“What’s a Sermon?” Thinking about Preaching with Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

In the Spring of 1935, Dietrich Bonhoeffer returned to Germany as he recognized that God was calling him to serve his home country as it suffered under the rapid rise of the Nazi Regime. By the Fall of that year, he was the head of a newly founded underground seminary – the famous Finkenwalde Seminary – founded to train pastors and preachers who had little or no previous theological education to serve in the Confessing Church (the minority of the German Church that was resisting Nazism). Bonhoeffer lectured on a variety of topics, including preaching; much of what he had to say is relevant for emerging preachers in the Synod’s CGPI program.¹ 

Bonhoeffer begins his preaching lectures by stating that the call to preach is distinct from the call to be a pastor. While he recognizes that they often overlap – nearly all pastors are also called to preach -- he is quite keen to distinguish the call to the ordained office of pastor from the call to preach. The position of pastor, says Bonhoeffer is a temporary one, in a different time and place the church might not need pastors as we currently think of the pastoral office. But the office of preacher is essential, for the proclamation of the Gospel is the very purpose of the church: “This call [the call to preach] is irrevocable; we cannot get out from under God’s command.” 

With this distinction, Bonhoeffer asks his listeners the question: “What is Sermon?” He answer the question by comparing the sermon with other forms of public speech (such as speeches or lectures intended to instruct, influence, or even improve the lives of others). Bonhoeffer warns his listeners not to think the sermon as a speech intended to create, unite, or even persuade a community, in so far as that community is formed by a shared identity, culture, or ethnicity. The only thing that should unite the community that is the Church is “discipleship, obedience to the commands of Jesus Christ.” All of the ways that we human beings organize ourselves, by nationality, by ethnicity, by culture, by special interests, these have no place in the Church of Jesus Christ. The Church is that community that is gathered around and which follows after Jesus – when it ceases to do so, when its reason for existence is some identity other discipleship to Jesus, such a “church” is no longer the Church. 

And the sermon should reflect this fact that the Church is that community that follows after Jesus. According to Bonhoeffer, what sets a sermon apart from other forms of speech, is that a sermon is commissioned by Jesus Christ. This is not to say that preachers should not address contemporary events in their sermons. But what they say must be what God says and what God says is to follow Jesus, to listen to him and to obey him. If the preacher’s intention is anything other than calling the congregation to follow Jesus as disciples, than we no longer have a sermon, because we are hearing (or speaking!) something other than the call to follow Jesus. 

Bonhoeffer concludes his lecture on “What is a sermon?” with some practical points. He states that because all Scripture comes from God, the choice of sermon text is relatively unimportant. As an example he points out that Roman 13.1-7 (which calls Christians to obey human authorities such as the state) and Acts 5.29 (which states that in some circumstances Christians are called to obey God and resist human authorities) are both God speaking: the task of the church, the preacher who is commissioned to proclaim the Word of God to the Church, is to listen to Jesus speaking to them in the here and now. 

And this is done by prayer. The preacher is obligated to call upon the Holy Spirit to guide them both as they prepare the sermon and as they preach it. Bonhoeffer encourages preachers to begin their sermons with an invocation to the Holy Spirit: “come Holy Spirit!,” calling the entire congregation, including the preacher themselves, to be guided by the Spirit to follow after Jesus.  

Yet, this does not mean the preacher should expect the Spirit to do all the work! Mere paragraphs after telling his listeners to call on the Spirit, he tells them to read the scripture passage they are preaching on multiple times, to not write the sermon all in one day but to spend a few days reflecting on the passage (he writes: “Begin at the latest on Tuesday, have it finished at the latest on Friday! You must work on it at least twelve hours.) He tells his emerging preachers that they should memorize not words but connecting lines of thought; memorize the ideas and transitions, not every word.  

But then he states, “A written sermon that is finished is not yet a finished sermon! …A sermon is born twice, once in the pastor’s own study and once in the pulpit, the latter representing the real origin.” Anyone who has preached more than a few times will recognize the truth in this last statement! How often does a sermon transform in the pulpit, from the word I thought I needed to tell the congregation, to the WORD that God speaks to the people called to follow Jesus. Amen.