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I had the special occasion to present a workshop at the recently concluded M7 Conference held in Kansas City. The material I prepared was intended to provide those who grace the pulpits on Sundays with the biblical hermeneutic for preaching with the theme of justice as a critical focal point of engagement. I hoped that the workshop would be interactive and dialogical. The workshop was entitled, “Preaching Justice Every Sunday.”
As we got more engaged in the task, I became acutely aware of an imbalanced view embraced by some of the participants. The overriding interpretation of justice was the pronouncement to return to the historic “moral values” of the evangelical constituency. By this was meant very narrowly, personal and pietistic concerns like abortion, personal indulgence in drugs and alcohol, same sex marriage, and human sexuality.
This constricted interpretation of justice robs the Christian community of the prospect to address a wider range of issues that were the themes of the Old Testament prophets and the New Testament Christ. There can be no true justice without action and accountability, distribution and retribution, and engagement and responsibility. For Jesus, justice involved action on behalf of “the least of these,” those marginalized by systemic inequalities, the poor, the economically excluded, the neediest, the most vulnerable, and the most at risk of having no advocate.
It has become convenient to proclaim the Word Sunday after Sunday with pious platitudes that simply serve to buttress us in the internal machinations of the congregation’s maintenance and self-serving strategies for numerical growth. Such preaching is woefully truncated. Furthermore, to do so, and at the same time give little or no allegiance to the more pressing moral issues raised by Jesus in Matthew 25: 31 – 44 is a bit disingenuous. To address the needs of the marginalized is justified by the biblical injunctions to reach the lost and to disciple them within the congregation.
This preoccupation with personal righteousness has led to a nuanced view of what sermons should be preached from our pulpits. Most of my preaching colleagues would have no problem regularly delivering sermons that address the “maintenance issues” that are so necessary in the everyday task of pastoral ministry. The challenge, however, is to be more holistic in the embrace of the biblical message as it is juxtaposed with the needs of the communities we are called to serve. There is a deafening silence about systemic injustice.
One way for preachers to find balance in their preaching might be to review the recommended homiletic outcomes suggested by Robert McCracken in his book, The Making of a Sermon.1 McCracken offers four possible outcomes from a sermon:
1. Kindle the Mind – The primary objective of this sermon is to present some controversial topic with which the congregants could grapple. The preacher should objectively present all sides of the issue, and leave it up to the listeners to draw their own conclusions, and to act on new revelations.
2. Energize the Will – People must be encouraged to move from inactivity and malaise to reflection and action, after having been presented with new accounts of existing conditions and realities. The preacher’s task is to offer motivation and methodology.
3. Disturb the Conscience – Congregants should be made aware of the missional omission in the practice of ministry. Paul’s dictum should be a guide to preachers, “I have not hesitated to proclaim to you the whole will of God” (Acts 20:27). It is the preacher’s responsibility to remind Christians whenever they fall short of the standards of justice and righteousness.
4. Stir the Heart – With this sermon one can find themes of praise, mercy, grace, hope, theodicy, and the steadfast love of God. “The steadfast love of God never ceases, his mercies never come to an end. They are new every morning” (Lam. 3: 22 – 23).
This approach to the preaching task provides the pastor with the balance that is necessary to be holistic. With this approach it is rather difficult to ignore the prophetic themes that represent a subversive thread that is ever present in the fabric of the corpus of God’s written word, where God is often depicted as One who has a “preferential option” for the poor and marginalized. When Israel became obsessed with the Temple of Solomon, the Levitical priesthood, observance of laws, and proper practices of “holy living,” the prophetic preaching of the prophets reminded the people:
Take away from me the noise of your songs, I will not listen to the melody of your harps, But let justice roll down like waters, And righteousness like an ever flowing stream.
(Amos 5: 23 – 24)
The need for justice preaching is evidenced by the uncomfortable fact that conditions in our communities today closely mirror those of Old Testament times. Consider for a moment these startling statistical realities:
• In a country of 300 million, roughly 2.2 million of its citizens are presently in prison. While blacks are 13% of the overall population, they represent 50% of the prison population.
• 23 million children lack the means to access health insurance, leaving a significant margin of our population vulnerable to possible pandemic health risks.
• According to census data, nearly two of three people in severe poverty are white (10.3 million) and 6.9 million are non-Hispanic whites. Severely poor blacks (4.3 million) are more than three times as likely as non-Hispanic whites to be in deep poverty, while extremely poor Hispanics of any race (3.7 million) are more than twice as likely.
• The inner city public school system continues to matriculate minority students who lack the foundational academic skills to compete in the corporate job market. Additionally, the ratio of students per computer in the city schools represents a technological divide that is shameful (and continues to widen) when compared to suburban schools.
• Women, in spite of the historic contributions they have made to the building of our great nation, are increasingly economically marginalized by a system that refuses to compensate them equitably for the same employment positions held by men. The tale of black women is even more disparaging.
These deplorable conditions demand that our pulpits be transformed from mere bastions of clever word manipulation and structural artistry into depots where the word from God sounds a warning to those insensitive to the plight of the least of these.
In the March 22, 2005, issue of The Christian Century, an article appeared under the heading of “Where’s the Compassion?” It states:
While biblical justice included charity for the needy, it also included means to even the playing field between rich and poor–affirmative action for those left out or left behind–such as the sabbatical year that liberated slaves and forgave debts. And the prophets castigated commercial practices that took advantage of the people already suffering.2
When justice preaching returns to our pulpits, we will again witness a faith community that reminds us of Samuel who confronted Saul, Nathan who confronted David, Amos who confronted Jeroboam, Jeremiah who challenged Jehoiakim and Zedekiah, and John the Baptist who called Herod Antipas to accountability.
A homiletical equivalent to an old folk song from the 1960s best describes the tragic absence of justice preaching:
Where have all the prophets gone?
Gone in search of mega-churches, everyone.
Where have all the prophets gone?
Gone in search of faith-based funding, everyone.
Where have all the prophets gone?
Gone in search of personal comforts, everyone.
Where have all the prophets gone?
Gone in search of political correctness, everyone.
Where have all the prophets gone?
Gone into a ministry that places praise over speaking truth to power, everyone.
When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?3
Martin Luther King’s reflection was insightful:
“We are caught up in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny… Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”4
George Bernard Shaw is reported to have given this commentary on preaching: “Some is like coffee, stimulates but does not nourish; some is like wine, sparkles but has no lasting value; some is like seltzer water, a big fuss over nothing; and some is like spring water, good, but hard to get.”
Preaching that speaks to the crisis social inconsistencies of the day would not be easy. It is vast and foreboding. This is a result on the one hand, of those who contend that the pulpit is not the appropriate turf for dealing with social issues, and on the other hand, by those who seek to occupy the territory themselves for the cause either of recalcitrant conservatism or lethargic liberalism.
Of preaching, Kelly Miller Smith noted: “Preaching is no mere human undertaking. Those who set upon this work from the highest motivations are those who understand the depth of meaning of the spiritual that says, ‘I know the Lord has laid his hands on me!’ Preaching is no trivial matter circumscribed by human foibles and abridged agenda. It is a divine-human enterprise and is properly concerned with the whole of life. Concern with social crises is not simply permissible: it is imperative.… Authentic preaching takes into account the social issues and dilemmas that plague the human family. It is sensitive to the relevancy of the Christian gospel for these concerns, and it proclaims that relevancy.”5
We must return quickly to the preaching of justice, if our preaching is to become relevant to the communities we feel compelled to reach.
by Oliver R. Phillips
Endnotes
1 Robert McCracken, The Making of a Sermon (New York: Harper & Row 1956).
2 “Where’s the Compassion,” Christian Century (March 22, 2005), 5.
3 Adapted from the lyrics of “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” by Peter Seger 1955 © 1961 (renewed) Fall River Music Inc.
4 Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter From Birmingham Jail: Why We Can’t Wait (New York: Signet Books 1964), 77.
5 Kelly Miller Smith, Social Crisis Preaching: The Lyman Beecher Lectures (Mercer University Press 1984), 17, 18.
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