The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey D. Arthur’s new book, Preaching As Reminding.<\/p>\n
The phrase \u201cthe Lord\u2019s remembrancers\u201d was coined in 1594 by Lancelot Andrewes, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth and King James I, in a sermon titled \u201cRemember Lot\u2019s Wife.\u201d Andrewes was drawing his metaphor from the royal court. The king\u2019s (or queen\u2019s) remembrancer is the oldest judicial position in continual existence in Great Britain, having been created in 1154 by Henry II. Today it is a ceremonial role, but for centuries the remembrancer\u2019s job was to put the lord treasurer and the barons of court in remembrance of pending business, taxes paid and unpaid, and other things that pertained to the benefit of the crown.<\/p>\n
Likewise, Andrewes said, preachers are the \u201cLord\u2019s remembrancers.\u201d We remind God\u2019s subjects of their covenant with the king of heaven. The sovereign king initiated a relationship with his people motivated by grace and sealed with his own blood, and he demands that they respond with worship, service, love, and fear.<\/p>\n
As part of Andrewes\u2019s exposition of Luke 17:32, where our Lord said, \u201cRemember Lot\u2019s wife,\u201d the court preacher quotes Hebrews 2:1: \u201cWe must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.\u201d \u201cDrifting\u201d is a haunting image that suggests that we can slip our mooring. The corrective, according to Andrewes, is preaching. He states that \u201cpreaching [is] employed . . . as much in calling to their minds the things they know and have forgot, as in teaching them the things they know not.\u201d<\/p>\n
A century and a half later, Jonathan Edwards put it this way: \u201cGod hath appointed…preaching…as a fit means…to stir up the pure minds of the saints, quicken their affections by often bringing the great things of religion to their remembrance, setting them in their proper colours, though they know them, and have been fully instructed in them.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of most crucial functions preaching accomplishes, a function often neglected in homiletics textbooks, is the stirring of memory. We need not\u2014indeed we should not\u2014scurry about like a character in a video game searching for originality. That is not our calling.<\/p>\n
Both Andrewes and Edwards were probably aware of Augustine\u2019s profound meditations on memory in the Confessions in which he suggests why memory must be stirred. Using the metaphor of the cave, he describes how we shove things we have learned into hidden recesses so that unless they are drawn out by admonition, we will never think of them. Augustine also compares memory to a storehouse and field. A remembrancer is a servant who brings things from the storehouse, a farmer who helps the listener harvest memories previously planted. Augustine\u2019s most striking metaphor for memory may be the \u201cstomach of the mind\u201d (venter animi), where food is stored without tasting but later brought forth for rumination.\u00a0 This metaphor strikes the modern ear as odd and even repulsive, but the image is brilliant. It implies that memories are held and digested, eventually nourishing the whole body. The remembrancer helps people ruminate.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s metaphors for memory have moved away from storage to mechanisms of capturing and sorting. In the twentieth century the camera metaphor was popular, conceiving of memory as catching images on blank film. Today we favor the computer metaphor to suggest how our minds sort and retrieve data. Both of these have merit, but as with all metaphors they obscure as well as reveal. They imply that memories are always accurate because they are captured and stored mechanically, but, as we will see in chapter two, this is not the case. Humans are not machines. For one thing, we forget; and for another, we actively select, highlight, and discard elements from the past to form a cohesive narrative that makes sense in the present. To counter the human propensity to edit memories, God has given us narrative and ceremony. The majority of the Bible is narrative, a fixed account of God\u2019s action in redemptive history, and he commands children of the covenants to recall those actions with concrete ceremonies such as the Passover and the Lord\u2019s Supper. However we describe it\u2014 using images of cave, storehouse, field, stomach, camera, or computer\u2014one of the preacher\u2019s main callings is to make knowledge, values, and experience present once again. Ministers must serve as the Lord\u2019s remembrancers because things learned can be buried, lost, amputated, or corrupted. That is why Peter said, \u201cI intend always to remind you of these qualities, though you know them. . . . I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to stir you up by way of reminder\u201d (2 Pet 1:12-13). Ministers take their cue from Peter, devoting themselves to the work of stirring memory.<\/p>\n
I hope preaching as reminding strikes you as good news if you have been shamed into believing that every sermon has to include novel ideas. No. Telling the old, old story stands in the front rank of the preacher\u2019s calling. Some may raise a skeptical eyebrow. \u201cPreaching as reminding sounds monotonous,\u201d they say. \u201cRepeating what believers have heard since they were children sounds like a homiletical nightmare, like preaching Christmas fifty-two weeks a year.\u201d But when it is done well, preaching as reminding is not empty repetition, formalistic and perfunctory. Rather, it is the work of soul-watchers. Our people need reminders of the great truths of the faith. We are like the hobbits who \u201cliked to have books filled with things that they already knew, set out fair and square with no contradictions.\u201d Not only do people need reminders, but they also enjoy them.<\/p>\n
You can buy a copy of Preaching As Reminding from IVP and Amazon.<\/p>\n
The following is an excerpt from Jeffrey D. Arthur’s new book, Preaching As Reminding. The phrase \u201cthe Lord\u2019s remembrancers\u201d was coined in 1594 by Lancelot Andrewes, chaplain to Queen Elizabeth and King James I, in a sermon titled \u201cRemember Lot\u2019s Wife.\u201d Andrewes was drawing his metaphor from the royal court. The king\u2019s (or queen\u2019s) remembrancer … Continue reading “The Preacher\u2019s Call: Not Originality, but the Stirring of Memory”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biblia.work\/sermons\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}