Shape and Substance

Shape and Substance
Paul Hooker
12 November 2024
No. 1

I have a bone to pick with preachers. And since I was one for forty-plus years, I’ll include myself among the pick-ees.

I’ve had all I can take of homiletical moralizing.

Moralizing, in case you were wondering, is defined by St. Merriam of Webster as

1: to explain or interpret morally
2 a: to give a moral quality or direction to
b: to improve the morals of

You know what I mean. The preacher reads some text, perhaps gospel or epistle, and then proceeds—either implicitly or explicitly—to deduce a set of behaviors obligatory for Christians, each preceded by some form or hortatory. We must do something; we must not think something. We must be like (insert name of biblical hero); we must not be like (insert name of biblical goat).

This is not new; preachers have been doing this since the Hebrew prophets and the apostle Paul, and probably before. And I can hear myself as a younger man, without much knowledge or appreciation of the art of preaching, sawing away at a congregation with the dull blade of adjuration. We must …we must not. I feel a strong need to apologize to the good people of the three congregations where I regularly preached for what I put them through. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.

Sunday’s sermon in the congregation where I worship was a good example of what I mean. The morning’s preachment, we were told, was the last in this year’s stewardship season (for those unaccustomed to churchly rhythms, “stewardship season” is akin to a public television fund drive, only without the enticements of themed coffee mugs and canvas tote bags). During such a sermon, the preacher said, he “ought to be talking about pledges and giving”…but he was eschewing all that to focus on the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his definition of ministry as “humility.” We were then treated to a 20-minute lecture on being humble, accompanied by all manner of admonitions about what “we must do” or “must not think.” At the end, he recited a recycled tale from the writings of Fred Craddock, a story about how the author’s father came to appreciate the importance of the church on his deathbed after a lifetime of denying it. What Craddock’s father’s almost-too-late-in-life learning had to do with humility—or stewardship, or the gospel text, for that matter—was not elucidated, except for the concluding moral that “it’s important to admit you were wrong.” That was it; sermon over. In the name of Christ, amen.

It seems to me that moralizing is cheap and lazy preaching. It ducks out on any commitment to creativity, thereby making no demand on the preacher to think originally or write/speak innovatively. All I have to do is list the things I want to see happen, and then put “I/We must” in front of each, then find some clever or emotionally manipulative story in one of the many books or websites I have at my disposal, and there, sermon done. Moralizing also allows listeners off the hook by not demanding of them that they try on the garments of the text for size, to see whether and how the text might make a demand of them that is distinct from that demanded of the person sitting next to them in the pew. No need to think, no need to assess whether the truth claimed by the preacher comports with the truth as I understand it. One size fits all; here’s your dose of behavior modification for the morning.

There are all manner of explanations as to why churches are struggling (and mostly failing) to thrive. Just add my observation to that canon of critique: preachers are too eager to tell their beleaguered congregations what they must do or think or be. Whether it’s offering an extended homily on how to be humble or demanding conformity with the latest in progressive pronouncements on pronominal linguistics, have we not reached a point of saturation with moralizing? Have we not filled the cups of congregational attention to overflowing with adjurations and admonishments? All those bowed heads in the pews: are they really reflecting on their need for repentance, or have they taken the moment to check out on the preachments and check in on their smart phones for the scores of last night’s college football games?

In the last few years of my active ministry, I was trying to find another way to preach, one that didn’t involve me telling people what I thought they needed to know or do or think. I was never really successful at this; there is something about preaching that poses an almost irresistible invitation to the preacher to improve the behavior of those gathered before the preachment. But I saw a vision of it in something my former colleague, the late Blair Monie, once called “atmospheric” preaching—trying to create with the colors of language the atmosphere and environment within which hearers (and preachers?) hear the text anew and afresh and for themselves, rather than being instructed by the preacher on its meaning and application. I think I got close a time or two—maybe the baccalaureate sermon I preached (over Zoom) for the 2020 graduating class of Austin Seminary, or this ordination sermon I preached in 2021—but the effort it took was enormous. I don’t know if it’s something a weekly preacher can do weekly. All I know is that occasionally being lost in the mythic landscape of the text without having someone else’s homiletical roadmap to rescue me feels like adventure and delight, and I’d like to do it more often.

Maybe you would, too?