Preaching and the Anglican
The discipline of hearing and applying the preached Word is part of the vital bread and butter of a healthy, full-blooded Christian life.
If we’re honest, though, we probably allow ourselves to become overly familiar with the sermons we hear. The glaze so easily sets in on our eyes and ears. It all looks so ordinary—just a pastor… talking. Words in the air. Weak. Maybe a half-hour long, but not as witty or entertaining as that sitcom we love! It’s usually longer than a TED Talk. Heck, most pastors don’t even use props. Boring. And maybe we think we’ve already heard the best sermons—we’ve heard it before, we’ve heard it better, we don’t need to hear it again. But Scripture is replete with examples of how we, as God’s People, need to hear essential truths again and again. Truth be told, the most important sermon we’ll ever hear is probably the next one we’re deciding whether or not to give our attention to.
Sponsored
If we are anemic in the Christian life, you can bet that it has something to do with divorcing ourselves from the Word of God and its preaching. The Christian can no more warm himself from a fire in the next room than he can distance himself from God’s Word and expect to remain healthy in Christ.
Applying Our Tools, Remembering the Purpose
Writing from the vantage point of Anglicanism and a robustly liturgical tradition, I think perhaps sometimes we can apply all the right tools and yet forget the purpose. For instance, within the Prayer Book’s Morning Prayer and Holy Communion services, we read and meditate on scads of Scripture. I mean, lots of it! We read from every portion of the Bible in a way that is typically narrative and thematic, encompassing the Old and New Testaments, Psalms, Epistles, and Gospels. The loot’s all there for the taking!
It’s important to remember that, here, we’re not just filling space: we’re feasting on the Word. I have a sneaking suspicion that some of our parishioners might be tempted to ask, “Why so much Bible? Couldn’t we do a dramatic skit or something like that?” Here’s why: because the Bible is living. Even just reading it together has incredible power. The Apostle Paul teaches us that, “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Likewise, God promises that his word will never return to him void (Isaiah 55:10-11).
The unfolding of the Word is one of the two great “peaks” in our Eucharist service together (the other is the Sacrament of the Table itself). So, are you wandering from the Word? Are you wandering during the giving of the Word? You’re not alone. That’s why I’ve written Hear, Read, Mark, Learn & Inwardly Digest: Preaching for the People of God as a remedy and a short guide. I wanted to bring clarity and focus to your life of listening and application.
Misdiscipled?
Perhaps for some of us, we just don’t know any better. We’ve never been taught to understand the primary place of the Word of God in a believer’s life. Just as a child has to be taught how to eat, so a child of God has to learn how to feast on the Word. We may have been taught to be quiet, but not how to receive. In some churches, worshipers are being discipled out of careful, attentive, edge-of-your-seat listening. Some today are even actively calling for the abolition of preaching. Or, sometimes the misdiscipling is more subtle: “Preach the gospel always—if necessary, use words,” you might hear someone say (often misattributing the statement to St. Francis). To that, I give author Andrew Pearson’s reply from his essay in The Future of Global Anglicanism: “Preach the gospel always, using words.” To do so will include regular devotion to the preached Word for ourselves, first and foremost.
Yes, to sit under the Word of God is a lifelong blessing and discipline in the life of a Christian. We never outgrow it, and we never graduate from it. I don’t believe that just because I’m a pastor. I believe that because I’m a Christian. What I argue for in this small work is that you must also. Dr. Al Mohler writes,
We preach, not because we have come to the conclusion that preaching is the most rational or most effective means of reaching the lost, but because God has commanded it —and because he has promised to take that which the world would say is foolishness, and use it to save sinners.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr., He Is Not Silent (Moody, 2008)
And not only save sinners, but renew, conform, strengthen, and confirm the Christian who stays near this ordinary means of grace.
Five Marks & Four Truths
To Be a Christian, the Anglican Church in North America’s catechism (that is, a manual for discipleship), helpfully places preaching at the center of the Christian life using the words “hear,” “read,” “mark,” “learn,” and “inwardly digest” as five distinct practices for the Christian. It goes on to define these practices in this way:
228. How should you “hear” the Bible?
I should hear the Bible through regular participation in the Church’s worship, in which I join in reciting Scripture, hear it read and prayed, and listen to its truth proclaimed.
229. How should you “read” the Bible?
I should read the Bible daily, following the Church’s set readings … or following a pattern of my own choosing.
230. How should you “mark” passages of Scripture?
I should study the Bible attentively, noting key verses and themes, as well as connections between passages in the Old and New Testaments. I should study on my own and with other Christians, using trustworthy commentaries and other resources to grasp the full meaning of God’s Word.
231. How should you “learn” the Bible?
I should seek to know the whole sweep of Scripture and to memorize key passages for my own spiritual growth and for sharing with others.
232. How should you “inwardly digest” Scripture?
I should meditate on Scripture and let it shape my thoughts and prayers. As I absorb Scripture, it deepens my knowledge of God, becomes the lens through which I understand my life and the world around me, and guides my attitudes and actions.3
To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism (Crossway, 2020)
These words themselves come from an age-old prayer for illumination before reading Holy Scripture, treasured by Christians worldwide. The beginning of the prayer runs,
Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them.4
It was initially written during the English Reformation and placed in the 1549 Prayer Book to “[acquaint] the people with the contents and teachings of the Bible.”
Of course, the catechism and the prayer above envision a life of Scripture intake that is both public and private, corporate and intimately personal. They envision a Christian saturated in Scripture throughout all of life, one devoted to ingesting the Bible whole! But, the scope of Hear, Read, Mark is to focus like a laser on the quality and intent of preaching from the pulpit, as it comes from godly, called, and qualified ministers to the Christian.
What is the quality and purpose of God’s Word given in this way? We can summarize it in four words: power, primacy, story, and strangeness. The book uses five “sermons” derived from Scripture itself to take readers through each aspect of the Word. We can understand each of these four aspects as follows.
Power
In Ezekiel 37, God asks the prophet to preach to the world’s most “unalive” audience ever. Literally. He preaches to a massive graveyard of bones—the “house of Israel.” Ezekiel gets it right. He doesn’t present his own “thought of the day” or something he found on TikTok that week. Instead, he says to the bones, “O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” And you know what? They do! They come alive. An essential ingredient in our approach to preaching is the realization and trust that the Word is effective. As we lay ourselves bare before the Word each Sunday, it does its mysterious, God-ordained work. Our part is to yield to that work and keep showing up for it.
Primacy
As Christians in the Anglican Way, we boldly say that “Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation” (Articles of Religion, Article VI). What this means is that we believe in the primacy (we could also say sufficiency) of the Word. This means that the role of the Word of God in the Christian’s life cannot be replaced or substituted for other means.
The Lord has definitively spoken and continues to speak through “God’s Word written” (also a phrase from the Articles of Religion, Article XX). Notice that we don’t say that the Bible is a book of everything about everything. Such a book might theoretically fit on your iPhone, but you’d never get through it, could never navigate it, and it would definitely not fit in your hand as a printed book. God’s providence and purpose in giving his Word is to give you everything you need for life in Christ, right through to heaven.
In our day of tailor-fit everything, this is a powerful, common affirmation about the central place the preached Word occupies in our lives and churches. We all sit under the same Word, preachers included!
Story
The Bible is a grand story. In fact, it is the One Story that narrates the whole world. It is, in the words of author Dorothy Sayers in Letters to a Diminished Church, “[The] terrifying drama of which God is the victim and hero.”6 In Luke 24, unbeknownst to both of them, two disciples walk with our Lord. Afterwards, they would say to each other, “Did our hearts not burn within us as he spoke with us?” Well, every sermon where Christ is at the center should leave us saying something like that. Faithful preaching will always leave us with much more than (though not less than) data, facts, and morality. Faithful preaching will help us to understand how the Scriptures fit together in Christ.
Strangeness
Lastly, as the Bible does, it works in a sin-soaked and broken world, and it will always seem a bit foreign. We should expect this. It is as Simeon prophesied it would be at the Presentation of Christ: “Behold, this child is appointed … [to be] a sign that is opposed” (Luke 2:34).
A sign that is opposed. You see, the Word of God (and the Gospel of Christ which it proclaims) cuts against the grain. It bothers us – like sandpaper running over the hardwood of hardened lives. Apart from Christ Jesus, the Word is foreign to the way we think and live, particularly in our relationship with God. But it is this chaffing that will polish us into the image of Christ himself! This ordinary, Sunday-by-Sunday work is the stuff of the mature and godly Christian life.
Interested in going deeper? I humbly commend Hear, Read, Mark, Learn & Inwardly Digest, to you, dear reader, where I explore the above points and much more.
Pick up Justin Clemente’s new book, Hear, Read, Mark, Learn & Inwardly Digest: Preaching for the People of God, now in print and ebook on Amazon.
Image: From the Preacher’s Pulpit, photo by EyeJoy from Getty Images Signature, courtesy of Canva. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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