Homiletical Perspective - Essay Example

In a bid to evaluating various homiletic challenges in this story, the issues of significant concern include the preacher to preach this text, problems arising from the text for a contemporary congregation, and surprise twists within the story. In addition, the paper attempts to identify different ways through which image and story can be used beyond strict analogy in shaping the lives of contemporary Christians. It is evident from this paper that there are different ways through which sermons on the story can be used to shape lives of Christians.

Effects of the text on life of a community as well as the future of this story form part of the paper. Evidently, anyone who can understand and interpret various messages in this long passage can preach the text. After all, preaching simply entails delivering a sermon or religious address to a group of followers. Preaching also includes teaching or proclaiming some religious messages3. Therefore, it is possible that anyone having the ability to address a gathering or assemblage of persons can preach this text.

Nonetheless, not all preachers will find this text good to preach4. Other than its length, the text poses homiletic issues especially with reference to contemporary Christians. What’s more, preaching this text requires an emotionally strong preacher who can overcome emotions especially from the congregation given that this scripture evokes a lot of emotions. Two main homiletic challenges that make this text not appealing to many preachers are that Mark does not talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and the fact that Mark through his story evokes a lot of emotions from the listeners.

Amazingly, Mark vividly describes the trials and death of Jesus Christ without mentioning His resurrection5. This provides the first homiletic challenge. Salvation according to Christians is the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians strongly believe that through the death of Jesus Christ on the cross all the sins were washed. His resurrection on the other hand depicts a new dawn in respect to salvation. Consequently, it becomes difficult for a preacher to talk about salvation without mentioning resurrection of Jesus Christ as it is in this text.

Surprisingly, this text is used during Palm Sunday, which forms the foundation of Christian faith. If Jesus Christ had died without resurrecting then they would not have been salvation of mankind. In his story, Mark only addresses trials and the death of Jesus Christ. Secondly, Mark’s story of Jesus Christ’s trials and death evokes a lot of emotions from the listeners as well as readers. There is no doubt that emotions impair ability to critically and rationally think. When the congregation in question starts becoming emotional, the preacher may be affected as well hence impeding his/her sermon6.

The text in this gospel vividly describes how Jesus Christ was tried, mocked, struck on the head, and later on crucified. Most Christians of course have watched movies on the passion of Jesus Christ. There is likelihood that whenever this scripture is read most Christians always imagine the real action. This evokes emotions of the Christians, which may also in turn cause the preacher to be emotional. Though the length of the scripture does not cause much problem to many preachers, there are those who find it too long to preach on.

In any case, the text addresses various aspects of Jesus Christ’s trial, crucifixion, death, and burial. Many preachers try to link these aspects of Christ in a bid to passing the desired message to the congregation7. Notably, when a text or scripture has various aspects it is always advisable to pick on a specific aspect and provide sermon on the same. After all, there is no universal or specific