Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

spiritchatter

Home
Progressive Christian
Pope Francis on How to Prepare a Sermon

Pope Francis on How to Prepare a Sermon

Last updated on: June 1, 2015 at 9:10 am by Jack Levison

Pope Francis on How to Prepare a Sermon 2015-06-01T09:10:47-07:00 Jack Levison

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The pope and I agree. He’s in very good company! (Okay, I’ll admit, it goes the other way, too.)

What do we agree about? How to prepare a sermon.

Here’s the backstory to how I know Pope Francis and I agree.

I wrote this week to Susan Stabile, a law professor and Faculty Fellow of Spiritual Life at the University of St. Thomas. Susan had written an endorsement for Forty Days with the Holy Spirit followed by a fine blog post. I wrote to her about my first term at Perkins School of Theology–how I cajoled, screamed at, and urged my students never, ever, ever to begin sermon preparation by heading to the commentaries or, worse still, the internet. Never, ever, ever.

What then? What to do? How to start?

Start the way we started class this term: with lectio divina. We turned the lights out, put meditative music on, and gathered groups of four around plastic tea candles. (For the record, I’m a docile, obedient soul who would never sneak contraband candles into the classroom.) Then we read a passage of scripture three times.

The first time, we listened for a word that struck us.

The second time, we listened for an emotion that grabbed us.

The third time, we listened for an invitation that God extended to us.

We then took the word that struck us in the first reading (okay, so I pre-selected the word) and did a word study on it using Blue Letter Bible, a handy online tool for word studies. We asked about how that word is used elsewhere. We looked at associated words. We discovered related passages in scripture by tracing the occurrence of the word.

And that, I told my Perkins students, is how to begin preparing a sermon.

With meditation.

With word studies based upon the word that grabbed our attention during lectio divina.

Sam, a student who poked and prodded and raised dynamite questions during term, asked, “You pick the words, so you know they work! What if we pick the wrong words?”

Fair question, to which I had an inspired response: “An hour of failed word studies in scripture is worth more than ten hours on the internet!”

Back now to my email exchange with Susan. After I told her about the exercise of lectio divina coupled with word studies, she quipped that she wished priests, and not just Protestant pastors-to-be, would follow my advice. Then, a day later, she sent me this remarkable quote from Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. The words are powerful, the challenge imposing.

And the result, if we followed it? Stunning. Sermons would not be a litany of stories and personal illustrations or, worse yet, impersonal filler culled from the internet, but a reflection rooted in meditation, a sermon suffused with depth.

This is the pope talking–not me. (Turns out the pope feels the same way I do about how priests and pastors should prepare sermons.) After talking for a bit about lectio divina, he says:

Whoever wants to preach must be the first to let the word of God move him deeply and become incarnate in his daily life. In this way preaching will consist in that activity, so intense and fruitful, which is “communicating to others what one has contemplated.” For all these reasons, before preparing what we will actually say when preaching, we need to let ourselves be penetrated by that word which will also penetrate others, for it is a living and active word, like a sword “which pierces to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerns the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb 4:12). This has great pastoral importance. Today too, people prefer to listen to witnesses: they “thirst for authenticity” and “call for evangelizers to speak of a God whom they themselves know and are familiar with, as if they were seeing him.”

Do me a favor–yourself, too.

Don’t get up quite yet. Don’t scroll to another screen.

Imagine instead what it means to “communicate to others what one has contemplated.”

Imagine a sermon described with these words: incarnate, intense, fruitful, contemplate, penetrate, living, active, pierce, importance, authenticity, know, see.

Imagine if communication—from tweets to sermons to student papers—arose from contemplation.

Imagine that!

Perkins School of Theology

Pope Francis

preaching

Protestant

University of St. Thomas

Previous Post

May 19, 2015

The Promise of Pentecost You May Not Know

Next Post

June 9, 2015 5 Reasons Why We Need More Guns on Campus

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 March 2017 February 2017 February 2016 December 2015 September 2015 August 2015 June 2015 May 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who found baby Moses in the river?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Pharaoh’s daughter Pharaoh himself An Egyptian priest Miriam