What Makes A Good Sermon?

Journal  - 1/6/98

Re Sermons in Honor of Geo A Buttrick[1]

In a sense, I am competing with the best preachers in the world, at least with those who preach in English.  With the reference book in mind, I see such sermons as goals for me, yet they aren’t really great sermons.

Well, what makes a great sermon?

The Scripture Lesson (added later):  Mt 19:16-26  “What good deed must I do to have eternal life?”

A Good Sermon

What shall I do?

The question immediately presents itself:  What makes a good sermon?  Ant that in turn leads us to the next question:  What is the purpose of a sermon?  What are we trying to accomplish?

Common wisdom has it that we are ‘preaching the gospel’ – and what, you may ask, is that exactly? Does Jn 3:16 spell it out?  Not in my opinion.

Fundamentalists may see a simplistic concept here – God required a sacrifice a la ancient Israel to atone for the sins of the world, not just for past and present sins but for future sins as well.  Is that it?  God appeared on earth in human form and sacrificed himself to atone for all sins?  Is that the gospel?

Not quite.  There is a whole lot more to the gospel than that – and that is where great preaching begins.  And, I might add, that is where the many approaches to Christianity become manifest.

We, in the Presbyterian Denomination, preach the Reformed Tradition.  We are not exactly sure what that is.  It has something to do with Martin Luther and John Calvin, but we are not exactly sure what.

One thing all the denominations do is to claim that they preach the gospel.  And yet, you can tell a Baptist preacher when you hear him (not many hers).  Their sermons are different from ours.  So, even though we call our sermons ‘preaching the gospel’ are they really?  Naturally, we think so.

It all boils down to this:  What is the gospel?  Is it really a matter of opinion?  Of course not.  But all can receive the Holy Spirit, and proclaim the message he hears.  We prepare ourselves by means of prayer, study (especially bible study), and discussion.  And always we keep our hearts open to receive the Holy Spirit.  We all hear a different drummer – that is, we get different messages from the HS.

Does that mean my message is truer than yours?  I might think so, but Jesus tells me, “Don’t be too sure of yourself.”  I am sure he tells me to proclaim what I believe, but not to claim that that is the gospel.

I would like to think that the congregation expects to hear a new understanding of that message.  I believe that they expect to be inspired – that they want to be up-lifted.

Unfortunately, I Don’t know how to provide that warm glow of self-satisfaction and at the same time tell you to ‘sell what you have and give to the poor’.  If I tell you that, you, too, are going to become sad.

How hard it is for a rich person to enter into the kingdom of heaven.  If I were to preach that sermon, there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house – or any other kind.  You would all depart and not come back.

There aren’t many like St Francis of Assisi anymore.  I am like you!  I like my computer- my private library – my Blazer – my ranch – I don’t want to give up any of my things – in fact I always want more – whatever I have I want one that is bigger, stronger, newer, more expensive.  But – and this the big but – “What shall it profit a person if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?”  Is this really Jesus’ message?

No! It is not!  There are millions of people in this world who do not have a dime to their name, but who are no more spiritual than my dog.  I don’t think Jesus cares about how much we own; he is only concerned with where our heart is.  It was his experience that ‘where a person’s treasure is, there will his heart be also’.

Jesus uses the term ‘kingdom of God’, or as in Matthew ‘kingdom of heaven’ well over 100 times in his ‘preaching, teaching, and healing’; and yet he never told us what it was.  He told us what it was like many times.  The bottom line is that the kingdom of heaven is worth more to us than all the material things we own.  And we will know that when we get there – Paul said, ‘I gave up everything I owned and all my status in the community in order to serve Jesus, but I count all that I gave up as so much trash compared to what I have gained.’

It would be presumptuous of me to try to define something that Jesus didn’t define, and anyway I am not sure I could.  They call ‘The Love of God’ indescribable’, Perhaps ‘The Kingdom of Heaven ‘ is also indescribable.

All we know for sure is that ‘the kingdom of heaven is at hand’ it is near, in fact it is within each of us.  It is like a treasure – it is like a magnificent pearl – it is worth whatever it takes to seek it out.  And when we find it, and become a part of it, that is where our hearts will be.

Summary

To summarize, I have said that a good sermon preaches the gospel – that it proclaims the word of God as we see it revealed in scripture and receive it thru the Holy Spirit.  We study the words of Jesus – looking not only for the surface meaning but also for their deepest meanings.  We find promises that excite us – we, too want the abundant life – we want the peace of God – we want to be a part of the kingdom of heaven.  To that end we ask ourselves, ‘Where is our heart? – Where is our treasure – What is worth more to us than everything else we possess?’

Let Us Pray 

Our Heavenly Father,

We give you thanks for your Son Jesus and his teachings.  We give you thanks for your Holy Word, the Bible.  We confess that we have not followed your teachings as closely as we should have.  Enable us we pray, to get our lives together – to focus on what is important – and to put aside worldly distractions that keep us emotionally distraught.

We ask your blessings in Jesus name.  Amen

This sermon started as commentary on a book, then like Topsy, it just grew.  It is not a sermon – just an idea for one.

Today – 5/31/00 – I feel that a modern sermon should encourage the congregation to move toward the new theology.  I don’t know exactly what that involves, but I think the move away from rationality is a move in the right direction.

Re: The Kingdom of God – The more I think about it and the more I read about it, the more convinced I become that ‘The Kingdom of God’ is the spiritual world.