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Preachers set some remarkably large assignments before people. Preachers ask that listeners change their worldview, give their money, and sacrifice their life. On what authority do they such things? There are many potential sources of authority, from the preacher’s own personality to the Word of God itself. Usually, the question comes down to a battle between the text and today.
Preachers, on one hand, offer the listener the authority of the text, God’s Word, given in print. On the other hand, preacher’s can speak to the listener’s own built-in sense of authority. The preacher can speak to today. Usually, these two worlds are described as opposite ends of a polarized spectrum, distant and inaccessible from one another. The job of the preacher, then, is to build a bridge that will allow the listener to journey back to the original text and then return again to the contemporary situation. The challenge, of course, is to ensure that the listener makes both legs of the journey.
This model, forces the preacher to make some difficult choices. Exactly how much text and how much today ought such a sermon offer? How much time should be spent in each world? Traditionally, preachers have erred on the side of the text. After all, the listener spends most of their life in the world. More time in the text might serve to counterbalance that inequity. A traditional sermon according to this thinking might look something like this:
This sermon takes great pains to present the text of Scripture with, perhaps, a contemporary story at the conclusion, to make some kind of application.
Recently, however, preachers and listeners have seemed less satisfied with this kind of approach. In the desire to gather more listeners, contemporary preachers have turned the paradigm on its head. A contemporary sermon, might look something like this:
In this sermon, the preacher is interesting and entertaining. The sermon speaks to the life of the listener today, and perhaps, a little tidbit of Scripture is thrown in, just to make it a sermon.
In both of these approaches, the parallel worlds of text and today are kept separate and distant from one another. This distance is the bane of the preacher. It is this distance that causes listeners to doubt the value of sermons as they are preached, from either paradigm. On one hand, the sermon seems irrelevant, but vaguely important. On the other, the sermon is interesting, but mostly lacking value. In the end, the listener finds little authority in either approach.
It is possible, however, that our problem is with the paradigm itself. Perhaps it is possible that the side-by-side model is itself wrong.
In this model, we realize that the text is not distant from today. The text is today. We understand that the Bible, as the Word of God, is alive and active. It is God breathing (2 Timothy 3:16,17). It is not a dead document but lives with the life-breath of God himself. We know, also, that the people and events of the text are really not all that different from the people and events of today. Yes, we may have to explain who the Hittites were, or what a Shophar is, but in the end, the distinctives are not relevant.
Preaching that understands that the text is today will find authority for the preaching as people connect with the real human promise and challenge that is described in the text God has inspired.