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April 2025

Rev. Mary Donovan Turner, PhD, is the retired Professor of Preaching and Vice President and Dean of Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, CA. She was ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 1982 and has served congregations in GA and CA. Mary received her PhD in the Old Testament from Emory University in 1992 where her secondary area of interest was Preaching from Biblical Narratives. She is the author of Old Testament Words, The God We Seek, and along with Dr. Mary Lin Hudson, Saved From Silence: Finding Women's Voice in Preaching; she has written numerous articles in edited volumes and preaching and biblical studies journals.  

The Power of the Question

Rev. Mary Donovan Turner, PhD

Last fall, I met with a group of Disciples clergy colleagues in Northern California/Nevada to talk about preaching. Reviewing exegetical/interpretive strategies, we reflected on Mark 10:46 – 52, the story of Bartimaeus, the lectionary gospel reading for the upcoming Sunday. After sharing something about our preaching histories and our current congregations, and what we ourselves hope for in sermons, we began. 

We read the text together and shared the questions that arose.  As the discussion progressed, our questions became more significant, piercing even. We were reminded that a sermon’s quality is often correlated to the questions we ask of the text as we first encounter it. The more creative and insightful and challenging our questions, the more engaging the sermon growing from them.

We considered together these questions and others:

1) Most healing stories do not give the name of the person being healed. Why here? And what does Bartimaeus mean? 

2) Why is this story paired with that of James and John which immediately precedes it where Jesus asks the same question he asks Bartimaeus? What is the significance of this being the last story before Jesus and disciples enter Jerusalem?

3) The disciples are identified in 10:46 as being on this journey with Jesus; they disappear along the way. Do they lose their distinctive disciple-voice to the larger crowd?

4) How is a sermon written to a community of Bartimaeus-like disciples, pushed to the margins of society and community, different from a sermon in other contexts?

This stage in the process, asking the questions that arise out of our own lives and those of our communities, is essential to a “theology of voice.”

In 1999, Dr. Mary Lin Hudson and I published Saved From Silence: Finding Women’s Voice in Preaching (St. Louis: Chalice Press).  In it, we explored varied dimensions of physical and metaphorical voice, and advocated for a theology of voice, contrasted to a theology of word, for preaching. Defining voice as contextualized word, a theology of voice recognizes that the contexts of the person of the preacher, the listeners, and the wider community are essential for sermon-writing.  

Keeping a “theology of voice” in mind and in preparation for writing this article, I asked ChatGPT for a sermon on Mark 10:46 – 52. In seconds I received a sermon entitled: The Power of Faith and Persistence.  The sermon gave basic, superficial information about the Markan text, nothing grown out of strong, contextual questioning. It was not written by a person speaking with and vulnerable to any particular community and was clearly written for readers, not hearers. It was void of story, and expectedly a-contextual in most ways possible. Armor plated, it ended with the delineation of four things we should do to be like Bartimaeus.  

Being intrigued by Dr. Casey T. Sigmon’s suggestion in her presentation on AI and preaching for Proclamation Project, I then asked ChatGPT to write a sermon on Mark 10:46 -52 for a Disciples congregation. The sermon was plagued with the same inherent limitations of the first AI-generated sermon, but the differences were noteworthy.  Unlike the first sermon, in this new version Bartimaeus is identified as a man on the margins, naming his many vulnerabilities.  It retells the story of Bartimaeus crying out and contrasts Jesus’ response to that of the crowd. The sermon then ends not with four “shoulds” but with pointed Disciples-inspired questions inviting the readers to explore: times they were marginalized, times they ignored the marginalized or fought for them, times they were willing to follow Jesus even to Jerusalem, times they were not. Interestingly, the questions which put the readers in the shoes of Bartimaeus and the crowd provided varied seeds for possible sermons in our own contexts and invited memories of stories that could embody, incarnate them.

Asking AI for a Disciples sermon didn’t result in one I could print out and preach because I need to find my own contextual questions and sermon focus; it would rob me of the spiritual discipline of exploring the text’s meanings, finding voice. And would it be unethical and a breach of trust for me to print and preach an AI sermon if the community believed the sermon grew out of my/our life experiences and study?

However…the exercise did show me what AI knows about Disciples preaching – that Disciples preachers ask discerning questions. That makes me hopeful about us.  

"A sermon’s quality is often correlated to the questions we ask of the text as we first encounter it."

"Beyond" is a new sermon series and resource designed to help congregations prepare for this summer's General Assembly. You'll find materials for use in a six-week series, including scriptural reflection, sermon starters, liturgy suggestions, poetry, and visual art. This undated material is perfect for use now or in early summer, or even after GA! There's also a Bible Study version that will work well in Sunday school classes, small groups, or individual use.

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