Preaching God's Compassion: Comforting Those Who Suffer
Overview
This is a book about human suffering and the church's efforts to minister to those who are suffering. It uses the resources of contemporary pastoral care to understand situations of suffering. For the most part, however, it focuses on pastoral preaching, that is, on the oral proclamation of God's Word from the perspective of caring for or comforting people in need. While many books have been published on suffering and on pastoral preaching, few have combined these into a single concern, as does this volume. The authors represent the respective disciplines involved: Aden, pastoral care, and Hughes, preaching. The book has been written from within the Pauline/Augustinian tradition as seen from a Lutheran perspective.
The book begins with reflections on the reality of human suffering and an examination of several ways in which we try to make sense of suffering. It then focuses specifically on the believer's struggle with suffering, the church's attempt historically to address suffering, and the minister's pastoral relationship with troubled parishioners. After dealing with some of the practical differences between counseling and preaching, the book proposes a functional approach to pastoral preaching and describes the form of the pastoral sermon.
Centering on five particular situations of suffering—loss, illness, violence, fear, and failure—the book suggests ways in which the pastor can preach to parishioners who are experiencing one or more of these traumas. Three sample sermons illustrate how to preach on God's gracious activity, while avoiding "psychologizing the text" and reducing the gospel to cheap therapy for individual problems.
Top Highlights
“We have no complete and final answer to the ‘why’ of any particular instance of pain. But we do have an ‘Answerer,’ a God who in Christ entered the world to be with us in our suffering. If God did not abandon Jesus in his sufferings, God will not abandon us in ours. Our ‘Answerer’ will be with us in all the dark places our lives may go.” (Page 18)
“Persons who suffer may be emotionally ready to reflect on their situation and to grow in ways that the stable individual is not.” (Page 27)
“A great deal of human suffering can be traced to our failure to trust in God and to give our lives back to God in obedience.” (Page 14)
“The denial of suffering or, as Hall describes it, the incapacity to suffer, is not only a personal response but also a societal prescription. We Americans are taught to believe that suffering can and will be overcome by ‘human ingenuity and inventiveness.’1 We buy into the American dream that diminishes the reality of human suffering, and then we, like Willy Loman in Arthur Miller’s The Death of a Salesman, become pathetic creatures not because we suffer but because we ‘cannot face it.’” (Page 2)
“The theology of the cross seeks to link authentic hope to genuine honesty in the face of suffering. Because God is suffering love, sensitivity to distress resides in the heart of God. God suffers when we suffer.” (Page 22)
- Title: Preaching God's Compassion: Comforting Those Who Suffer
- Authors: LeRoy H. Aden and Robert G. Hughes
- Publisher: Fortress Press
- Publication Date: 2002
- Pages: 192
LeRoy H. Aden is Professor of Pastoral Theology Emeritus at Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He is co-editor (with David G. Benner) of Counseling and the Human Predicament and (with J. Harold Ellens) of Turning Points in Pastoral Care, and (with Robert G. Hughes) Preaching God's Compassion.
Robert G. Hughes is St. John Professor of Homiletics at, and former President of, Lutheran Theological Seminary, Philadelphia. He has authored Preaching Doctrine (with Robert Kysar) and A Trumpet in Darkness: Preaching to Mourners.