The Interrogative Mood - Linguistic Moods and Preaching

The interrogative mood is the mood for questioning. As I wrote in the introduction to this series, think of a detective trying to get to the bottom of a case, or a child asking questions.

 Questions are an incredibly important part of preaching. A cursory reading of the gospels shows that Jesus often asked questions of people: "Who do you say I am?", "Which is easier...?", "Why do you worry about clothes?", "What do you think?" etc.

 

Questions stimulate peoples thinking, and help them to think about how what we are saying applies to their life. Once our sermon has been written it is good practice to go back through the sermon (or sermon outline) and ask ourselves "what questions can I ask in this sermon that will help people to respond?". These questions can be a mixture of rhetorical and non-rhetorical.

 

However, one of the primary points I want to make in this post is not necessarily that we need to ask more questions, but the subtle problem that I have seen creeping into some preaching practice that leans far too heavily on questions. I recently heard someone remark, "the bible is not the place we go to in order to find answers, but where we go to find really good questions." This saying contains grains of truth (as most good mis-truths do) - as we read scripture we are constantly challenged by what it says to live differently: "how then should we live?" (Ezekiel 33:10). But to shy away from the abundance of answers that scripture provides is to fall pray to the post-modern zeitgeist and to shun Christ's claim to be "the way, the truth, and the life".

 

Our job as preachers is to have a "proper confidence" in the claims of Christ Jesus, and to proclaim him crucified to a broken and hurting world that is in desperate need of his healing balm.

 

To look at this from a philosophical perspective, it is important for us to diagnose where this framework comes from. Post-modernism, characterised by its rejection of all absolutes and meta-narratives, and at least in a mixed framework, represents the dominant worldview of Western society. This framework grew out of a reaction to the Enlightenment, with its emphasis on absolutes and its confidence in empirical reasoning. Some of these critiques are right and good and we should indeed be careful of leaning to heavily on our own rationality in coming to conclusions, however, this skepticism has leaked into the proclomation of the church, arguing that our confidence in God and in our witness about Christ Jesus is also something arising out of the enlightenment. To this end, it is important to argue that the original disciples really believed (had strong confidence) that they encountered the risen Christ. This, too, should be seen in the witness of the early church in the face of martyrdom. Somebody does not go to face the wild beasts in the coliseum, or face crucifixion for something that they are unsure whether it is true. This does not mean that we are not allowed to doubt or go through difficult times in our lives. But it does mean that as we go through life, placing more and more trust in God, and seeing God's faithfulness displayed, we develop this proper confidence that allows us to proclaim the gospel truths.


Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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