Preaching Sunday by Sunday through the summer, the “Green Growing Season,” is not for the faint of heart, but there are some opportunities for the intrepid pastor to open God’s word. I remember my first summer as an every-Sunday preacher. Our church plant launched on Pentecost, and I put incredible effort into making sure that my Pentecost and Trinity Sunday homilies sparkled. Pentecost is a great day for starting a church. Just ask Peter! Trinity Sunday may not be any preacher’s first lectionary choice for accessible hooks, but it offers much for outfitting a theological imagination.
When it came to going step-by-step through the “ordinary time” of Sunday lections through the rest of the summer and fall, however, I found my homiletical well beginning to run dry. Whether one is wrestling in Year B with six weeks on the Bread of Life in John 6, or a long walk through Jesus’ parables in Matthew or Luke in Years A and C of the Revised Common Lectionary, summer preaching presents numerous challenges. I decided to spend my first three summers through the lectionary preaching the Gospel readings, as much to deepen my understanding as to help this new congregation begin on the foundation of Jesus’ teachings.
Of course no one must preach through the Gospel readings. Many have similar themes week-to-week, especially in the John 6 summers of Year B, so there are good reasons for diversifying one’s homiletical fare. Some solve this lectionary challenge by preaching through the Epistle or Old Testament readings, a worthy task that can deepen parishioners’ comprehension of the Scriptures. Sometimes, just preaching what speaks to you in a set of lections allows you to “leave room for the Holy Spirit” in your preaching.
However, for those wanting to bring people through the Gospels during the “propers,” or those just wanting to arrive at summer’s end with a little more juice in the preaching tank, here are a few ways to make the summer preaching season into a time of renewal and refreshment.
- Get a Good Commentary and Read It.
If you’re going to study a Gospel deeply, there is no substitute for preparatory reading. Get a good, insightful commentary on your summer Gospel. Make room in your book budget and time in your summer. My personal favorites are Ulrich Luz’s three-volume Hermenaia Matthew commentary, Joel Marcus’s two-volume Anchor Bible commentary on Mark, and Joseph Fitzmyer’s two volumes on Luke in the same series. Since John appears sprinkled throughout the three-year lectionary, especially in special liturgical seasons of Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, and Eastertide, it is good to have some John books on hand. Don’t forget Year B’s John 6 section, practically a liturgical season all its own (“And I will rai-ai-se them uuu-uuup on the la-ast day”). Raymond Brown’s Anchor Bible commentaries on John still can’t be beaten, though Richard Bauckham’s The Testimony of the Beloved Disciple offers many new insights, and Francis Moloney’s Sacra Pagina John volume is worth consulting as an update to Brown.
Then, read the commentary, not slavishly, but as a guide to details and challenges in the text we don’t easily notice. Our familiarity with the Gospel stories can lull us into a sense that we know what they’re saying.
Jesus, God’s Word Incarnate, speaks to us in the Gospels. That Word often speaks in simple, earthy language, easily comprehended by first-century shepherds, carpenters, and fishermen. Yet the Word’s words are a world of depth and meaning that centuries of study and meditation have not emptied. You may be exhausted, but you have not exhausted the meaning of Christ’s word. A good commentary will point readers to the history of interpretation and the nuance of the language, and it will connect these observations into a broader set of themes and a clear-eyed reading of the Gospel.
- Read the Gospel.
We are not just commentary translators, but readers and students of the sacred Word. It’s important to take the time to read the Gospel meditatively. Read it straight through to find the overall picture. You can read an entire Gospel in an hour or two. Then read it slowly if you want.
- Don’t Worry About a Sermon Series.
Follow the Gospel each week. Look into the context. Wrestle with the challenge of the parables. Study the characters. Follow the plot of Jesus’ stories and the evangelist’s ordering of the Gospel around a plot of its own.
The following guidelines aren’t specifically about preaching a Gospel. They are more concerned with how to let the slower pace of a summer benefit you as a preacher and reader of Scripture.
- Think about Your Voice as a Preacher.
Standup comedian Mo Amer, Palestinian-American writer and star of the Netflix comedy Mo, told fellow comic Mark Maron that when comedians begin their career, a brick wall stands between them and the audience. Each set with an audience removes one brick. Over time, the comic stops performing a character and begins to speak as a real person (it’s not for sensitive ears, but good).
Consider this summer a chance to pull down a few more bricks between you and your people. Listen to or watch homily recordings. Is your preaching voice different from your conversational voice? Are you yourself in the pulpit? If not, who are you?
- Read A(nother) Book.
Leaders are readers and readers become leaders. Words are the preacher’s primary medium. Drink deeply. A preacher sprays a fountain of words, and that font needs refilling. Get a good, challenging, insightful book, preferably literary fiction, that has little direct connection to your Gospel. You won’t write a book report on it. Don’t quote it in your homilies. Imbibe big ideas, expressed beautifully. Let that be enough.
Reading literature helps me rest. During graduate school, the best solution I found to settle my mind after hours of reading commentaries and ancient texts was to take ten minutes per night and read Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead novels or Cormac McCarthy’s Border Trilogy. Their descriptive prose and stark imagery were just the palette cleanser I needed to take me into another world long enough that I could relax and sleep.
Reading literature can also inspire, indirectly. One summer, a leisurely read through Graham Greene’s The Power and the Glory led me to a profound sense of the sacredness of my little mission church’s cast of needy, cantankerous, beautiful people. I cried for them. I prayed for those I had considered obstacles to my personal agendas. Somewhere in the reading, my parishioners had come to populate the narrative in my imagination, and I was changed.
- Develop New Interests.
I get it: Who has time for hobbies? It’s amazing what a little bit of physical or mental activity outside the norm can do for one’s mental and physical well-being. Jesus’ parables drew from the world of agriculture, human relations, and those parts of daily life that are filled with deep truth. Who knows what gospel analogies might come to you on a pickleball court?
- Pray.
Pray the Office, yes. But also just pray. Walk, and ask the Spirit to search your heart and anxieties. Pray for the people and places you love. Pray for the challenges that make life hard. Listen to what God may want for them and for you. Our lives are filled with devices and distractions that choke out the quiet that becomes the seedbed of creative thought. While reciting ancient prayers does much to furnish my theological vocabulary, at times I find it can also be a way that I can distance prayer from my deepest longings. What life-changing call ultimately came because young Samuel finally stopped his busyness and simply responded to God’s voice, saying, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:9–10)?
I’m sure many readers will have tried many of these things before. There is nothing new under the sun, of course. I hope, in sharing these, that working preachers and others of us ground down by the weight of our words and work may find encouragement to dig in, listen up, and press on. As I spent three ordinary-time seasons in a row committed to preaching from the Gospel reading, I discovered a depth in Jesus’ words and life that I had never known.
I found a coherence to the stories, parables, and the evangelists’ shaping of the narratives that drew me into the world of Jesus and the early Church. Ultimately, I unearthed a pearl of great value in the Gospels that experience led me into Ph.D. coursework in New Testament and writing a dissertation on the Gospel of Mark. Above all, however, I got to spend summers learning from Jesus and talking about him with the people he loves. I hope you can too.
The Rev. Dr. Paul D. Wheatley is assistant professor of New Testament at Nashotah House Theological Seminary.
