may be silent ones, but they are there to be discerned nonetheless. And the public nature of preaching, as an event with multiple hearers, makes this process especially complex.
All this constitutes the most basic reason why preaching must be considered as a corporate, not an individualistic event. The previous chapters have already given strong backing to such a notion, as preaching has been located within the tradition and practices of the Church. But it is as a communicative event that it displays this corporate character most obviously.
In this part we will unpack the implications of the ‘message square’ for preaching. In Chapter 3 we will consider the mystery of language, the words (or images) which are the basic tools of communication, and the relationship of medium and message. This will lead to examining preaching as rhetorical journey, an event in time, with constant interplay between ‘sender’ and ‘receiver’. In Chapter 4 we will explore preaching as a sociological event in which the identity of a congregation is shaped, as well as some of the psychological dynamics which feed into the preacher’s self-disclosure and appeal, the relationship between preacher and hearers, and the hearers’ response to the message.
Finally we will raise the question of preaching as an event of spiritual encounter. How are claims that preaching is a locus for meeting with God to be assessed? This will form an appropriate transition point to Part 3, in which we will turn to our theological appraisal of preaching events.
[1] Richard R. Osmer, 2008, Practical Theology: An Introduction, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, pp. 79–128.
[2] Osmer, Practical Theology, pp. 81–100.
[3] Osmer, Practical Theology, p. 80.
[4] For an explanation, expansion and critique of this basic ‘cybernetic’ model see Achim Härtner and Holger Eschmann, 2004, Learning to Preach Today: A Guide for Communicators and Listeners, Sheffield: Cliff College, pp. 167–71.
[5] Discussed in Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 171–98.
[6] Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 175–6.
[7] Härtner and Eschmann, Learning to Preach, pp. 176–7.
3
Language, Medium and Rhetoric
The mystery of language
Words are a preacher’s stock-in-trade. As we have seen, live communication is a relational event, which invests words with tone and value which go far beyond anything that could conceivably be captured in a dictionary. Nonetheless, words themselves and the language-systems of which they are a part have a mysterious character and force which must be reckoned with.
A successful act of communication requires the adoption not just of a language but a particular ‘register’ of language appropriate to both speaker and hearers. For instance, a preacher who uses the language of a theological lecture will not communicate effectively with most congregations. There are, however, deeper questions to consider here, arising from the modern philosophy of language. Without getting mired in abstruse philosophical debates, we will seek to tread a path between extreme positions in order to identify some key facts.
First, it is now generally recognized that we are all embedded in language, yet have power to shape it. Language shapes our thinking and living in profound ways from the earliest stage of life. This recognition has come in response to the over-confident view of the Enlightenment that as humans we could be masters of language, deploying it at will for our purposes, and able to decode the language of others with the aid of authoritative guides such as dictionaries. Some have gone so far the other way as to say there can be no thinking without language. Without adjudicating on that point, we are wise to recognize that no speaker can simply select and control what they say at will. But this does not mean we are helpless tools of an impersonal system. Words can still work for us in creative ways. But they do this not so much as tools to be selected objectively from a toolbox, but rather as an internal lump of clay which invites being shaped into particular forms.
Perceiving this should save us from two unfortunate errors. On the one hand, it is futile to seek to escape from the ordinary language that has formed us – whether the common language of our upbringing or the specific ‘Christian’ cultural language that forms our heritage of faith. Both are a part of the ‘givenness’ of what we have to work with, and any attempt to leave behind either (in the interests, perhaps, of being more ‘accessible’ to our hearers) is doomed to failure. On the other hand, we should not imagine we are imprisoned by these inherited languages. We are free agents who can mould the clay in ways that are both authentic to us and available to our hearers to receive. Otherwise we are doomed to mere repetition. Unfortunately, some preaching seems to court this error. Cliché may be religious-sounding, and accord well with orthodox doctrine, but that does not stop it being cliché.[1]
Moreover, there is a creative element to being a receiver as well as to being a sender. Not only is it possible to invest creatively in the words we hear, bringing our own associations to what, to the speaker, might seem a perfectly ordinary sentence; we are actually doing it, consciously or unconsciously, all the time. We are interpreting beings, as linguistic philosophy since Martin Heidegger has recognized.[2] A single word – ‘waves’, ‘rose’, ‘hospital’, almost anything – may draw to the surface of a hearer’s mind specific memories or expectations, as well as vague hopes, delights and fears. That sensation then shapes and colours not only the meaning the hearer receives from the word, but their reception of all the communication that is to come.
Without frank recognition of this combination of the given and the creative in our use of language, discussion of the subject of preaching and, indeed, of specific sermons will be fraught with pitfalls. As R. E. C. Browne put it, the sermon is to be located neither in the mind or script of the preacher, nor in the ears of the hearer, but in that uncertain yet fertile space between them, as the gift of language is moulded, almost simultaneously, by each.[3]
The second modern insight into language relevant to us here is that words do have meaningful reference beyond themselves to a ‘real’ world, but also shape our perception of it. Although words are part of language-systems in which their relationship to each other is crucial[4] – thus, for instance, we cannot understand ‘red’ without reference to ‘black’, ‘yellow’, ‘green’ and so on – the label ‘red’ really can be applied to certain objects. The notion that there is no reality – or at least no accessible reality – outside language probably lies behind some of the nagging scepticism about words and their effectiveness which undermines preaching as well as other communicative events. Is E. M. Forster’s jibe about ‘poor little talkative Christianity’[5] the more stinging because words, in the end, refer only to other words?
Common sense as well as a Christian understanding of the creation, however, suggests that there is more to reality than language
