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PREACHING SKILLSSet Free from the Cookie CutterHow the text can form the sermonHaddon Robinson
When we first learn to preach, we need to learn a form to pour our sermons into, such as a three-point, subject-completed outline. But as we mature in our preaching, we need more flexibility in our sermon forms to stay out of the rut. We need to learn to let the text form the sermon, instead of vice versa.
Genre and the form of a sermon
The first step in that direction, of course, is to fully understand the text. You can talk about exegesis, and it can sound cold. Sometimes when people think of exegesis, they think of analyzing words and phrases. But basically what you're trying to do when you exegete a text is to really understand it—understand its flow of thought, how the author is developing that thought.
So when I come to didactic literature, such as Romans or Galatians, I analyze how the thought develops because there tends to be a logical flow. I get to a parable and I can't do that. The danger is to go to an epistle and see that Paul has three moves in a particular paragraph in which I can trace that development, then move over to a parable and try to say there are three things we learn from this parable. One thing you have to say is, Couldn't Jesus have said that? Why did he tell a story when he could have just as easily said, "There are three things I want you to know about God's grace?"
Part of exegesis is to recognize that the form of literature ought to have some influence on the form of the sermon. A sermon developed from didactic literature, the literature of the epistles, will be different than a sermon developed from the parables or from the Psalms or from the narrative literature of the Old Testament, because the writers are using a different form.
For example, if I say to you, "Once upon a time," what do you expect? A story.
If I say, "Dearly beloved, we're gathered here today," what do you expect? A wedding.
Or if I say, "The party of the first part assigns to the party of the second part," what do you expect? A legal document, a contract.
If I say, "And it came to pass," what do you expect? Maybe a parable. You pick up from the Bible a certain tone.
If I say to you, "How do I love thee, let me count the ways," what do you expect? Poetry.
Notice what happens. The minute I give you those clues, you set your mind to a whole new hermeneutical development. Let me give you just one more. If I say, "There were three men: a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, and a Baptist minister," what do you expect? Humor.
So if I start by saying, "Once upon a time," and I give you a story, but you respond as though you were analyzing a legal document, we're going to miss each other badly.
So, there are ground rules that immediately get established based on the form.
We see it easily with English. We all carry this hermeneutical grid around with us. So if I start out by saying, "The party of the first part owes to the party of the second part," and I'm trying to establish a legal contract, but you take it as poetry, we're going to have trouble in court.
So one of the things I have to do is look at a passage and say exegetically, What's going on here? What is the genre? What is the writer doing? You have to assume the author didn't just choose this genre because any old genre would work. If Jesus tells a parable, then I have to be aware when I preach the sermon that I can't treat it as if it's didactic literature. To be true to the Bible, I have to understand the genre; that's part of exegesis. And different genres, different kinds of literature, have different rules.
We understand that in English, yet somehow when we get to the Bible we don't understand it.
So the first job of the preacher is to understand the text for what it says and how it says it, rather than my putting my own grid or mold on it.
One kind of grid we've put on texts for years has been the three points grid. If I go to a psalm, I get three things we learn about suffering from the psalm. But the first question you have to ask: Is the biblical writer giving you three things about suffering? We learned four things about stewardship from Matthew 18 in the parable of the unjust steward (about the man who was forgiven the several million dollars he owed but wouldn't forgive his brother's debt). You take something such as that and you can say, "There are three things we learn about our obligation to God because of his grace." But you have to think, Is that what the biblical writer is doing? Is he giving you three things? Once you say, Oh no, that's not what he's doing , then the question is, What is he doing? And how does this story carry what he is doing? That is an important part of taking the genre of the literature, then working to see how I can incorporate that in my sermon.
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