The Very Rev Dr James Simpson considers the importance of preaching.

QUEEN Victoria so admired the preaching of the Very Rev Dr Norman Macleod, that she often invited him to stay at Balmoral Castle and conduct worship for her and her guests on the Sunday.

She held him in such esteem that when he died, she installed a stained glass window in Crathie Church in his memory. At the close of one of Dr Macleod’s services, two of the congregation were overheard discussing his sermon. One of them asked, “Did you ever hear anything so grand? Wasn’t that a great sermon?” The reluctant reply was “Aye, but he read it.” “Read it” cried the other, “it moved me so much that I would not have minded if he had whistled it!” Norman Macleod was a master at reaching people’s hearts without bypassing their minds. How markedly different was the oratorical style of Robert Paine, a well known American intellectual. It was once said of him: “He could make even murder tedious”. That comment came to mind one Sunday as I listened to a very boring sermon on the Crucifixion, history’s most infamous murder!

Though in our secular society it is not always easy to bring to life the “old old story of Jesus and his love”, I have kept trying for over 60 years, believing, as the Russian writer Berdyaev also did, that that old story “is the starting point for learning who God is, who we are and what life is really all about.”

My preaching has radically changed since I was ordained. I now never enter a pulpit without realising that I have to answer two questions, questions being voiced silently by some in the congregation, “O yeah?” and “So what?” Though technical and academic language can be helpful when scientists speak to other scientists, or doctors speak to other doctors, academic language can often be a barrier when preachers seek to communicate with lay people. Most worshippers come to church not to listen to a philosophic or academic lecture, but hoping the preacher will, in everyday language, shed some light on the mystery of life, and where power can be found for the mastery of life. “Unless”, said St Paul, “you utter with the tongue speech easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken?” (1 Cor 14:9)

The late distinguished Bible translator and preacher Eugene Peterson, warns preachers against over analysing the complexities of a Biblical passage. He likened preachers who are guilty of this, to an over-zealous surgeon who, as he operates, points out to the students watching, interesting but not always relevant anatomical facts and details. Sometimes by the time the operation is over, the poor patient, says Peterson, lies dead on the operating table. Lengthy, interpretive academic preaching can also end up leaving the living Word of God dead, for the majority of worshippers.

An artist tells how one day, as he was sketching, a group of children appeared on the scene. They watched every stroke of his brush. Finally one said: “Mister would you get us into the picture?” I believe that is the unspoken plea of many in the pew: “Get us into your preaching. Include in your semons our problems and sorrows, our tears and fears, and our struggles with the world without and within. 

“Most worshippers come to church not to listen to a philosophic or academic lecture, but hoping the preacher will, in everyday language, shed some light on the mystery of life, and where power can be found for the mastery of life.

I believe preachers should give their message a sight track as well as a sound track, something for the eye to see as well as the ear to hear. That I am sure is why Jesus in his teaching told so many parables. Abraham Lincoln once wrote: “They say I tell a great many stories. I reckon I do, but I have learned from experience that people are more easily influenced through the medium of the story than in any other way.” Jesus and Lincoln both knew that the human mind resembles a picture gallery more than a debating chamber. After sixty years in the ministry ,I am now more persuaded than ever that truth becomes more intimate and relevant when presented in the guise which we humans know and understand best – stories and word pictures.