“Great is Yahweh, and highly to be praised, And His greatness is unsearchable.” (Psalm 145:3, LSB)
I remember it vividly because of the shock I had when he spoke the words. I was an associate pastor of a small church and was soaking up every practical ministry lesson I could. “I hate preaching holidays like Christmas and Easter,” he said.
“Why?” I couldn’t fathom a Christian pastor ever uttering those words. Unfortunately, I have heard versions of that same sentiment ever since I first heard it.
“I have a hard time finding something new to say,” the pastor replied. As a young man just starting out in ministry, I could see his point. If you preached for 40 years (and never repeated a sermon at a different church), you would need to write 40 sermons on some aspect of Christ’s birth and the resurrection. If you preach a special message about communion, the task grows exponentially.
I’m on the other end of the spectrum–maybe even a little farther down the road than the pastor who spoke those shocking words to me. So, have I come to adopt the same sense of dread? No, and the words of Psalm 145:3 are part of the reason why.
I have found that when I preach to an “audience,” I am especially mindful of their reactions and responses. I am not much different from an orator, stand-up comedian, politician, commencement speaker, or anyone else who is seeking to win the approval of their listening audience. Such a person would be reasonable in wanting a positive response and in seeking some form of entertainment or fulfillment. I have seen many pastors do this very thing. And that can stir up the feeling that we need to say something novel, or something that will impress listeners so they keep coming back. But this can become a trap, like a hamster wheel of pleasing our audience or they will become bored with God, with the church, and worst of all in this mindset: bored with us!
Some homileticians have argued that expositional preaching is dying because listeners don’t want it. Some have said it isn’t a biblical model to just stand in front of people and tell them what the Bible says (even though Jesus and the Apostles did just that). But when all the arguments are laid out, they all amount to the desire to scratch the hearer where they itch.
Can we take a step back for a second and meditate on the verse above? Our God is great! We, as preachers of the Scriptures, get to open our Bibles and tell people about this great God every time we step into the pulpit, sit down in a discipleship setting, or meet in counseling. Then out of the overflow of that magnificent truth comes forth praise for this God! Here we can see our goal is not to entertain, but to have those who hear us, both believers and unbelievers, walk out of our churches in awe of the God within the pages of Scripture. If we aim to have them see our preaching as something great, we have greatly missed the point of our calling!
And finally, there is no end to this greatness, and thus no end to our speaking about our great God. “His greatness is unsearchable,” David wrote. And to illustrate this truth, he wrote this 21-verse song in an acrostic form to put on full display the beauty and majesty of his Subject.
It’s Saturday morning, and I have to wonder how many pastors will muddle through another sermon they have to write because they have to preach tomorrow. If that’s you, you may have lost the reason why God has called you to be one of His heralds. It’s not about you or your listeners. It’s all about Him. Even if it’s only you and the church mouse, proclaim the majestic glories of our Risen Savior tomorrow–and then do it again and again until Jesus calls you home.
Discussion
NewNot Sure I Agree
I always enjoyed the privilege of preaching the Word, but I have to disagree with our brother on a number of points.
A good preacher should work hard not only at presenting the text, but holding the attention of the congregation. One of my profs at Moody told us, “Never bore people with the Word of God.” Today’s crowd is less likely to have focused attention than the crowd from 50 years ago. And the crowd 50 years ago had less focused attention than the crowd 50 years before. Of course I am speaking generally. And, frankly, if we bore people, many of them will find it quite easy to go to another church with less content, less doctrinal conviction, less Bible.
I am now retired but was in full time pastoral ministry for nearly 43 years, and I always struggled with preaching for the holidays. I was not bored with preaching, not bored with God, but quite bored with preaching holiday sermons. I don’t think I was ever bored with any other sermons. But it is not just myself being bored with holiday sermons, it is the congregation as well.
I have pastor friends who never change their current series, even for the holidays — except maybe Christmas and Easter. I did not always preach a Mother’s Day or Father’s Day sermon. Some pastors hit every holiday, a patriotic 4th of July Sermon, another one Labor Day or Memorial Day, etc. The only holiday they skip is Ground Hog’s Day!
I learned to preach creative holiday sermons, like “Christmas in Revelation” or a host of other variations to keep from preaching the same thing year after year (I remained in my second and also last church for 39 years). I preached on the Two Josephs and how they were similar, or on altered plans (Joseph and Mary planned to be a normal couple but God changed that; the Wise Men planned to return to Herod, etc.). I preached on the three Nazarites (Samson, Samuel, and John the Baptist). There are only two extensive Christmas narratives, one in Luke and one in Matthew, and I often alternated these on Christmas Sunday, adding perhaps a few new insights or angles. But it didn’t thrill me to preach holiday sermons unless I could come up with a new angle; then it was better. Same issue with Thanksgiving.
Pastors who move around every few years often stop growing in these areas. And although the sermons seemed to be edifying and true to the text, and though I was often built up in some way, the process of sermon preparation (in which I normally delighted) was often interrupted by holiday sermon prep dread. I usually ended up feeling good about the sermons, but I dreaded going into them every year.
Maybe I am unspiritual or maybe I am bored with God. Or maybe I am just being honest with myself. But in my preaching, unless I saw or learned something different, I wasn’t happy.
"The Midrash Detective"
NewDeadness of rote religion
Per Ed's comment, having grown up Methodist, there was a point when the standard lessons of the "church calendar" often got stale, and I remember wondering as a young believer whether I would get bored of the Scriptures after reading them each year....well, 37 years in, not yet.
And not having submitted myself to being a pastor, I guess I'm unlikely to ever learn what it's like to preach 43 Christmas sermons and 43 Easter sermons, but I would like to believe that with all the references to Christ throughout the Scriptures, I'd find something new to say. Or maybe (smile) I'd freak people out with being esoteric.
Aspiring to be a stick in the mud.
NewAnd although the sermons…
Ed, I have to agree, but although I tend to go into the holidays with dread, I tend to come out of them with a bit of satisfaction because I usually end up learning something new. I love expository preaching and look forward to each new message because they just flow naturally from the text. I do not like that interrupted so I tend to only depart for Christmas and Easter. Often the Easter message is easy to fit within whatever book I am preaching through- so much points us to the cross, so it is not unusual for me to just stay in the same book I am preaching in but making an extra focus on the resurrection or the cross for Easter. Christmas tends to be more challenging, but it also helps me to learn more and to dig deeper. Last year I got into more details about Isaiah's virgin passage and how it would make sense to the original audience and to us. Going to the Old Testament and Hebrew tradition has also brought a lot of new information as I got to be a bit of a detective on things of Jewish culture (Hat tip to Ed) in order to tie things to the birth of Christ.
NewHoliday messages
I’m not a pastor or preacher, though I have preached a couple messages over the years. However as a congregant, I look forward to the holiday times, and yes, the messages, although I know I have covered that material many times as a listener.
But isn’t that true with the gospel as well? We have heard it many times, and yet, the message continues to resonate with us. And isn’t the incarnation and virgin birth, i.e. when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, the beginning of its fulfillment? I’m reminded of a verse from a hymn that no longer gets much airplay in our churches:
Or how about this one:
I realize you guys that have preached these messages many holiday seasons may have trouble finding something new, and presenting it in a new way, but don’t underestimate its value to the rest of us, even if we have heard you preach that topic before.
Dave Barnhart
NewFor me it's not so much that…
For me it's not so much that I dread (or am bored with) preaching about the incarnation or the resurrection, but the feeling that the calendar is determining the subject rather than the text. Maybe it's an overreaction to the cultural pressure to preach Hallmark holidays, but I really would rather just keep on preaching through a book and deal with incarnation and resurrection as those subjects arise within the pages of Scripture.
NewCalendar
I sort of understand that, but of course all the feasts and remembrances in the OT took place on the calendar as well, even up through the Year of Jubilee every 50 years. I can just hear someone from that time thinking, “wow, we need to celebrate the Year of Jubilee now, when we’ve just been invaded, and it’s not convenient?” And of course, our Sundays occur with calendar regularity too, so our main day of public worship is not “when we get to it,” but when it inevitably arrives on time.
Maybe the calendar just helps the people of God remember things on a regular basis. We don’t need Hallmark or anyone else tell us what our holidays should look like, but the Bible does give an indication of how regular remembrances worked. Of course, in the NT, we we have the freedom to celebrate the holidays or not, but when it comes to explicitly Christian holidays like Easter or Christmas, I’m personally in the camp of wanting to regularly mark those days rather than not doing so, or only doing so when we actually get to that part of scripture by whatever preaching timetable is being followed.
Dave Barnhart
NewWhile the old covenant…
While the old covenant system was very much tied to a calendar, the NT seems to really deemphasize the idea of recognizing certain days as holy. I've no objection to celebrating Easter and Christmas (so long as we're not going to be legalistic about it), but I do question at times why we fill weeks and weeks with extra activities and events during the "Christmas season," and often only a day to celebrate Christ's resurrection. Of course, there are some churches that observe holy week (in my circle this amounts to maybe a special Good Friday service), but even then it seems like we've allowed our secular culture to dictate what we must do and focus on as a church.