Last week I was listening to a sermon that was something like 17-18 minutes long. I cannot remember what the sermon was on or where I found it (I deleted the mp3 file), but I remember thinking that the preacher had really not done justice to the text. The fact that he had lumbered along in an utterly apathetic drone did not help.
That prompted me to tweet about it, to which
Scott Schultz replied with that he thought sermons longer than that could border on distraction because there are so many other things going on in worhsip
. That short discussion provides the context for this post.
First, as I mentioned in the tweet, I don't think there is a magic number for what length of time a sermon should be. I've heard
Mark Driscoll before say something to the effect that he is going to preach for an hour no matter what. Part of it, I understand, is his desire to break the inattentive nature of this fast-paced culture. But I don't think he's right about mandating a length of time. In fact, it seems to border on some sort of legalism. It is also seems to be a reflection on evangelicalism's tendency to view the sermon as the only important part of worship, everything else being tangential.
Second, and related to that, I am in full agreement with Scott that there are lots of things going on in worship. Worship cannot be devoid of certain elements, nor can disproportionate weight given to one or two elements above others. The public worship of God is a unified whole, and needs to be viewed as such. Music, prayer, confession and absolution, the reading of Scripture and proclamation of the Word, partaking of the Lord's table, and the pronouncement of blessing are all integral parts of worship.
Third, although all the various elements are integral to worship, I do think there is something unique about the preaching of the Word and the sacrament of the Eucharist. There is a reversal of sorts—in our songs, prayers, and offerings it is us, the worshipers, in some sense giving those things to God. But in the preaching and in the table God gives something to us. The first chapter of the
Second Helvetic Confession states, "The preaching of the Word of God is the Word of God. Wherefore when this Word of God is now preached in the church by preachers lawfully called, we believe that the very Word of God is proclaimed, and received by the faithful." Certainly, that is quite a loaded statement, but it gets at the significance of the proclaimed Word. Also, it is not insignificant that faith comes by hearing (Rom. 10:17), and that faith is confessed assent to the proclaimed message that Jesus is Lord (Rom. 10:8-10).
Additionally, the Lord's Supper, as a means of grace, is also something that flows from God to us. The
Heidelberg Catechism speaks of it as something that reminds and assures us of Christ's sacrifice (
Q&A 75) and the nourishes and refreshes us (
Q&A 77).
John Calvin taught that the sacrament should always accompany the preaching of the Word because there was no more fitting way to conclude the proclamation of the Gospel than to taste and see it.
John Witvliet, of the
Calvin Institute of Christian Worship,
agrees: "The sacrament seals the Word proclaimed. This means that if a sermon can’t be preached before the Lord’s Supper, it probably shouldn’t be preached!"
Fourth, and this is the main point I should have made more clearly originally, I have
not yet heard a sermon do justice to a text in a short time frame of 15 minutes. It would be unwise to say it is impossible. In fact,
what I heard at the wedding last weekend indicated to me that it is quite possible (although the context there was a little different). The years I have spent listening to sermons, however, seem to demonstrate a pattern of taking longer than that to really unpack a text. There is a personal perspective to this as well—having prepared a few sermons myself, I could not have adequately made the points I wanted to in less time.
All that being said, I think it would be quite wrong, as I said before, to require a sermon to fit within a time frame. That goes back again to something I read in
Martyn Lloyd-Jones'
lectures, Preaching and Preachers, for to do so would stifle the work of the Holy Spirit in preaching. There is a lot more that can be said about that, but I think you could easily draw your own conclusions on that point even if you have not yet read the book.
This all feels relatively inconclusive, but at this point I'll turn it over to Scott and anyone else who might like to offer some thoughts...
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