Sermons, Abstract Art, and Existential Urgency
some thoughts on the sermon as art
I write sermons every week. Well, to be honest, “write” is maybe a strong word.
Sometimes I’ll jot notes down in my Moleskine softcover pocket notebook with my Blackwing 602 pencil. It’s all very intentional, analog, and quite therapeutic.
Other times I’ll make a list of passages or ideas in the notes app on my phone.
Rarely, I’ll call my friend Corri and say, “Can I use you as a sticky note?” And then she’ll jot down my thoughts in a text.
Occasionally, I’ll map out my sermon on the marker board in my office, translate that to my notebook, and then write out a manuscript that I don’t follow.
Most of the time though, I prefer to mull over a passage in my mind as I drive, shower, run, hike, walk, or do basically anything. Then I’ll just get up on Sunday and let it fly. These are my favorites, but they don’t really allow for slideshow presentations and things like that.
Sometimes I’ll come up with an idea, hear a story, experience something, tell a story, or jot down a word or phrase, and I won’t know if it’s a sermon or an article or a podcast or what, but it will eventually jump out at me and become very apparent. Sometimes I start out thinking it’ll make a great sermon, but it will end up becoming an Uplift devotional or article.
Sermons find their way to the congregation in so many different ways, but there is one thing that is true across the board: if I can’t nail the existential urgency to my sermons, then I walk away feeling like something big is missing.
Three Sermons I Heard
Recently, I heard three sermons, and two of them were structurally pleasing.
They had a clear plan and setup, and the one delivering the sermon stuck to the script.
The first sermon was cool because the speaker basically said, “Alright, I’m going to tell you four things to do to make your day better, give you four scriptures, and then give you four words.”
And that’s exactly what he did, and knowing where you were going kind of made you feel safe and engaged and locked in.
The other sermon didn’t have that kind of setup. Instead, it was more of a hook. The speaker basically said, “I want to tell you this thing, but we have some work to do to get to it.” He then dropped little reminders that we were working towards that punchline the entire time. As a public speaker, he did a great job of keeping the audience engaged. I have some thoughts on the content choice, but the skill was undeniable from my perspective.
The third sermon I heard didn’t have a clear structure because it was more exegetical, so there were very few strategies involved, but he walked us through the passage, and every word was baptized in love and care. That’s not to say that the others weren’t. It’s just the impression I got from his tone, content, and delivery. Also, I’m totally biased because I’m pretty sure we have the same or close to the same delivery and style.
But here’s the point: two of these sermons were obviously well delivered, and a lot of thought went into the structure. I actually took a lot of notes on the first one. But it was the third sermon that captured my heart and attention, and I think the artist Robert Irwin (1928-2023) explains why.
A Note On Abstract Artwork and How Robert Irwin Gets It
In this quote from the book seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, Robert Irwin explains why imitators of abstract art just couldn’t get it.
That's one of the facts in abstract expressionism that a lot of its imitators could never really understand. They understood the gesture; they knew how to make all the marks, the right moves, as it were…
They never really understood how to put the painting together in any physical terms, how each color or element in the painting has weight and field density, and that they all must be consistent. They were putting it together in intellectual or gestural or pictorial terms, but they didn't understand the actual physicality of a post-cubist painting, how it exists in the world…
That is, having the technically correct parts isn’t what makes an abstract painting a painting. There is something deeper, something more.
The same is true with the sermon.
Capturing the Existential Urgency
Sometimes the existential urgency hits me almost immediately. It might be the thing from which the entire sermon flows.
Or it could be like the Sunday before Memorial Day.
I had the entire sermon planned. I knew the passages I wanted to use, the points I wanted to make, and the general flow of the sermon.
Had I gotten up and delivered this sermon, it would have been a good sermon. People would have gotten something out of it. But there would have been something missing.
Having the structure, the passages, the points, and the delivery isn’t what makes a sermon a sermon.
To me, it’s the existential urgency, which is the thing about the sermon that makes you feel as if it has to be delivered. If this sermon isn’t given, then the world will come to an end, time will stop, and humanity will cease to exist.
Now obviously, this is a bit dramatic, and I don’t think I’m that important.
But I believe in the power of the sermon as a kind of guerrilla theatre.
By the way, I’m pretty sure I got a lot of these ideas from this video. There’s more than this, and I’d be happy to share that material with you or point you to where you can purchase it.
On that particular sermon before Memorial Day, the existential urgency never came.
Until Sunday morning during my prayer following my welcome.
The answer had been there on the calendar all year, but I didn’t notice it until just minutes before I was to deliver my sermon.
The very fact that the next day was Memorial Day gave me what I needed to make the entire sermon come together. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but you can listen to it here:
If you want to track down my welcome and opening prayer, you can find that here:
As I was reading this book about the life and work of Irwin, this quote really stood out to me as something that I’ve noticed about crafting sermons. Sermons are more than a lecture or a verbal essay. Sermons are meant to be creative, subversive, challenging, discomforting, and always on the move.
Sermons can be the seeds of radical transformation and new creation.
And I take all of this very seriously.
But in another way…
I have to hold it lightly because at the end of the day, I’m just Daniel, and what do I know? Will I inspire some people? Well, I know I have thanks to those of you who have told me so. Will I change lives? No, but the Spirit might change lives through me, if I may be so bold. Will I set the world on fire? Nah. I’m too much “just Daniel” for that sort of thing, but we sure can have a lot of fun trying, eh?
Okay, that’s about it, and since I’m being pretentious about “the art of sermon building,” I’m going to end this at an awkward spot because why not?
My teacher and friend Dr. Bradley Jersak wrote a bit on sermons and homilies today (the day I wrote this) too. As my friend Sam used to say, “Great minds think alike, and ours do too.”
Great post and great sermon. You explain things so well. Keep inviting them in!!
I love hearing your sermons (and devos and reading your articles and all else), and a lot of it is because of this you just said. You care so much about the message you are conveying, on whatever platform, and while you don’t always follow a clear (or any ha!) outline, you have a way that flows and ties things together. It’s also fun and amazing to see the processes leading up to those sermons/articles/etc, and sometimes getting to play a small part in it. Witnessing the journey from stray thought to concept to the fleshing out to the delivery. I love you, bro-son! You just keep on doing what you do!