This week’s mindmapping sermon experiment didn’t go as well. The best thing about the sermon is that it was short. But you can’t have everything! I think the problem was that I didn’t map out enough detail, didn’t use enough visual cues for preaching, and didn’t have as clear a trajectory toward the Sacrament.
Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Trinity 15 (September 20, 2009)
Matthew 6:24-34
For an audio MP3 of this sermon, CLICK HERE
[This sermon is a bit of an experiment for me. I wrote it using a method called mind mapping. It's basically visually drawing and outline. The map is pretty simple, and this is a process that I'm going to explore for a while. I want to get away from using a written down word for word text and toward more outlining, but I think using this sort of visual representation may be more helpful for me in preaching than a traditional outline. Here's a sample graphic of the mind map:]
Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Trinity 1 (June 14, 2009)
Luke 16:19-31
For an audio MP3 of this sermon, CLICK HERE
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Our text is the Gospel lesson just read, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus from Luke 16.
In our text this morning we have a comparison of the inside and the outside, the hidden faith and revealed works, the hidden church and the revealed works of the world. Christ our Lord makes this comparison in a way that is simple and easy for us to understand, and yet has a profound effect upon how we view the world, the church, and the faith that God gives to us as baptized children of God.
So let’s rehearse our text again. The rich man has everything on the outside; poor Lazarus has nothing on the outside. The rich man appears to be blessed by God and loved by everyone around him; the poor man is cursed, or at least appears so. His life is a mess, his health is a wreck, he is poor and hungry, and even the dogs come and lick his sores. There is no doubt in the eyes of the world who is in the better position.
But look, says our Lord, at what is hidden under the obvious. Poor Lazarus had the one thing needful; He had received faith and trusted in the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob for the forgiveness of sins. Hidden under the dirt and muck, hidden under the hunger and fear and pain shone a faith in the Messiah that only God Himself could give. The rich man did not have this faith. God doesn’t even know his name. He is simply the rich man. But Lazarus, the angels of God know Lazarus. No matter what the appearance, the reality is that the rich man is poor and the poor man is rich beyond measure.
This hidden reality is not unlike Abraham in our Old Testament reading. God had promised to Abraham that His house would prosper beyond measure, and that all the nations of the world should be blessed through him. But Abraham had no child. The promise was still hidden by God, only to be revealed in due time. Now God’s point to Abraham was that when God promised something according to His Word, it is real, as real as anything else. But sometimes you just can’t see it. It’s hidden.
This is, my dear friends in Christ, is so often what we do when it comes to our views of God. God has revealed Himself to us, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. He has given us His Word and bound Himself to us by Baptism and the Sacrament of the Altar. God has given everything to you in His Son Jesus Christ, just as He had given to Lazarus. God’s gifts to you are all you need, all that you truly need to get to heaven and join the heavenly hosts with Abraham and all the saints.
But these gifts of God, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, are hidden. You cannot bankroll forgiveness of sins. The life that God bestows is not the good life that we Americans strive for so much. And salvation, well, salvation is hard to really grasp at all. These gifts of God are hidden. Indeed, Jesus Himself is hidden, just as His Church is hidden.
Let me give you an example. In our day and age if you were to ask people where the church is or what is the church, they would probably say something like where the people are. Or the church is made up of people. But our church, on the contrary, teaches that The church is the assembly of saints in which the Gospel is taught purely and the sacraments are administered rightly.
In other words, for us as Lutherans, when we go to locate the church, we don’t look finally at the people. People change. Some may be believers; others unbelievers masquerading as believers. You don’t look at the uncertain things. You look where God has promised to be found. And where does God promise to be found? In His Word and in His Sacraments. That is where God promises that He is.
This is what the rich man can’t understand. He can’t understand that faith isn’t created by a show or even by someone rising from the dead. No, faith flows from the Word of the Gospel giving by preaching and the Sacrament of the Altar, the Lord’s Supper. That is how God creates faith. That is how God draws many into His eternal kingdom.
Now what does this mean for you today? It means a great deal. Where do you place your trust? If you place your trust in what you see, you will be disappointed. Churches, you see, are made up of sinners. And so it shouldn’t surprise you when sinners sin. That’s what sinners do. So if you place your trust in the people, you will finally be disappointed.
Where does God direct you? Your faith has an object, and that object is Jesus Christ. He comes to you know through preaching and His Word. He comes to you now through His holy baptism and through His Holy Supper. That is where God is found. That is where your sins are forgiven. And that is where the Church is to be found. For wherever God’s Word is rightly preached and His Sacraments are rightly given out, that is where God’s Church will be found. It may be hidden. It may even be wearing rags and look pretty pathetic at times. But underneath those rags, like the rags of Lazarus, lies God’s dearest treasure, His Holy Bride, the Christian Church.
So when you look at this parable of our Lord, the point of the parable is this: God gives you His Word to trust, so that when the winds and the waves of life come, when false doctrine assaults you or other fears afflict you, you may look to His Word of promise, and know that God will bear you home, just as the angels carried Lazarus off to the bosom of Abraham.
Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds in true faith, unto life everlasting. Amen.
[I have used this sermon in a couple forms over the years, but I think it is a good one and worth repeated. -LL]
Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church
Kenosha, Wisconsin
Good Friday (April 10, 2009)
In the name of the Father and of the † Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Our text is from the Passion of our Lord from St. John, we focus on the quotation from John 19:37, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”
They looked at Him whom they pierced. Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God, died upon the cross for us and for our salvation. He promised that when He was lifted up, He would draw all men to Himself. He promised that they would gaze upon Him, dead, and that in His death their life would truly begin.
This kind of love is beyond comprehension. It goes far past anything that we can understand or fathom. While we were still sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. And this day we look upon His cross as the dead God, the God who gives of Himself so completely that His has poured Himself out upon the altar so that we might live with Him forever. In John 19 they quote Zechariah, which says the following:
““And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” (Zechariah 12:10 ESVS)
So it is that we mourn for Him who died. We mourn because it was our sin that caused His death. But it is a joyful mourning. At His death the price is paid forever. You do not have to pay for your sins. You do not have to suffer the torment of hell. You do not have to live in fear of an uncertain future.
But these wounds go on. They do not end this day. On the last day, when we shall all rise from the grave to meet our Lord in the air, we will view Him with new eyes. St. John in His Revelation paints us the picture as follows:
“Behold, he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” (Revelation 1:7 ESV)
After Jesus rises from the dead, even until the very end of time itself, the wounds which He suffers this day shall be His. That is His love, poured out for you. One of our hymns puts it this way:
Those dear tokens of His passion
Sill His dazzling body bears,
Cause of endless exultation
To HIs ransomed worshipers
With what rapture, with what rapture, with what rapture
Gaze we on those glorious scars (LSB 336:3)
Look this day upon the death of Jesus for you. Look, mourn for your sins, and rejoice. Rejoice that His wounds are for you. Rejoice that you will rise with Him at the Last Day, robed in His blood, crowned with His righteousness, and that you with all of the ransomed shall stand before Him as His bride, holy and beloved. Believe it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
One of my gentle readers wrote this post regarding preaching that referenced one or my posts about preaching from around Christmas time. It seems worth discussing a little here. This is the link:
Not Alone: In the Name of Jesus
Here’s the final paragraph:
When this is what God works through sermon preparation, how can I speak of being bored or burned out? For any pastor who finds himself telling himself that he is bored or burned out, all that you really need is to stand back and remember whose Word you are called to preach. Then you will remember the great privilege and blessing of preaching. Then it will not seem like a laborious obligation, but a cause for rejoicing. The preaching office is Christ’s office, who Himself counted it a joy to suffer and die on the cross to provide this office with its power. This powerful office that opens the very gates of heaven to you and to all whom it rules over has been entrusted to you, dear pastors! Whenever you imagine that your office is boring or that you have become burned out, remember this! Remember what it really means to be a preacher of the Gospel!
I think it is fair to say that the author basically missed the point. We are not automatons. We are sinner/saints. And as a sinner/saint, I get frustrated, bored, burned out, whatever you want to call it with preaching. Just like anyone in nearly any vocation will not find satisfaction and happiness in the work God has given them to do.
I understand perfectly well the importance of preaching, the joy of preaching, that it is Christ’s office and work, and the like.
I also, by way of comparison, understand the importance of being a father, the joy of fathering, that it is God’s office and work, and the like. But as a human being, I get frustrated, tired, bored, out of energy, and easily distracted.
Why, gentle readers, would it be different for preachers? And furthermore, what is the solution?
I’ll tell you what isn’t the solution. The solution is not a variation of GET OVER IT, BE HAPPY, KNOW HOW IMPORTANT IT IS, or REMEMBER WHAT YOU’RE DOING. Those are all Law, and we know that the Law does not produce good works.
I would suggest that the solution is A) The Gospel. Be forgiven, be fed, hear God’s promises to you. B) Rest. Being a pastor is hard work. It’s not easily measurable, but that does not make it any less easy. Take a break. Breathe. Play. Do something else. And C) Know that you aren’t alone in your trials. Nearly every pastor I know recognizes the challenges of preaching. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
Anyway, those are some further thoughts. Have I missed anything?
-LL
I love the historic lectionary. The rhythm of the readings, the Psalms and Introits, the use of traditional hymnody that speaks references it directly, it flows in a way that is beautiful, reverent and stirring. It stirs up the faith, just as the historic collects remind us as we prepare for Adventtide.
That is why I am so utterly mystified by confessional Lutheranism today.
As Rev. McCain pointed out to us in a recent survey his offered in connection with Cyberbrethren, there is little uniformity amongst practitioners of the historic lectionary. This is no surprise. Since no major publishing house has really supported it in a couple generations, those of us who use it are left to our own devices to come up with translations and practices that fit our given parishes. I can understand that, but it doesn’t make me happy.
But that’s not the real problem. The real problem as I see it is this:
1. While it is in the hymnal, it isn’t really supported or “resourced” by Concordia Publishing House, beyond the production of the lectionary book for LSB.
2. It isn’t taught or supported in any meaningful way to my knowledge at either seminary. I am very happy to be proven wrong on this.
3. It’s been dropped from the Thrivent Calendar, and I don’t believe it is in the more recent CPH pastor’s calendar either.
4. It is not only not taught or “resourced”, I hear pretty consistent anecdotal evidence that it is specifically disdained by liturgical scholars throughout the synod.
Please don’t get me wrong here. I’m not pointing fingers, trying to start a fight, incite liturgical or lectionary rebellion, or in any other way be difficult. It’s really this simple:
Why? Is it marketing? Is it money? Is it ecumenism with other churches today? Why is there not only a lack of interest, but a near irrational hostility to this lectionary? What is the deal?
Please. Help me out here. This is truly a mystery to me.
-LL
By Reverend Todd A. Peperkorn, STM
Messiah Lutheran Church, Kenosha Wisconsin
St. Michael’s Liturgical Conference
Redeemer Lutheran Church
Fort Wayne, Indiana
St. Michael and All Angels, 2008
We’ve all faced it at one time or another, maybe often. Those of us who use the traditional lectionary of the Western Church perhaps face it more than most. You sit down to write your sermon for Sunday morning, pull up all of your usual sermon helps (Parsch, Gerhard, whatever else is on your go-to shelf), and you are ready to go. You look at the text, and realize two things: 1) You’ve preached on this exact text about eleven times, and 2) You have nothing more to say. You get up, get a cup of coffee, maybe try to pull out something different from the shelf. Maybe you look at the Old Testament reading, or the Epistle. You surf the web, look around for inspiration. Nothing. You dust off your Greek New Testament, in the hopes that the heavens will open and an incredible homily will drop down, based on the word qa¿rsei or prose÷feron or some other word that you’ve looked at a thousand times. Zip. Time to go make a call, play a game, or do something else. It won’t happen today.
The next day, it’s rinse and repeat.
By the time Sunday morning rolls around, you’re starting to feel guilty. You know you should have a new sermon. It’s your job. It’s your call. Furthermore, you like preaching. No, you love preaching. But why is this so hard? Or what makes preaching so hard now, even though you’ve been doing it for years?
The fact is that you’re bored. You’re bored with preaching the same text. You’re bored with your congregation. You’re bored with yourself, with your own words, spoken over and over again.
What I would like to do today is speak briefly about boredom in preaching, and offer some solutions for you. This come from a fellow preacher, and like most good preaching, I am speaking to myself of this as much as I am to you.
The causes for preacher’s boredom are myriad. I won’t even pretend to analyze or list all of them. Some of the obvious ones, though, do bear listing and brief comment:
- Overconfidence, arrogance. This is a particular temptation with the traditional lectionary, as we can come to believe that we have plumbed the depths of a text after preaching it ten times or more.
- Despair. Preachers rarely see the fruits of their labors. We are messengers, not measurers. Because of that, despair is ever around the corner, lurking, seeking to drive the preacher to believe that no one is listening, no one cares, and that you might as well quit. If you no longer believe that the Gospel is the power of God for salvation (Rom. 1:16), then you will quickly become disinterested in preaching, because it will be empty words.
So what do you do when you’re bored with preaching? Recognizing these various causes, here are a few tips from a fellow preacher that I hope will be of help to you. I’ve grouped them into two general categories, theological and practical.
1. Confess and Repent. Since this conference is at Redeemer, I felt obligated to say that first. But in this case, it is very true. Repent of your boredom with God’s Word, with your lackadaisical attitude toward your congregation, and toward the great and mighty task of preaching. Do not give the devil a foothold on your soul by clinging to these sins. Repent and be done with them. Go to your father confessor. Confess your sins and be absolved. This more than anything else will help you in your preaching. Related to this is the practice of actually hearing confession. I’ve found that hearing confession is the most useful “work” that I have for preaching. It helps you to understand the actual sins of your parishioners, and how God works to forgive them.
2. Pray for and remember your parish as you are writing. Gustaf Wingren, in his book on preaching writes the following regarding the role of the congregation:
“Hearers do not just come on the scene in a secondary way when the sermon begins, but that group was already there from the very first moment that the thought of preaching entered the preacher’s mind. They were present in the sermon from the beginning not because the preacher felt a missionary interest in them, or had a personal knowledge of his public, but rather because they were there in the passage itself. The preacher, on first reading the prescribed passage, found there words, sentences, promises, admonitions belonging to God’s people, which had been the water of life to them long before he was born and which will still be the same when his day is done. Now the word is here in order that by means of a particular sermon it may speak to this congregation which has come to listen and which thereby reveals itself as the congregation of the Word.”
Because of this, by praying for and remembering your congregation as your prepare your sermon, you are putting flesh and blood on the holy task. Sermons are about the Word and the Hearer. God desires more than anything else to come to His people, to forgive their sins, and to draw them into His holy embrace. I have gone so far as to keep pictures of parishioners lying around on my desk as I am preparing my sermons. This makes it much less of an academic exercise and much more the great spiritual task that it is.
3. Preach to just one member of the congregation. I don’t remember where I first ran across this suggestion, but it is a good one. St. Paul reminds us “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man.” (1 Corinthians 10:13 ESV) By preaching to one person, you make your sermons specific and timely. But the trials that face one of your parishioners is probably not that different from what we all face.
By doing this, you are actually going to make your sermons more universal, not less. It is when we try to stereotype or generalize that we lapse into the desire to become relevant or connected or something equally ridiculous. C.S. Lewis was right when he observed, “All that is not eternal is eternally out of date.”
4. Preach to yourself. This is a common variation on the last one. If you are not convicted of your sin then it is unlikely anyone else will be, either. If the Gospel does not comfort you then the Gospel may not be in there in the first place.
5. Recognize you are not alone. Preaching is no easy task. Luther himself often remarked that he would stay awake at nights in fear of preaching the next day. Every preacher gets afraid, bored, stuck, and every other preacher’s ailment you can come up with. It goes with the territory. But you will be able to address your boredom or preacher’s block much easier if you are able to recognize that you are not alone in your task. Talk about it with your brothers in office.
6. Remember the purpose of preaching. Peter Berg in his paper on the art of preaching calls preaching an assault, a mugging if you will. This view is quite common in preacher’s circles. From a theological point of few I suppose that is true at one level, but unhelpful at another. The Law kills, the Gospel makes alive, etc. From a rhetorical point of view, it is certainly not true, or at least is not a helpful way of thinking. We confessional Lutherans can get so wrapped up in how unique we are, how special and how insightful, that we can forget that the actual purpose of preaching is to create faith by means of the Gospel. Listen to Luther’s words on how God brings us into His embrace by the Gospel:
When God draws us, He is not like a hangman, who drags a thief up the ladder to the gallows; but He allures and coaxes us in a friendly fashion, as a kind man attracts people by his amiability and cordiality, and everyone willingly goes to him.
Now what does this mean for the preacher who is bored or unmotivated? It means this. We are to approach preaching first of all as critically important. Preaching faith is life saving. But secondly, we are to approach preaching like we were trying to save the life of a two year old who is out on the limb of a tree. When I was two my parents tell me that I did just this. I climbed to the top of a hundred foot evergreen. Now how do you as a father or mother get your son down in that circumstance? For starters, you are not going to scare them down. All that will do is paralyze them, make them so that they can’t imagine coming down from the heights. It will require love, coaxing, friendly conversation and gentleness.
When we preach to our congregation, we are not to do so as though we are hurting them. We are about saving them. Now how does this help with boredom? Coaxing the two year old off of the limb of the tree is a lot harder than scaring the hell out of him. By remembering the purpose of preaching, it makes the task more concrete, and that will help us to find that approach in the text itself.
7. In order to have sometime to give, you must be receiving. In other words, be fed. Listen to good sermons. In our online world you can listen to great sermons any time, and while it’s not as good as being there, it will still be of great service to you. As a preacher, you must be able to receive the gifts of God yourself.
8. Don’t just dust off your Greek and Hebrew, do it right. If we believe that the Scriptures as the Word of God, and that the sermon is delivering God’s Word to God’s people, then every preacher of the Gospel ought to be working in the text itself, and not a translation. This is hard. I know. I struggle with it every week.
9. Tie in the liturgy to your preaching. Common words make for a common understanding. You probably do this already, but be more deliberate about it. What elements of our common liturgical life together address death? Fear? Doubt? Guilt? Sickness and disease? This doesn’t mean use some cheesy formula or automatically including the exact words of the liturgy. Sometimes an allusion or passing reference can be enough. One of the chief things that makes preaching different from catechesis or bible class is the context. Preaching happens in a specific liturgical space and time. Be mindful of how that shapes what you say and how you say it.
10. Schedule your sermon writing time. Don’t leave the time you spend preparing for Sunday morning as the leftovers. This is the most important thing you do every week as a pastor. Yet it is so easy in the midst of terribly busy schedules to push it aside or cram it until Friday afternoon, or Saturday afternoon, or Sunday morning. Schedule time every day to work on your sermon. It may only be 20 minutes, but do it. Develop a study and writing plan that involves both general reading and specific textual studies. Make sure that this includes time for praying the daily office, and for praying for your members. DON’T CRAM. While you may need to do this sometimes, if you make that the norm, you will quickly run out of gas on what to say to your flock.
11. Work on refining your style. One of my favorite books on style is by Ben Yagoda and is entitled, The Sound on the Page. The basic thesis of Yagoda’s book is that Struck and White are wrong. Style does not mean simple. Direct yes. Able to communicate, yes. But that does not mean dumbing down your language. It means using language as God intended it, as something rich and wonderful and full of surprises. What makes great writing, and I would commend to you that what makes great preaching, is style. I don’t mean cheap plastic style. I mean how you put the words together, what words you use, what makes a sermon by Todd Peperkorn different than a sermon by David Petersen or whoever. This gets back to specificity like we spoke of earlier. Be mindful of the way you preach and why you do it.
So what can you do to refine your style? Read. Read, read, read, read, read. Read fiction, non-fiction, poetry, books about preaching. Read whatever you can get your hands on. But not just books. Music and art can play a significant role in shaping who you are as a preacher of the Gospel. J.S. Bach has cantatas for every Sunday of the church year. Bach had a great understanding of the liturgical life and of the texts of the Gospels. Why not learn from him? In the same way, the great artists of the world can reveal elements of human nature to you that you may not see otherwise, as well as a new insight into understanding the Gospel.
12. Vary your reading. If you’re like me, you have about half a dozen books that you always go to for sermon preparation. Parsch, Gerhard, Giertz, etc. You have your favorites. This is good, because they work. But it can also put you in a rut. I would urge you to try and find at least one thing you haven’t read before each week for sermon preparation.
Martin Luther once wrote:
“Our Lord God wishes himself to be the preacher, for preachers often go astray in their notes so that they can’t go on with what they have begun. It has often happened to me that my best outline came undone. On the other hand, when I was least prepared my words flowed during the sermon.”
All we can do is receive what God has given us, confess, be absolved, pray and work. It is His Word. He will give the increase, and see to it that it accomplishes its purpose. But take heart! Preaching is a noble task, and our heavenly Father will see you through it to the end. Your preaching is never in vain.
-Todd A. Peperkorn
I am often struck by the sheer ordinariness of preaching. It is very easy, I believe, to view preaching as a divine activity where the Holy Spirit is whispering into the ear of the preacher what he is to say, much like you occasionally see with icons of the Evangelists. But I’m here to tell you, it simply doesn’t work that way. continue reading…
