Preaching the Passage Against Itself

Some passages are doing two things at once, and the second thing complicates the first. The most familiar example is a passage with a strong primary claim and a secondary tension that resists the primary — the qualifying phrase that troubles the rhetoric, the character whose actions undercut the moral, the contrast the writer leaves unresolved.

The default move is to preach the primary claim and ignore the tension. Sometimes that is right. Sometimes the tension is part of what the passage is doing, and preaching it requires the harder move of preaching the passage against itself.

What this looks like

A passage on the value of obedience contains a sentence that hints at obedience's limits. A passage on God's faithfulness includes a verse where the speaker is uncertain. A parable that seems to teach one moral has a detail that, if pressed, teaches a different one. A psalm that praises God includes a line of accusation. A narrative that ends in resolution leaves a thread unresolved.

In each case, the writer wrote what they wrote. The complication is not a defect to be edited out. It is part of the passage's grain. Preaching the passage faithfully requires letting the complication speak.

Why this is hard

It is hard because sermons want to land. A sermon with a clean primary claim is more memorable than a sermon that holds two things in tension. The minister feels the homiletic pull to flatten the tension and preach the simpler version.

The simpler version is sometimes a good sermon. It is also sometimes a sermon that has betrayed the passage. The congregation, especially the careful reader in the second pew, knows the verse the minister did not address. They notice the silence. The sermon, however polished, has a hole in it that they can see.

Preaching the passage against itself is honest about the hole. The sermon takes a different shape — slower, more careful, willing to sit with the unresolved. It lands less cleanly. It also does not have a hole.

The shape of the sermon

When the passage calls for it, the sermon usually has three movements rather than one or two.

The first movement is the primary claim. Make it cleanly, with the passage's own force. Do not preempt the complication.

The second movement is the complication. Name the verse or the detail or the unresolved thread. Do not minimize it. Show the congregation that you, the minister, see what they see.

The third movement holds the tension. Sometimes the resolution is in another part of the canon, and a careful cross-reference does the work. Sometimes the resolution is eschatological, and the sermon names the not-yet. Sometimes there is no resolution this side of the eschaton, and the sermon's honest landing is to acknowledge that the congregation is being asked to live in the tension. Each of these is faithful preaching. None of them is the clean primary-claim sermon.

When to preach it this way

Not every passage with a complication needs this treatment. The discipline is to ask whether the complication is significant enough to the passage that ignoring it betrays the writer.

Two signals that it is. The complication recurs in the writer's other work — this is how the writer thinks, and ignoring it elsewhere too would compound the problem. The congregation has the passage in front of them and will see the complication if you do not address it.

When neither signal is present, the simpler sermon is honest. When both are present, the harder sermon is.

The harder sermon is harder. It is also the kind of preaching that, over a long ministry, builds the kind of trust that keeps a congregation listening. They learn that this minister sees what they see. That trust is worth more than a cleaner sermon.