I have been trying to decide what to do with this Blog. For the time being, I think I will post some reviews of books on preaching.
One of the older, late twentieth-century works on preaching is Fred Craddock’s Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon, 1985). There are three major sections in the book. Part I is Preaching: An Overview; Part II, Preaching: Having Something to Say; and Part III, Shaping the Message into a Sermon. Part I, An Overview, consists of three sections: Introduction, The Sermon in Context, and A Theology of Preaching. In the Introduction, Craddock makes a number of general remarks that frame the rest of his discussion. He states that his purpose is two-fold: to provide a text for seminarians and to provide a refresher for the “practicing preacher” (14). Further, “the structure of this book is an attempt to answer the question, How do I prepare and deliver a sermon?” (15).
Perhaps the most important single observation Craddock makes is this: “preaching
should be nourished, informed, disciplined, and authorized by Scripture, and the experience of being taught by Scripture that there is no single form of speech which qualifies as a sermon” (16). The fact that God’s Word is wrapped in many human forms of communication (27, 171-73) is vitally significant not only to the question of the content of preaching, but to the form of preaching as well. For Craddock, traditional designations of sermons such as “exegetical, textual, expository” and the like, are not important to his project. Rather, it is most important that the text provide not only sermon content but “say and do what the biblical text says and does” (28).
“It is possible that a sermon that buries itself in the text, moves through it phrase by phrase, and never comes up for air may prove to be ‘unbiblical’ in the sense that it fails to achieve what the text achieves. On the other hand, a sermon may appear to be walking alongside rather than through a text, or may seem to pause now and then to look up at the lofty peak of a text so extraordinary as to defy the skills of the most experienced preacher, and yet be quite ‘biblical’ in the sense of releasing that text to do its work among the listeners.” (28)
For those who are familiar with the refrain from Reformed preachers that the only correct sermon is an expository sermon, Craddock offers an alternative, and potentially helpful, way to frame the discussion.
Much of the book covers ground familiar to any student of homiletics. In the rest of the overview, Craddock looks at the various contexts of preaching (31, historical, pastoral, liturgical, and theological) and then constructs a theology of preaching (51) which says “preaching is understood as making present and appropriate to the hearers the revelation of God” (51). Part II looks at the “nuts and bolts” of preaching, including the minister and his study (69), the listeners (84), the interpretation of the text (99), and the preacher as interpreter between text and listener (125). Part III moves from the text to the formation of the sermon, identifying the qualities sought in the sermon (153), the formation of the sermon (170), enriching the form (194), and the delivery of the sermon (210). Throughout these discussions, Craddock continually expounds his thesis that “there is no [single] form that can be identified as ‘sermon’” (170).
The question of form is vital to Craddock’s understanding of preaching. “Form is not simply a rack, a hanger, a line over which to drape one’s presentation, but the form itself is active, contributing to what the speaker wishes to say and do, sometimes no less persuasive than the content itself” (172). Indeed, “form shapes the listener’s faith” (173). He gives a number of examples, showing how the form of preaching impacts the audience and shapes the faith of the listener. For example, “ministers who, week after week, frame their sermons as arguments, syllogisms armed for debate, tend to give that form to the faith perspective of regular listeners. Being a Christian is proving you are right” (173). For Craddock there are several guidelines that shape the selection of a sermon form: first, a given text might be preached in “several different forms” (174); second, there is a variety of forms available to the preacher (176-77); third, “no form is so good that it does not eventually become wearisome to both listener and speaker” (177); fourth, the preacher must determine what the text achieves and then frame the sermon to achieve the same end (178); and, fifth, the preacher may create a new form (182-189) if the text so requires, or make use of an existing form—if that is where the text leads (189).
While Craddock does not directly address the question, How did Jesus preach?, he does make a number of references to the preaching of Jesus. He says that Jesus “interpreted” the Scriptures (Luke 4:16-30) in his sermon in the synagogue at
To summarize, the form of the sermon ought to arise from the text, providing a rich variety of sermonic forms that will nourish the congregation. As Craddock says in the introduction: “The Scriptures continually remind pulpit and pew not only what but how to preach. The rich variety of its passages constantly objects to the boredom of imported outlines that ill fit the contours of the text and creates a stir among preachers and listeners who had settled for monotony as somehow the way it is. Just like grandmother’s view of medicine, “If it doesn’t taste bad it won’t help you,” so it has been supposed that if it is not dull it is not a sermon. A stirring text well read creates an expectation in listeners which the sermon should not disappoint.” (27)
Just as good sermons do not disappoint, even so Craddock’s Preaching does not disappoint, but still opens new vistas and possibilities two decades after its publication.
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