Pixar and preaching, part II

If we are to preach the gospel “in its truth and purity,” as the Catechism says, then we might take a page from the Pixar playbook. We cannot fall prey to our own skepticism about the ability of a law-and-gospel word to actually do its work, nor can we shirk the task of manipulating the will of our hearer and, thus, draw that one into the realm of faith.

If preachers are to be faithful, then they cannot be so craven as to reject the assertion that faith comes by hearing. The work of the preacher is to be Johnny-on-the-spot appearing in the midst of the Law’s kill zone with a word that does indeed raise the hearer to new life. And if the hearer doesn’t recognize how deep sin runs or how one’s attention to the Law leads not to self-continuity but to the grave, then the preacher must trust the word preached to expose such a denial and bring it to light.

In any event, the preacher cannot assume that faith is already present for the pew-sitter. When that happens, what results is a job description for successful “Christian” living or an action plan for achieving justice or a bunch of dithering on moral schemes. We can use Kent Jones’ assessment in his Pixar article as an analog: This kind of preacher revels in the pleasure of storytelling, either in morality tales and other fables of self-preservation or in the mantra of an all-accepting God.

This sort of self-styled preaching sophisticate is “loath to relinquish enough precious sophistication to fully surrender” to the true power of the word which arrives as both law and gospel. On the one hand, there appears a preacher who is an expert at value-laden living. Whether those values lie on the right or the left of the political spectrum is irrelevant – either way they’re just another appearance of the law dressed up as pseudo-gospel. Such is the word from the lips of a theologian of glory. It sees the law and calls it what it is not: the gospel.

On the other hand, the preacher of all-rightness before God fashions the preaching moment into the homiletical equivalent of Stuart Smalley’s affirmations on Saturday Night Live in days of yore: “You're good enough, you're smart enough, and doggone it, God likes you!” If the word is that God accepts you as you are, then it’s an antinomianism that at its core is really more law. The hearer is left in the same old situation, aware of the reality that something isn’t working, and begins to distrust the power of the word to do something, anything.

How about we gospel preachers make some radical assumptions? Try these on for size:

Those you preach to don’t already have all the faith they need (and maybe aren’t baptized). Your job is to speak God’s word in a way that faith is created – just as that same word created the heavens and the earth at the very beginning. And just because your preaching brings faith today, don’t assume it’ll still be there next Sunday!

Your pew-sitters are smart enough to detect when you’re giving them a load of bull. They may not catch on immediately, but eventually their B.S. detectors will calibrate and they’ll vote with their feet (see, for example, the ELCA, which has experienced tremendous losses in its two-decade-long history). At some point they’ll need a word powerful enough to raise the dead. If you don’t have it, you’ll have left them hopeless and dead. Do you not remember what you swore to do at your ordination?

It’s okay to manipulate your audience – as long as it’s not self-aggrandizing manipulation or teaching them to engage in spiritual self-pleasuring. In the parable of the wedding banquet, the king sends his soldiers out to compel the guests to come in. If Luther’s right about us being beasts of burden ridden by God and the devil, God calls you to take the reins and give your hearers a compelling word – one to which they can’t help but say, “Amen.”

Hear the wonder and know the awe of the gospel that has saved you yourself. To that end allow me to preach to you: “You who organize your days and deeds in order to prolong your life and have just one more day to finally get it right: your days are numbered and all your efforts come to naught. Yet there is one won’t accept what you thing you can bring to the table, for he not only expects more from you, he’s also ready, willing and able to give it to you. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, died for you that you might have his own new, resurrected life. He’s made himself the foundation and linch-pin of all the good gifts God has in store for you. Open your eyes and see that you are risen from the death of your sin. Look up. He’s come for you. Hang on. You’re in for the ride of your life!”

More to come???

My Lying-Sack-of-Sin Pastor Friend's "Basement"

A good friend (who is also a fine example of a sinner) serves as pastor to a congregation in Wisconsin (emphasis on the last syllable). The congregation began in 1988 and the building went up in 1990, without a basement.

On occasion he's preached an imaginative sermon in which he says he'd been stuck for what to do for a sermon and that he'd wandered through the church basement. He would say he'd encountered the ghost of Martin Luther down there, or found Noah's diary, or come upon an early-1960s piece of kid's Sunday school artwork (with a handwritten note from God attached). A nice bunch of clever dream sequences spun from whole cloth for the sake of delivering the gospel.

How careful we must be with the word we've been handed! My friend just got the news that a parishioner has left the congregation because, "He lied. There is no church basement."

If what comes from the preacher's mouth is not factual, does that make it untrue? Students in my New Testament course grapple with that question when dealing with four different gospels, with four different timelines, with four different points of view, and a Jesus who's almost four different people. "How do we know what's true, then?" they ask.

We so easily fall for the proposition that truth can be gleaned from facts. It's part of the air we breathe in this culture, from dissecting a frog in 7th grade science to the latest article in the journal Nature. We look for truth in facts, in the measurable, in the definable, in the tangible, and in what Paul in Corinthians calls the perishable.

But the preacher of the gospel calls that stuff mere stuff and in turn says what is truly true. It is a relational truth: Jesus Christ, true God and true human being has died and is risen...for you. We know it's true because this promise does something to sinners like us. It's true in its power to change absolutely everything.

Basement, shmasement, I say. You want truth? I'll give you truth: You are dead in your sin, bound and captive to yourself, to your own future and your own narrow life. Jesus Christ comes for you now. At this very moment he is wandering around the basement of your heart to create some new life there.

What? Your heart doesn't have an actual basement? Don't let that cardiac ultrasound fool you. It's there and Jesus has set up his resurrection carpentry shop in it. He is even now grabbing hold of whatever detritus he can find, whatever dust-covered antique hurt or bitterness lie in its corners, whatever bits of trash and rottenness he can find. And he's turning his surroundings there into an exact model of his own heart — with a basement swept clean and fit for eternity.

I'm a sinner who preaches. And I lie about all kinds of things, especially to myself. But I cannot lie about this. As Luther said in the Heidelberg Disputation, "A theologian of the cross sees something and calls it what it is." What the preacher sees is success and power that are truly facets of death and the grave. The gospel preacher sees the foolishness of the cross, the lie of imagination, and the disaster of death as a perfectly satisfied Christ shaping his materials into his risen form.

"When this perishable body puts on imperishability, and this mortal body puts on immortality, then the saying that is written will be fulfilled: 'Death has been swallowed up in victory.' 'Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?'" 1 Corinthians 15:54-55