Early this year I got an email from a theological student from another denomination. He wanted to write something about the choice of sermon texts for the Sunday worship services and asked for advice. The reason why he wanted to write about this topic was that in some congregations of the church to which he belonged, complaints were heard about one-sidedness in the choice of texts. According to these rumours, pastors would often preach on the same sort of texts and as a result various aspects of the breadth and depth of Scripture would hardly be discussed.

I don’t know if these complaints are altogether justified, but the request of this student drew my attention once more to the issue surrounding the choice of texts for the worship services.

Two Extremes⤒🔗

For that problem certainly exists. Generally speaking, opinions move between two extremes. On the one hand there is the traditional system of pericopes/lectionaries. This system originated in the early church and is still followed in the Roman Catholic, the Lutheran, and the Anglican traditions. There is an established list of Bible readings whereby the parts of Scripture to be read each Sunday are firmly established. Usually there is more than one reading each Sunday, generally two to three. The idea is that the sermon text is chosen from one of these readings.

It is usually seen as one of the advantages of this system that it is a safeguard against a wrong kind of subjectivism on the side of the preacher: it is not up to him alone what he will preach about. There is also an ecumenical motivation: the ideal is that everywhere in the worldwide church the same parts of Scripture are read on the same Sunday. Because for centuries this happened in the Roman Catholic Church in Latin, people everywhere heard Scripture in literally the same words.

There are of course also disadvantages. I mention the most important ones. Because the same Scripture passages are read each year, there is unnecessary repetition, while some parts of the Bible are never heard. Another problem is that this system cuts Scripture into small pieces, as a result of which the great Biblical structures are not clearly noticeable. And lastly, if one has to preach according to predetermined texts it is difficult to deal well in the sermon with the actual and spiritual questions of the day.

At the other extreme there is the absolutely free choice of text. The well-known English preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) went very far in this respect. He believed that for every service a preacher must personally “receive” a text from the Lord. Somewhere he writes: “I admit that I often pray and wait for hours for a text and that this is the most important part of my (weekly) study.” One of the results is that among the more than 3,500 of his sermons that have been published we find no sermon series and hardly ever sequels. We do, however, regularly find sermons about more or less the same texts. Of course, this emphasis on wrestling with the Holy Spirit for his guidance in the choice of texts is very important, and the manner in which someone like Spurgeon dealt with it deserves our respect. Yet we are required to ask the following critical questions, “Is there not a danger here that, in spite of all good intentions, people are left to the completely subjective arbitrariness of the preacher?” And, “Are the preacher’s personal impressions always the work of the Holy Spirit?” After all, every preacher tends to choose texts that for theological or spiritual reasons appeal to him. Furthermore, what he thinks the congregation needs is not necessarily what it actually needs.

In this way the congregation can be led in a one-sided manner and become a victim of various spiritual illnesses! And so we come to the question: “How do we avoid the difficulties that threaten on both sides and find the proper way?”

The Principle: Free Choice of Text←⤒🔗

The pericope system was developed in the early church and especially during the Middle Ages. In this system – as already mentioned – the Bible readings were precisely prescribed for every Sunday. Especially the Swiss Reformation (Calvin and Zwingli) radically broke with this tradition and chose on principle for the free choice of a text. This decision has been very influential in the Dutch church of the Reformation. Thus the Convent of Wesel (1568) decided that no servant of the Word was to be forced to use prescribed texts but that each of them had to act in this matter “according to the measure of the gifts he had received from the Holy Spirit.” Concretely this means that the preacher himself, while praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit, searches for the sermon text of the coming Sunday. In this choice he is “free” in the sense that no one can force him to preach on a certain Sunday about a specific part of Scripture.

Now, even in the time of the Reformation people knew that this decision was not without dangers. This freedom can be abused. A preacher can be very one-sided in his choice of text, as a result of which the whole of the Scriptures is not opened. He can, for convenience’s sake, preach on texts about which he has sermons available from others, so that his preparation requires little time. His choice of texts can even become totally arbitrary. In order to limit the possibility of such dangers, people in the Reformed tradition limited the principle of freedom of choice often in the following three manners.

Catechism Preaching←⤒🔗

One of the motives for the weekly Catechism preaching is that every preacher has to deal with all the facets of the biblical doctrine. He has to preach about the person and the work of Christ, about justification and faith, about the commandments and prayer. The regularity of the Catechism preaching forces him to deal with all these subjects in the teaching service, including themes that personally he is perhaps less interested in.

The Ecclesiastical Year←⤒🔗

There is yet another way of giving some direction to the choice of texts, and that is the ecclesiastical year. Although the Calvinist Reformation broke with the Roman Catholic pericope system, in the Dutch tradition it was common to remember each year on the feast days of the church the great events in the history of salvation. Often it is said that a choice was made here for a “sober” ecclesiastical year. This means on the one hand that not every Sunday has a specific liturgical “colour” with prescribed Bible readings and Psalms or hymns. On the other hand it means that attention is given to the days of Christmas and the preceding four Advent Sundays, the days of Easter and the preceding seven Sundays of Lent, the day of Christ’s ascension, and the Pentecost days. Some go further still and suggest that between the days of Christmas and those of Lent the minister should preach especially from the Gospels or that between Easter and Pentecost the glorified Christ and the coming of the Spirit are to be at the center. But no matter how one works it out, the principle is clear: annually the great events of salvation are proclaimed during the feast days, and it is good that a servant of the Word keeps that in mind when prayerfully searching for a text.

Sermon Series←⤒🔗

Calvin gave even less attention to the ecclesiastical year than we generally do. This was, among other things, a result of the fact that he strongly favoured the preaching of sequels and sermon series. On Sunday and on the weekday services he preached through entire Bible books. To give a few examples: some 200 serial sermons by him have been found that dealt with the book of Deuteronomy and some 159 about Job. The Reformer’s idea was to acquaint the congregation in this way with the entire breadth of the speaking of Scripture. In this respect the English and Scottish Calvinists have generally been more faithful followers of Calvin than the Dutch ones. There – in England and Scotland – it is much more common to preach sermons on (parts of) entire Bible books than it was among the Dutch. I suggest that also among us series should be regularly preached. This is good for the congregation, which in this way becomes better acquainted with Scripture, and for the preacher himself, who is in this way forced to dig further in the treasury of the Word.

The Shortened Bible←⤒🔗

Of course these three “limits” on a free choice of text don’t guarantee that a minister can’t be one-sided in the choice of his texts and in his emphasis on certain aspects. Let preachers, therefore – and also their church councils – continually make sure that in the preaching “the full counsel of God” (Acts 20:27) and the breadth of Scripture are declared. We should do all we can to avoid making the Bible smaller than it is!

This article was translated by Freda Oosterhoff.