PRAGMATIC MECHANISMS OF SACRED MEANING CONSTRUCTION IN THE CONTEMPORARY GERMAN-LANGUAGE LUTHERAN SERMON

The article examines pragmatic mechanisms through which biblical content acquires the status of contextually relevant sacred meaning in contemporary German Lutheran sermons. The study aims to identify and systematise these mechanisms and to determine how they are linguistically realised in the structural segments of the sermon. The material comprises six written sermons from the Predigtwerkstatt collection of the Centre for Protestant Worship and Preaching Culture, published on predigten.evangelisch.de within the second pericope series for 2025/2026. The methodology combines theolinguistic and pragmalinguistic analysis, speech act theory, frame semantics, and discourse analysis. The textual analysis suggests that sacred meaning may be constructed through the interaction of epistemic authorisation, frame correlation, inclusive subjectivation, deontic modalisation, and affective legitimation. Assertive formulations present a biblical interpretation as authoritative knowledge, directive and modal constructions link it to behavioural guidance, while first-person and evaluative forms propose communal alignment and affective appraisal. Inclusive wir incorporates preacher and addressee into a shared interpretative position, enabling a biblical injunction to be construed as an internally accepted communal commitment rather than an external demand. Publication in a digital collection extends the pragmatic action of a sermon beyond its initial liturgical setting because the text can be reread, reinterpreted, and reused by other preachers. The article proposes to explain these mechanisms as a functional sequence leading from the biblical text to its contextual theological interpretation and from interpretation to a collectively accepted value-based and behavioural position. The small and generically homogeneous sample limits generalisation beyond Predigtwerkstatt; therefore, the identified correlations necessitate further study of written and spoken sermons.