Read the assigned scripture.
Read the scripture surrounding the assigned scripture.
What is being communicated?
How is it being communicated?
How does it fit into God's story of Creation, Fall, Redemption, and Restoration?
How is it pointing to Christ?
What issues is it speaking to?
How is it challenging you?
These questions shouldn't be mere inquiries into the text, as if you were interrogating it--or hunting for answers. Rather, they should be integrated into the preacher's approach to the text. All scriptural texts point to Christ. All scriptural texts exist in God's redemptive story. Listening to the text involves hearing the text's response to the questions.
Further, these questions shouldn't be asked as if you were above the text, analyzing it. They should be reverently asked, as if you were below the text.
The temptation is to ask only "How can I use this text to teach?" The preacher must begin with "What is the text saying." To start with "How can I use this text" short-circuits the process of listening to the text. Ask the Spirit to confront you through the text. Ask the Spirit to pierce your heart. Ask the Spirit to hear the challenging word, before saying the challenging word. This will revive your soul and will later be the 'raw material' of the sermon.
Take your time.
Listening takes patience.
You may think you have an 'answer'--don't move too quickly.
Listening is an act of prayer.
Showing posts with label exegesis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exegesis. Show all posts
Monday, December 21, 2009
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Primary Considerations: Listening, the All-Important Foundation
And now the end has come. So listen to my piece of advice: exegesis, exegesis, and yet more exegesis! Keep to the Word, to the scripture that has been given to us.
-Karl Barth
(Just before Karl Barth was exiled from Germany in 1935)
“For what we preach is not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as servants for Jesus' sake.”
2nd Corinthians 4:5
We don't preach ourselves, but the Word--the Living Word Christ (John 1) and the scriptural Word. The temptation is to build on a foundation other than the Word. We all have personal stories or great illustrations at the forefront of our minds, good and important though they are, they aren't the foundation of a scriptural message. It's perhaps tautology but the foundation of a scriptural message is: scripture and to that which it points, namely Christ.
In this section we'll look at what it means to do faithful "exegesis". Exegesis means: a critical explanation of a text. The preacher's first task is to be a student of the Word, drawing the meaning out. This requires an act of listening. Before you can draw out what is being communicated in the text, you must listen to the text.
I'm writing a little handbook on preaching for some of my adult leaders. This is the preface, so to speak. More coming.
Listening
There are many approaches to texts. Shuffling through pages, quickly hunting for summary statements and bold words--this is a form of reading that belongs to university libraries. A skeptical reading, looking between the words for cracks in arguments or faults in the story line--this is a form of reading suitable for debate or argumentation. Then we've all read several pages only to find that the words were merely white noise, nothing was retained.
Kierkegaard talks about the reading of scripture as an act of love, like reading a love letter. This is the only way to approach the reading of scripture. Listening to the scripture, within its context, is an act of submission to it--and by extension it is an act of submission to God. In listening to scripture you're setting yourself below the text. You don't offer anything to add, you are under it's tutelage. This is where the preacher must start, you must be under the scripture's tutelage. You must be under the Spirit's tutelage as he points you to the living Word Christ through the scriptural Word. Listening is the appropriate metaphor for the way a preacher reads scripture; before the preacher proclaims he must listen.
-Karl Barth
(Just before Karl Barth was exiled from Germany in 1935)
“For what we preach is not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord, and ourselves as servants for Jesus' sake.”
2nd Corinthians 4:5
We don't preach ourselves, but the Word--the Living Word Christ (John 1) and the scriptural Word. The temptation is to build on a foundation other than the Word. We all have personal stories or great illustrations at the forefront of our minds, good and important though they are, they aren't the foundation of a scriptural message. It's perhaps tautology but the foundation of a scriptural message is: scripture and to that which it points, namely Christ.
In this section we'll look at what it means to do faithful "exegesis". Exegesis means: a critical explanation of a text. The preacher's first task is to be a student of the Word, drawing the meaning out. This requires an act of listening. Before you can draw out what is being communicated in the text, you must listen to the text.
I'm writing a little handbook on preaching for some of my adult leaders. This is the preface, so to speak. More coming.
Listening
There are many approaches to texts. Shuffling through pages, quickly hunting for summary statements and bold words--this is a form of reading that belongs to university libraries. A skeptical reading, looking between the words for cracks in arguments or faults in the story line--this is a form of reading suitable for debate or argumentation. Then we've all read several pages only to find that the words were merely white noise, nothing was retained.
Kierkegaard talks about the reading of scripture as an act of love, like reading a love letter. This is the only way to approach the reading of scripture. Listening to the scripture, within its context, is an act of submission to it--and by extension it is an act of submission to God. In listening to scripture you're setting yourself below the text. You don't offer anything to add, you are under it's tutelage. This is where the preacher must start, you must be under the scripture's tutelage. You must be under the Spirit's tutelage as he points you to the living Word Christ through the scriptural Word. Listening is the appropriate metaphor for the way a preacher reads scripture; before the preacher proclaims he must listen.
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