From Kenton C. Anderson, Preaching Magazine
Minutes after receiving my PhD degree, a friend approached me and one of my fellow graduates asking if “we could help him with the pain in his knee.” My colleague, not missing a beat, immediately grabbed a knife and fork from the’ restaurant table and asked our friend to roll up his pant leg so that we could see what we could do.
We all laughed together, commenting on how we had become “the kind of doctors who couldn’t help anyone.” Another waggish friend suggested that PhD actually stood for “Permanent Head Damage.” Some days, I think that he was right.
Of course, one doesn’t need a PhD to be a preacher, and one doesn’t need a medical degree to “help someone.” That said, there is a sense where preachers serve as healers of a different kind. Across the history of the church, preachers have sometimes been called “curates.” Soul curation” continues to be understood as one of the major functions of the pastoral role.
We believe that the gospel is a kind of salve that not only saves us from our sins but can help us overcome and heal us of our deep soul maladies. The preacher’s medicine is God’s Word which is sufficient prescription for those things that ail us, both spiritually, and sometimes even physically.
Preachers as doctors serve multiple roles in the healing process: preventative, diagnostic, and curative. As a work of prevention, preaching works to offer protective understanding and frameworks that help listeners to avoid the sin that so easily entangles and corrupts. In this way the preacher is a kind of Surgeon General, offering words of warning in the hopes of helping people avoid spiritual illness to begin with.
This sort of preaching involves careful exegesis and teaching of Scripture, such that listeners appreciate how God calls us to live lives that are healthy and abundant by following the precepts of God’s Word, acting congruently with the call and expectation of God who leads us to live fully and well in the world he has created.
As a work of diagnosis, preachers help listeners and congregations understand how it is that sins beset them. This sort of preaching seeks to uncover how sin cripples and corrupts, showing the listener where and how the self can work to undermine our health and well-being. This aspect of the sermon requires the I preacher to engage the work of conviction, helping listeners to appreciate the weight of their sin, and the possibility of salvation. It sometimes means the listener: might feel the pain a little more acutely as j they are led to appreciate that things are not what they ought to be and could be.
As a work of curation, preachers work to apply God’s grace to the needs of the congregation, both individually I and collectively. This is where preaching • becomes good news as the gospel is brought to bear on the broken bodies, j minds, and souls that gather every time preachers proclaim the gospel.
Of course, we’re not always going to quickly overcome our physical disfunctions and deformities. We’re not always going to be able to avoid the pain we feel in life. I remember a sermon many years ago, where Christian psychologist, j Larry Crabb, described listeners coming to preachers with their pain, hoping that they might “feel better fast.” But good doctoring is not always quick and painless. Sometimes the cure can feel worse than the pain, at least for a season. There are times when the pain is the point as any good doctor will readily understand. The Jesus we preach showed us this, in His going to the cross.
Some of my best friends are medical doctors. I marvel at their patience, their learning, their insight, and their wisdom. I remember one of them describing deep frustration at his inability to resolve a particular patient’s illness. His living room was strewn with medical journals which he would study every night in the hopes of finding a cure. While committed to the cause of physical healing, my friend also understood that ultimate healing is an act of God’s Spirit beyond the reach of mere surgical and pharmaceutical intervention. From that perspective, my doctorate was as worthy as his, and perhaps even more.
The preacher as doctor knows that the best medicine is resurrection, the full and final cure of all our groaning. Jesus saves us not merely by dying, but by rising, reversing the curse upon our failing bodies and giving us eternal hope that will never perish, spoil, or fade. One day, in Jesus, we will rise as well, with new and perfected bodies, fit for eternity, beyond the need of doctors – even those who preach.
