A sermon for Sabbath

Time had worn deep ruts of exposition across the passage that I had chosen for my Sabbath sermon at Newbold College. Yet the conviction had settled that the parable of the prodigal son should be the topic.

The decision itself was somewhat alarming. A great many years had passed since last I took a parable and used it for an expository sermon. To leave the writings of Paul and the major prophets, my usually productive sermon-hunting territory, and take up such a well-worn story appeared foolhardy. With God's help, could I blaze a new path through a story as old as Christianity? Could the vehicle of Biblical exposition be driven out of the ruts? One thing at least was sure—I would not have to tell the story, and that would leave more time for explaining God's Word.

I don't know how it is with you, my fellow preacher, but for me the hardest part of preaching is deciding what to preach about. I know not whether all preachers have this difficulty, because I hear men say that they have a thousand sermons yet unpreached. That may be true, but no one has handed me my list yet!

The preaching life of an administrator can be relatively easy. After all, he appears in different congregations week after week, and one good sermon may be effectively peddled from church to church. I do, in fact, have a few emergency sermons of that kind tucked away in my memory banks, to be produced as needed. Years ago, while still a novice in departmental work, I traveled extensively with a visitor from another division. In less than four weeks I heard the same sermon twenty times! Quoting parts of that sermon presents no problem even today. Such a pattern cakes dust on everybody's shelves, and I have at tempted to avoid stultifying repetition.

At any rate, I chose to preach on the parable, and now, having completed that assignment, I've decided to take a look back, revealing a little of what a sermon means in study and preparation.

Versions and the Spirit of Prophecy

Basic to any Biblical exposition is a clear view of the Scripture message it self. Reading the passage in several versions gives the shades of meaning that one might also obtain from a good lexicon, but it has the advantage of giving them in the context of the living Word, not as isolated dictionary definitions.

Three weeks before the sermon date my desk groaned with Scripture versions. The King James Version, The New English Bible, the New American Standard Bible, The New International Version, the Revised Standard Version, Moffatt, Weymouth, The Jerusalem Bible, Today's English Version, and The Living Bible all contributed their view. Someone will surely say that Bible reading is best done in the original language. Perhaps so for a scholar, but with my stilted Greek translation process that allows my mind to encompass only one or two English meanings for each word, I find the New Testament Greek too slow and limited for an initial grasp of the story. I have to go frequently to a lexicon to broaden the context and establish the etymology of the words. Therefore, I find it more effective to read English versions first and then consider the Greek.

After all that reading I felt fairly comfortable with the story. I understood the context (as well as many of the nuances), and I was ready to head off to word study, exegesis, commentators, and the Greek New Testament itself.

At this point the Spirit of Prophecy came to the fore. What did Ellen White have to say about my passage? As so often happens, she surprised me with her insights and crystal-clear grasp of the elements of the subject. Strangely enough, The Desire of Ages was little help, with less than a page devoted to the story. But Christ's Object Lessons, a favorite of mine for its crisp, concise writing, provided several pointed observations and quotations, as did Steps to Christ and, to my surprise, the third volume of the Testimonies.

All this time I was jotting down random notes, ideas, and thoughts from the versions and the Spirit of Prophecy that might later be useful. A choice quotation I would write out. A thought gained would be noted, and the insight offered by a particular version spelled out. No particular order was attempted at this point; I just put down page after page that might prove useful.

Commentators

Every year I budget between $600 and $800 for new religious books. At the moment I am in the process of building several modern commentary sets to supplement such older ones as Clarke's and Barnes's. For this sermon I found the New International Commentary on the New Testament, Black's New Testament Commentaries, and Barclay's The Daily Study Bible particularly useful, with the honors going to the New International Commentary.

My experience with the Seventh-day Adventist Bible Commentary fluctuates. Sometimes I find it highly productive; at other times it glosses over passages on which I would dearly love a clear exposition. Usually, however, it makes a valued contribution, and this time was no exception. It also serves as a conservative counterbalance to some of the more liberal, critical studies that find their way onto library shelves.

But my most exciting and rewarding moments came from what I call speciaist books. What a gold mine of treasure on the subject came from Joachim Jeremias' The Parables of Jesus! Who else could have proved that the prodigal was only 17 or 18 when he left home? Or defined so clearly the legal situation that evolved from the father's decision to split his capital assets between the two sons?

Well, one man could! J. Duncan Derrett provided even more detail in his Law in the New Testament. He offered the clearest definition of exactly how the prodigal sinned against his father. And he also served as a counterbalance to some more extreme interpretations espoused by other scholars. Victor Paul Furnish strengthened the view of divine love portrayed in the story with his comments in The Love Command in the New Testament.

Now came a critical moment in any expositor's preparations—word study. It was time to examine the parable's key Greek words and phrases to determine flow and counterflow of concepts in this tightly woven story.

As I sit at my desk writing this article, right in front of me are my favorite tools for word study. I prefer Arndt and Gingrich's A Greek-English Lexicon chiefly because it confines itself to the New Testament and early-Christian literature. My interest in classical Greek is limited to the light it throws on New Testament usages. And for a detailed view of both classical and New Testament usages, what better source than Kittel and Friedrich's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament? To support this basic tool, Colin Brown's The New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology has its own invaluable contribution.

Now someone (especially presidents and departmental leaders) will no doubt ask me how I made time for this study. Most of it came at night, after work at the office. That's one difference between administrative personnel and pastors on the whole, administrators have more nights free for study, while the pastor can find more time during the day. Reading a serious or scholarly book every week or two seems a reasonable goal for any minister, whatever his responsibilities. It is interesting, for me, to note on the front page where and when I began the book, and where and when I finished it. I'm not very interested in owning a book unless I've read it or at least browsed through it.

Putting it together

At this point I had more than twenty-five pages of disordered notes, bearing no resemblance to a sermon. Having approached the parable with an open mind as far as the sermon product was concerned, the jumble of ideas was horrifying. Now the task was to bring order out of chaos.

But first a word. At this point, more than anywhere else, I felt the need of prayer and guidance. To lay before the Lord all you have been able to find out about the topic is a comforting thing. You have done your part. Surely if there is any moment when the Spirit must be free to work in the preacher's mind, this is it.

It seemed to me that the best way to group the material into some order would be on the basis of the three main characters. So I wrote "Prodigal Son," "Older Brother," and "Father" at the top of three separate pages and went through my notes rewriting and grouping the material accordingly. It soon became necessary to add two more pages, one for "Context" and one for "Application."

I now had excellent quotations; I had decided on The New English Bible as my preaching version; I had fresh ideas that were quite new to me and hence could be new to at least some of the people to whom I would preach. But even at the end of this process the result was still far from a sermon.

I decided that I would cross section the story at four points: (1) the moment when the son takes farewell, his asses loaded, and he gives that last, long look at the farm, with the father and elder brother watching; (2) the moment when the prodigal has snatched the carob pods from the pigs and in revulsion lets them fall back to the snuffling swine; (3) the moment before the embrace, with the father, gown flapping, running toward the startled prodigal, who is already on his knees ready to utter his well-practiced repentance speech; (4) and, finally, the moment when the older son plants his feet, stiffens his back, and shouts angrily at his entreating father.

I plucked a metaphor from the world of film and television to deal with these cross sections. Just as the visual media will suddenly stop an action picture at a critical point of climax, so each of these moments was to be a "freeze frame."

Now the final hours came, and the typewriter became my tool as I took each of these points and made them a part of the exposition, building a sermon that displayed the tension in the home prior to the prodigal's departure; the depth to which the prodigal sank in dis honoring God and his father; the father's prodigal unselfishness; and the older son's own departure from sonship.

And, thus, at last, a sermon for Sabbath.

In all, it had taken fourteen hours of immediate study and prayer to bring the sermon to paper. I say "immediate" be cause every sermon builds on the years of study and reading that undergird a preacher's life. It would be used two or three times at most, by which time it would be preached without notes, a point where I consider a sermon ready for joining the fat file that only rarely hears the resurrection call. At this rate of usage it would equal that of an average pastor who can take his sermon from congregation to congregation, adapting it to local circumstances. It might, perhaps, even join the group of "emergency" sermons for those unexpected demands.

The initial preaching is past now, and I believe the Lord blessed. I know I have been blessed deeply by the study and the prayer. For me, to preach is the essential experiencing of my calling. To be called for such a task is the greatest honor God and His church can bestow. And now I am thinking and planning for the next sermon. Already the ideas are starting to crystallize.