We need to hear this again and again. That’s why we have a message every week, every Sunday. It is something we need to hear again.
A brother in Christ spoke these words to me recently. It got me thinking about the nature of preaching and the sermon. It does not take much to get met thinking about such things, as readers of this blog know.
Without using anything close to these words, my brother’s words made me think of the more ritual and communal functions of the sermon. The speaking of the word week-after-week helps form a community by the very repetition of the great themes of the Christian faith. The value is not in novelty. It is in solidity. A foundation is laid and relaid as the preacher calls to mind the stories and truths that shape our life together.
This is different than the approach to preaching that sees it mostly in terms of solving problems or advancing arguments. The value of such preaching is its ability to offer something that connects with the questions and quandaries of contemporary life. Preaching is a curriculum of lessons. If it does not seek to be new each week, it certainly seeks to avoid seeming old or a rehash of material already covered in the recent past.
Of course, it is probably not all one or all the other. But there is a distinction in these thoughts somewhere that seems true to me.
I am a part-time local pastor serving 
This love we believe to be the medicine of life, the never-failing remedy for all the evils of a disordered world, for all the miseries and vices of men. Wherever this is, there are virtue and happiness going hand in hand. There is humbleness of mind, gentleness, long-suffering, the whole image of God; and at the same time a peace that passeth all understanding, and joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Nicely said.
My pastor preached on “sustenance” on Sunday. He talked about how Christ sustains us. It seems to me that sermons are like sustenance. We need to hear the Word again and again.
I’ve had my wife’s roast beef dinner lots of times, but it is still good. I don’t need a completely new meal each time. Find the good stuff and keep going to the well with it.
love it! and I love the roast beef analogy. My husband makes me roast beef at least once a month. It is hearty and filling. It is comforting. It is a large meal and sustains us for a few days at least. In the same way, I know what to expect with Christian community and in communal worship. It is not the novelty that speaks to me, but the familiar refrain, the building up of identity, the remembrance that the Word was and is and is to come.