“I suppose there’s no point in preaching to the converted though”, said a director at work recently. He was talking business rather than theology of course; the phrase has become just another figure of speech like, “walk though the eye of a needle,” or, “road to Damascus experience.” Every day people use Biblical allusions and terminology without realising it. Many a time you hear folks cite the profound influence that Shakespeare has had on the English language, whilst at the same time ignoring the much bigger influence that the King James Bible has had on our mother tongue. (It’s called mother tongue, I think, because women do more talking than men!)
Now, preaching to the converted is just the one thing
that we Christians do all the time, at least every Sunday. It might mean
that we’re naturally forgetful and stupid or that we have a penchant for
re-runs of the good news in the same way that we listen to a favourite
record time and again. There is some truth in both those implications.
As with good music there’s always something else to be discovered in the
Bible, something new to delight us, and yes, we do need constant reminders
to keep us from theological equivalent of listening to Mantovani. No disrespect
to those of you who actually like Mantovani; I was just trying to elicit
a chuckle or two, and I couldn’t work Arsenal into this particular train
of thought.
In fact there’s every point in preaching to the
converted. We may not need to convert them any more but we do need to keep
them going in their Christian lives. The best way of doing that is
to hear God’s voice and to hear the word explained. In Romans 10 Paul tells
us this and explains that God deliberately sends us preachers and teachers
to fulfil this very function. Sunday services are all about the sermon.
We’ve all been involved at one time or another with
Christian events, especially those of the evangelistic type, where you
put in a huge amount of effort to get it off the ground. There have been
all the meetings, the phone calls, the practising of music and drama; food
has been prepared, sound systems and lights have been rigged, time and
money has been given and spent. Now you’ve got the audience primed and
ready. They’re in just the right, positive frame of mind…
….and the speaker doesn’t even mention Jesus, doesn’t mention the cross,
doesn’t tell the gospel. If it’s a service for believers only, they don’t
even open the Bible and expound a passage. In such circumstances, what’s
the point of it all? About as much as do-it-yourself brain surgery,
I’d say. It’s like having an Irish coffee without the whiskey, or supporting
Arsenal if you want to watch attractive football (got the joke in there
eventually!).
Let’s face the facts. People are very forgetful,
and only really learn well when the lesson is repeated time and again.
Without the constant exhortation, we all tend to drift aimlessly in the
flow of life, prevaricating and leaving until tomorrow what should be done
today. Young Israelites who wanted to know about the nation’s customs were
told about the Passover and the exodus from Egypt. When they asked the
‘why’ question, the answer was always ‘because God did that for us’. This
routine has become enshrined as a ritualistic custom in the Jewish tradition,
so when they celebrate the Passover, the youngest boy in the family asks
this question of the oldest man who tells him about their liberation from
slavery all those centuries ago. Like the Jews, we Christians need reminding
constantly of the cross and our liberation from sin and the power of death
– we need people to preach to us that we should stay strong in our conversion.