DO YOU HAVE THAT
COURAGE TO BE A GOOD PREACHER?
By. Don. J.B.
Nyamunga
The
word is always communicated personally in one to one dialogue and it has to create
and focus towards the proclamation of the word in a public way, and has to be
set in the context of worship of the revealed God. Preaching to produce the
quality and depth of Christian discipleship in the congregation that depends
heavily upon the weight of preaching. This will depend exclusively on what
investments we have put into homiletics (from homileo, “to speak, converse, address someone”). Homiletics is the
study of the process and act of listening to the Spirit speak through Scripture
so as to engender an appropriate here and now witness to God.
We
proclaim about the coming of the kingdom of God as Jesus preached: on
mountains, on plains, form a boat, near the temple, in the market place. The
apostles were sent out, two by two, they assigned them the responsibility. St.
Paul too reminds us of the necessity of preaching: faith comes by hearing and
hearing comes through the word of God. And how do you hear this word of God
unless you have somebody to declare it, and how do you do that without a
preacher? (Rom.10:11-15).
Preaching
(kērugma) means proclamation of the
good news that Jesus Christ is Lord. Preaching is a continuous and public
testimony which the church is constantly seeking to make to all who would hear
it, most conspicuously in the context of worship, witnessing to the church’s
faith in Christ. Preaching consists substantially in the clarification,
exposition, interpretation and re-appropriation of the written word that
witnesses to the revealed word. It’s a public exposition and to all who would
hear it. In the contemporary language we say that God is addressing us
personally through Christ in history as revealed word. The proclaimed word is
witnesses to the revealed word. (Cf. Luther, WLS, vol.3, 1125). Before it became a written word, the proclaimed
word was first and foremost an oral tradition. In time, a written tradition of
apostolic teaching emerged that subsequently became universally recognized as
canon to which the church could constantly became universally recognized as
canon to which the church could constantly return for the nurture of its
continuing oral witness (Cf. Tertullian, ANF, vol.3, 610).
The
revealed word, the preached word and written word all cohere in mutual
interdependence. The revealed word of God is communicated through speech,
expressed through ordinary human languages, spoken, written, remembered,
translated, and respoken. The gospel itself is thought to be a word (logos) an address to us from God
Himself. The notion of logos can be translated not only “word”, but “reason”.
It is by means of words, through ordinary language, that reason is expressed.
As a struggle for words, I struggle to express reasoning. Preaching seeks to
clarify that self-revealing word of God in the pulsating contemporary, local,
here and now situation. (Luther, WWL,
79).
The
Christian worship contains both prophetic and priestly dimensions. The
prophetic aspect deals essentially with God’s address to us. The priestly
aspect focusses on the gathered community addressing God responsively in
prayer, praise and intercession. Preaching emphases the prophetic side.
Ordinarily, Christian preaching does not, like Old Testament prophecy, says
directly: “Thus saith the Lord” as if
the revealed word were coming immediately through our preaching. But we have a
more modest task of saying “Let us listen
to the Scripture together. We will talk about the way in which the word of God
the Father through the liberating son meets us with help of Spirit through the Scripture.”
Preaching
has to lead towards inviting persons to Christ as evangelization agents. Sometimes
leads to seeking comfort, encouragement and inspiration, devotion, dedication,
loyalty and discipleship to Christ on the pastoral level, imparting clear,
understanding Christian teaching we find in the doctrinal dimension and then
building moral sensitivity and awareness and elicit changed behaviours, which
comes with morally formative dimension. The preached word addresses the whole
community, yet by this means hopes to penetrate the heart of each individual in
community as if alone before God.
Preaching,
to be complete, requires hearing. Yet each act of hearing in highly individual,
even though addressed to many. Preaching speaks from experience to experience.
One’s own personal story is the lens through which the larger Christian story
is seen. The Holy Spirit is at work to bring the preached word home to the
hearer. The best preaching prays earnestly that the Holy Spirit will illumine
the hearer through our frail attempts to speak God’s own word through human
language. One is dully authorized officer of the church. You are appointed to
the office of preaching. This is the reason why vestments in preaching have had
much historical significance (Clement of Alexandria, ANF, vol.2, 453).
The
liturgical vestments point beyond all temporal powers to the ground and end of
temporal power. The office of preaching needs the imprint of personality,
without being reduced to it. As a preacher, one has to risk telling his own
story, not as an end in itself, but rather as a sharply focused lens through
which the whole Christian story is refracted. This will require delicate
balance, a creative tension, a dialectic that can easily become imbalanced. It
will test your insight and ability as a preacher of the word to hold person and
office together in fine balance. There is no easy formula. It requires an
intuitive wisdom that has on it the stamp of your personality and sense of
vocation.
God
preaching is in touch with specific hungers, the current aspirations, the
sociocultural presuppositions of the contemporary audience. Preaching must come
through with a vital recollection of historical Christian memory so as to
illuminate and challenge the alienated present by means of Scripture and
tradition. Preaching is not simply fixated on the now archaic language of the
first century A.D. or the sixth century B.C. It is by definition essentially contemporary,
a here and now event. How are we to make clear the seemingly remote connection
between a text written twenty-five hundred years ago and this here and now
audience? God’s spirit work cooperatively with our intelligence and
attentiveness to make that otherwise improbable connection.
Preaching
is therefore concerned with both the widening of the community through
evangelical witness and the deepening of the community through spiritual
formation. Homilia, from which our
word homily comes, points more often toward the pastoral nurturing, and
didactic side of congregational preaching. When the good news is announced, it
is often perceived as a profound challenge to our idolatries, and so we may
fight it or be offended by it. The best preachers have always sought to
penetrate the self-deceptions of their hearers and work their way skillfully through
hardened layers of defense. Christians preaching tries to announce the judgment
and grace of God to those who may not want to hear its full force. Preaching
tries to get through these obstacles, not in coercive or overbearing ways, but
through skillful persuasion under the guidance of Scripture and Spirit.
A
preacher has a delicate task analogous to that of an ambassador delegated to an
embassy in a remote, perhaps hostile, area who tries to get across the message of
the home government in whatever ways possible. The preaching today has to be
addressed to all and the people have to believe and respond. The poor and
unlearned were crucial contributors to the primitive Christian mission. This
has to be done in the language of the common people, rather than in a special
technical language or an academic jargon.
The
church celebrates good preaching as a gift of the Spirit (1 Cor.12). It’s not
an easy to do this task well, to take hearers deeply into the meanings and
claims of scripture and to bring ancient wisdoms into contemporary context in good
humour and spirit, and in such a way that not only the least educated persons
in the congregation can understand, but the wisest also be moved and edified.
Preaching is not only a gift but a studied and improved upon. It involves cooperative
relation between the spirit’s awakening guidance and our best human efforts. It’s
God’s address through our fragile, distortable language. God the Spirit
cooperates with our human competencies, talents, languages, abilities, and
imagination to enable our speaking and hearing.
When
preaching dwindles into philosophical speculation, literary criticism, free
verse, political manipulation, or lathered sentimentalism, the laity know that
the commission of ordination has somehow been misplaced. To some we give milk and
others, meat (1 Cor. 3:2). To preach “in wisdom”
Is to draw out of the fund of scriptural
wisdom the particular insight that applies most clearly to this circumstances
here and now (1 Cor. 2:6). Preaching involves a personally grasped, experienced
affirmation of these meanings, a clarification of what they signify in our
times and how they address our own situation. The pastor is called upon to make
accessible the wider range of the wisdom of Scripture. The lectionary will
always help prevent subjective, biased selections of texts.
To
pretend to know everything and cover all subjects as encyclopedic manner will
be disaster to the hearers. There is much of which we should never speak in the
pulpit, yet which we do well to know. A man who understands his subject and his
work can speak to the ignorant in a manner interesting and instructive to the
wise. Depth and simplicity meet at the same point. Have you an audience
composed of forty-nine wise and one ignorant? Speak for the ignorant one
(Vinet, 1853, 206). The best preaching is wise in its simplicity, nor its
complexity (Kierkegaard, 1851-52, Bonhoeffer, 1948).
Through
ordination, the minister is authorized to preach, assigned in the formal sense
and does not make it subjectively appropriated, in the consciousness of either
the preacher or the hearer. The preacher has to say something right, to utter
something worthy of belief. The hearer must be conscious of the rightness of
that word. Only then does the circle of authority completed. Then you have to
speak with something significant to say and those who hear will be prepared by
experience to trust what that person has to say. Authority is diminished when
the divine self-disclosure is ignored or overlooked in the interest of personal
opinion-making. Humble submission to the authority of the word is central to
the authority of preaching. One cannot make up for absence by personal charm or
rhetorical flair.
Preaching
is closely connected with duty of reproof: correction, discipline and
admonition. The teaching must be correct; otherwise, false assumptions may be
reinforced. The pastor must reprove with authority. (Titus 2:15). Christian
teaching stands in continuity with the prophetic tradition. This calls for pastoral
courage to identify accurately the particular deficit or injustice or lack of
awareness in the flock at a given time. But if you are going to offend the
flock, offend them with the truth. You have it turned around if you yourself
are the offense. Let the gospel be the offense; let the word be the scandal;
let the truth be the offense. That is good preaching in the prophetic
tradition. Prophetic preaching addresses human need not just on the individual
scale, but on terms of ingrained social injustice (Amos 5:7, Isaiah 3:13-15)
The preacher should have the courage to stand up as the conscience of the
community, as an unintimidated critic of the corrupted society.
One
must grasp inwardly the depth and relevance of those truths that elicits in
other the same emotive qualities felt in oneself. “The anointing which received
from him abides in you and you have no need that any one should teach you; as
his anointing teaches you about everything, and it is true, and is no lie, just
as it has taught you, abide in him”. We know good preaching when we hear it. It
touches us viscerally. It is profound, subtle mode of communication that
somehow makes the transcendence of Yahweh appear palpably imminent. It mixes
courage and comfort, candor and sympathy, strength and vulnerability, in the
kind of delicate blend achieved by excellent cook. Most worshippers know that
there have been rare and beautiful times when they have been privileged to hear
such a word. When it happens it is a remarkable event. It is a treasure in
earthen vessels.
©
Don J.B. Nyamunga’20
