Homiletics class is driving me bonkers. I hope that you read my first sermon. I unashamedly am NOT proud of it. I would not go so far as to describe it as some bit of excremental expletive but as the comments pointed out, it has its weaknesses. I know I am only human and perfection is not in me.
Yet I struggled to capture or emulate what I experience every day here in the chapel. I know it will come with time. I will become more familiar with the environment of the pulpit. I will learn to communicate in ways the people understand. By God’s hand, I will be a preacher. It will happen.
I wonder though what role the arts serve in this process. I read a lengthy diatribe of quotations against the Roman theatre by the church fathers on Tuesday. It was fascinating. Unanimously, they voiced dissention and opposition to the theatre. They expressed concern over the falsity of acting, the base and irreverent gestures, and a general concern over their people’s sanctification. The author was a Baptist who was trying to reinforce his opinion that we should not watch popular TV and Movies.
I do agree but I dissent on one point. Popular culture has a way of communicating. People listen. They can sit for 30 minutes, no problem. How many people can sit through a 30-minute sermon without a panic attack? Not many today I suspect. Why is this? Better yet, those same people can sit through a 2-hour movie and be utterly captivated. Bizarre!
It was not long ago that people felt comfortable sitting and listening to whole albums, without moving, talking or anything. Previously to that they could sit through a 1.5-hour concert without as much as a peep.
Think of the how classic art captivated the mind, drawing them into the piece with beauty, awe, wonder, and amazement. People would stare in contemplation for hours without knowing it.
Our classical literature can span hundreds of pages. We can sit and read these works, captivated by them. Even modern lowbrow novels can approach or exceed their length and yet hold the reader’s attention.
Imagine in the Greco-Roman world the ability for people to sit and listen to the orators speaking in the amphitheaters. No problem, they could do that. These people could spontaneously compose, weaving material together rhetorically, on the fly presenting their subject in a way to fascinate and captivate.
My point is I do not think culture is the problem. I think we have lost the ability to communicate in a classic sense. We certainly do not teach people how to do so. I have not received rhetorical training. I can barely describe why a good piece of literature holds the reader hostage. I do not know the techniques that painters would use to capture a scene with such emotive and thorough meaning. I cannot imagine most people I know suffering through a symphonic performance much less an album of the same.
Yet the folks can watch TV and watch film. Why? What do these mediums have that rhetoric and literature do not? Perhaps they are multi-sensory. Perhaps they stifle the imagination, replacing it with captured image. Perhaps they just have content that people find amusing.
I would argue that they give the people what they want. Just as the Romans loved the pantomime, with men acting out crude sexual acts on each other and degrading, but they also liked the gladiators and the arena. They liked seeing other people suffer. They even stood, amused while our savior was beaten, flogged, and hung on the cross.
Modern preachers who integrate and include this debauchery in the form of popular media, art, music, TV, film and such into the church run the risk of bringing with it the hedonistic, self-driven nature of this media. The church is not about the human condition as we see it; the church is about the solution to the problem of the human condition as God gave it.
So my question is, without doing this same thing, giving people what they want… can we learn to deliver a sermon in such a way that it captures the imagination, interest, and ultimately the soul of the listener? Perhaps by training in the classic secular arts of rhetoric, literature, visual art, and sacred music we can communicate the Gospel of Jesus with all the power and effectiveness (and none of the long term side effects) of popular culture. These arts have a timeless and classic means of communicating which would serve us well in our preaching.
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