When I first started preaching, two of my congregants were internationally known New Testament scholars, Krister Stendahl and Helmut Koester. It scared the exegesis out of me. But they knew how egregiously difficult preaching predicated on biblical texts can be. So they gave me a lot of slack. In the same vein, one of the great preachers of that same era, who, when teaching, told anxious young theological students like me that there is only one rule for preaching.
I, blessedly, happened to have been able to take a homiletics class from that very preacher – whether I learned anything, is another question. Then Preacher to the University at Harvard, the Presbyterian, George Buttrick, distinguished himself in many ways. He was an avid student of literature and the arts. He had a resonant, but not booming voice. He constantly worked diligently to probe biblical texts in their historical settings. He also was on top of the daily news. But best of all, he obviously loved all those who showed up to hear his sermons. As an undergraduate, I hung on his every word Sunday mornings, and was typically surprised when the sermon had ended. To coin a not very theological phrase, Buttrick always left me hanging.
What was the great Buttrick rule for preaching? After we proto-preachers labored passionately, summarizing our proposed sermons in his homiletics class, Buttrick would invariably ask a question that most of us had typically thought to address in our sermons: “Now, having said all this so powerfully, what do you want them to do?” Some of us obviously hadn’t thought about that question. Others somehow had concluded in advance that it didn’t have a place in their sermons. Preach the Word! Deliver your message! Interpret your biblical text! That’s what most of us assumed that we had been called to do.
Buttrick welcomed such thoughts. But he would always ask: Now, what do you want them to do? We could come up with various ideas, of course, such as: pray more often, love your neighbor more fully, practice forgiveness as a way of life, really become a champion of social justice, read your Bible more often. “Okay,” Buttrick would invariably respond, “why don’t you tell them what to do?”
If it were to fall to my lot one these days to say one word to preachers in training, it would be this. This is my one rule for preaching: “Whatever else you aspire to do in your preaching, along the way or definitely at the end of each sermon, please, please, please tell me what to do.”
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