II. How Does a Sermon Come About?
No sermon can begin without a prayer for the Holy Spirit, for a sermon is not merely a presentation in which we express personal opinions or feelings. Hence we must pray that God the Holy Spirit will be speaking. This is part of the objective organization and is a necessary part of the sermon form. This prayer then transitions to a meditation on the text, which does not mean that we collect our own thoughts but rather that we appropriate the text in a personal way, word for word, not freely, but rather on the basis of the word that has just been spoken.
One is not searching for new ideas or homiletic or exegetical insights. Just as the words spoken by a loved one move us, follow us. Kierkegaard: read the Bible as one reads a love letter.
Then comes a meditation focusing on how one will convey the text to the congregation. Ignatian rather than Sulpician meditation: the Ignatian method consciously refers to the text, is firmly bound. Although the Sulpician takes the text as its point of departure, it ultimately issues in free prayer.
We can then direct concrete questions to the text itself:
What is the text saying about God? About human beings?
About God’s relationship to me?
Where do I risk becoming untruthful in my sermon on this text?
Where do I risk bending or weakening the text for my own sake merely because I cannot come to terms with it?
Saying something that I myself cannot believe, with respect to which I do not want to be obedient? (Sermon on the Mount)— What is the text saying to the congregation?
Think about special needs within the church-community, particularly people beneath the pulpit. You may certainly think about these people when preparing a sermon. Repeated reading of the text until the center of the text comes into view, which in its own turn does not need to be a theme or even to be mentioned. But everything revolves around this center.
The sermon is a sector of the text.
Moves toward the center or comes from it, though also moves all the way out to the periphery. Then the sermon unfolds on its own, without being forced. You should write the sermon down if at all possible during the day, not at night. Otherwise you will be excited in the evening and then sober up the next morning.
You should not write the sermon all at once.
Stay with the chosen text!
Not least because ultimately every text can say the same thing. If possible do not read any other sermons on this text until your own draft is finished. Although it is good to read commentaries, it is not absolutely necessary. Clear conceptual disposition, otherwise difficult to learn and also not good.
Begin at latest on Tuesday, have it finished at latest on Friday!
You must work on it at least twelve hours.
A written sermon that is finished is not yet a finished sermon!
Memorize not words but connected lines of thought. For every section, note the first and last ideas, then the material between them.
By all means keep Saturday evening free. It is nice if you can make pastoral visitations on Saturday afternoon that genuinely are strictly pastoral in nature. Refuse basically all invitations within the congregation.
A sermon is born twice, once in the pastor’s own study and once in the pulpit, pulpit, the latter representing the real origin.
An ill-prepared preacher will be insecure and will have to distract listeners from that insecurity through all sorts of devices deriving from his own vanity: noise, pathos, appeal to teary emotions. The highest possible objectivity in the pulpit results from the best preparation. The preacher is free with regard to preparatory work to the extent required and is not bound to having to learn anything word for word.
Prayer in the sacristy before the sermon.
Kneeling belongs not in the pulpit but in the sacristy.
After the sermon, prayer for the fruit of God’s word through the Spirit.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Theological Education at Finkenwalde: 1935-1937
