WE WOULD SEE JESUS
Many years ago in a far away land I got behind a pulpit and the first thing I noticed was the sign: SPEAK UP. I learned later that there was some problem with the audio system. I'm glad I didn't know that until later. I understood the sign metaphorically and thought I was being told to so speak that people would be uplifted by being enriched with gospeling. A great word of exhortation that, for what else are preachers called by God to do? To seduce entire congregations, or segments or individuals within congregations, with our oratory, elegance, education, cleverness, humor, flair, passion, or whatever, is just that—seduction.
It's not less than that but it's more than that! It's robbery! It doesn't matter that people committed to our care by God as ministers of his Word—it doesn't matter that they don't always know that when they gather together as God's people they need a steady diet of GOD—it's what they need whether they know it or not! And when those who are entrusted with the privilege and responsibility to offer that rather than some substitute they're more than robbing the people—they're mugging them.
Teaching institutions that so shape their ministers of the Word that those ministers think their business is to "educate" or "inform" or "make them think rationally" are hurting God's people and as a consequence are hurting the world God so loves that he sent his Son to bring them life!
We don't want to be educated unless education is immediately linked to our coming to know GOD. We don't want to be informed unless information brings us more and more into the presence of GOD. We don't want to think rationally unless rationality is immediately connected with knowing GOD for it is in knowing GOD that we live! John 17.3
We don't mind ministers of the Word being educated if it helps them to minister THE WORD. We're not interested in nor do we need to know that the minister is well-read in the fields of rhetorical, literary, redactional, hermenutical, epistolary or other criticism. If all his study doesn't enable him to bring us into the presence of the GOD who is his God and ours—A pox on his education! We don't need him to be ignorant, we fully expect him to be better-read than we are and we'd find it hard to bear if he got the bulk of what he had to say from LEAVE IT TO BEAVER or FRIENDS or the ANDY GRIFFITHS SHOW or the READER'S DIGEST. We want him to spend prayerful time with the biblical text and listening to others who do the same so that he can bring it to us in the 21st century.
But when he gets behind the pulpit he isn't just another husband or father or friend or sibling or somebody's son! And if he doesn't know that he ought to know it! [Schools again—we have no quarrel with homlietics classes, no dispute about the value of classes on pedagogy but if these classes are nothing but wise advice on "how to" say what you will say they're grooming "talkers" and "communicators" rather than "preachers".]
It makes no difference if the assembly is tiny and rural rather than huge and urban; it makes no difference if the people in the assembly are too busy to learn or to be interested in learning the high tech stuff that the city dwellers must and choose to learn—whoever they are, what they need to hear is rich truth about GOD for it is in his name that they confront and defy "the world" with a Story! In the pulpit we're to hear a declaration of war against despair, injustice, oppression, betrayal, violence, cruelty, distortion, greed, war-mongering and every other form of evil that frightens and enslaves humanity. And against all that we don't offer "a better way to pursue moral excellence"! We offerGOD, the God who relentlessly pursues humanity to redeem and restore; a God who in faithfulness to his creation purpose has come to us in and as Jesus Christ and who will right all wrongs. [He will! He will right ALL wrongs. Think noble things of God!]
The pulpit is not the preacher's "stage" on which he is to perform [nor is the platform the "stage" on which worship leaders and choirs are to let us see how much they love God]. Preaching is another act of God's people in an eschatological battle against satanic and demonic powers and the preacher in preaching is, at that moment, leading the charge. In such moments he is making it clear that the true and worthy Lord is Jesus, the Son of God, and that the satanic and demonic powers are the usurpers!
But the preacher who is about his business does more than confront and denounce "the world" in the name of God and his People. Like a skillful poet he gives the trustful hearers the vision of a new world, GOD'S world, God's new creation. Preachers and poets are like seers, they see things the rest of us can't see without help. The "world" that is satanic and anti-God is real [see 2 Corinthians 4:4; 1 John 2:15-17; John 12:31; James 4:4] but so is God's world. In and through Jesus Christ God has brought about a new creation and all who have been drawn to and embraced Jesus live in the new creation. In and through Jesus God has crucified "the world" {Galatians 6:14] and the preacher helps God's People to see the new world. He helps them rejoice in it, to see its glory, to delight in its freedom and to learn the life direction and behavior of that new world.
In another place and another time I stepped behind a pulpit that had a sign attached, a phrase from John 12.21:
WE WOULD SEE JESUS!
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy, for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.