Wednesday, February 06, 2008

Sermonizing a song

Just thought I might share a little sermon preparation angst with you. I hope the following dilemmas make sense. Any tips welcome, though really the sermon ought to be ready by supper time.

As a general rule I would have thought its good if the style and manner of our preaching matches the genre and feel of the passage we’re preaching from. I guess that under God we're usually after the same emotional response and rhetorical effect that the original writer intended to produce.

I’m preparing to preach on Psalm 98 which is an exuberant call to triumphant praise. Enthusiasm and even a little flamboyance would seem called for. I wont be breaking in to song, but a little loudness wouldn’t be out a place (vv4-6).

Yet I feel tempted to crunch the Psalm down into clear propositions. I feel the need for headings and structure. I’m toying with rearranging the material (something like: 1. What should be done? 2. By whom should it be done? 3. Why should it be done?). Its a way of mining the psalm for its teaching but this would be a move away from the poetry of the psalm that I’m reluctant about. A line by line approach might help me to stick to the feel of the psalm rather more.

Maybe I’m over attached to the attractiveness of a neat(ish) handout! I don’t want to sacrifice clarity or precision yet I fear that showing too much scaffolding in my sermon may not be the best way to get the effect of psalm across.

I know there ought to be practical applications, but too many specific take-home lessons about what our corporate worship should be like, for example, seem to risk blunting the call to praise the Lord! But I guess that sometime somehow such applications also need to be made from such texts, if they genuinely are implied by them, since when would they otherwise be made?

Maybe they shouldn’t be, but some of these things can seem like competing concerns and I’m not sure which of them really matter (or matter for the sermon) and how best to do justice to them all. We are going to sing a version of the Psalm (Sing To God New Songs of Worship) and we’ve tried to pick some other stuff that fits its mood. Maybe it would be good to read the psalm aloud together too?

Perhaps I need to do some more thinking about specifically what the sermon's for. I'm not sure I really know the ideal I'm aspiring to! But I guess as the clock is ticking I'll probably just try to say some true and useful things from the passage without being too dull...
Posted by Marc Lloyd at 10:58 am
Labels: ,

5 comments:

Ros said...

Well, you could try singing the sermon...

I think it would be fine not to rearrange into headings and just work through the material, noting when themes recur like refrains int he song. Circling round ideas can be as useful as dissecting them. And certainly end with the triumphant praise to which we're called. Loudly and joyfully! You could even ask for some audience participation.

1:13 pm
Neil Jeffers said...

Marc,

Not a specific comment on Ps 98.

Is it true we generally want the same rhetorical impact the author had?

Much as I agree with the "not just what the passage says, but the way it says it" advice, I can see many possible exceptions.

What if you're preaching "You foolish Galatians" to your congregation who are generally mature, godly, humble and probably tending more to antinomianism than to legalism (or maintaining inappropriate covenantal boundary markers - whatever it's about!)?

Might it not be a disservice to them to preach the text in the style it was written? We might say, shouldn't have chosen Galatians as the sermon series then, but if we have, what to do?

4:24 pm
Marc Lloyd said...

Neil,

Yes, I agree.

Of course Galatians would have lots to teach any congregation but not necessarily that they are foolish and almost certainly that they are not Galatians.



I'm also wondering about how much hedging and qualifying we want. Preaching on Ps 98 its tempting to say that God doesn't have a body (v1) and doesn't have memory lapse problems (v3), but I guess these things probably don't need to be said and could detract.

4:32 pm
Anonymous said...

Hi Marc et al,

Take the points above, but I very much empathise with your dilemma between points and impact (to put it crudely).

I think on the whole we do want to keep the tone of the passage for surely it is created by the God-given words. In Galatians, for example, we may not want to call the old people foolish, but we wnat to maintain that sense of exasperation and irritation Paul had with those who had lost sight of the heart of the gospel - to demonstrate how painful it was to him and should be to us. It's also true that we aren't always to be seeing our congregation as the commiters of that particular error (though they may be - we don't know their hearts) but might also be equipping them to have the same love and pain for those they see who fall foul of legalism(their friends etc) I suppose I'd also argue that if you carry on through Galatians, you'll get to deal with antinomianism...

Back to Psalm 98 and what you preached looked great. But I'm slowly working through in my sermons how to balance the teaching of truths with the impact of the preaching event. Listening to Tim Keller, he talks of having moved from having lots of points for people to take away as handouts and look out, to trying through every passage to point and move people to Jesus. It's a hard thing and requires thinking deeply about how you present what you preach - particularly thinking not just what information you would like people to leave with, but how you would like them to leave. e.g. there are many grat things to take away from Psalm 98, but ultimately in a time of covenant renewal, do we not want people to leave actualy praising the Lord, in harmony with the roaring and the clapping and the singing of creation, for the salvation they have in Christ Jesus?

I think it is here that hedging and qualifying particularly distract. Sometimes these things need to be done, but I generally find that it is qualifying hat I think I should do which lengthens my sermons and ruins their flow. When wondering about qualifications, I think we need to sit and ask oursleves what questions people ask of the passage sitting in the pew, and I think people take the poetry enough on face value not to be concerned with the right hand and the remembering.
THat's an awful long blurb, bits of which may not make sense... Gad to see you guys keeping going- hope things are well,
Ben

2:15 pm
Marc Lloyd said...

Thanks, Ben. Yep, I think I agree.

Must listen to some Keller sometime. I think one has to pay for most of his sermons, though?

I assume you're Ben Walker: how are things?

2:45 pm

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)