From Sermons to Homilies - Tips

Bradley Jersak

Expository Sermons: A Memoir

I began preaching prior to my years of pastoring, circa 1985. Sorry, there was one sermon that I wrote and preached when I was eight years old. It was good. I’ll share that another time. But my first forays into expository preaching were at Calvary Baptist Church during my undergraduate years. The mediocrity of my preaching was matched only by my over-confidence.

Pastor Earl Wannamaker was committed to making space for young preachers to develop. But we had one major gap in our communication. When I preached and he would loudly say “Amen!” he meant to communicate, “That’s a good place to stop!” But what I thought he meant was, “That’s great, keep going!” Upwards of forty minutes.

But the time I was hired as a Youth and Associate Pastor at Bethel Mennonite, my expository preaching had improved somewhat, but I still had this expectation of forty minutes. I was put off when the senior pastor told me I should aim for 22 minutes. I complained about it to my friend and mentor, Bob Seale, who promptly and firmly corrected me. “If you can’t say it in 22 minutes, 40 minutes won’t help. It just means you don’t know what you’re saying yet.” Ouch. And AMEN. I knew he was exactly right. To be honest, my sense of entitlement was all ego.

My next pastor, Peter Bartel then went a step further and asked me to follow the lectionary. I couldn’t imagine. How does one preach from the heart when you don’t get to pick your own Scripture passage and topic? He graciously pointed out that when preachers choose their own text and only preach what they’re passionate about, they quickly resort to hobbyhorses and eventually dry up their repertoire. He offered that if I would try the lectionary—and really ask the Lord to speak to me through those assigned readings—I would discover that God would be faithful to give me a good word. After all, I had a whole month between sermons. He also told me that if I was every truly stuck, we could make an exception, and I could pick my own. Over the next six years, I found he was right. I only felt the need to leave the lectionary once.

For better or worse, I continued preaching throughout two decades of pastoring and many guest gigs at other churches, retreats, and conferences. I took seminary courses on preaching and teaching, and got a lot of practice over twenty years with our youth group and eventual church plant. I’m not everyone’s cup of tea but I received enough affirmation to keep learning.

From Sermons to Homilies (not synonymous)

But then I went through a transition from churches that elevate expository preaching as the central feature of their service to liturgical expressions where ‘the homily’ is much shorter and serves a very different purpose. In “High Anglican” services, I would be given 15 minutes. And when I became a preacher at All Saints of North America Monastery, the Abbot (Archbishop Lazar Puhalo) asked me to aim for eight minutes, ten only if necessary. Twelve minutes might be a forgivable exception, but I should know that meant I was rambling. It helped that the congregation had to remain standing the whole time, so I could read the crowd as their eyes rolled back into their heads, or their bodies swaying, or simply stepping outside for a break. As it happens, not long before his departure, Pope Francis likewise instructed all his priests to stick to eight minutes.

As young Evangelical, we often heard, “If you preach sermonettes, you’ll produce Christianettes.” Do you hear the problem? The sermon becomes the focus of every gathering and locus of discipleship—a fairly modernist notion that replaced the Eucharistic altar with the pulpit at center-stage.

But homilies are different than sermons—they have different functions. So, what follows is meant for both preachers and attendees who find themselves moving from the expository preaching model into a liturgical world where the homily needs explanation.

Tips in Preparing a Short Homily

First, these are suggestions from my experience rather than prescriptions. Take what seems helpful and leave the rest. My transition from 20 years of expository preaching (22-40 minutes) to 12 years of liturgical homilies (8-12 minutes) has become deeply meaningful for me. Hopefully these insights on how homilies work will help those in transition.

1. It helps to start by thinking that the homily is not the message. It can’t bear that weight. The gospel message is delivered through the liturgy in its entirety—a weekly, interactive Passion Play in which the gospel is communicated through the antiphony of prayers, Scripture readings, homily, and Eucharist.

2. It helps to see the homily as part of the liturgy rather than a sermonic exit from it. The homily is, as much as possible, liturgical in tone—part of the same flow. I don’t know how to explain this… I can only say there’s an ethos to liturgies into which the homily is embedded—a rhythm that is broken if the homily goes too long or if the preacher associates the anointing with histrionics. For some, scripting seems to help with the tone. For others, forcing oneself to speak without notes helps with the length.

3. It helps to recognize that the homily has two primary functions based on its placement. We can clarify those functions by asking two questions: First, what is the word Jesus Christ is speaking to us through the Gospel reading? Second, how does the homily prepare us to encounter Christ in the Eucharist? (Sermons seem more important for those who do not trust that we meet Christ in the breaking of the bread.

4. It helps to prioritize the message of the Holy Gospel reading prescribed in the lectionary. The other readings serve to frame the Gospel text, but it has priority. It sometimes helps to alert us to the golden (or perhaps scarlet) thread running through the Scripture readings (the Psalm, the Epistle, and the Gospel). But we can trust those texts to do their own work, rather than connecting and explaining all the dots for the congregation. Trust the liturgy. Trust the Scriptures. Trust the Holy Spirit’s anointing in the attendees so that they can hear their own inferences as it meets their lives. Don’t infantilize listeners by ‘preacher-splaining’ everything.

5. The homily is not expository preaching—a monologue Bible study. The homily is the voice of Christ to his people (even if spoken in third person). The best way to deliver the voice of Christ is to hear him yourself, and then to testify to that which the preacher has heard. In that sense, the priest becomes both the voice of Christ in our midst and his faithful witness.

6. Because of this point (combined with the need for brevity), I recommend that homily preachers read the text early in the week, listening for Jesus to speak through the text without reference to commentaries. Most preachers already have enough (or too much) information from decades of previous study. Typical pastors and priests don’t have time to accumulate even more research and then distill it all back down (unless they need a break from people work). Given ONLY what we see and hear Jesus speak to us in the text through the week, a 10-minute homily is already a great challenge. Then the questions become (a) what is the one thing you heard? (b) how is that the gospel?

Practically speaking, if we meditate (in prayer, not academic study) on the passages themselves (only) through the week, it may be possible to have a routine where, having listened for the golden thread, we can compose the homily in the same one-sitting time slot each week.

7. I also suggest preparing the final sentence of the homily in advance. As the sense of our own anointing increases, this becomes more necessary. We may feel that the experience of the Spirit is our sign to escalate and amplify and extend our sermon. Rather, we can trust the Spirit to take the ‘unused oil’ into the next liturgical act.

The last thing I want to do is shut down the voice of the preacher or teacher. There is a place for all these genres. Throughout my spiritual journey, God’s voice through pastors and preachers has frequently been powerful and healing. My only agenda is to help preachers moving into liturgical contexts traverse genres from expository teaching or preaching to the spiritual art of liturgical homilies. Perhaps a few of these points will resonate in your context.