Pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in Christo. (Martin Luther)
Amen! Boenhoffer’s commentary on that phrase is darkly humorous and true: “You are a sinner anyway, and there is nothing you can do about it!” Speaking of Luther, I really need to get Wingren’s Luther on Vocation.
shane lems
sunnyside, wa
Years back, I heard a sermon that was loaded with adjectives; the adjectives were something like “sermon bling.” Afterwards, an old-school elder came up to me and said something like this: “Too many adjectives in a sermon is a sin.” Then he walked away. (I’ll never forget it!) That was his way of saying what Buttrick says here.
“Orally, he weakest word we use is an adjective. If you could tape-record a day’s conversation, you would discover that you converse in verbs and nouns and that you employ few adjectives. You will use adjectives only when you must use them; you will almost never use them for effect. The rule holds for preaching: unnecessary adjectives will cloy language, while an occasional necessary or ‘right’ adjective will help. …If we use adjectives, they must be either necessary (to define or distinguish) or well chosen. For the most part, however, we will speak without adjectives. Many preachers add too many adjectives which do little but cloy. …Emotional force in preaching is produced by syntax and metaphor, but seldom by adjectival elaboration.”
“So, the rule can be stated: If you must use an adjective, find the right one, otherwise avoid adjectives in public address. Verbs and nouns are strong; adverbs have some power; but orally, adjectives are weak words.”
David Buttrick, Homiletic, (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 218-19. I may have mentioned it here before, but serious “homileticians” really should read this book, even if they don’t fully agree with all that Buttrick says. It is a serious and well-written book for preachers.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
In The Hauerwas Reader, edited by John Berkman and Michael Cartwright, there is an essay of Stanley Hauerwas from 1981 called “Reforming Christian Social Ethics: Ten Theses.” I’m not a pacifist (but I hate war and love peace), nor am I “with” Hauerwas in every way, but a lot of the stuff he says is provacative and very much worth pondering. Here are a few examples.
Thesis Three: “The ability to provide and adequate account of our existence is the primary test of the truthfulness of a social ethic. No society can be just or good that is built on falsehood. The first task of Christian social ethics, therefore, is not to make the ‘world’ better or more just, but to help Christian people form their community consistent with their conviction that the story of Christ is a truthful account of our existence. For as H. R. Niebuhr argued, only when we know ‘what is going on,’ do we know ‘what we should do,’ and Christians believe that we learn most decisively ‘what is going on’ in the cross and resurrection of Christ.”
Thesis Five: The primary social task of the church is to be itself – that is, a people who have been formed by a story that provides them with the skills for negotiating the danger of this existence, trusting in God’s promise of redemption. The church is a people on a journey who insist on living consistent with the conviction that God is the Lord of history. They thus refuse to resort to violence in order to secure their survival. The fact that the first task of the church is to be itself is not a rejection of the world or a withdrawal ethic, but a reminder that Christians must serve the world on their own terms; otherwise the world would have no means to know itself as the world.”
Thesis Six: “Christian social ethics can only be done from the perspective of those who do not seek to control national or world history but who are content to live ‘out of control.’ …For to be out of control means Christians can risk trusting in gifts, so they have no reason to deny the contingent character of our existence.”
Thesis Nine: “For the church to be, rather than to have, a social ethic means we must recapture the social significance of common behavior, such as acts of kindness, friendship, and the formation of families. …One of the most profound commitments of a community…is providing a context that encourages us to trust and depend upon one another.”
One more, thesis ten, without comment: “The church does not exist to provide an ethos for democracy or any other form of social organization, but stands as a political alternative to every nation, witnessing to the kind of social life possible for those that have been formed by the story of Christ.”
Stanley Hauerwas, The Hauerwas Reader, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright (London: Duke University Press, 2001), chapter 5.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
The church today is facing something similar to what Machen faced less than 100 years ago: Jesus divorced from Scripture, history, and the church. We saw it a few days back in Deepak Chopra’s “third Jesus.” Deepak’s jesus used scented lotions and came so we could realize our inner potential, so we might find self-actualization and inner tranquility. The Christ of Scripture, history, and the church is God in the flesh who came to save people from sinful self-actualization by becoming a bloody curse on the cross, by destroying death in his resurrection, and by ascending into glory where he now lives to protect his church. This is the gospel truth that Machen so ably defended.
“I do not think that what the New Testament says about the cross of Christ is particularly intricate. It is, indeed, profound, but it can be put in simple language. We deserved eternal death; the Lord Jesus, because he loved us, died in our stead upon the cross. It is a mystery, but it is not intricate. What is really intricate and subtle is the manifold modern attempt to get rid of the simple doctrine of the cross of Christ in the interests of human pride. Of course there are objections to the cross of Christ, and men in the pulpits of the present day pour out upon that blessed doctrine the vials of their scorn; but when a man has come under the consciousness of sin, then as he comes into the presence of the cross, he says with tears of gratitude and joy, ‘He loved me and gave himself for me.”
From “What the Bible Teaches ABout Jesus” in J. Gresham Machen, Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D. G. Hart (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2004), 30.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
I wish all writers would write as clearly and beautifully as J. G. Machen. One of the pressing duties of and needs in the Christian church today is clear and unembellished truth without all the equivocation and ambiguity. Machen can teach all of us many things, one of them is this: be clear and concise. I’ve never read anything by Machen and asked myself “What did he just say?” Of course sermons should be the same, but that’s a different post. There are quite a few examples I could use from Machen; I’ll display it with one of my favorite short passages of Machen on God’s love and another one on facts in Christianity.
“The Christian religion is founded squarely upon a message that sets forth facts. If that message is false, then the religion that is founded on it must of course be abandoned; but if it is true, then the Christian church must still deliver the message faithfully as it did on the morning of the first Easter Day.”
From J. Gresham Machen’s Selected Shorter Writings, edited by D. G. Hart (Phillipsburg: P&R, 2004), 32, 95.
shane lems
sunnyside wa
