Viewpoint: Ten things to do with a sermon

Gordon Matties

Most people forget most sermons by the middle of the week. Recently someone told me he'd just as soon sit in the car and read a good book as listen to a sermon. As an occasional preacher, I find these are forbidding thoughts. What's more, even if I think everyone is listening, I can't speak to everyone's situation every time.

So did I waste my Saturday preparing that sermon on repentance? Why not simply offer people a thought-byte or two? Instead of 20 minutes on John the Baptist's call to repentance, I could have given them my 55-word synthesis of Matthew's repentance theme to post on their refrigerator door in the hope that it would edify them throughout the week.

But that wouldn't be a sermon. And I don't suppose most congregations are about to replace sermons with a thought for the week.

Our problem is that most of us have grown up listening to sermons without ever knowing what we were to be listening for. Preachers have countless resources for how to prepare, construct and deliver sermons. Yet I've never read anything on how to listen to a sermon.

I suggest, therefore, that it's time for the congregation to take some responsibility for the sermon. To assume that it's up to the preacher to communicate effectively with us is asking too much if we're not willing to work at listening. We listeners have to create a way of entering the sermon, especially when the sermon doesn't create an easy entry point for us.

If we listen well, we will share the burden of sermon preparation and delivery. Making the sermon "ours" will mean that we will have less to criticize after walking out the door. Active listening may even help us discover that sermons are rather good food for body and soul.

Listening well is learning to pay attention

Simone Weil, in her book Waiting for God, suggests that paying attention is the virtue that trains us in prayer. Listening well is a spiritual discipline. Since we're not likely to change every sermon to suit the tastes and needs of every one of us, the best strategy is to change the way each of us listens. That way, we become as responsible for what we "take" from a sermon as preachers are for what they "give" us. Rather than seeing ourselves as an audience, why not become partners in the sermon? The sermon can then be a responsive part of worship--a "service" that we all offer to God rather than a speech telling us what we ought to do or feel.

Listening well involves using the imagination

What you hear is not the same as what's been spoken. No sermon can get into your head, your experience or your heart unless you do something. Only you can open your mind or heart to the Spirit. You can actively invite the newness and nurture that God wishes to bring into your life by His Word. Let me explain:

1. Listen from within your experience. Bring all of who you are and put it on the table: work, love, children, friendships, loneliness, fear, addiction, anger. Whatever your life experience, whether joy or pain, whether stability or disorientation, find a crack somewhere into which your imagination can slip. Then push at what you hear, as though it is a wedge. As a crack opens a space in the sermon, imagine what you might say, if given an opportunity, to fill out what you need to hear so that the sermon can touch your experience.

2. Imagine your way into the sermon's agenda. Among other things, a preacher may be trying to change our minds, move us to commitment, invite us to act in the light of the gospel or nurture our relationship with God. Yet many sermons don't begin by telling us those things. Imagine what the sermon wants to do. What outcomes are necessary for this sermon to have been successful in accomplishing its purpose?

3. Imagine yourself rewriting the sermon. One person, the preacher, cannot be master of the biblical text. Sermons are always submitted to the congregation for discernment. A sermon offers only one voice; you must add your own. Ask yourself What does this text mean for me today? How would I put that into words if I were preaching? What would I add? What would I omit? What would I change?

4. Imagine an illustration. Some congregations offer people time to respond to every sermon. Sometimes people stand to share an illustration that puts a unique spin on the sermon, or that provides a concrete example of an abstract idea from the sermon. Even if you can't do that publicly, imagine your own story that demonstrates the truth you are hearing.

5. Imagine a piece of music or artwork you know that offers a window into what you are hearing. Imagine using that piece as an object lesson for the congregation, explaining how this work embodies the biblical text or sermon.

6. Imagine people you know. Are there people who embody the virtues highlighted in the sermon? Are there people whose lives might be touched with the healing and hope you are hearing? Listen for how you might channel grace to others because of what you are hearing.

7. Imagine what response the sermon is calling you to make. Ask how the theology in the text or sermon challenges or supports what you've always thought to be true, right, good or beautiful. Imagine being wrong. What would need to change about your behaviour? What should change in your attitudes?

Not all sermons move toward a decision. You may wish to make that imaginative move yourself. As a result of the sermon, what action is called for? When will you begin to act on what you have decided? What first steps will you take?

8. Imagine hearing the text from the underside. Sermons often identify with a central character, or a person in charge. Imagine the text from the side of what's left out, or who's left out. What insight would you offer from that vantage point in the text? What could you add to the sermon without denying the different perspective of the preacher?

9. Imagine a New World in which what you hear is truly practised. Jesus called this "seeking the kingdom". Ask yourself what hinders your wholehearted search for the kingdom. What prevents you from acting out that vision in your life?

10. Now it's your turn I invite readers to make suggestions for active sermon listening and send them to me. Perhaps we'll include a list of these suggestions in a future issue of the Herald.

Active listening puts an end both to silence and to criticism. It frees us to interact with the preacher in a healthy way because we become responsible for what we hear. Listening is hard work. It requires an imagination that moves us beyond the words we hear from the front. Disciplined and creative listening will change us, for in listening we practise what Paul recommends--that we offer our bodies and allow our minds to be transformed (Romans 12:1-2). To listen actively is to turn the sermon into a prayer in the presence of God's transforming Spirit.

Gordon Matties is associate professor of Old Testament at Concord College in Winnipeg. He can be reached at 169 Riverton Ave., Winnipeg R2L 2E5, phone 1-204-669-6583, fax 1-204-663-2468, email gmatties@ConcordCollege.mb.ca

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