A "Taste" of the Gospel

As I was making espresso today, it occurred to me that, at its best, preaching leaves people “tasting” the gospel. That's different from describing the taste or telling people what they should taste or how they should respond to the taste. If people don’t “taste” the gospel, the rest really doesn’t matter—you can’t satisfy someone by describing a good cup of coffee, convince someone that they had a good cup of coffee, or get people to respond to a good cup of coffee when we haven’t served one.

Another thing I am learning is that a goal of making espresso is consistency. We cannot tell someone, “Sorry your coffee isn’t good. The shot I pulled last week was excellent.” So a goal of preaching is consistently—as in every sermon—giving people a taste of the gospel.

I teach that preaching is “an event in which God speaks a word of promise to God’s people as the essential core of the gospel is proclaimed” (Craig A. Satterlee, When God Speaks through You: How Faith Convictions Shape Preaching and Mission (Herndon: The Alban Institute, 2008), p. 61). My friend Chuck Campbell suggests that preaching is “a word that enables the people of God to step into the freedom from the powers of death given through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection (Charles L. Campbell, “Resisting the Powers,” Jana Childers (ed.), The Purposes of Preaching (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), p. 29). In and through preaching, God brings people from death to new life; God releases people from bondage and empowers them to step out of the tomb and live the new life exemplified and inaugurated by Jesus. For more of my thinking on the sermon as an event, see Craig A. Satterlee, When God Speaks through You: How Faith Convictions Shape Preaching and Mission (Herndon: The Alban Institute, 2008), pp. 61-64.

Some argue that expecting every sermon to be an event in which God speaks a word of promise is not reasonable; this high expectation causes both preachers and congregants to go away from the sermon feeling disappointed because, for whatever reason, the Spirit did not show up. A second concern about preaching as an event is the difficulty of translating the Gospel into a word of promise that means something to particular people on a specific occasion. Unable to find the words and committed to preaching the Gospel, preachers might reduce their proclamation of the Gospel to a formula or proposition, or simply mouth traditional language. A third concern about preaching as an event is that the preacher will alter, reinvent, add to, evaluate, or water down either the grace or the claim of the Gospel. A fourth concern is that people may mistake the preacher’s voice for the voice of God; should this happen, the pastoral relationship, and even the congregation, might be characterized by hierarchy and distance between the preacher and the people. Yet another concern is that this approach to preaching may become so focused on the individual worshiper, in order to facilitate a personal encounter with Christ, that it neglects speaking to the congregation as a community of faith and relating the Gospel to the world. Alternatively, people who do not feel individually addressed in the sermon may conclude that God has nothing to say to them.

And here’s where making espresso is helpful. Perhaps expecting preaching to be an event is too much, though as a hearer, I certainly hope not. But if it is, maybe we can leave people at least tasting the Gospel.