It is wrong to look down upon the venerable institution of sermon-giving just because some people who are not qualified to speak sometimes get up and make a farce of it. We must respect the idea of sermon-giving, since the topic of a sermon is Allah’s revelation to humanity and it draws upon that revelation for its subject matter. Moreover, we must respect sermon-giving because it was one of the occupations of the Prophets. This gives sermon-giving a double dignity: that of conveying Allah’s message and that of being the vocation of the Prophets.
When we reprimand those writers and intellectuals who ridicule the practice of sermon-giving and say that it is the practice of simple-minded and backward-thinking people, we must know that those intellectuals do not shoulder the guilt alone. They have partners in crime – sermonizers who are equally guilty of visiting disrespect upon the institution of sermon-giving. Indeed those sermonizers are more guilty than their critics. They are the one’s misrepresenting the practice of religious exhortation; their intellectual detractors are merely describing what they see.
Some novices to sermon-giving give it a bad reputation, because they approach it incorrectly and because they are injudicious in what they say and in the material that they draw upon. Others, as a consequence, become prejudiced against the whole idea and spread that bad reputation by limiting their criticism of sermon-giving to the few poor examples that they have seen. They fail to mention that there are other sermons being delivered which are intelligent, dignified, inspiring, and even at times sublime.
Due to these two groups of people, sermon-giving has developed a public stigma that it should not have. This problem is very serious, because of the high position that the practice has in Islamic teachings.
The sermon will not reclaim the respect that it once had until those sermonizers who disgrace the sermon with their mistaken methods and their off-the-cuff, nonchalant approach of saying whatever happens to come to mind. They show little regard for the seriousness of what they are doing. Their attitude towards religious exhortation is to have a sincere and solemn intention to give a sermon – and then they stand up and improvise. They neither bother to prepare their facts nor to set their ideas in order. They do not worry about how they choose their words nor do they care to substantiate what they say.
If one of them happens to go so far to mention a verse of the Qur’ân or a hadîth of the Prophet (peace be upon him) regarding a matter of what is lawful or prohibited in Islam, they stretch what the text is saying beyond anything that could possibly be understood from it with their far-fetched interpretations. They often destroy the beauty of the verse by their banal commentary and by trying to prove that the verse is imposing a religious duty that it is not imposing, or that it is forbidding something that it is not forbidding.
This class of sermonizers who denigrate the art of sermon-giving are very close to being part of the rank-and-file, as indeed many of them are. They are close to being scriptural illiterates, speaking far more than they read and not verifying the truth of what they say. This is in spite of the fact that religious exhortation is always either about Allah’s promise of reward or His threat of punishment. Such matters are known to us only through divine revelation, so any tidings of eternal reward or threat of punishment must be taken directly from scripture. These are matters of the Unseen, not matters open to personal opinion. And the speaker’s “good intentions” are not enough to carry him.
These people are duped into impromptu sermonizing by an overly high self-opinion, so that they are no longer capable of sensing their own limitations. They fail to see the need to study or revise their knowledge. They do not take the effort to read or engage in research, since they find it so easy to sermonize with what cannot be found in books – or sought in the Qur’ân and Sunnah.
Why bother, when they can see how inspirational they are and how they can captivate the ears with what they have to say.
This easy approach is none other than the approach of storytellers. Stories that allege to be factual are especially exciting. Stories have a natural appeal. They can hold an audience’s attention from beginning to end.
It is not wrong to mention a story in a sermon. We see stories being used effectively in the Qur’ân. What is a problem is to go too far with so-called “factual” stories, presenting them without restraint – many of them too far-fetched to be believed, and with no more authority than “someone heard that someone said…”
If there were nothing else wrong with these stories – regardlish of how “true” they might be – aside from the fact that they distract us from relating the authentic, ennobling stories of the Qur’ân and Sunnah, that should be enough for us to keep them to a minimum. These rumors, stories anecdotes that people mention are a poor substitute for what is found in scripture.
How much worse it is when we add to that the fact tat many of these stories are full of lies, injudicious claims, and exaggerations. Moreover, many of the stories make people afraid of worldly consequences more than spiritual ones. These sermonizers give the impression that the sinner must be punished in this world, otherwise, he is spared divine retribution altogether.
Of course, these storytellers do not say this outright. However, this is what comes across from their numerous fables. This is indeed a sad substitute for the warnings given in the sacred texts, warnings which are more than enough for the people, whose good sense should be respected.
The stories related in the Qur’ân and Sunnah are the stories that a sermon-maker should wish to convey to the people, especially those that relate to the life of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), for which the authentic Sunnah provides us with a rich reservoir. It is then the job of the sermon-giver to give expression to the lessons and exhortations that those stories contain.
We often hear it said in the very sermons we are criticizing: “If such-and-such were a good practice, we would have seen the Prophet’s Companions doing it.” These are good and true words. We now wish to present those sermon-givers with the same good argument: If it were best to relate all kinds of stories and experiences in our sermons, why do we not see the Prophet’s Companions mentioning in their sermons the stories of their day?
They understood the exhortation of the Qur’ân: “Would you exchange what is best for what is of lesser value?” -islamtoday.net
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