The Ten Commandments for Preachers.

The Ten Commandments for Preachers was designed as a discussion instrument for a pastoral conference. I had three homiletical theological goals in mind.

The first was to illustrate the art of application. After all, preaching is application.

The Ten Commandments, like all biblical texts, pose a challenge in application for today. These commandments were addressed to Israel in its religious and cultural milieu. The commandments are both religiously conditioned, e.g., the Sabbath Law, and culturally conditioned, e.g., wives are listed as if they were the property of males, which other males should not covet. The ethical demands are minimum statements that stake out the outer boundary in behavior a member of the community dare not cross.

Yet next to the Love Commandment in the New Testament, the Ten Commandments are the most treasured summary of divine law for the church. Luther's Small Catechism with its succinct explanations of the commandments is still the functioning guide for the laity.

The reason is simple. The Ten commandments are true to the meaning of faith in the God who delivered Israel from bondage. They are also true to the demand of love in human relations for anyone who has experienced true love in a relationship. The demand of the commandments retains their power because they are true to the life of faith and love.

To be sure, the church transposed the key of the Ten Commandments in terms of the Christ event. The Sabbath rest became an Easter celebration. Jesus' love commandment radicalized the second table of the law. Any preaching for the church on the Ten commandments must take this transposition into account.

The Commandments are relevant for today when seen as the tip of the iceberg that signals the whole life of faith active in love. For example, Luther takes the commandment to honor father and mother and relates it to the whole dynamic of governance applicable to all forms of human community. This article seeks to probe the tips of ten icebergs in relation to the preaching ministry.

Application in preaching involves a thought process that moves from the universal to the particular, from the general to the specific. It also involves the movement back again from the particular to the universal.

The commandment to love one's neighbor is true for all believers in all places at all times. This demand can be made without reservation. "Honor your father and mother" is more specific and more complex in application. Sermons would be dull generalizations without concretizing this commandment even more by relating it to the alienated father-son relationship in Steinbeck's novel East of Eden.

The risk in becoming specific and concrete is offering proscriptions for action that wrongfully bind the hearer's conscience. That is why there needs to be a return from the narrative within this particular situation to the universal call to faith active in love.

This is most important when touching on social issues. "Honor your father and mother" was Israel's social security system. When they got old, most Israelites had only their children to take care of them. At this moment in history the question of how to salvage our own social security system looms large. If one never concretizes the love commandment in a way that touches on this issue and other social issues, preaching at best is privatized and at worst offers innocuous generalizations. To relate the message to Social Security reform, however, runs the risk of propagating political ideology and binding consciences.

This dilemma is negotiated by moving from faith active in love to Social Security reform and back to faith active in love. The congregation may validly differ on how to fix Social Security--e.g., means testing, benefit reduction, stock investment, tax increases, etc. The preacher has no crystal ball to offer a divinely prescribed solution. But there are basic issues of justice and injustice, of faith and unfaith, of love and selfishness that are at work in the present debate. The preacher is called to preach the commandment to expose the unfaith and self-concern that stand in the way of our realizing intergenerational justice. The preacher can preach a gospel of God in Christ that frees the hearers up for greater self-sacrifice in the quest for the common good.

A second goal was to suggest a gospel application in relation to the Ten Commandments. Preaching is a means of grace even when the central text is one of the commandments. The commandment is used to lead the hearers to and from the gospel promise. On one hand, the radical demand to trust God and love the neighbor exposes the hearers' problem that necessitates the proclamation of God forgiving and reconciling death in Christ for them. Meditating on "the Ten Commandments for Preachers" led me to join the psalmist in saying, "If you, O Lord, should mark inequities, Lord, who could stand? But there is forgiveness with you so that you may be revered" (Ps 130:3-4).

But the gospel not only covers past sin, it also is the ground and empowerment for future faith-life. The demand "Believe" or "Love" can only be realized in response to the daily proclamation of God's trustworthiness in Christ and the gifts of the Spirit in our hearts. Giving the gift of God in Christ to the people of God is the most crucial task in preaching.

Finally, this was an effort to resurrect the word "Commandment" for myself and others who have battled against the moralism and legalism that gives "preaching" a bad name. There is a tendency in mainline church preaching today not to utilize the power in the word "commandment." Commandment contains the force of demand. It strikes the hearer as an obligation and not simply an invitation to choose or reject as one sees fit. Commandment evokes a sense of duty so badly needed when we are not spontaneously given to keep our covenants with each other. The word says, "This is serious, and there are serious consequences for good and ill." God's commandment does not produce a false guilt feeling. It may expose God's guilty verdict already at work in the hearers' lives. "Be reconciled" is a gospel exhortation in response to "God has reconciled" (2 Cor 5:17-21). "Be reconciled" can also function as a demand for discipleship. Commandments can be lethal, but so can their absence.

I. Preach no other gospel

We are to fear, love and trust in God's grace in Christ alone and preach no gospel that promises self-salvation.

"For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him
crucified." (1 Cor 2:1)

"But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the
Messiah, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his
name." (John 20:31)
"If I were to write of the burdens that a preacher must bear and endure,
as I know them and myself experienced, I would frighten everybody away
from the ministry. For a devout God-fearing preacher must be so minded
that there is nothing he desires more than Christ, his Lord and Savior,
and the eternal life to come, so that even though he lose this life and
all else, Christ would say to him: Come unto me; you have been my
beloved, faithful servant." (Martin Luther)

II. Do not use the Lord's name to justify your cause

We are to fear and love God that we may speak for God and not use God to sanctify our agenda.

"We are to preach to our age, but woe to us if it is our age we preach,
and only hold up the mirror to the time." (P. T. Forsyth, Positive
Preaching and the Modern Mind)

"The church confesses that she has taken in vain the name of Jesus
Christ, for she has been ashamed of this name before the world and she
has not striven forcefully enough against the misuse of this name for
an evil purpose." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

"People are trying to use God as a means to an end, to say that a man
should be a Christian because that would make him moral, or would make
him free." (Geoffrey Clayton, former Archbishop of Cape Town, South
Africa)

      I've learned to hate Russians
      All through my whole life
      If another war starts
      It's them we must fight
      To hate them and fear them
      To run and to hide
      And accept it all bravely
      With God on my side.
      --Bob Dylan

III. Remember to rest in God

We are to trust God that we may rest from doing and in silence be persuaded by the Spirit to surrender to God's promise in Christ: "I justify you by grace. I alone create and sustain faith and community. My word works." In obedience to this faith our preaching is kept holy.

                    "Drop Your Nothing"
Disciple: I have come to you with nothing in my hands.
Master: Then drop it at once!
Disciple: How can I drop it? It is nothing.
Master: Then carry it around with you! (Anthony de Mello, The Song of
The Bird)

"Rather kneel down in your closet and pray to God in true humility and
earnestness, that through his dear Son he may grant you his Holy Spirit
to enlighten, guide, and give you understanding." (Martin Luther)

IV. Require the doing of justice

We are to trust God that we may not be silent in the face of injustice but proclaim God's demand to do right to the family, work, society and the whole creation.

(or)

Do not dispense cheap grace

God's grace is made cheap when offered as if it cost God nothing, and the people receive it as if it cost them nothing in their life together.

"What God joins together let no one put asunder. Justification and
justice, faith and works, personal and social, eternal and temporal
life." (Anonymous)

                          "Christmas Trees"

   Bonhoeffer in his skylit cell bleached by the flares' candescent
   fall, pacing out his own citadel,

   restores the broken themes of praise, encourages our borrowed days,
   by logic of his sacrifice.

   Against wild reasons of the state his words are quiet but not too
   quiet. We hear too late or not too late.
   --Geoffrey Hill

"When the state solved the Jewish question in the most horribly brutal
way and delivered the mentally ill and retarded to euthanasia, apart
from a few exceptions, there was silence. For after all, were not these
"political questions" which were not the concern of the church?" (Helmut
Thielicke)

V. Do not kill the spirit by moralizing

We are to fear and love God that we may not kill the spirit by telling people what to do as if they could when they can't, or burden the conscience by telling them what to do as if we knew when we don't.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control." (Gal 5 22)

"We need that preachers shall not keep demanding either a faith or love
that we cannot rise to, but shall preach a Christ that produces and
compels both." (P.T.Forsyth, Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind)

"Today, the role seems to be reversed: private antinomians and public
moralizing.... We are private antinomians, tolerant and open to all
sorts of private behavior, but coercive and legalistic in our control of
other people through the safe anonymity of public policy and church
polity." (William H. Willimon, The Service of God)

VI. Be faithful to your promise

We are to fear and love God that we may not grow weary in our pastoral care and sermon preparation for the Lord's bride, the Church, but remain faithful to our ordination vows.

P   "Will you be diligent in your study of the Holy Scriptures and in
    your use of the means of grace. Will you pray for God's people,
    nourish them with the Word and Holy Sacraments, and lead them by
    your own example in faithful service and holy living?
R   I will, and I ask God to help me.
P   Will you give faithful witness in the world, that God's love may be
    known in all that you do?
R   I will, and I ask God to help me."

"Let no one despise your youth, but set the believers an example in
speech and conduct, in love, in faith, in purity. Until I arrive, give
attention to public reading of scripture, to exhorting, to teaching. Do
not neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you through
prophecy with the laying on of hands by the council of elders. Put these
things into practice, devote yourself to them, so that all may see your
progress. Pay close attention to yourself and to your teaching; continue
in these things, for in doing this you will save both yourself and your
hearers." (1 Tim 4:12-16)

"If I prepared my briefs before the judge as poorly as I sense some
preachers prepare their sermons, I would be disbarred." (Robert
Duesenberg, lawyer and Lutheran layman)

"I am convinced if I asked any one of you suddenly to recall five
sermons you have listened to, you would be hard put to answer. But if I
should ask you to name five persons through whom God has put his hand on
your life, you would not hesitate a moment." (Halford E. Luccock)

VII. Do not steal someone else's witness

We are to trust God that we may not become dilettantes or impostors mouthing someone else's lines but be true to our own confession of faith.

"A minister of Christ should have his tongue, his head and his heart
agree." (Jerome)

"Doubtless most people have a notion that it requires courage to step
out upon the stage like an actor and venture to encounter the danger of
having all eyes fixed upon one. And yet this danger is, in a sense, like
everything else on the stage, an illusion; for personally the actor is
aloof from it all, his part is to deceive, to disguise himself, to
represent another, and to transmit accurately the words of another. The
preacher of Christian truth, on the other hand, steps out in a place
where, even if all eyes are not fixed upon him, the eye of omniscience
is; his part is to be himself, and that in an environment, God's house,
which, being all eye and ear, requires of him only this, that he be
himself, be true. 'That he be true'--this means that he himself is what
he preaches, or at least strives to be that, or at the very least is
sober enough to admit that he is not." (Soren Kierkegaard)

"A person becomes a theologian (preacher) by living, by dying and being
damned--not by understanding, reading, and speculation." (Martin Luther)

VIII. Tell the whole truth

We are to trust God that we may not avoid the truth that hurts but say it in the service of the truth that heals.

"Truth is meant to save you first, and the comfort comes afterwards."
(George Bernanos)

             "The Wayfarer"

   The wayfarer,
   Perceiving the pathway to truth
   Was struck with astonishment.
   It was thickly grown with weeds.
   'Ha,' he said,
   'I see that no one has passed here
   In a long time.'
   Later he saw that each weed
   Was a singular knife.
   'Well,' he mumbled at last,
   'Doubtless there are other roads."
   --Stephen Crane

"Doublespeak is language that pretends to communicate but really
doesn't. It is language that makes the bad seem good, the negative
appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive or at least tolerable.
Doublespeak is language that avoids or shifts responsibility, language
that is at variance with its real or purported meaning." (William Lutz,
Doublespeak)

IX. Do not covet a favorable response from the people

We are to trust God that we may not seek favor from the people but offer the favor of God to the people without strings attached.

"I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you have revived your
concern for me; indeed, you were concerned for me, but had no
opportunity to show it. Not that I am referring to being in need; for I
have learned to be content with whatever I have. I know what it is to
have little, and I know what it is to have plenty. In any circumstances
I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of
having plenty and of being in need. I can do all things through him who
strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my distress."
(Phil 4:10-14)

"Have you ever preached without remembering your calling? Have you ever
preached the Word solely for the sake of souls, without any thought
whatsoever of the impression you are making, no matter whether you were
pleased with your performance or whether you had feelings of
inferiority?" (Bo Giertz)

                "In Church"

"And now to God the Father," he ends
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the
    vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.
The door swings softly ajar meanwhile.
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss
    or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.
--Thomas Hardy

X. Do not desire another preacher's gift or success

We are to trust God that we may not covet a colleague's charisma or success but rejoice in our gifts and praise the Spirit for the harvest.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one
who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives
the growth." (1 Cor 3:6-7)

"We must make sure that we do not decide that we shall succeed. If we
decide to succeed then we may succeed without succeeding in God's way.
But if we go on from day to day seeking to do his will, then we shall be
prepared to receive success from him if he wills it; and if he does not,
then humbly to say--It is God's decision that David shall not build the
temple, but he will raise up Solomon." (W. A. Visser't Hooft)

"The person who cannot sincerely rejoice in another person's gift has no
call to the ministry. Neither has he who has not learned, with his two
talents, to work loyally with her who has five." (George Johnstone
Jeffrey)

"The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success
as its standard." (Dietrich Bonhoeffer)

Andrew M. Weyermann[dagger]