The Declining State of the Sermon

Having been doing this “church thing” for years now, this “Christian thing”, I’ve heard hundreds, maybe thousands of “messages”, “sermons”, and maybe even a couple homilies. Some of them have made me cry (in a good way); some of them have really opened my eyes and even made me a better person.

However, lately I’ve been thinking that I’ve been duped. You see, I enjoy reading a lot, and I enjoy engaging in the substance and mystery of my faith. The bottom line is that I’m disappointed at our (the church’s) preachers’ abilities to preach the central, basic tenets of our faith.

• What is the role of the cross in our lives?
• What is “life everlasting”?
• What does the common life—our life in community—look like?

To my reading, my understanding, these are central, non-negotiables of Christianity. In addition, we have the mystery of our basic sacraments: baptism and communion. These are treated as little drive-by celebrations and ceremonies, where as I read scripture, these are deeply rooted traditions that are meant to be savored and understood in a slow, leisurely manner. Baptism is more than immersion (or a sprinkle); it’s a passing through the water (an image common and evocative in the ancient world) from death to life. Communion is more than a wafer, it’s a socio-economic status bashing, leveling, meal-in-common with the diverse faces of the church.

Our teachers have become extremely adept at illuminating the moral and (apparently) ethical dilemmas in the modern world. The problem is, they’ve divorced these moral and ethical challenges from the theological framework of scripture. We get the rules from mom and dad; but none of the explanations that children get as they mature.

Admittedly, I’m a big-picture person: I like to know what forest I’m in, not merely focusing on the trees. So I love understanding the theological world I’m living in. But you know, I don’t think that this is simply a matter of my preferences. The fact of the matter is, this stuff is scriptural, and it makes up the fabric of our lives. In the evangelical church, it appears as if we’ve treated this as the realm of university theologians only, preferring a sort of “salt-of-the-earth”, homey vibe to our preaching. At worst, this can actually be a sort of anti-intellectual bias; at best, a blissful ignorance of what really are the central foundations of Christianity.

I’m afraid that we are continuing to drift—not just from the vibrant, kingdom-focused teachings of our spiritual ancestors—but into a biblically illiterate, intellectually lax faith. It doesn’t have to be boring; understanding that the point of everlasting life is not heaven but the earth remade and our bodies resurrected—have a congregation wrap their minds around that and observe the implications.