He is risen indeed

Mark 16:1-8: Rolling Stones

Preached my first Easter Sunday sermon ever yesterday. Pardon the melodrama here, but I got shivers when I said to the congregation,"He is risen" and heard the resounding "He is risen indeed!" in reply at the start of the service.

In honour of the occasion, I thought I'd re-post some thoughts on preaching and the resurrection that I'd posted before I was a pastor, almost a year ago. In a way, it feels (and I hope) all my preaching so far has been leading to yesterday's message: Jesus is Lord of Life, who through the Spirit was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.

He is risen indeed.

May 28, 2009:
I preached yesterday. Briercrest Seminary has its chapel every Thursday, and they invited me to share the Word. It was a real blessing for me: lots of people said encouraging things afterwards; edifying conversations about the text I'd chosen continued over lunch; people responded.

So I have absolutely no idea why I came home feeling kinda dejected.

There's no reason for it at all. Except that preaching is this profoundly paradoxical endeavor that can leave you emotionally energized and emotionally drained, spiritually blessed and spiritually broken, intellectually stimulated and intellectually wrung-dry, all at once. I read this preacher once (think it was William Willimon), who said something like: No one who has really felt what it is to preach the word of God will ever feel like they've really done it.

And that says it for me.

I've shared different thoughts about the nature of preaching over the last few months (like here or here). Reflecting back over yesterday, I'm wondering again: what is it that makes preaching preaching? What separates this speech-act from other kinds of public oration-- lectures, speeches, philosophical pontification, dramatic performance?

My friend David talks a lot about the radical assertion made in the Second Helvetic Confession (1566), that "The preaching the word of God is the word of God." David likes to point out that what makes preaching preaching is its outrageous conviction that God himself speaks in, through and with the words of the preacher; and unless God does, preaching is one of the silliest of all human activities. That's always been helpful for me (though again it always brings me back to the above quote: No one who has really felt what it is to preach the word of God will ever feel like they've really done it.)

But today I'm remembering another word of advice a friend gave me about preaching. Preaching, he said, must be a public proclamation that depends fundamentally on the death and resurrection of Jesus to give it meaning. Put differently: would you still say what you're about to say if the cross and the empty grave had never happened? Could you still say it if Jesus was still in his grave? If the answer is yes to that question, then whatever else you're doing-- entertaining, exhorting, educating, moralizing-- whatever else it is, it's not preaching.

I think this is the vital question for the church to ask whenever there's speaking from the pulpit: Does the fact that God raised the crucified Lord from the dead matter at all to these words?

Because we could still tell each other to do more, give more, try harder, be kinder or less stressed or more self-actualized, be better parents or spouses or citizens-- all this even if Jesus was still dead. We could even still help people understand the historical context, literary conventions and grammatical structure of the biblical text, without needing a really-risen Lord.

But we wouldn't be preaching.

And until our words depend on the proclamation that God raised his crucified Messiah from the dead, and that his risen Life now beats at the heart of all our acts of Christian service, and devotion, and life together-- until our words hang with bated breath on this reality- we may always go home inexplicably dejected, feeling like we haven't preached.