There are many temptations in preaching. Of this, there can be no doubt.
As a theologian, my own temptations are, at times, to push beyond where people actually are to focus on things that interest me. Instead of considering what they need, I can gravitate to what I find interesting. But I can also over-react to this. I can sometimes avoid speaking direct theological truths out of a worry that their minds will just shut off when I do so.
My own preaching tends to stay pretty close to the contours of the texts given to me for that sermon, but if you have been following along, I have shared a handful where I turned to broader theological points that people need help navigating. For this post I want to consider this a bit more.
One of the things I think preaching needs to do is to constantly hold before a congregation the truth of who God is in Christ, and how his self-giving reorders all things around him. In other words, we need to help people see both the broadest scope of scripture, but also the deepest logic of redemption.
Notice what it will mean to preach scripture faithfully. We have to articulate what must be true for scripture to say what it says. This is what doctrine is. We articulate doctrines (e.g., justification by faith, the atoning work of Christ, the Trinity) so that we can read scripture faithfully. To fail to do this would be to be tossed by the waves.
Many who set out to be “biblical” end up being heretical. This is the history of heresy. Biblicism, or the refusal to read in a “ruled” way, is a failure to read the whole of scripture together in light of who God is and what God has done. The rule the Protestant tradition used for this was the Lord’s Prayer, the 10 Commandments, and the Apostles’ Creed. These were held together with the creedal statements of the early church so that we were never reading scripture alone, as if we were the first one’s to come upon it. Rather, we read with the Spirit-filled community of faith.
In the rhythm of my church’s preaching schedule, it became clear that the doctrine we struggle to preach is the incarnation. We have days set aside, at least once a year, for the transfiguration of Jesus, the Trinity, Pentecost, and the ascension of Jesus. But those sermons don’t often focus in the incarnation itself. The most obvious Sunday would be Christmas, but often in the Christmas season we are proclaiming a broader message for those who might be in church for the first time that year.
So I have taken it upon myself to try to preach the difficult doctrine of the incarnation without reduction to my congregation. This one was a struggle. But I want to be clear that I see this as very much a part of the spiritual formation of my church. The incarnation of Jesus is not a minor doctrine, nor is it a useless piece of abstract theology. In the incarnation we find the core of the Gospel.
But also, it is impossible to read the Bible without having a view of these things. I think some folks think they can “just read the Bible” and not do theology, but that is absurd. You cannot read about Jesus being “from above” and not have a view of what that means (John 8:23). You cannot hear Jesus talk about the “glory I had with you [the Father] before the world existed” (John 17:5), and not construct a way to understand that. You cannot hear Jesus praying in Gethsemane about willing something different than the Father wills, without struggle to make sense of what this entails (Mark 14:36).
For most evangelicals, I worry, the solution is to believe things that are false to maintain their vision of “being biblical.” All of the great heresies sought to be biblical, but did so in a way that led them to reductive visions of God and his action in history. These questions are not just for a seminary classroom, but are the life-blood of our faith and life with the Lord.
So here is my first attempt to preach the incarnation without reduction. There are things I would do differently now. There are things I wish I could clarify further (and plan to). But since we’re all learning and growing together, I hope this is helpful.