Every preacher knows the moment. The music has faded, the congregation is seated and becoming still, the text has been read, the prayer finished, and the amen uttered. Then, for a brief moment, the preacher in silence looks into the faces of the congregation, as they return the gaze. The avalanche of words, which will tumble from pulpit to pew, has yet to begin.
In that sacred, compressed, expectant, momentary silence are many things, and not least this hope: that what is about to occur, especially if the sermon is a good one, will be foolishness from start to finish.
This is what I mean.
The fool’s foundation
Good preaching is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:21) first because of its conviction that God exists. The preacher’s foolish passion describes and depicts that before we human beings dance or weep, construct or deconstruct, self-actualize or empower, will or suffer, God is.
Little could be more audacious in a postmodern world than to assume, as the biblical preacher must, that the universe is not empty and meaningless, that reality is not our own making, that we are not free agents of self-will, and that our language does not constitute the universe.
Without such conviction, and even more, without such divine reality behind it, the preacher should never enter the pulpit. For unless God is, the preacher—well, forget the preacher.
The biblical premise for reality is named in Scripture’s fourth word: “In the beginning God … ” Change that fourth word to biochemistry, to power, to language, to culture, to spirituality, to economics, to sexuality, to intentions, to feelings, or simply eliminate God entirely, and there would be no word to speak to anyone, for there would be no world. In humble confidence, the biblical preacher shatters that pre-sermon silence with a pronouncement of Good News, the Word by which all those present live, move, and have their being.
When the congregation faces the preacher in that momentary silence, they long to know whether their lives truly matter. Bad preaching leaves the impression that the answer is “yes” because the preacher makes it so. Foolish preaching affirms that the answer is “yes” because God has made us so.
We come to worship as human meaning makers. As the preacher and the congregation carry on their daily lives, we discover and craft explanations. We assemble perceptions and construct paradigms. This meaning making is primary, and distinctly human work.
But the anxious longing in our world is whether human meaning is all we have. Is life just us? Contemporary western culture declares that human meaning making is and can be only about us. For, the argument goes, whoever and whatever we are as human beings, that’s all we’ve got.
If preaching can only be about us, the congregation instinctively knows it would be better served by silence than by speech. What we long for, however, is the assurance that somewhere there is much more beyond our meaning making. We know what we make of our lives. The question is whether there is something or Someone who makes anything of us.
What better definition of bad preaching is there than “preaching that occurs when all that is present are human words framing human perceptions.” Foolish preaching, on the other hand, occurs when what is primarily present is the Word, albeit embodied in human language. Such biblical preaching operates under the foolish assertion that human meaning making is never original but only derivative, and that when it occurs wisely it actually reflects God’s signature before it ever bears our own.
So when the preacher dares to speak into the lives of those whose hearts are full or breaking, whose spirits are lifted or dashed, whose minds are at peace or in turmoil, what matters most is the reality of God who sees, knows, and loves them. Foolish preaching speaks because God is.
If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications
Foolish, fruiful listening
Good preaching is foolishness second because of its conviction that God speaks. The biblical preacher’s first and primary work then must be to listen to God.
Scripture portrays God as the grand orator, whose very being desires self-revelation, whose majesty and imagination speak creation into existence, whose power and creativity are borne through the visible testimony of the natural world, whose love and commitment are proclaimed in the promises of the Covenant, whose mercy and longing are heard in the Exodus, whose perseverance and care are witnessed in the wilderness, whose redeeming love is heard in the law and the prophets.
As significant as all this has been, God speaks most clearly in and through the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, now present in the Holy Spirit. Here is the one Word the world must hear and by it be saved. To this one true, saving Word, all Scripture, by the power of the Spirit, speaks its witness. No wonder the preacher must first listen.
Bad preaching is mere talk without the fruitfulness of such listening. This explains why preaching never ultimately rises or falls based on technique per se, whatever its elegance and sophistication or its awkwardness and naivete. A crude sign may be harder to read, but what matters is whether it reliably points towards a true destination. The foolish preacher who listens will still, at best, be only a crude sign. What matters is the reality, the Word, to and by which the preacher testifies.
The foolish preacher speaks only because first God is and because God first speaks. Preachers are messengers of the Word Who is from beyond them, Who has been spoken to them, and Who they now pray will speak through them. The wonder of such preaching is that God shows up and actually does speak, even as God has spoken.
Saying all this does not promote the indefensible position that the preacher is merely an empty vessel through which the Word and Spirit are poured out to the congregation. That would be not only historically and culturally blind, but also contradictory to the approach of an incarnational God.
It is the particularities of the preacher that embody the incarnate proclamation so that equally particular people can hear, understand, and embody that Word.
The multi-layered worlds in which preachers and congregations live their lives are always, always, always intrinsic to the pastor’s hearing and proclamation, just as they must be to the hearing and speech of the congregation as well. The Word made flesh speaks into these realities, but in doing so does not become their captive.
Through a semi-clear window
Good preaching is foolishness third because of its conviction that God can be known, if through a glass darkly.
Both preacher and sermon must be shaped by two inextricable realities: revelation makes knowing God possible, but revelation means such knowing of God will be partial. The preacher therefore seeks to share all that can be known about God while acknowledging that God cannot be known wholly nor purely.
The foolish preacher exhibits passionate but humble confidence, boldness mixed with understatement, assurance tinged with agnosticism.
The overly fundamentalist implies or states that the glass is utterly transparent. The overly liberal implies or states that the glass is utterly opaque. The apostle Paul affirms neither is the nature of the case. He says instead, “God can be known. And, God can be known only through a glass darkly now, in contrast to when we will see and know him face to face.” This means that the foolish preacher dares to “preach it!” in the confidence that God exists, speaks, and can be known in Jesus Christ.
If revelation is revelation, then the sermon need not die a death of a thousand qualifications. Revelation has done its work, and therefore, it is possible to see and to know in part what we could not otherwise even have guessed! This delivers the preacher from being merely politic about the life of faith or the nature of God’s love. These are not imaginings but realities revealed!
They are put in the take-home basket of our lives each week and on them pastor and congregation are to be fed and sustained. This Good News has been tested, tried, and found to be the Bread of Life here and there, now and then.
Alongside this, the foolishness of biblical preaching points to God, not to human doctrine as the final touchstone. While the glass makes it possible to make passionate affirmations about the God it reveals, the preacher is nevertheless alert to and not surprised by the darkness of the glass.
Fool’s gold
Good preaching is foolishness fourth because of its conviction that God speaks through preachers. The biblical warrant for this conviction is that God has consistently voiced the Word through human beings whose hearts, minds, souls, and strength are agents of such communication. Scripture is replete with such examples.
In fact, one way some have defined Scripture is God preaching through those witnesses.
Few Sundays pass in which I do not find myself struck dumb by the momentary silence before the sermon. As I look into the faces before me, I am stunned by the foolishness of what I am about to do—again!
All that we have been doing in worship has been shaped by previous moments like this, and what we have now come to hope for is the foolishness of the Gospel. In the foolish trust that because God is, because God speaks, because it is possible to know God, and because God can use preaching, I will stand to preach.
Mark Labberton is pastor of First Presbyterian Church 2407 Dana St. Berkeley CA 94704 MarkL@fpcberkeley.org
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