invention of the church. Ephesians 4:11–12 says that they are Christ’s gift to God’s people. The church needs its preachers. What is true during this singular time of crisis will still be true when things return to normal. How should you preach during this season of the coronavirus? You should preach like someone whose hope is cast upon the word of God. Speak the truth with priestly sensitivity. Point your listeners to Jesus Christ. Do the best you can. You can do no more.

Fear and Loathing in Deerfield

October 19, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Last week the Evangelical Homiletics Society (http://www.ehomiletics.com/) held its annual meeting at Trinity International University. I don’t attend the EHS conference as often as I should, partly because they meet at a difficult time in the semester and partly because I don’t enjoy traveling (probably more the latter than the former).

This year, however, I not only attended, I presented a paper entitled “Prophet, Priest or Stand-Up Comedian? The Priestly Role of the Sermon.” The environment of the EHS is wonderfully supportive, not at all like some other meetings where academics gather. Perhaps this is because the EHS isn’t made up solely of academics. It is a society of preachers. The atmosphere is collegial and the attendees are interested and encouraging.

Still, I found the experience unnerving. I finished feeling a great sense of ambivalence, torn between a desire to run away and hide in shame and a compulsion to stand at the door with a sheepish grin in a desperate bid for compliments. I walked away promising myself that I would “never try that again.”

But then, if you ever done any preaching, you know exactly how I felt. It’s pretty much the same after every sermon. I finish the message feeling a curious mixture of relief, self-loathing and insecurity. Basically, preaching is like being in the 8^th grade…FOREVER. Lately I’ve been thinking about giving it up. But I doubt that would make me feel any better.

One of my former students has started a Facebook group devoted to discussing matters related to preaching. Sounds like fun! Check it out at http://www.facebook.com/home.php#!/pages/Biblical-Exposition-MBI/136375829745690

The Power of the Pulpit

July 22, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ 16 Comments

The pulpit has fallen on hard times in today’s evangelical churches. While I don’t have scientific data to back this up, it’s my personal observation that the pulpit has fallen into disfavor. Of course pulpit furniture, like any other kind of furniture, is subject to the whims and vagaries of designers’ tastes. The pulpit furniture of some churches seems dated, like the stainless steel and sputnik inspired décor that filled many of the homes we grew up in during the 50’s. Still, as a preacher, I have always had a great affection for pulpits. I am disappointed that they seem to be becoming a relic of the past.

The place of the pulpit in worship is more than a merely pragmatic decision. It has always had theological as well as aesthetic significance. Many churches that come from a sacramental tradition locate it to the side, so that the altar where Eucharist is served can have center stage. This is no accident. This is a way of focusing worshipper’s attention on what is considered to be the most important aspect of the service. In these churches the sermon is important but not as important as the sacrament. Some churches in this tradition actually use two pulpits, located at each end of the chancel, one for the reading of Scripture and the other for the sermon, with the altar at the center. Following the Reformation, churches in the Protestant tradition relocated the pulpit to the center. This was intended to symbolize the centrality of the word of God and highlight the importance of the sermon in the worship service.

My favorite pulpits are in the classic style. Massive and sturdy, they are broad shouldered and look as if they were intended to bear weight. They are dark and imposing, as if their designers expected the word of God and the sermons they were meant to cradle to bear down on them. I like a pulpit that is wide enough to grip and durable enough to support me. I want a pulpit I can lean on. Like the tree from which it was carved, I want one that feels as if it has immovable roots. I want a pulpit that has an air of dignity and history. I want a pulpit worthy of the title “sacred desk.”

Sadly, the church treats these old pulpits as if they were an embarrassment. They have been hidden away, relegated to dusty closets, musty basements, and the occasional out of the way Sunday school class. They have been replaced by spare, anorexic imitations of their forebears. Undernourished and gaunt, they are not pulpits at all but really only lecterns. Many modern pulpits are designed to be invisible to the worshiper. Made of Plexiglas and plastic, they are built to disappear, in the hope that they will not be perceived as a barrier between the preacher and the people. While I understand this sentiment, I think it is foolish and wrong headed. It implies that the preacher ought to be the focal point of sermon. I disagree. The focal point is the message not the messenger.

Even worse is the tendency to replace the pulpit with a music stand. This substitution is often not only functionally inadequate; I believe it sends the wrong message to the congregation. It treats the Bible and the sermon as if they were merely afterthoughts. It gives the appearance that the word of God has been shoehorned into the order service, squeezed in after its most important elements have been completed. I am not suggesting that our churches will be transformed if we dust off the old pulpits and restore them to their former place. That will depend upon what is done with the Bibles that are placed on them.

Offering the Hope of the Gospel in the House of Death

July 6, 2010July 6, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ 6 Comments

I was once asked to perform the funeral for a neighbor’s son who had committed suicide. He was a hard living man who plied the waters of the Illinois River working on a barge. During his life he expressed little interest God.

God alone knows the heart, but by all outward appearances, this lack of interest did not change on the day he took his life. Like so many others in this sin torn world, he lived without God and died without him.

I felt nervous when his parents asked me to officiate at the funeral. They were not church going people. They did not want church music. Instead, they asked the funeral home to play “Proud Mary,” the song made famous by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I breathed a sigh of relief when the funeral director politely informed the family that he didn’t have a copy of that particular song on hand. But I worried that they might ask me to recite the lyrics like poetry. I imagined myself standing before the coffin chanting:

Big wheel keep on turnin’,
Proud Mary keep on burnin’,
Rollin’, rollin’, rollin’ on the river.

Instead, I preached a sermon about the foolish man who built his house on the sand: “The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash” (Matt. 7:27).

How do you offer comfort to people who have no reason to hope for it? What can you say to those whose loved ones have ordered their lives in such a way that they have left little room for God? I thought about the advice we had been given in seminary for dealing with situations like this. Back then an old school preacher with a booming voice and a soft heart who taught courses in preaching and pastoral care had urged: “Gentlemen, don’t say anything about the destiny of their loved ones. Leave that to God. Just preach the hope of the gospel and make the condition of faith plain.”

I confess that at the time I wondered if this approach was a little soft. “After all,” I reasoned, “if these people have rejected Christ, why not come right out and say it? The shock might do the mourners some good.” That was when I was young and brash. It was only after pastoral ministry took me to the bedsides, emergency rooms, and funeral visitations of my congregation that I really learned to look into the hollow eyes of grief.

So when the time came to do the funeral, I followed my old professor’s advice. I chose to trade in hope not despair. I preached the hope of gospel, making the need for faith in Christ clear, and left judgment of the deceased in the hands of God. I’m glad I did. He can handle the responsibility better than I can.

Helmut Thielicke: Preaching Amidst the Rubble

June 24, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

During the last days the Third Reich, as the Nazi terror struggled in its final throes and allied bombs rained down on Stuttgart, Helmut Thielicke preached a remarkable series of sermons based on the Lord’s Prayer. These were days of uncertainty and death. On more than one occasion the shriek of air raid sirens interrupted the sermon.

Thielicke writes that during this period there were times when he felt utterly stricken: “My work in Stuttgart seemed to have gone to pieces; and my listeners were scattered to the four winds; the churches lay in rubble and ashes.”

In one of the messages from this series, based upon the petition “Thy Kingdom come,” Thielicke describes an encounter with a woman from his congregation. It happened as he was standing in the street looking down into the pit of a cellar–all that remained from a building that an allied bomb had shattered. The woman approached him and declared, “My husband died down there. His place was right under the hole. The clean-up squad was unable to find a trace of him; all that was left was his cap.”

What does a pastor say in a moment like this? “I’m sorry,” hardly seems adequate. But the woman had not come to Thielicke for sympathy. She wanted to express her gratitude. “We were there the last time you preached in the cathedral church” she continued. “And here before this pit I want to thank you for preparing him for eternity.”

This is as good a definition of preaching as I have heard. Better, perhaps, than many, because of its stark realism. Preaching is preparing others for eternity. Preaching is having the last word. To preach is to take your stand before the pit and bear witness to the rubble of this ash heap world that the Kingdom of God is at hand.

Preaching and the Authority of the Text

June 21, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

Preaching derives its authority from the text of Scripture. Our work of correcting, rebuking and encouraging all flow from a more fundamental command: “Preach the Word” (2 Tim. 2:4). Without the authority of the biblical text there would be no authority for preaching.

There are some who prefer to point past the text and locate the preacher’s authority in the ideas of Scripture, generally in the gospel or more particularly in the person of Christ. In his book Homiletic, for example, David Buttrick writes: “Of course, when we claim that the Bible is our ‘authority,’ we are pointing past text, and past even the gospel in scripture, to God-for-us in Jesus Christ.” Buttrick admits that there are many who believe that God has conferred authority on the Scriptures themselves and are convinced that “the Bible has been designated ‘Word of God’ by divine fiat to rule the church.” But he clearly sees this as a problem.

Buttrick is right to say that the Scriptures point beyond themselves to Christ. Jesus asserted as much when he told the religious leaders: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is these that testify about Me; and you are unwilling to come to Me so that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). But Jesus also testified to the authority of the biblical text, down to the smallest letter and to the least stroke of the pen (Matt. 5:18). He said that Scripture cannot be broken (John 10:35).

It is certainly possible to misunderstand the Scriptures. We can intentionally twist the Scriptures. But we cannot put Jesus at odds with the text of Scripture without putting Jesus at odds with himself. To attribute authority to Christ but to deny it to the Scriptures is a contradiction. The Scriptures bear witness to Christ and Christ bears witness to the Scriptures. They both speak of each other and they both speak with the same voice.

On Preachers and Preaching: The Divorce Between Theology and the Pulpit Part II

June 16, 2010June 16, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ Leave a comment

The church’s suspicion of the practical value of theology, though misguided, is not without some basis in experience. Helmut Thielicke’s humorous portrait of the young theological student who comes home from seminary and unleashes his learning on an unsuspecting church reflects the perception of many laypeople when it comes to theology: “Under a considerable display of the apparatus of exegetical science and surrounded by the air of the initiated, he produces paralyzing and unhappy trivialities, and the inner muscular strength of a lively young Christian is horribly squeezed to death in a formal armor of abstract ideas.”

In its healthy form the speculative nature of theology can enable us to uncover hidden depths of God’s revealed truth. It is the role of theology to help us probe questions we have not thought to ask. But theology can also take unhealthy forms. It may elevate small points and magnify textual obscurities to the degree where all that the theologian has to offer the church are “paralyzing and unhappy trivialities.”

The use of academic language when discussing theology is only one of the factors which contributes to this. The root problem is the theologian’s aim. The goal of most theological writing today is not to theologize the church. The real prize is the recognition and respect of those in the guild and the best way to obtain these is by doing battle. Consequently, the theologian does not approach his subject like a shepherd who is concerned for the well being of the flock but like a knight arrayed for battle. Theological discussion is a jousting match with other members of the guild.

Furthermore, theology’s preoccupation with the interests of the guild breeds an air of condescension, if not outright contempt, towards those who are not members. The average church member senses this and concludes that the task of theological reflection is beyond his grasp. In this way the guild mentality actually fosters the very theological ignorance it condemns. Since the guild is made up primarily of academics, the perspective of the majority of pastors is excluded from the conversation. As a result, pastors read theology for their own personal benefit but do not know how to draw the congregation into the discussion.

On Preachers and Preaching: The Divorce Between Theology and the Pulpit

June 14, 2010 ~ John Koessler ~ 2 Comments

Preaching and theology were lovers once. Though inseparable and mutually devoted to one another at the beginning of their relationship, in these latter days they have become estranged. They are not exactly enemies, but they are hardly friends any more and they are certainly no longer partners.

As is so often the case in these matters, each is inclined to blame the other for the separation. And as is also so often the case, there is some truth in the complaint that they make. Both are guilty of mutual neglect. And both, sad to say, have at times been unfaithful to the other.

Still it must be recognized that if preaching and theology have since found more interesting companions, it was not their original intent. They began their relationship with a common sense of purpose, supported by vows of mutual fidelity. In order to better accomplish their goals, they decided to divide the work between them. Theology was to focus its attention on the higher matters of God, creation and redemption, while preaching would devote itself to the “lower” but equally important concerns of the flock. They did not at first see these tasks as being mutually exclusive. Indeed, they believed that they contributed to one another.

Yet in time the two “grew apart.” The noble questions which first occupied the attention of theology have given way to more obscure matters, many of which prove to be at odds with the bread and butter interests of preaching. Theology prefers the thin air and heady conversation of the classroom and the philosopher’s salon to the dishrag speech and knee scrape anxieties which so often seem to occupy the attention of preaching. Preaching, for its part, has grown impatient with the endless speculation and impractical theorizing that theology loves so much. Preaching criticizes theology for being too detached. Theology accuses preaching of being too parochial.

The sad truth is that neither is very far off the mark.