 1 of 3
 
PREACHING SKILLSPreaching Through Personal PainIf you have a crisis, should your sermons discuss it?Daniel T. Hans
"Two days ago my daughter Laura died."
So opened the most difficult sermon I have ever had to preach. In that message, titled "God on the Witness Stand," I put myself in the place of Job, who, when assaulted by horrible personal tragedy, declared, "But I would speak to the Almighty, and I desire to argue my case with God."
That morning I preached a dialogue between myself as the prosecutor and God as the defendant. For nine months I had helplessly watched my 3-year-old lose her physical and mental abilities to a malignant brain tumor, and I had a strong case against God.
Friends questioned the wisdom of my decision to preach so soon after my daughter's death. Could I withstand it? Could the congregation handle the emotional impact?
But if I did not use my personal life as the basis for preaching during this time of crisis, would I have either an audience or a message for someone else's time of pain?
Exegeting our experience
Those who caution against becoming too personal in preaching raise necessary questions. Does a preacher have the right to carry his or her own confusion and pain into the pulpit? Doesn't such transparency focus more upon the preacher than the Lord? Does not personal exposure in preaching turn the pulpit into a soap opera and denigrate the ministry of proclamation into self-aggrandizement? Certainly discretion must be employed in what the preacher says about personal matters from the pulpit. However, in response to these cautions, a counter question must be asked: Shouldn't a human preacher be human in preaching?
That sermon preached two days after my daughter's death was one of many messages composed at my daughter's bedside in the hospital and her deathbed in our home. Those sermons constituted a collection of feelings and convictions as intimate as private prayers. I must confess that little biblical exegesis went into them. My own life became my primary source. My prayers and reflections became my commentaries.
As I preached in the midst of my pain, I was unaware of particular features of my sermons that later proved healing and directive for my congregation. Looking back, however, I can identify four characteristics of preaching that should be present whenever I attempt to preach through pain.
Vulnerability: admitting the pain
Vulnerability heads the list. While this has become an overworked word in the jargon of pastoral ministry, it has no suitable substitute. Openly expressing sorrow in the pulpit does not constitute professional sin for preachers. On several occasions, I couldn't keep back the tears. Controlling my pained emotions proved no problem when I stared at myself in the mirror. But somehow my control dissipated as I stood in the pulpit looking out at faces visibly suffering with me. It was painful for my congregation to see me cry, yet it was tremendously healing for them and for me. One member whose earlier years had been clouded by drug abuse confided in me, "Your tears helped free me to face some painful things in my life that I've tried to hide behind a fake wall of strength."
The greatest resource in preaching through my own pain was the Old Testament Prophets and Wisdom Literature. I mined those writings thoroughly, for I found therein faith's best reflections upon the injustices of life, placed beside the reality of God and the futility of attempting to categorize and control him.
Arthur Gossip, a Scottish preacher from the early 1900s, lost his wife suddenly. Upon his return to the pulpit following her death, he preached "When Life Tumbles In, What Then?" In that message, Gossip announced that he did not understand this life of ours. But still less could he understand how people facing loss could abandon the Christian faith. "Abandon it for what!" he exclaimed. Speaking from the darkest storm of his life, he concluded, "You people in the sunshine may believe the faith, but we in the shadow must believe it. We have nothing else."
Honesty: equal access for anger
A second necessary characteristic of preaching in the midst of personal pain is honesty. Honesty holds vulnerability accountable, adding the following caution: We must not talk about our struggles from the pulpit unless the thoughts and feelings expressed truly belong to us. If hope and strength characterize our emotions, let that be known. However, if hope and strength have abandoned us, then in the pulpit we must not pretend to possess them. People will see through our veneer and therefore doubt our integrity.
As grief must be given access to the pulpit, so also must anger and doubt. Here I balked. I had often used the sovereignty of God as an excuse for allowing life's loose ends to remain untied. Now, when I spoke of hope, I found I was ignoring my own strongly felt doubts. Unwilling to face honestly my inner anger toward God, I bailed out when opportunities arose to address my indignation in the pulpit. In the year following my daughter's death, I put together a book that was my "pulpit journal" during those nine months surrounding my family's travail. A counselor friend offered this comment after reading it: "While I appreciated the insights you shared, I think you let God off the witness stand too soon. Your anger was not allowed to present fully its case against God."
| 
Printer view
back to top
