In Defense of Pulpits
I love old pulpits.
It doesn’t matter if it is a grand and richly carved pulpit in a medieval church in central Paris, or a humble, rough-hewn pulpit in a mountain chapel in Cades Cove, Tennessee, there is just something powerful and mystical about a place where God’s word has been faithfully preached. Sure, one could argue that they are just a piece of church furniture, a platform with a place for the preacher to rest his or her notes and bible, but for me at least, they are so much more than that. Good sermons have touched and enriched my life in ways that are, quite frankly, difficult to explain. They have led me, and continue to lead me, back to God. A good sermon can be a mystical, almost sacramental, thing. It can help us realize how the God of scripture is active and working in our lives. And if the sermon has power, as a point of connection between us and God, then the place where the sermon is given takes on power as well. It becomes a symbol of that connection. That is why pulpits have power. They are a symbol of an encounter with God. They represent the place where God’s story meets our story, where the God of scripture reveals himself to us through the words of one of his servants. Maybe there isn’t power in the wood, but there is power, divine power, in the word. It is the words that have been preached from pulpits that make them holy. Words of comfort, words of hope, words of warning; words that shape how and what we think of ourselves and the world around us. Words that direct us to God. When someone speaks from a podium, they can be talking about anything, but when someone speaks from a pulpit, they are talking about God. Whether they are grand or humble, the true power and significance of pulpits comes from being a place where people meet God. Pulpits matter.
Where is the pulpit in your church?
In my church, the pulpit stands to one side in the crossing, right at the point where the nave of the church meets the chancel. It is a common placement for pulpits in Anglican churches, although this wasn’t always the case. There was an architectural trend in many Anglican churches in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of making the pulpit the central focus of the congregation’s attention. So instead of the altar being front and center, as is the case my church and in most Anglican (and of course Roman Catholic) churches today, what you had was a large prominent pulpit right in the middle from which the scriptures were read and the sermon was preached. There are a few old Anglican churches around that still have this arrangement, and in many reformed traditions, such as Congregationalist and Baptist, this is the preferred setup, with the pulpit in the center. Maybe that is where yours is.
One of my ecclesiastical heroes is the Victorian priest John Keble, who in addition to being a poetry tutor at Oxford, was also appointed to a church in the quaint country village of Hursley, just outside of Winchester in England. When he got to his new church, he found a building much like the reformed parishes I just described with a prominent pulpit in the center. This was unsatisfactory for Keble, so he moved it. You see, as a poetry teacher, symbols meant everything to him, and the placement of the pulpit symbolized the role of the preacher. He didn’t want the preacher to be the main focus of the congregation’s attention; he wanted that to be Jesus. And for Keble, Jesus was most fully present to the congregation in the sacrament of communion. If Jesus is really and truly meeting his people in communion, then that is what should be front and center in the church. The preacher’s role, for Keble, was to be a witness; a witness to God’s presence in the midst of his people; a witness to an encounter with God; a witness to Jesus. That is why the pulpit, in Keble’s eyes, should be off to the side in the midst of the congregation. It is the place where God regularly encounters Christians on their journey between the font of their baptism and their ultimate destiny of being gathered before God’s throne. If the altar is the place where we as Christians most fully encounter Jesus, if it is a symbol of the Tree of Life and the Christian promise of heaven (as was Keble’s thought) then the pulpit should be in a place where the preacher can point people to Jesus, direct them along their way, but not get in the way.
One could, of course, argue that that is what all good preachers are trying to do, regardless of where they stand during the sermon: point people to Jesus. They invite people into a fuller life in Christ. The prevalence of “altar calls” in reformed sermons would seem to be a good indicator that even pastors delivering sermons from the very front of the church still see the sermon as an encounter with God that should lead to an even deeper encounter. Even if the pulpit is at the end of the aisle, it isn’t intended to be the end of the Christian journey. It is the place where we are called to go deeper.
Nowadays people don’t always see pulpits that way. They may not even recognize their importance at all. I have heard pulpits described as symbols of clericalism; a glorified platform that elevates the priest above his or her worshippers; a vestige of bygone days when God was seen as distant and unapproachable like so many high altars in grand cathedrals. Now, of course, I think most of this is nonsense. Why shouldn’t altars and pulpits be grand and lifted up? Why shouldn’t they be as beautiful as they can be? Is there any story more deserving of a glorious setting than the one that is told in our pulpits and on our altars?
I feel a great twinge of sadness whenever I see an abandoned high altar off in the distance, no longer a place of sacred encounter; now used primarily as a glorified flower stand, while God’s great banquet is celebrated down in the nave. It is the same feeling I experience when I see a pulpit standing alone and unused, looking down on a priest in the aisle reading his or her sermon from a borrowed music stand. It is a feeling of loss; loss of tradition; loss of respect; loss of glory and majesty. It feels like a loss to me when any place that has been a witness to God’s story and God’s grace is casually abandoned. It doesn’t matter if it is a pulpit or an entire church. It is a loss when the symbols of God’s grace are so lightly dismissed.
I think that for a generation or more, the Church has been told that we must make a choice between awe and intimacy. We can either worship God in settings that emphasize God’s grandeur, or we can worship God in settings that emphasize God’s humility, but we can’t have both. It is the tension between recognizing that God is immanent (present in the community and present in our lives) and transcendent (above us and beyond our comprehension). I think that it is time that we started calling this out as the false dichotomy that it is. It is a false choice between two aspects of our Lord that does not need to be made. Jesus Christ is both God and Man. He is both immanent and transcendent. Our response to him can be one of both awe and intimacy, at the same time. We do not have to choose between these two responses to God because as they are bound together in the person of Jesus Christ. We can celebrate communion at a high altar, recognizing the meal as a symbol of the eternal banquet of our Lord, filled with awe and wonder, and at the very same time we can experience God’s real presence in the gathered community giving us food for our daily journey. It is NOT either/or, it is both/and. The same is true for pulpits. God’s word can be preached from a platform that is grand and lifted up, and still I can experience that word as a humble message from a personal saviour. The God that we encounter in the sermon is a God who is both set apart from us, and in the midst of us. That is why pulpits are so wonderful: they bring the word of God into the congregation, and at the same time they physically remind us that the word is sacred and set-apart. It is symbolic of what a good sermon does: good sermons help us to see God at work in our daily lives AND help us to recognize those moments as encounters with a God who is holy.
Perhaps it is time for a long overdue caveat: obviously I recognize that Jesus didn’t preach from a pulpit. John the Baptist didn’t preach from a pulpit. Plenty of excellent sermons have been delivered in revival tents, and in church aisles, and in open fields, and plenty of terrible sermons have been delivered in pulpits. I would never go so far as to say that one must preach in a pulpit, because there are reasons not to do so at times; sometimes it is necessity, sometimes it is the Holy Spirit moving us to do something to make a specific point. A sermon can be preached anywhere, just like a baptism can be done in a river and Eucharist can be celebrated on a dining room table. God is never bound to work within our ecclesiastical traditions, but that doesn’t mean that traditions and holy symbols should be casually dismissed. God uses them too. They are a gift from God.
I say this because I have often seen pulpits abandoned or unused almost as a matter of principle by the preacher; as if the pulpit was something to be avoided rather than embraced. I have witnessed some ridiculous examples of this aversion to pulpits. One preacher stood immediately beside the pulpit, notes in hand, fumbling to find her place (and her point), not on the nave floor and not in the center aisle, but still refusing to step into the pulpit which was literally two steps away. Another preacher week after week walks down, grabs a music stand from beside the pulpit, moves it a few steps forward, preaches, and then puts the music stand back. All the while the pulpit stands there, unused, seemingly mocking the preacher, as if to say: “if only there was some piece of furniture that could help this preacher out.” When I have heard some priests sneer at the thought of preaching from a pulpit I have been left to wonder whether they thought pulpit preaching was above them, or beneath them. I often suspect the latter.
Preaching from the aisle, or anywhere else for that matter, is no sign of humility. As I said, there may be times when the Holy Spirit moves you to do something different, and a good preacher is bound to listen to that Spirit. There may be many good reasons to preach outside of a pulpit, but I don’t think humility is one of them. If your reason for not preaching from the pulpit is that you think it makes you look more humble, then I have bad news for you: you aren’t fooling anybody. I am reminded of the quote from C. S. Lewis’s Preface to Paradise Lost:
The modern habit of doing ceremonial things unceremoniously is no proof of humility; rather it proves the offender's inability to forget himself in the rite, and his readiness to spoil for everyone else the proper pleasure of ritual.
Lewis may not have been referring to preaching specifically, but I think the same principle applies. To preach outside of a pulpit is no proof of humility. If you are a truly humble preacher, your congregation will know it, no matter where you preach from. If you are full of conceit, preaching from the aisle isn’t going to help.
There are good reasons to preach from the aisle sometimes, but I don’t think there is ever a good reason to fully abandon the pulpit. It is still a potent symbol of a sacred calling. Even though John the Baptist didn’t use a pulpit, those of us who do step into a pulpit, are in a sense stepping into his shoes. He gave probably the greatest sermon in the history of the world. Standing in the midst of a crowd of people who thought he had all the answers, he pointed to someone else off in the distance and said simply: “Behold the Lamb of God.” Short and to the point, just like many good sermons are. John the Baptist was surrounded by people who came to him looking for salvation and answers, but he pointed instead to Jesus and said: “there’s your answer. Follow him.” John fulfilled the words of the Prophet Isaiah, by raising up his voice and saying: “Here is your God!” John is the preacher who introduces the real preacher. His job was to make the introduction. His role was to help people see that their God was coming to meet them, in fact he was already in the midst of them.
That is really what the preacher is meant to do; that is our job: point people to Jesus, and get out of the way. The preacher must keep his or her eyes peeled, looking for signs of the Lord’s presence and say to the congregation: “here is your God. The Lord is right here in your life, only you may not be able to recognize him. The Lord is just over the horizon; can you see him coming?” That is what the preacher is for: to help people meet the Lord; to help them recognize the signs and symbols of God’s presence, and in the Christian tradition one of the greatest symbols of an encounter with the God of scripture is the pulpit itself. That is why I want to begin any discussion of preaching by lifting up a piece of church furniture, that though it may be either simple or ornate, represents both a sacred calling and a sacred encounter.
John Keble got to build and move his pulpit where he wanted it, but I would venture to say that most of us don’t get to do that. The pulpit in my church wasn’t built for me. I am not the first priest to preach from it, nor am I likely to be the last. It is a reminder to me, every time I step into it, that none of this is actually about me. If I ever do get to build a pulpit though, I would like to leave inscribed inside a piece of solemn advice to every preacher that uses it afterwards:
This is not about you.
Of course, in order for the preacher to be continually confronted with that important reminder, he or she would need to be using the pulpit.
