So Luther followed in the footsteps of Christ as he thought about how to preach. He opened God’s Word, explained the text as simply as he could, and applied it in a conversational style to everyday life situations. Undoubtedly, this is one of the reasons Luther’s countercultural style of preaching was so popular.
Luther had choice words for preachers who ignored the masses and allowed their ego to feed upon complicated sermons filled with academic terminology to impress the social elite:
Cursed be every preacher who aims at lofty topics in the church, looking for his glory and selfishly desiring to please one individual or another. When I preach here, I adapt myself to the circumstances of the common people. I don’t look at the doctors and masters, of whom scarcely forty are present, but I look at the hundred or the thousand young people and children. It’s to them that I devote myself, for they, too, need to understand. If the others don’t want to listen they can leave. Therefore, my dear Bernard, take pains to be simple and direct; don’t consider those who claim to be learned but be a preacher to the unschooled youth and sucklings.28
It is important to note that simple preaching for Luther did not mean simple study.
Luther was still highly educated and committed to the study of the original Greek and Hebrew of the text. He even advocated the study of the original languages in preparation for the sermon.
“Though the faith and the Gospel may be proclaimed by simple preachers without the languages,” said Luther, “such preaching is flat and tame… But when the preacher is versed in the languages, his discourse has freshness and force, the whole of Scripture is treated, and faith finds itself constantly renewed by a continual variety of words and works.”29
However, although Luther encouraged the study of Greek and Hebrew when pastors think about how to preach, he despised the use of the original languages in the sermon itself.
He once criticized Zwingli for this reason: “How I do hate people who lug in so many languages as Zwingli does; he spoke Greek and Hebrew in the pulpit at Marburg.”30
So while Luther was proficient in the study of Greek and Hebrew, he never allowed the terminology to show itself in the pulpit.
Luther preferred “to preach in an easy and comprehensible fashion,” he said, “but when it comes to academic disputations watch me in the university; there I’ll make it sharp enough for anybody and will reply, no matter how complicated he wants to be.”31
He reserved the academics for the university. Therefore, for Luther, simple preaching was far from simplistic and easy preaching. He believed “to preach simply is a great art.”32
Luther’s simple preaching has influenced what pastors consider about how to preach today. We do not hold our services in foreign languages.
In most churches, it’s rare to hear a preacher who speaks in such an academic way that the congregation cannot understand.
