Examining Three Sermons by Fleming Rutledge
A paper written in November 2025 for Preaching: Understanding and Interpreting Context
For this paper, I chose to reflect on three sermons by the Reverend Fleming Rutledge, who, though retired, has remained engaged in preaching, lecturing, and writing. As I discerned which preacher might offer the most valuable insights for me in this assignment, I found myself returning to several criteria. I wanted a preacher who refused to shy away from God’s grace and human sinfulness, someone who stays close to the scriptural text rather than using it as a jumping-off point or utilizing thin connections. Richard Lischer, in The End of Words, describes the kind of preaching that “leaps into the text,” going deep and emerging (emotionally and spiritually) somewhere other than where they began.[1] Sermons, Lischer says, can be imagined as “Jesus trying to speak once again in his own community.[2] I wanted to examine preaching that takes both of those elements seriously. This paper focuses on three sermons:
“Now to Him Who Is Thrown Out of the Temple Comes the Lord of the Temple” (Beeson Lecture Series, Asbury Theological Seminary, February 26, 2008)
“Do We Have Two Gods?” (Duke University Chapel, September 15, 2013)
An untitled Lenten sermon preached at Trinity Episcopal Church, Columbus, Georgia, on March 8, 2015.
I. “Now to Him Who Is Thrown Out of the Temple Comes the Lord of the Temple” (John 9:1–41)
The first sermon—preached at Asbury Theological Seminary as part of the Beeson Lecture Series—engages the entirety of John 9. Rutledge’s structural choice not to have the text read separately prior to the sermon stands out immediately. Instead, she integrated the reading directly into her preaching, moving through the narrative verse by verse and interjecting explanatory comments, expansions, and moments of interpretation. This approach gave her time for careful exegesis while also allowing the congregation to encounter the story in something close to its dramatic fullness. She establishes her theme through the opening line of the passage: “Jesus saw the man.” Rutledge emphasizes that Jesus sees him—truly sees him—and highlights how this theme of seeing and being seen recurs throughout the chapter, and also points to what Rutledge identifies as the Gospel of John’s theme: God seeing us.
In the story of chapter 9, different characters “see” the man, but their responses reveal differences of perception, misperception, and moral dispositions. The disciples see him primarily as the occasion for an interesting theological question. His neighbors fail even to recognize him accurately, debating among themselves about who he is. His parents see him, but with a fearful distance. Each form of “seeing” becomes a theological clue. In contrast, the man who was healed has repeated opportunities to renounce Jesus and refuses each time, and each refusal deepens his understanding and conviction.
Rutledge closes the distance between text and hearer by allowing the gospel story to unfold on its own narrative terms while placing interpretive markers at key moments. She avoids elaborate superstructure. Instead, she invites listeners directly into the story’s dramatic world. Small comments and interpretive prompts create natural bridges between the world of Scripture and the listeners’ world.
One example of Rutledge’s bridging technique is her humorous anecdote about a friend reading her book Not Ashamed of the Gospel in a diner. Initially embarrassed, he placed the book face down, but then—considering the title—turned it over again. Doing so, however, drew several unwanted conversations. Rutledge uses this story to illuminate the hesitancy of the blind man’s parents, who want nothing to do with Jesus publicly because they fear the social consequences. She follows the anecdote with a line: “Sometimes I think it would be easier to face a judge and a jury than declare faith in Christ at a sophisticated dinner party.” This is a helpful rhetorical move: a single sentence that crosses two millennia of human experience and lands with pastoral clarity. Her preaching here embodies exactly what Lischer describes when he writes that preaching is “Jesus trying to speak once again in his own community”. Rutledge stays close enough to the text that listeners encounter the living Christ speaking and acting in their midst. Mode of exegesis functions almost as a re-performance of the story, allowing auditors to inhabit it rather than observe it from afar.
Having traced responses to Jesus throughout John 9, she summarizes them: the disciples’ abstraction; the neighbors’ confusion; the parents’ fear; and the growing witness of the man born blind. The temptation for clergy, she argues, may be closest to that of the parents: distancing ourselves from Jesus in contexts where naming him clearly might seem embarrassing or detrimental. This twist drives the sermon’s application home and shows her pastoral awareness of the risks clergy feel in “sophisticated” settings. Her delivery in this sermon reflects a characteristic gravitas. She does not rely on dramatic vocal shifts or reveal a great deal of emotion (though her emotion is often visible); instead, subtle but deliberate variations in pace, tone, and emphasis draw attention where needed. Her humor serves as a gentle release valve, increasing engagement while deepening theological insight.
II. Do We Have Two Gods?” (Jeremiah 14:11–28 & Luke 15)
The second sermon, preached at Duke Chapel, explores the widespread caricature of a wrathful God in the Old Testament and a loving God in the New. Rutledge begins with humor, acknowledging aloud the discomfort many modern Christians feel when confronted with the more severe passages of scripture, including parts of Jeremiah. Rather than shame the congregation, she uses humor to disarm and prepare them for a more nuanced engagement with the text. Her central claim is that Christians do not, in fact, have “two gods.” The supposed gulf between the Old Testament and New Testament depictions of God collapses under close reading. The God of Jeremiah is deeply grieved, longing for covenant faithfulness, and acting in judgment not as arbitrary wrath but as a facet of divine mercy. Likewise, the shepherd imagery in Luke 15—often taken to present God as primarily tender—has roots in Old Testament portrayals of royal power and responsibility, as well as of God as the one shepherd who can ultimately be trusted, entangling with the ideas of protector and judge. Rutledge demonstrates canonical reading at its best. She reads Jeremiah historically and contextually, setting it within the larger arc of Israel’s struggle and God’s persistent fidelity. She reads Luke in continuity with that same story, noting that Jesus does not introduce a new God but reveals the fullness of the God Israel already knows.
Her cultural illustrations here are grounded and effective. She references drug addiction, drawing from the film Traffic, and names global contexts of violence such as the civil war in Syria. These examples offer listeners a way to understand or at least entertain the idea of divine wrath as God’s opposition to evil.
Concluding with a reference to Communion situates the sermon’s theological claims within the Church’s sacramental life. The table reveals that God’s justice and mercy meet in the self-offering of Christ. This resonates with Luke Powery’s discussion in Becoming Human of the ways preaching should help the community express the full range of human experience—suffering, longing, injustice, and hope—within the Spirit’s work.[3] Rutledge does this by refusing simplistic dichotomies and instead depicting God’s character in a well-rounded way, with implications for how we recognize the diversity of human experience as well.
III. Lenten Sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church (Columbus, GA, March 8, 2015)
Although untitled (she refers to it as a belated Ash Wednesday Sermon), the sermon at Trinity Episcopal Church exhibits the pastoral presence that Rutledge establishes as a visiting preacher. By acknowledging past visits, expressing affection for the congregation, and narrating her connections to current and past clergy, she demonstrates attentiveness to the relational context of preaching. These seemingly minor details model how guest preachers can build rapport across diverse settings—churches, seminaries, conferences—without assuming shared history.
The sermon itself continues her pattern of close engagement with Scripture, using humor and cultural touchstones such as the novel The Towers of Trebizond to create narrative connections. Her presence is relaxed but not casual, focused without being rigid.
She enters the sermon by drawing attention to the opening hymn, “How Firm a Foundation,” particularly the verse “When through the deep waters I call thee to go, the rivers of sorrow shall not overflow; for I will be near thee, thy troubles to bless, and sanctify to thee thy deepest distress.”[4] Rutledge connects with the congregation’s shared sense of grief, loss, and tragedy, touching on the preacher’s role as a leader of lament, as described by Luke Powery.[5]
In focusing on Psalm 51, which she calls “one of the most penetrating confessions of sin that we know,” Rutledge moves beyond recognition of tradition and lament toward a proactive response in faith. She recognizes Psalm 51 as a prayer of redemption not only for sin but also from sin’s power. In Christ, we are saved from sin, death, and the devil, so our laments for tragedy and our repentance for sin are never thoroughly separate from one another.
IV. Thematic and Homiletical Synthesis
Across these three sermons, several themes emerge consistently. First, Rutledge maintains a commitment to the scripture as the primary engine of the sermon. She does not construct elaborate introductions or rhetorical frameworks; instead, she invites listeners into the world of the Bible and then opens up that world with interpretive clarity. This approach allows the biblical story to be unpacked more quickly and, in some sense, to interpret itself, while giving the preacher space to highlight key theological moments. She effectively collapses the distance between biblical narrative and contemporary experience. Humor, anecdotes, and well-timed asides create a sense of continuity between ancient text and present hearers. This is a form of pastoral leadership: she guides listeners not by simplifying the gospel but by translating its world into ours. Third, her sermons demonstrate a consistent balance between theological seriousness. Pastoral warmth may not quite be an accurate description. Rather than pastoral warmth, a more precise description might be pastoral stability and reassurance. She is unafraid to speak about sin, judgment, or divine wrath, but she never wields these themes as weapons. Instead, she frames them within the larger narrative of God’s mercy and covenant love. Finally, her delivery exudes a kind of authority that is neither authoritarian nor emotionally manipulative. She preaches with gravitas, but not with theatricality. This allows her listeners to focus on the sermon’s content rather than the preacher’s performance.
V. Leadership Dimensions of Rutledge’s Preaching
Each of the three sermons illustrates Rutledge’s attention to the context of her listeners and how she has allowed them to shape her sermon and delivery.[6] Rutledge’s sermons consistently show how attentiveness to context shapes both preparation and delivery, whether she is preaching to seminarians or to a parish.
Rutledge’s preaching demonstrates leadership in several ways. Her close engagement with Scripture models a form of theological leadership that treats the biblical text as trustworthy, rich, and capable of commanding the preacher’s full attention. She also displays a passion for teaching and leadership in her preaching across diverse contexts—seminary, university chapel, parish—without altering the core of her message. Her humor and anecdotal illustrations serve not merely as rhetorical tools but as ways of shaping communal imagination. By gently and strategically addressing congregational assumptions, she corrects misconceptions without provoking defensiveness. Her sermons are also a form of vocational instruction, especially in the Asbury sermon. Her warning to seminarians about the temptation to distance oneself from Jesus in sophisticated social contexts points to a moral challenge facing clergy today: the subtle pressure to downplay explicit faith commitments in environments that may find them “embarrassing or detrimental.”
VI. How Rutledge Challenges My Own Preaching in the Diocese of Tennessee
As I reflect on these sermons in light of my own preaching context in the Diocese of Tennessee, I am struck by Rutledge’s relaxed confidence. She stays rooted in the text, trusts the Scripture to carry the weight of proclamation, and avoids over-explaining. Her pacing is calm, her delivery grounded, and her reliance on narrative steady. In my own ministry—often marked by the pastoral pressures of transitional leadership, clergy formation, and preaching in congregations facing anxiety about identity or future direction—I sometimes feel the temptation to over-explain or over-structure sermons to ensure clarity. Rutledge’s preaching challenges me to trust the text more deeply, to rest in the story’s power, and to leave space for the Spirit’s work in congregational imagination. Her ability to preach deeply theological content without excessive scaffolding challenges me to cultivate a similar clarity. Her willingness to face difficult theological tensions—judgment and mercy, sin and grace—encourages me to embrace challenging messages when necessary. In short, her example invites a posture of greater trust, simplicity, and theological boldness.
VII. Potential Challenges or Weaknesses
Taking on the common myth of an Old Testament God vs. a New Testament God as she did in her Duke Chapel sermon illustrates a potential downside to Rutledge’s directness as a preacher. While she pushes back against assumptions with humor and grace, some might feel she’s too blunt or that she’s gone after their sacred cow. Sometimes the issue might be a sensitive one and turn off some listeners. While it was not among the three sermons I watched for this assignment, in part because it only exists in audio form, Rutledge’s sermon Alone in the Dark which (available in audio format from the Cathedral Church of the Advent in Birmingham, or in her book Three Hours: Sermons for Good Friday) illustrates this danger in the form of an aside where she’s talking about suicide and she says:
A person very close to me, a devout Roman Catholic, told me years ago that she had considered suicide many times but had not gone through with it because she was afraid she would go to hell. I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. To this day she struggles with the idea of suicide but resists it. Her courage is the daily struggle not to give in to the power of Death.[7]
I have heard sociologists and public health experts advocate for maintaining a taboo around suicide because it can spread like a virus, and treating it as a taboo can curtail the spread. And yet, associating hell with something like suicide, even in the context of a broader point, could draw people up short or distract them from the rest of what you say. We read this sermon in the new clergy group I lead, and this section elicited similar tension, even as people appreciated the sermon overall.
VIII. Conclusion
Studying Rutledge’s preaching has deepened my appreciation for her voice and challenged my own preaching practice. Her close engagement with Scripture, her pastoral skill in collapsing distance between text and hearer, her humor, her narrative clarity, and theological seriousness, and occasional bluntness all model a form of preaching that is traditional while continuing to feel relevant. She demonstrates what it means for preaching to be a moment when Jesus speaks again in his community—a moment of truth-telling, grace, judgment, and hope. Her work encourages me to preach with trust in the text, greater attentiveness to the congregation, and greater willingness to name the fullness of God’s character. Her sermons have sharpened my understanding of preaching as a theological and pastoral act, one that calls both preacher and congregation to deeper participation in our shared life in Christ.
Works Cited
Episcopal Church. The Hymnal 1982 : According to the Use of the Episcopal Church. New York, N.Y.: Church Hymnal Corp., 1985. notated music.
Kim, Matthew D. Preaching with Cultural Intelligence : Understanding the People Who Hear Our Sermons. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017.
Lischer, Richard. The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence. The Lyman Beecher Lectures in Preaching. Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005.
Powery, Luke A. Becoming Human: The Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race. First edition. ed. Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022.
Rutledge, Fleming, “2019 Lenten Midweek Reading: Alone in the Dark,” Eerdword. Eerdmans, 2019, https://eerdword.com/2019-lenten-midweek-reading-alone-in-the-dark/.
[1] Richard Lischer, The End of Words: the language of reconciliation in a culture of violence, The Lyman Beecher lectures in preaching, (Grand Rapids, Mich.: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 2005)., 92
[2] Lischer, The End of Words: the language of reconciliation in a culture of violence., 8
[3] Luke A. Powery, Becoming Human: the Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race, First edition. ed. (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022)., 71-72
[4] Episcopal Church., The Hymnal 1982 : according to the use of the Episcopal Church (New York, N.Y.: Church Hymnal Corp., 1985), notated music., 636
[5] Powery, Becoming Human: the Holy Spirit and the Rhetoric of Race., 98. Powery writes “Preachers lament for the good of the whole, for a larger vision of what it means to be God’s people on earth.”
[6] Matthew D. Kim, Preaching with cultural intelligence : understanding the people who hear our sermons (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, a division of Baker Publishing Group, 2017)., 157
[7] Fleming Rutledge, “2019 Lenten Midweek Reading: Alone in the Dark,” Eerdword, Eerdmans, 2019, https://eerdword.com/2019-lenten-midweek-reading-alone-in-the-dark/.