is no less than amazing to see what the findings are when one operates within boundaries and tensions. This is an approach to preaching that does not rely on cleverness and innovation. It takes seriously the sense of preaching found in the early church. One delivers in preaching what has been received from the Lord. A dispensation has been given to the preacher; the consequence is woe for not preaching the gospel. Preaching is an act of contending for the faith once delivered to the saints, and in undertaking the task one need not rely on tales artfully spun. When all is said and done, the mandate is to preach the remission of sins. We are sent by the Son, even as the Father has sent the Son, and we are accompanied by the very breath of God.
Bringing the times and seasons to the text is nothing less than the methodological performance of the question asked of Jeremiah by a young king named Zedekiah. What is so interesting in that case is that the young king did not really want to hear what the older prophet (who had been a friend of his father) had to say. Yet the question is on target. Faced with the dilemma of a kingdom under siege, he asked, “Is there any word from the Lord?”
Methodologically speaking, the issue is how to beg for the word needed in the moment, and how to open discursive spaces for its entrance. The opening is a tempus through which the word pierces, penetrates, illumines, and challenges the context and empowers the hearer. The word itself is a manifestation of power (a kratophany). This is where the word comes alive. Some have the wonderful gift for telling stories, or giving illustrations. Others will wear their selves out looking for stories, telling lies, or taking stories of others as their own.
Many more will be helped (and far better) by learning to exegete to the core of the text. This is where words come to life, where one discovers a key lodged in minute details for unlocking the mysteries. Or, we might say that one sees into the mystery. By means of a “lithic imagination,”4 we are invited to look into the dense, opaque stone and see what has been given. Such keys open both the text and the context. Then preaching is far less a chore than a delight. It is a report of what has been shown to eyes that previously were “holden.” The “stranger” who joins us—as he did the two who walked to Emmaus—makes our world without him seem strange as the bread of life is broken.
Exegeting with Intention
Nobody reads the bible without interests of some sort. Even those who read it as literature, for pleasure, or to dispute it have some purpose in mind. This is even more the case for those who read it as sacred text. Indeed, the claim for the bible as word of God, authoritative writing, or any other designation that indicates privilege necessarily involves a theological act. The privilege the bible has among human creatures means that there is no ordinary reading. The intention to which we now have reference, however, refers more to the subject who reads or hears what is brought forth from the scriptures.
It is like leading the children to stand before the mountain where God spoke from the flames of Sinai. It is like the prophet making a direct address to the king, who is confused regarding who is the troubler of Israel: the selfish scoundrel who should be put to death, or the finger that writes to break up the sacrilegious drinking party? Again, it is like the prophet telling the king he must die and then pronouncing that fifteen years have been added to his life. Exegeting with intention is bringing a brother into the presence of the Messiah who sees and knows him prior to the introduction. It is the ephphatic encounter that opens the deaf ear (as with the man whose ear was opened by the word of Jesus in Mark 7:34), or the ergersistic event, where the command to rise performs the work of obedience, which is like resurrection (as with the cripples in Luke 5:23 and John 5:8).
With intention, a specific word is spoken to specific persons to address specific issues. This is more than the truth in general—whether it be the truth of the scriptures or the truth about the human condition. Just as there can be exegetical excess from the investigation of the text, so it can be from the context. Exegesis with intention refers to the truth of the word being applied on the spot. It is more than a statement of the case, as with social scientific analysis, or social commentary such as one hears in rap and hip-hop. It is more than theological truism, such as is found in trite speech, like “all things work together for good” taken out of context.
Just as one must submit to the world and reality of the scripture to rightly divide the word (cf. 2 Timothy 2:15), so one must give the mind to know the “madness and folly” that resides in the heart of the hearer. This hermeneutical principle, articulated by the preacher in the book of Ecclesiastes, is the only real option for those desiring to be heard and understood, especially in a day of epistemological shifts. In the truly dense spaces where civilizations intersect and clash—where eras join and separate—canons are not always clear.
Vexation of the spirit cannot be avoided in relevant and powerful preaching. The business is not usual. The subjects are not predictable. A trip to the commentary does not comprehend the madness of racism, wars of preemption, and suicide bombing. Nor does it make sense out of ethnic cleansing, genocide, and patricide. The madness must be stared in the face for knowledge of what it is—with comments about what ought to be the case suspended—till one sees what makes it tick. Children do not join gangs and commit suicide for nothing, despite the protests of parents concerning “how good they have it.” Put another way, we do not know the mind of the generation by doing all the talking ourselves.
Twenty-first-century preaching is to a generation that to a significant degree knows nothing of the farm. Many persons in our civilization have no sense of the work that is required to plant, cultivate, and harvest crops. Food is purchased at the market, or it is bought prepared and ready to eat. Similarly with other forms of technology: the younger generation has come to rely on them—without the memory of times that predate such innovations—as if conveniences and gadgets simply came with the world. No explanation of the physics of electricity, magnetism, or electronics is required. On the other hand, where scientific knowledge is present, it can readily become the measure for all claims that are trustworthy. Verifiability is thought to reside in the measurement of the senses. In a context such as this, preaching from the scriptures seems to rest on knowledge from a strange and distant world.
Because of this strangeness and distance, countless images, metaphors, and parables from the bible have no resonance. The epistemological discontinuities often go unrecognized. Common sense realism has flowered into full bloom. Add to this the perduring pragmatism that is driven deeply into the American landscape, and the consequence is that much of what the bible has to say about human nature has an odd sound. The world of the bible is strange and foreign.
A necessary intention of preaching, therefore, must be to expose the hearer of the gospel to his or her own subjectivity. Knowledge and exploration of the epistemological breaks is as crucial for the exegetical task as critical study of the text. To put the matter another way, preaching with intention requires what Charles Long has called “archaeology of the subject.” This is an interrogation of what it means to be modern, postmodern, American, or whoever we know ourselves to be. But sincere communication also requires taking seriously how we are known by those we consider as the Other. An intersubjective connection is present in every act of effective preaching.
A cornerstone in the structure of modern knowledge is the dictum popularized by the philosopher Hegel, that the rational is the real. He spoke in concert with others who sought to push back the curtain of mystery and enlighten the world. Despite the benefits of scientific knowledge deriving from this epistemological shift, reality has never caught up to the dictum. It refuses to evolve fully from magic, to religion, to science. As with the solution to the quadratic equation, there is a set of factors in plenary reality that have a coefficient of “i.” If imaginary, there is a section of reality that remains real, even when it does not fit into rational constraints.5 To use the language of Rudolf Otto, the “numinous” is as real as the rational.6
Preaching
