Homiletics 2 File 1 Professor Carl Fickenscher II Question by: Joshua >> PROF. FICKENSCHER: I'm Dr. Carl Fickenscher. We're here in the studio at our seminary with the opportunity to videotape, for those of you in the Delto Hom 2 course, a number of questions and answers that you have for us. Let's begin with prayer and then I will eagerly receive your questions. We pray. Lord God, Heavenly Father, we give you thanks that you have given to us your holy word by which you proclaim to us your Son, Jesus Christ, our savior. We thank you that your Holy Spirit has worked through that word to create in our hearts faith in Jesus as our savior for our eternal salvation. And Father, we give you special thanks for preparing us and calling us at some point to be preachers of that holy word to your precious flocks of people. Father, we confess to you our inadequacy to that task, and we depend on the power of your word and your Holy Spirit through the word to support us and to enliven our work toward that end. Be with us in this course time together, that you would enhance our skills and strengthen us in faith. And give us the joy of knowing that the word from your holy scriptures that we proclaim is the word that saves those precious people in our charge. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Let's hear now your questions for our Homiletics 2 course. >> JOSHUA: My name is Joshua. I'm glad this class has started. I'm looking forward to learn what you have to teach. Preaching the word is such an important part of what we will be called to do, and yet I have to admit it makes me very nervous. I've heard hundreds of sermons, maybe thousands, and I've been working with sermons myself now, but I still want to be sure I'm going about this right. So let me start with a hopeful question. Is there maybe like a single key to understand about preaching, to make sure you're on the right track? >> PROF. FICKENSCHER: Thanks, Joshua. It's great having you in this course. I wish I could say that there was some kind of magic key that would open up everything that we want to do in preaching. There isn't anything quite that simple or easily simple or easily summarized to express what we're doing in the entire area of preaching, but I definitely would say it is my conviction that the ultimate key to proclaiming Christ to the people in our charge would be to properly divide law and gospel, proclaiming law and gospel in proper distinction. A Lutheran homiletician by the name of Herman Stuempfle who, by the way, also wrote several hymns that will be in our new hymnal says this about preaching: He says, "Whatever other elements are necessary in a Christian sermon, there's a certain theological substructure which is indispensable: The classic law/gospel distinction, which has been a constant theme in Lutheran theological and homiletical thought since the Reformation." You see what Stuempfle is saying. He says we can do a lot of things in preaching, and obviously in this course and in your Hom 1 course before, you talked about so many fundamentals, so many things that really are necessary to good solid preaching, but Stuempfle says underneath it all, the he calls it "the theological substructure" the real basis, the real substance of what we're doing is proclaiming law and gospel. As he says, something that we Lutherans have been doing very intentionally at least since the Reformation, and really Christians throughout the New Testament age and all of the proclamation that has gone out. Stuempfle is saying that the real content of what we do is to proclaim sin and the salvation from sin that we have in Christ Jesus. I think back on my time in the seminary and my years in serving congregations, and certainly I was taught to do this. The whole law/gospel thing was foundational in our homiletics courses when I was at the seminary. And then over the years of preaching to my congregations, I took that very seriously. But it really wasn't until I was working on my my advanced degree at a Baptist institution that I fully came to appreciate this. I worked with other guys who were very sharp, who were well studied, who were very able preachers, most of them Baptists, and I saw that they had tremendous insights and tremendous skills in the whole preaching area, but it was true that they had never been taught to think in terms of law and gospel. Often they would do it essentially accidentally. They would proclaim sin, they would proclaim God's demands upon us, they would proclaim salvation in Christ, but because it was not intentional, it really happened sometimes, and frequently not. And in the opportunity to discuss the full range of homiletical topics with these very able gentlemen, including my professors and fellow students, it occurred to me that the one thing that would solidify all of those good tools that we were all bringing to the table was this homiletical substructure, this theological basis that Stuempfle is talking about that, yes, we had been taught as Lutheran seminary students to see as foundational to preaching. And in coming to appreciate, by my discussion with non Lutherans what we had as Lutherans, it made it very clear to me that this is where we should focus our attention as we develop as preachers. Luther, of course, was famous for his emphasis on distinguishing law and gospel, and Luther has a quotation that is perhaps even more extensive than Stuempfle's. He says this: "Distinguishing between the law and the gospel is the highest art in Christendom and one that every person who values the name 'Christian' ought to recognize, know, and possess." If you think about what Luther says here, it really says this law/gospel thing is not only foundational to preaching, but it really reaches beyond that and includes everything that we are as Christians. And so of course it would also include everything that we do as Christian pastors. What Luther says here when he says everyone who wants to be called Christian should value this law/gospel distinction, he's not saying that unless a particular person has an ability to define law and gospel, to explain what law is, what gospel is, and how they interact, he's not a believer. Not at all. What he's really saying is that law and gospel is what makes any person a believer. In its simplest form, the law for us, applying to ourselves individually, is our recognition that we are desperate sinners in need of salvation, that we can't save ourselves. Every believer actually recognizes that. And then the gospel, in its simplest form, is understanding that we have a savior in Christ Jesus. And certainly every true Christian believes that. So even for countless believers who couldn't identify or define the terms "law" and "gospel," this law/gospel distinction and law and gospel kept distinct really is what their faith is all about. Luther's right, I think, when he says, "This is essentially what makes us believers." Now then, it stands to reason that if this is at the core of what it means to be a believer, even quite unconsciously, then we who aspire to be pastors of the Christian church, Lutheran pastors in particular, ought to be desirous of making that distinction more conscious in our minds. We really ought to know what we're doing unconsciously, so that we can be as helpful to our people as possible. And obviously that's true of preaching, but it's also true beyond preaching. It really is true of everything that we do as Christian pastors anytime, let's say, an individual member comes to us in need of counsel or comfort from God's word in a one on one kind of situation. I tell my students that as a pastor, your task always is to ask yourself the question: Is this a law moment or a gospel moment? The person with whom I'm speaking now, does she need to hear law at this moment or gospel at this moment? And then to give the medicine that that prescription requires. That really is what we do as pastors in every setting. We'll talk about that a little bit more later, as we go through our discussions. Let me say at this moment, to summarize my response to your question, Joshua, that I believe every step in the homiletical process, beginning with choosing a text and working through that text, all the way through the delivery of the sermon and even the aftermath of the sermon, if you will, are steps that are actually law and gospel steps. At every point of the preaching process, I think it is very helpful perhaps even essential for pastors to think in terms of law and gospel.