From Information to Transformation
Rethinking the Art of the Sermon
Several years ago, I began noticing something uncomfortable about my own preaching. People would compliment a sermon after services. They would tell me how much they enjoyed it. They would thank me for my insights. Yet if I asked them a week later what the sermon had been about, many would struggle to remember.
The problem was not with the congregation. The problem was with the sermon. Like many rabbis, I had fallen into a familiar trap. I believed that a good sermon should contain multiple ideas, several textual references, historical context, contemporary applications, and enough intellectual substance to satisfy the most attentive listener. I wanted people to leave feeling that they had learned something important. In trying to give them everything, I often left them with nothing. Years in the pulpit taught me that people rarely remember sermons, and began to realize that people rarely remember sermons. What they remember are stories, images, emotions, and a single compelling idea.
When someone arrives home from synagogue and sits down for lunch, a family member may ask, “What did the rabbi talk about today?” If the answer requires a five-minute explanation, the sermon has probably failed. If the answer can be expressed in a single memorable sentence, the sermon has a chance of living beyond the sanctuary. This realization has changed not only how I preach, but how I think about communication itself.
We live in a world saturated with information. Our phones provide instant access to more data than previous generations could acquire in a lifetime. Historical facts, biblical commentaries, scholarly articles, podcasts, videos, and opinions are available at the touch of a screen. Information is no longer scarce. Attention is! The challenge facing clergy, educators, leaders, and communicators today is not to compete with information. It is to create meaning.
Several years ago, while preparing a brief d’var Torah on the spies in Parashat Sh’lach Lecha, I was reminded of this lesson. The Torah tells us that ten spies returned from the Land of Israel focused on the giants they encountered, while Joshua and Caleb remained focused on the promise of the land itself. As I worked through the text, I found myself stripping away details rather than adding them. Eventually, the sermon came down to a single sentence: “The tragedy of the spies was not that they saw giants. The tragedy was that they stopped seeing the grapes.” That was the sermon. Everything else merely supported that idea.
The spies did not fail because they misread the facts. The giants were real. The dangers were real. Their mistake was allowing those realities to become the whole story. They could no longer see abundance because they were consumed by fear. The same challenge confronts us today.
Our congregants, students, colleagues, friends, and family members are already surrounded by giants. Political polarization. Economic uncertainty. Illness. Loneliness. Social upheaval. An endless stream of alarming headlines. The task of the communicator is not merely to describe those giants. It is to help people see the grapes.
Experience has taught me that effective preaching is not primarily about the transmission of information. It is about the creation of meaning. That transformation often begins with an image. Think of the teachings that have endured across generations. Jacob’s ladder. The burning bush. The still, small voice. The valley of dry bones. Hillel standing on one foot. Rabbi Akiva watching water wear away stone. These teachings survive not because they present abstract arguments, but because they create pictures in our minds. They engage both intellect and imagination. The same principle applies to contemporary preaching. Congregants may forget our outlines. They may forget our sources. They may even forget our conclusions. But they remember an image. They remember a story. They remember how something made them feel.
Today, every sermon begins for me with two questions .First: What is the one thing I want people to remember? Second: What do I want them to feel? The first question creates focus. The second creates impact.
Many sermons succeed intellectually while failing emotionally. They communicate information but leave no emotional residue. Yet feelings often linger longer than arguments. People may not remember every point in a sermon about gratitude, but they may leave feeling grateful. They may not remember every argument in a sermon about courage, but they may leave feeling more courageous.
Abraham Joshua Heschel understood this instinctively. His writing continues to inspire not because readers remember every detail of his arguments, but because he awakened what he called “radical amazement.” He helped people experience wonder. And wonder became the vessel through which wisdom traveled. The future of effective preaching lies not in shallower sermons or in the abandonment of intellectual rigor. It lies in greater focus. Not shallower sermons. Not less intellectual sermons. But more focused sermons. Sermons organized around a single memorable insight. Sermons that connect thought and feeling. Sermons that help people carry one image, one question, one challenge, or one source of comfort into the week ahead.
In an age when information is abundant and attention is scarce, the task of the sermon is not to tell people everything. It is to help them remember one thing that matters.
And if someone sitting around the Shabbat table can answer the question, “What did the rabbi talk about today?” with a single sentence that sparks conversation and reflection, then something sacred has occurred. The sermon has escaped the sanctuary. It has entered the life of the listener. At that moment, information has become meaning, and meaning has begun the sacred work of transformation.