Preaching the Text or Preaching the Event?
When you’re preaching the narratives in Scripture — and this is particularly true when you’re preaching the Gospels — you have to answer the question: Am I preaching a particular text or am I preaching the event described in that text?
Here’s what I mean: At a certain point in his earthly ministry, just as he leaves Bethany one day on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus sends two men out to get a colt for him to ride on. That’s an event and it is recorded in all four Gospels.
But it isn’t recorded in exactly the same way; it’s not as if Mark, Luke, and John all say what Matthew says, word for word. Rather, each evangelist tells the story in his own way. Matthew and John cite Zechariah 9:9, which speaks of the king coming to Zion, lowly and riding on a donkey, but Mark and Luke don’t. Matthew tells you that the disciples brought two animals, a donkey and its colt, but the other evangelists mention only the colt, and Mark and Luke don’t even indicate that the colt was a donkey (which, I submit, suggests that they expect you to know that from reading Matthew). Mark and Luke make the point that the colt must be one on which no one has ever ridden, but Matthew doesn’t say that. Mark says that the crowds shouted a welcome to the kingdom of David, but the others don’t; Luke says that they shouted “Peace in heaven and glory in the highest,” but the others don’t. And there are a host of other differences, too.
So what do you do when you preach this passage? One approach is to preach the event, perhaps attempting to include (and harmonize) all the details from all four Gospels. The event actually happened and all the details of it (though accepting that the various details do harmonize and being able to show that they do are two different things).
This is sometimes a valuable thing to do. For instance, in John’s Gospel Jesus comes to the temple and overturns tables and drives out the sacrificial animals, and he does something similar in the other three Gospels. But there is a huge difference. John is describing an event that takes place early in Jesus’ ministry, but the other three Gospels report something that happened just before the cross. For a number of reasons, I take these to be two distinct events, one at the beginning and one at the end of Jesus’ ministry. No one Gospel reports both, but it wouldn’t be improper for a pastor to preach a sermon on both texts, perhaps showing how Jesus inspects the temple twice, just as a leprous house is inspected twice in Leviticus.
Preaching the event in that way has its place, just as a topical or thematic sermon has its place (e.g., a sermon on infant baptism that draws on a number of texts). It seems to me that this is what Klaas Schilder does in the meditations (not sermons) in his magnificent Christ in His Sufferings trilogy, often with breathtaking results. But here’s the problem: A sermon like that — preaching the event of the “triumphal entry” — isn’t preaching what any one Gospel actually says.
By trying to focus on the event and drawing in all the details from all the Gospels, such a sermon fails to say what a particular Gospel says. Matthew has a reason for drawing attention to Zechariah 9:9, but Mark and Luke have a reason not to. Mark is interested in Jesus as the son of David and his kingdom being the restored Davidic kingdom, but that’s not Luke’s point; Luke is interested in showing how the crowds shouted something similar to (and yet different from) what the angels shouted when they appeared to the shepherd, but that’s not John’s point. Each one is doing his own thing, drawing attention to one detail or another in order to make his own point, and if you preach the event, you miss that distinctiveness.
That said, there’s also a ditch on the other side, namely, preaching one particular text while ignoring what other texts about the same event say. And so I read commentaries on Mark 11:1-11 that say, for instance, that the colt could have been a horse. Not according to Matthew. Or they say that it wasn’t the same crowd that shouted “Hosanna” and later on “Crucify him” because the ones shouting “Hosanna” were the Galilean pilgrims traveling with Jesus and the ones who shouted “Crucify him” later were the people of Jerusalem. Except that where Mark tells us the people traveling with Jesus shouted “Hosanna,” John 12 says that there was a crowd shouting the same thing that came from Jerusalem to meet Jesus — and some of them may have been shouting “Crucify” later. (Mind you, so may the Galilean pilgrims who traveled with Jesus, since, after all, they were still in Jerusalem at that time!). I read a commentary last night that talked as if these acclamations were offensive to Jesus, but Luke 19 says that Jesus refused to rebuke the crowds and told the Pharisees that if they kept silent even the stones would cry out, which certainly doesn’t sound like disapproval. In each of these cases, it appears that commentators have so focused on Mark that they have forgotten that Mark is describing an event and that he isn’t the only one to do so.
Now it’s not necessary for your sermon to include everything the other accounts say. If you’re preaching Mark 11, you don’t have to mention what John 12 says about there being a crowd coming from Jerusalem to meet Jesus or what Matthew 21 says about the colt and its mother being brought to Jesus. You may simply talk about the crowd with Jesus and the colt. But you do have to avoid saying something in your sermon on Mark 11 that would contradict those other passages.
Preaching the event is certainly permissible, sometimes particularly valuable. But it isn’t the same thing as preaching the text with its distinctive focus. And on the other hand, preaching the text allows you to say what the Spirit inspired a particular author to write, but it isn’t helpful if it focuses on the text to the exclusion of the actual event and the other accounts of it.