The image of this encounter is depicted no better than in the instance of the African slave who put the bible to his ear to hear what the ship captain who enslaved him had heard.
And yet, one must test what is heard to know whether it is true. For instance, did the slave and the master hear the same word? It seems they didn’t. One heard a word that authorized making slaves of the heathens in perpetuity. The other read from the same chapter (Lev 25) that in the year of Jubilee all who were in bondage were set free. What’s more, this is the year that has been declared by the Messiah, upon whom the Spirit has come to rest and in whom the Spirit dwells without measure.
Here the Spirit of wisdom matches the madness and folly of the generation. It exposes it for its true content in pneumatic space where the Spirit performs the work of liberation. One sees this most clearly in the intersection of Christology and pneumatology—preparation of the way for the Son, in the incarnation of the Son, the inauguration of the Son to Messianic office, in the ministry of the Son, and in the sending of the Spirit. The Spirit of liberty turns the hearts of those who believe to the wisdom of the just, prepares a people fit for their God, lifts the poor from the dung heap, and sets free those who are oppressed by the devil (Luke 1:17ff). In other words, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
Preaching with intention opens those spaces through which there can be a pneumatic flow. It plunges the preacher into a spiritual space older exegetes knew as the “sensus plenior.” The truth comes forth to embrace—yea, to overwhelm—the one who takes the time and makes preparation to hear. It is an answer to the prayers for the preacher that ask for “. . . his eyes to be set to the telescope of eternity, his ears to be pinned to the wisdom post, for his tongue to be turpentined, and his words turned into sledgehammers of truth.”10 This space is not entered into casually or upon a whim. This ground cannot be traversed without preparation; nor can what is claimed go without testing. Yet this is the surplus given in revelation, without which one is not yet prepared to speak for God.
The work of exegesis serves to modulate the corrupted boundaries in which the hearers dwell. It disturbs the false placidity and undifferentiated ether of a world that has turned from its creator; it punctuates the noise of chaos with silences of the Spirit; it charges toxic atmosphere with divine effluvium. Then it translates what has been seen and heard in the counsel of God into auditions that transform ordinary space into a doxological environment wherein God is present. The Lord is in his Holy Temple; let all the earth keep silence. Let the silence be broken only to say, “Speak Lord.”
1. Cleland, Preaching to be Understood.
2. See Cleland’s chapter on “bifocal preaching,” 33–58.
3. Taylor, How Shall They Preach, 24.
4. I am borrowing this term from Charles Long to account for the moment in which one gives full attention to reality that cannot be readily dominated or dissected. See Long, Significations: Signs, Symbols, and Images in the Interpretation of Religion. Long describes the moment as looking into a rock. Hence the term “lithic,” taken from lithos, Greek for rock. What is desired is “in the rock,” not under it or behind it. The moment is akin to the one in which the sculptor sees in the rock the image that is to be brought forth. For preaching, this is like looking into the word (the text) and waiting for the insight that must be given—an insight that cannot be rushed.
5. When the quadratic equation is solved, one of the factors is the square root of –1. Standard practice is to designate this factor by the sign “i.” Mathematical convention is to discard any answers containing this factor. It is real, and it can be squared to equal 1, but it cannot be reduced to any rational sum.
6. Otto, Idea of the Holy.
7. See Jones, African Americans and the Christian Churches 1619–1860, chapter 1.
8. See Smith, In His Image, But . . . , especially chapter 3, “In Defense of Bondage,” 129ff.
9. Buber, I and Thou.
10. Johnson, God’s Trombones.
two from scribble to script: a spirituality of preaching
Preaching comes from the passion of God. God moves graciously toward the creation in an act that is straight from the heart. Like the gift of the Son, God’s address is the outflow of love and compassion. In preaching, the unsurpassed gift of God finds its continuation in zeal and work to save the world—to heal the creation and restore it into fellowship. It is addressed to the creature, whose vocation is to lead the creation into obedience to Christ.
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