When the Word of the Gospel Is Heard
My friend’s reply gave our conversation a much more sober slant. He said, “I guess the thing that people like us are prone to forget is just how important are the words we use that help us help other people.” Of all people, those who use words to live by need to remember how vital our words are to other people.
The theme of this issue of The Living Pulpit is “the Word.” It strikes me as ironic that as we linger over “the [divine] Word” and its theological implications, the nature of our discussion obliges us to use human words. This oddity, of course, underscores the elaborate and deep relationship of our biblical faith to human communication. When we do theology or “God talk,” we employ human language to explore that divine-human relationship’s implications. Thus many believers experience the divine Word by communicating with our all-too-human words on many levels. Yet the Christian faith as it is filled with sacred images of “the Word” is communicated by what seem to be mere human words.
God’s Word brings creation into being: “Then God said, ‘Let there be light’ and there was light.” (Gen 1:3) In fact, ten times in Genesis 1 the biblical narrator uses the phrase “God said.” To add to the notion that “God said,” the synonymous phrase, “the word of the Lord” also occurs repetitively from Genesis to Revelation. When God wanted to reveal the divine personality in a most tangible, reasonable, and persuasive way, then God became a human being. John’s Gospel writes of the divine logos becoming flesh.
In his latest book in a planned seven-volume series Thomas Cahill mulls over one of the major theological differences between Eastern and Western Christianity. A major theological variation was how East and West each grappled with the question of Christ. They asked who is the Christ and why has he come? In addition, further questions about the inner relationships within the Trinity added zeal to the already heated ecumenical debates.
Eventually, and admittedly to oversimplify Cahill’s argument, as the Eastern Church approached these questions, their answers generally emerged from esoteric Greek philosophy and mysticism. By contrast, the Western or Roman church gravitated toward a more corporeal understanding of God’s revelation — that is, a more physical conception or construct of revelation. God condescended to become human, and thus the incarnation of the deity into humanity became the focus for Western theology. In his book Mysteries of the Middle Ages: The Rise of Feminism, Science, and Art from the Cults of Catholic Europe, Cahill puts the point this way:
Despite the aspirations of so many mystical Greeks, human beings are not disembodied spirits. What should matter to us is not so much the inner life of God — and whatever that may be, the truth is that not one of us knows squat about it — as the impact of divine revelation on our own lives. The only point at which we can sensibly connect with the Trinity is the point at which, as John’s Gospel puts it, “the Word became flesh and pitched his tent among us.”
Thus, if we accept Cahill’s suggestion as credible, we Western types are much more given to the practical, down-to-earth ways the Gospel intersects with authentic human life. Clearly there are many theologians in the West, and many of them write and talk much, but there is a plain and unpretentious aspect to our Western theologizing that keeps us grounded on earth. Perhaps for this reason, and following Augustine’s De Doctrina, the Western Church has continually had an interest and investment in preaching “the Word.” This kind of “grounded” preaching and communication is not always logical in the best sense of the word, and it habitually lacks sophistication. Yet it is authentic, especially if we consider Phillips Brooks’ characterization of preaching: “Truth through personality.” It is whenever human personalities get involved in speaking divine truth that we have messy humanity in its rawest form. But as kids are prone to say, this messiness is “keeping it real.” So the question may occur: Which is more faithful to the Gospel — urbane, well-conceived theology or theology that communicates God’s word to God’s people? It is a good rhetorical question because the point of communication from historical rhetoric’s perspective is to persuade people of one truth or another. This question is not an idle one, but has a great deal to do with how the Word becomes incarnate in the lives of God’s people and Christ’s church.
A Wesleyan scholar and Christian historian of some note, Albert Outler was an earlier generation’s preacher’s preacher. Outler was cerebral enough to challenge and droll enough to engage. In his modest book Evangelism in the Wesleyan Spirit he wrote, “The Gospel is not truly preached until it has been truly heard.” I heard Dr. Fred Craddock in a lecture once echo this sentiment: “The point of a sermon is not to get something said, but rather to get something heard.” In each case the audience becomes a critical factor in any authentic communication of the Gospel as the Word of God. Thus the way preachers cast “the Word” by our words makes all the difference as to whether or not the Word is heard — and thereby preached.
Unfortunately for many student-preachers who have never learned or who may have too quickly forgotten (and perhaps for some preachers who have not learned well enough their homiletic lessons) those who set the down-to-earth preaching agenda are persons in a congregation who need to hear the Word of God.
I recently visited with a young pastor at a preaching workshop. During our conversation he more or less acknowledged that he was not inclined to change the way he was preaching. This was the case although his congregation roundly criticized his preaching — enough grousing to get his denominational supervisors involved in the local church tiff. Because this young preacher was clearly bright and obviously informed about all things homiletic, I asked him about the resistance to his preaching style. He said that the congregation accused him of mainly reading his sermons. In fact, he admitted that he did mostly read. But when I pressed him as to why he did not use better public speaking strategies, he plainly said he was not about to “dumb down” sermons that he had worked on each week for between twelve and fifteen hours. He asserted in a fearsomely frank way: “I am going to give them good solid theology whether they want it or not.” This is obviously not a person content to “play to the crowd.”
Yet if one subscribes to the theory that preaching the word of God is intended to allow people to hear (see Rom 10:14), then my young friend has clearly missed the mark. His preaching days will be, in Thomas Hobbes’ words, “nasty, brutish, and short.” He has made the written part of his work, “his exegetical manuscript,” into something of an idol. He refuses to give it up although it may soon cost him his ministry. To be able to ponder, pray, and prepare a well-thought-out, respectable theological treatment of a biblical text for a congregation is an admirable thing. We all need to do this much as faithful preachers. However, to be able to communicate that reflection of a peculiar truth at a specific time to a particular group of people in an actual place is to incarnate God’s Word by way of ordinary human words. When preachers communicate the deep truths of the Gospel in both understandable and appropriate ways, then we have helped incarnate the Word of God as Jesus Christ into a congregation of people who seek to be disciples of that Christ. For although the subject of preaching the Word is surely divine, the words used to communicate need necessarily to be understandable by plain folks.
One of the ways to understand preaching is that at the homiletical moment one human being [a preacher] offers words publicly that offer shape to another person’s [a listener’s] human experience. Not only do preachers name other people’s experiences, and do so in light of the Gospel, but they do so in ways that are reasonably understandable to listeners. The real power of preaching is to universalize one common experience in life into other people’s collective consciousness. In other words, good preaching offers a slant on life in a spoken form — one that also brings the Gospel to bear on human experience — such that listeners can nod and say to themselves, “I know exactly what that feels (looks, tastes, sounds) like.” Unless we preachers can offer this slant to the life experiences of our congregations, then others like Paul may describe us as “a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.” (1 Cor 13:1) Preachers who love their people, as Paul perhaps suggests, are preachers who make the Word understandable. To preach well in a congregation is to love people enough to attempt a faithful interpretation of the Gospel.
To illustrate this matter of recognition in the heart and mind of a listener, let me offer an example. Most preachers, of course, know full well that sermon illustrations often put genuine meat for reflection on the abstract bones of a sermon. Recently I preached about Jesus’ parable “The Widow and the Unjust Judge.” (Lk 18:1-8) Obviously this is a parable about believers needing “to pray always and not to lose heart.” At the first worship service I referred to this part of the text [“to pray always and not to lose heart”] and stared into vacant eyes. So during the second service I used the image of a hidden and seldom used elevator in our church that I sometimes use because it is near my study. This little used elevator is easily the oldest of the three in our building — and a little scary.
I proceeded with the illustration, suggesting that for some people prayer is like the call button on this old elevator. On the control panel a button displays this note: “Emergency Telephone.” Yet anyone who has ever been on the elevator knows that a person could press that button ceaselessly and still no one would ever be on the receiving end. This kind of frustration is what Jesus’ parable tries to rise above. Jesus asks, “Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?” And I must admit that although not everyone in my congregation knew about the specific elevator, most of these listeners could visualize and relate to being in a place without a voice or a response. I tried to encourage them in this story by reminding all of us that Jesus through the agency of prayer connects to those who believe.
The Word of God is, according to the Bible, so powerful that not only was our world created by it, but our whole world is redeemed by “the Word made flesh.” In more sophisticated places, as the ancient rhetors who pondered on the words that orators used, some students of preaching ponder alliteration, invention, memory, or style. Sometimes the way a preacher says “Jesus” (with at least three syllables) can distort the listener’s perception of a preacher’s theological agenda. Despite all our machinations and scheming to persuade, Christian preachers who are faithful to the task will proclaim the Word out in the midst of the congregation in appropriate and understandable ways. If we communicate the Gospel clearly — and trust God’s Holy Spirit — then the Word will be heard. If the word of the Gospel is heard, then preaching has taken place. And if people hear the Word, then the Word will set them free.
