Page 35 - Presbyterian Connection Fall 2025

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ConnectionP R E S B Y T E R I A N
Continued from page 34
walk into church with ques-
tions on their mind, often good
questions, like: Will people here
understand me? What about rac-
ism? Why do I feel anxious and
depressed?
As our people may not share a
conviction regarding the authority
of scripture, we need to reverse
the flow of thought. Here’s how:
on any given Sunday, people
come to church with some good
values and big dreams for the
world. And they come to church
with grief, anger and trauma.
(You can be certain that there is a
broken heart on every pew.) Our
challenge is to show how Jesus,
as revealed to us in the grand sto-
ry of scripture, outdoes our best
imaginings and meets us in our
grief. Scripture holds out an invi-
tation to a shared life much more
beautiful than we ourselves could
have thought up in our grandest
dreams. And Christ meets us in
our emptiness, like no one else.
You might say that we are
nourishing faith in scripture, even
as we nourish faith in Jesus. To
do so, we display the beauty of
Christ and of Christ’s way with
help from scripture. With the Bi-
ble in our hands, we can show
how scripture, and Christ as
he is revealed in scripture, out-
shines our best solutions and
meets us in our struggles! In a
sense, we are arguing for scrip-
ture’s authority without saying
as much. Or better, we are mak-
ing space for scripture to argue
for itself. We are demonstrating
scripture’s authority from its
capacity to respond to our lives
rather than through assertions
or philosophical defences of its
value. The key point is that we
are displaying the wisdom of
Christ and the beauty of scripture
in contexts where this is by no
means assumed.
What does it mean to display
the wisdom of Christ and the
beauty of scripture in our preach-
ing? By “reversing the flow,” I am
not suggesting merely reversing
the order in which we present
our ideas. Rather, this is an intui-
tive, aesthetic, and pastoral ap-
proach to expository preaching
that begins not with the whole
congregation’s conviction of the
authority of scripture (though
that would be nice), but with my
own conviction that the text I am
preaching has been written to
nourish the beloved community
by the Spirit’s inspiration.
As an exegete, I need to keep
studying the text until I glimpse
the gold—that is, until I hear
God’s address to my commu-
nity, inviting us into something
more beautiful. I am like a tire-
less prospector, saying: “I know
there is gold here, and I will keep
Reversing the direction of flow in preaching. Graphic by Ella Ensheimer.
digging until I find it.” By study-
ing the text thoroughly, on its
own terms, and by reversing the
flow, we participate in healing
the congregation’s relationship
with scripture.
Preaching Colossians
3:1–17
Let me illustrate reversing the di-
rection of flow, taking Colossians
3:1–17 as an example. Again,
we are seeking to display how
scripture, and Jesus as he is re-
vealed in all of scripture, invites
us into something more won-
derful than we could come up
with ourselves. We are using our
aesthetic intuition and emotional
intelligence to display the beauty
of Jesus in the text, for our con-
gregation includes listeners who
are not convinced that scripture is
good for them.
This well-known passage be-
gins: “So if you have been raised
with Christ, seek the things that
are above, where Christ is, seated
at the right hand of God” (Colos-
sians 3:1). And it continues: “As
God’s chosen ones, holy and
beloved, clothe yourselves with
compassion, kindness, humility,
meekness, and patience. Bear
with one another and, if anyone
has a complaint against another,
forgive each other; just as the
Lord has forgiven you, so you
also must forgive” (12–13).
Preachers often focus on the
metaphor of clothing ourselves, in
verse 10: “clothe yourselves with
the new self.” A traditional flow
for preaching this text might be:
(1)  Motivation: “you have been
raised with Christ”: Christ’s
glory, that he shares with
us;
(2)  A call to put off the old self:
these behaviours have died,
along with our old self;
(3)  A call to put on the new self:
we take off scruffy clothes,
to be dressed in classy
threads.
A rather drab traditional ser-
mon on this text might simply
challenge our sinful behaviour
and call us to something better.
Period. A more thoughtful sermon
might explore how putting on our
new self is both our work and
Christ’s work. Our life in Christ is
glorious, and yet our glory is hid-
den (with Christ’s glory) in God.
Good—now there’s movement.
But what else?
I preached on this text as
a student pastor in my semi-
nary years. Before I stood up
to preach, Mavis, a lady in her
80s, read the passage out loud.
Mavis had a reputation for be-
ing prayerful and wise. When
she came to verse 12, “clothe
yourselves with compassion…”
Mavis began to weep; she wept
all the way to verse 17. I’m sure
that Mavis’s tears were a more
powerful message than anything
I said that day. I never asked Ma-
vis why she cried, but I have a
hunch her tears had to do with
the complexity of human rela-
tionships, and how Jesus’ ten-
derness can melt us. My moth-
er, another wise and prayerful
woman (and a therapist), used to
speak of the lists in Colossians 3
as lists of “relationship makers”
(compassion, kindness, humil-
ity, meekness) and “relationship
breakers” (anger, wrath, malice,
slander). When you think of it in
this way, it’s difficult to read the
passage without tearing up.
Preachers can easily miss the
purpose of Colossians 3: the
lists of behaviours to put off and
to put on are a recipe for living
well together as the community
who are raised with Christ: the
text is nourishing the church to
bear witness through our con-
trastive life—we witness in life,
word and deed. Living this way is
hard work. When we share life to-
gether, up close and personal, we
wound one another, we take of-
fence, we hold on to resentment.
If I were preaching Col 3:1–17
this coming Sunday, I would say
all of this—but more slowly—
including the stories of these two
women, while carefully walk-
ing the congregation through
the text. I would seek to hold
out a beautiful and practical vi-
sion for our community, from my
intimate knowledge of the com-
munity. And as I preached on
Paul’s instruction, “Just as the
Lord has forgiven you, so you
also must forgive,” I imagine that
I might briefly lean into psycho-
logical insights into forgiveness
(while carefully preaching the
text). Betty Pries writes, “[For-
giveness] is about releasing the
power that an incident (or series
of incidents) has over us” (The
Space Between Us). It’s curious
that by dying to ourselves to rec-
oncile with others, we also find
ourselves and find God.
By the end of the sermon,
we are not becoming a loose
collection of self-actualized indi-
viduals (as is on offer in West-
ern culture), but a community
of tenderness, the image of our
glorified Christ. We walked into
church wondering if we would
encounter Christ here. Colossians
3 has helped us to integrate some
of the desires, recognized and un-
recognized, that we carried with
us as we walked into the space,
through our unity with the risen
Christ. In our approach to preach-
ing this text, we have reversed the
flow. Rather than simply pointing
to the Bible and declaring, “Thus
says the Lord,” we have offered
an invitation to be the beloved
community.
CERTIFICATE IN
LAY
LEADERSHIP
Be equipped to lead in prayer,
to share the gospel, and to
provide leadership for mission.