Thread by @a_fellow_of

Alexander's 15 Principles as applied to sermons

1. Levels of Scale

Good things are structured at every level, and each level helps the others

in particular, the largest *does not* simply determine the smallest; they are both shaped by one another

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1328741078749634560?s=20

I think this means that our sermon shouldn't be shaped at the beginning of our writing process by a simple "hook", an empty image of what the sermon *should* look like that we fill in with verbal concrete

the levels need to shape one another

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1328745895467356161?s=20

2. Strong Centers

Our sermons still need coherence, though; the bits need to work together. One way to do this *is* to have some larger image that you're trying to build and point back to, some key theme that undergirds every part of the sermon

I notice that in my sermons that really helped people, I had an organizing goal in mind; not a "hook", a sentence I'd repeat again and again, but a larger message or theme that guided the whole thing; and the message was often large enough that it needed a whole sermon to examine

the thing is that you *can't* always make that a repeatable simple sentence; it's too subtle, too complex. Instead, you're supposed to craft each bit of the sermon to gesture toward this larger center

let me give an example

I gave a sermon about race recently; but the "main points" had nothing to do with race. they were "We honor our forefathers by: 1) respecting their memory 2) redeeming their sins 3) fulfilling their call."

but the "center", the main theme, was elsewhere

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1323806625996615680?s=20

the center was, "How do we handle the fact that our religious tradition and spiritual ancestors simultaneously gave us huge gifts *and* often capitulated to slavery? How do we handle our dissatisfaction with our own elders/leaders?"

that's not neat or simple and isn't a "hook"

but that theme gave the sermon its life/coherence

I don't think I could have done that with a "hook", with a sentence I repeated over and over

There's not a simple answer to the question I'm asking; you need images and reframes not application points

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1245720827968081923?s=20

3. Boundaries

And just like you can't just get rid of the "hook" but have to replace it with a "center", you can't just get rid of structure either

You do need boundaries and transitions in a sermon, to make each part of it clear and strong

The thing is that boundaries are supposed to have the character of what they bound; they aren't prefabricated divisions that are filled in later (like the three-point formula); they're tailored to the matter at hand, are themselves works of art (what Alexander calls "centers")

In some ways what I think this demands is *clarity.* Alexander makes the point that boundaries are fractal: they are composed of good objects that themselves have boundaries, and so on

And so a healthy thing is almost nothing *but* boundaries, in a way

I notice this sometimes when I preach; nine-tenths of the work seems to be done by the preamble, by the "this is what I'm *not* saying" bits of the sermon.

But more than that, so much of the work of prepping a sermon for me is getting the thoughts clear rather than cloudlike

4. Alternating Repetition

Roughly speaking, it seems like good repetition--repetition that isn't *dead*--is rhythm containing variance

It structures and brings wholeness without over-dictating and dumbing-down what it structures

So the impulse behind the "hook" is a good one; you want something that repeats, that gives rhythm, and you want that rhythm to point towards a greater theme

but one sentence, repeated over and over, tends to be dead unless it's either very beautiful, changes meaning, or perfect

A great example of repetition with variance is MLK's I Have A Dream

You have the constancy of the repetition, filled in with wildly varying and vividly contrasting language (red hills, sweltering heat of oppression, table of brotherhood)

just reading it, you feel it in your gut

But notice that "I have a dream" is not a hook! It's not a simple answer to a question! It's an empty vessel, filled up with other vivid images. And it points back toward the underlying themes of the speech--hope, determination, the future, America (via "American Dream").

Compared to this, our repetitions are dead on the page. Not that MLK is the bar, but we're not even *trying* to do what he does; his repetition is something that looks at his audience and speaks to them, is tailored to them, whereas ours is there for our convenience.

5. Positive Space

By "positive" Alexander means "shaped", crafted, handled intentionally. This applies not only to objects, but to the seemingly empty space *around* the objects; that space needs to be considered as a positive force, not just empty space

A good sermon, I think, has positive empty spaces. It is intentional about what it implies, and the preacher has attempted to shape his implications. Some things *cannot* be explicit, but you can leave a big old empty space for them: let he with ears hear

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1221921778831962113?s=20

Often, the *main* thing I'm thinking of in my sermons is what I'm *not* saying; not what I'm negating, but what I am implying

If you're talking about anything worth talking about, you'll pretty regularly need to come at the issue indirectly

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1282380915910508553?s=20

I recently preached on politics, because my church is pretty politically divided

What I *wanted* to say was "You morons! You know every injustice that happens far away and have never met your neighbor! You worry about injustice and leave the poor unfed!"

but you can't say that

So instead I talked about what politics are for Christians; and about why I was proud of our church; and about why Christian politics means caring for the community to which you can witness, your neighbors/city

And I didn't say *why* this new vision of politics was timely

The thing is that people *feel* the empty space, even if they don't see it

You preach like that a couple times, and your church culture starts to develop this norm of thinking that national politics are less important and a slightly cringe/immature outlet for the justice-desire

The thing that makes a sermon really work, in other words, is rarely what's *explicit* in it, and much more often is the powerful, positive space left by the things that are unsaid

I think this is where the magic comes in

6. Good Shape

Living things have good shapes--they're composed of many other concrete, satisfying shapes, arranged in a beautiful way. The shrine is good, satisfying, solid because of its deceptively simple composition; the chair is amorphous and alien, no real shapes to be seen

A bad sermon is like the chair; its parts are shapeless, and so it itself is dead the way only academic things can be dead. I find most theology to be exactly this: rooted in words that have no real application to life or to the world, shapeless and void

the words don't *have* to be this way, but we've neutered them. I'm thinking of words like justification, sanctification, imputation; words that once were maybe connected to a real image, but now are purely academic

be ecclesiastes instead

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1210452138008154113?s=20

the Bible is all like this! even Paul, the most academic writer of all! "Pursue love"; "be like the body"; "the wages of sin is death." Such great, strong, short words! Life, death, bread, light, darkness, blood, crown, glory

These words fuck

and the thing is that the simple words go deeper; they can talk to one another. "Let there be light"; "The light shone in the darkness"; "Awake sleeper, and Christ will shine on you."

Short words with heavy meaning

7. Local Symmetries

Global symmetries kill and local symmetries enliven.

Global symmetries come about when we have an image of what the thing should look like, and then we enforce it on the world blindly, without shaping our plan to the world around us

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1328741078749634560?s=20

Instead, you want to start at the very top and the very bottom. Your sermon outline is the *last* thing you do, not the first. First, you want to figure out what you're even building: what do my people need? What am I trying to *do*?

That's your top, the guiding star. Then you want to go to the bottom and get your hands dirty. If you're solving a real problem for your people, there will be something that isn't trivially obvious or easy, something you need to consider deeply and understand well

Solving that is solving your local symmetry: how do I put *these* tiles together beautifully? A beautiful living thing is the result of a bunch of hard, concrete problems solved in succession, *not* the result of a brutally enforced overarching plan

As you solve these concrete problems--exegetical, practical, pastoral--your overarching goal will shift a bit. You'll get greater clarity and see that what your people *really* need is this, but they need to see these things along the way, and so forth

But once you have the top and bottom of your sermon well-developed, the goal and the riddles, the middle bit (the overall structure) is trivial. The structure often falls out almost automatically from a real understanding of what needs to be done

8. Deep interlock and ambiguity

Living things are enmeshed in their world, are difficult to disentangle from other living things. This is the case for the beautiful thing as a whole, as well as for its constitutive parts.

Preaching is always ambiguous because it is both a human's words and God's words. The first goal of a preacher has to be to speak to his people on God's behalf. Preaching is prophetic, or else it's just talking. False humility is so dangerous here

https://twitter.com/a_fellow_of/status/1329806449502007297?s=20

There is a *reason* teachers will be held to a higher standard by Jesus when he judges us. We speak on God's behalf! And pretending your job is anything else does not absolve you of the responsibility to do so

You can turn down the job but you can't redefine it

Ambiguity allows for interlocking. God gives us the Holy Spirit because he wants the human and the divine to be united; and if your preaching is fired by the Spirit it will fuse your people and God closer together. This is the goal of just about every spiritual gift rightly used

9. Contrast

Tension creates life. Dead things either diminish everything to a uniform grey or leave light and dark in conflict with one another. Contrast brings opposites together and lets them make each other stronger

A good sermon acknowledges difference while still attaining unity. Sermons feel most alive when they contain both joy and sorrow. You want to be fully human as you talk to your people, and that means really fully engaging with the muck, and *still* being able to rejoice

Here's a place I need to get better: I have no idea how to show anger while preaching. This is part of a larger cultural confusion about healthy expressions of anger. Jesus is angry all the damn time! If I can't preach angry, my people won't know they're allowed to *be* angry

And the issue is that our lack of anger makes our love and mercy weak. They have no contrast; they are simply the *absence* of anger, rather than something strong and powerful that can *contain and transcend* anger. Contrast strengthens everything.