By David J. Schlafer

Preaching is hard work. Good preaching is even harder work. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Donald Coggin described the homiletical discipline as a "joyful tyranny." Most preachers are well acquainted with the noun Lord Coggin uses, but many have little if any sense of the adjective.

Preaching as drudgery. That feeling is well conveyed in an advertisement from a homiletical ghost-writing service that offers preachers a pre-packaged sermon per week for only 73 cents a homily (if purchased in a yearly subscription):

"Think for a moment: Couldn't you put to better, more profitable use the hours you now spend writing a homily that, once spoken, becomes only a reminder that you have to write another next week?"

The title of a splendid book on preaching by Eugene Lowry captures the flavor of preaching frustration even more succinctly: Doing Time in the Pulpit.

When preaching is envisioned as a formidable task to be discharged only by slogging through a "do list" of exegetical, rhetorical and spiritual "check points," it is hardly surprising (especially granted all the other responsibilities of a parish priest) if preachers approach this weekly workout exhausted before they start. Perhaps that is why some preachers procrastinate, cut corners, "blow it off," or subscribe to the 73-cent homily service.

What could the archbishop have meant by "joyful tyranny," if not merely the relief that flows when the sermon is over? Where, save in the satisfaction of a duty duly discharged, is the delight in preaching? It has to do, I think, with perspective - with how preachers envision what it is that they are doing.

I propose an alternative to the "work ethic" of sermon preparation: I believe that, at its heart, preaching is an act of play - not frivolous, escapist, or destructive play - but sacred play.

It is not insignificant that one of the synonyms we often use for "play" is "recreation." The play of children (and of adults as well, if they have not forgotten how) is a dancing interaction between structure and spontaneity - between patterned behavior and "making it up as you go along." Play means freedom from external constraint - the experience of grace instead of law. Play involves taking materials that are ready to hand - old clothes from the attic, a big bath towel, a stick and a sphere (known as a bat and ball) - and from these materials fashioning an imaginative, energizing new world, a world into which the only price of admission is a willingness to join the joy.

Such a process sounds, does it not?, very similar to that of the God who, in Genesis, says, "Let there be light" over the formless void; the God who, in Revelation, proclaims, "Behold, I am making all things new." Throughout the panoramic story of salvation which is spread out for us in the scriptures, God is depicted, through covenant, Exodus, prophetic proclamation of jubilee and return from exile, through the Incarnation, through Jesus' witness to God's inbreaking reign by means of world-upending parables and sabbath healings, as re-creatively involved with the world, and as constantly inviting human creatures to join in realizing the fresh new world of God's creative imagination.

Good preaching, I submit, does not issue reports about, or analyses of, God's playful, recreating action. Good preaching does what it talks about. It creates a playground in the space around the pulpit. It does not prescribe rules for recreation (for the listeners' "own good"); it evokes joyful participation in the divinely ordained dance of new life.

But how, specifically, can preaching do that?

"Play" is used in the English language in a number of senses:

1. To play with an object is to try it out, to get a first-hand feel.

2. To play a game is to participate in a pattern of imaginative interaction.

3. To play a musical composition is to perform it on a particular instrument.

4. To play a theater part is to undertake a role in a dramatic plot.

5. To play with a project is to prune, polish and fine tune it.

Each of these has direct, practical relevance for sermon preparation.

1. Preaching play as "getting a first-hand feel." This involves becoming tangibly involved in the torque and tingle of the scripture text, rather than standing at arm's length from the lessons, trying to ascertain the "point." I once had a student who told me, "I read the text to determine what doctrine it teaches, and then I preach that." His sermons sounded like it!

2. Preaching play as a conversation game. Even competitive sports require cooperative interchange - with teammates concerning strategy, with opponents concerning rules. An obsession with winning at all costs, instead of having a good game, often makes participants not want to play any more. Effective preaching conveys a sense of "conversational volleyball" - a vigorous, vital, almost kinesthetic back-and-forth between the voices to be found in the scriptures, the culture, the congregation, the liturgy of the day, and the preacher. It is a dull game when the ball doesn't cross and re-cross the net. Similarly, in a sermon, the interplay of conversational movement is "where the action is." The relevance of the gospel is discovered in the sermon through the energy of "Spirited" conversation.

3. Preaching play as the instrument of rhetorical music. Musical themes and phrases sound very different when played by string, woodwind, and brass instruments. The preacher has analogous instruments with which to play the sermon words: the poetic language of images, the prose language of exposition and argument, and the narrative language of stories. Preaching involves the orchestration of voices as well as their interaction. As in a symphony orchestra, different rhetorical voices can be used to enrich and complement each other in the sermon; but they also can create cacophony if not skillfully integrated. Image, argument and story language need to be balanced and interwoven (like a fugue) in a sermon; they cannot, however, be indiscriminately mingled without sending confusing signals to the sermon listener. In general, in any one sermon, one of these literary genres needs to predominate, the others need to serve as "background music."

4. Preaching as dramatic plotting. Preaching is not theater, but good preaching always has a plot.Preaching need not be a single story or a string of illustrations, but an engaging sermon will involve the listener as a suspenseful novel or short story rivets a reader. The generation of interest through a careful sequencing of rising tension and realistic resolution is critical in sermon construction. "Points" in a sermon "outline" - announced at the outset and summarized at the end - a sure-fire strategy for generating sermon "sleeping sickness" in one's listeners. What is needed instead of static logic is narrative logic - a moving, life-like logos. The movements in a sermon need to be shaped as well-sequenced scenes in a play - so that listeners arrive at the end of the sermon when the preacher does - and not before!

5. Preaching play as pruning and polishing. All of the previous "play" dimensions of preaching interdepend upon each other, but they cannot be attended to and developed, let alone effectively interwoven, all at once. Hence the need for a kind of playful tinkering and testing. After preachers discern an initial sense of sermon direction, they need to listen again for "what their sermon wants to be when it grows up," as a preaching colleague aptly put it.

The refining process need not be seen as making corrections for wrong work. "Polishing play" can be an adventure of discovery into the heart of the sermon - into the center, the place where it shimmers. The final polishing touches on the facets of a diamond are those that reveal its deepest fire.

Preachers cannot compete, of course, with the powerful, playful re-creation energy of God's inexhaustible love. They can, however, mirror it. Preaching is a joy when it is savored as sacred play. o

The Rev. David J. Schlafer has taught preaching at four Episcopal seminaries and at the College of Preachers. He is currently adjunct professor of homiletics at Virginia Theological Seminary.