Funerals, Weddings, and Preaching into Life’s Many Other Seasons and Circumstances
Funeral? Wedding? House blessing? Congregation’s major anniversary?
There are so many particular contexts for preaching, each with its own unique needs from a preacher. In For Every Matter Under Heaven, Donna Giver-Johnston and Beverly Zink-Sawyer describe approaching “special occasion preaching” from a hermeneutic of human situations—but make it biblical.
How do we choose the biblical text for each particular context? Begin by asking three questions:
- What’s going on?
- Who’s going to be there?
- Where do we see God, and how do we point to God in this situation?
If our preaching is to be personal, experiential, and transformational, then it has to begin with some change in us. Preachers have the first encounter and report how we have been transformed. That’s how we can move to question #3: How do we point to God in this situation?
In a wedding or funeral, there’s a particular group of “first” listeners: the couple, or the family. Then, like in any context for preaching, there are different circles of listeners. Who are all of those different people? What is the word of God they need to hear? The more we can think through those questions, the better.
There also needs to be some balance between focusing on the individual or couple and what has brought us all to this day. Where has God been or where is God going to be in that person’s or couple’s life/lives?
Then, how do we connect that to the others listening in? Focus on God’s work through this couple or individual’s life, but then apply it outward.
Funerals
Funeral preaching is holy ground, when people are most vulnerable. They need to know how to go on living. As Henri Nouwen said, we name “where our wounds hurt most.” The challenge is to sensitively name those wounds, not to offer cheap grace (such as “Everything’s going to be fine”).
Don’t be afraid to name where those wounds hurt. People really have ears to hear the gospel once you’ve acknowledged their pain. What makes funerals most difficult can be either when you know the people well, because you love them too, or when you don’t know them at all. We listen to the stories of those closest to the deceased and then weave God’s story into them. We may need to make ourselves vulnerable too, by admitting, “I don’t have the answers. Yet, we’re in this together, and God is with us.” There’s emotional support when we genuinely share our own vulnerability.
This book’s title comes from Ecclesiastes 3. Sometimes special occasions are not just one side of a pair of opposites named in that chapter, but involve both: a time to mourn and a time to dance. The structure of that text gives a way for preachers to think about preaching during or into various seasons in people’s lives. Once readers have that framework, they can apply it to situations that are not addressed in the book but that they see as a season in the lives of those who are listening.
Weddings
One thing wedding couples most want is a “perfect” moment, but preaching for weddings is about testifying to God’s love in our imperfection.
What is the primary role of preaching in a wedding? We testify to God’s covenantal love (as the couple covenants with one another) throughout all seasons of life. Of course, among those attending, there will be people with all kinds of relationship statuses, whom we do not want to exclude. We call all who are present to live into the covenants that we make, testifying to God’s love, which holds us no matter where we find ourselves along that spectrum of loving and being loved.
What do we do for special-occasion preaching when we get stuck?
Asking questions of ourselves and of the texts may help us get unstuck:
- What does this feel like?
- How do we experience this?
- Where might we find God in this?
- What’s going on?
Getting to know the situation before digging into the biblical text keeps us from getting stuck.
For more on this volume in the Working Preacher Books series, For Every Matter under Heaven: Preaching on Special Occasions, listen to a podcast episode or watch it on YouTube, in which hosts Rolf Jacobson and Karoline Lewis discuss the book and preaching with Beverly Zink-Sawyer and Donna Giver-Johnston.
