go to hear the preacher tell of his faith, his feelings, his experiences, much less his opinions on life and its problems. No, they go sorely needing and sadly seeking something else, something more primary and profound—longing to hear a voice out of the heavens, telling them the things eye hath not seen nor ear heard. They go seeking, as of old, the healing touch which makes them know that they are not alone in their struggle for the good; wanting to hear the forgiving, redeeming, all-inclusive, all-solving Word of God which embraces the whole of life—“the one Word alongside of which there is and can be no other.”
Such is the vision of preaching in the soul of Karl Barth, out of which his theology was born, not as an academic adventure, but as a response to divine urging in contact with aching human need; an effort “to tell that God becomes man, but to tell it as the Word of God, as God Himself tells it,”—nothing less, nothing else. If we are to understand his theology, he tells us, we must hear all through it the question which the preacher puts to his own soul and tries to answer, “What is preaching?” It was while in the pastorate, looking into his own heart and into the expectant faces of his people, that he discovered that preaching, as he had been trying to practice it—the preaching of spiritual values, based on his own inner experience or that of others, seeking to satisfy religious needs—is not enough, and was indeed no longer possible for him. Hence his quest for a Word more authentic, more authoritative, more intimately personal, more inviting, in which the contradictions of human life are reconciled; an answer to the cry of the soul not for truths, but for Truth, not for solutions but for the Solver, not “for something human, but for God as Saviour even from humanity.”
What, then, is preaching? “It is thirty minutes to raise the dead in,” said Ruskin; and only the living word of the Living God can work such a wonder. So defined, it is an august and impossible undertaking, “an act of daring,” as Barth admits, and only the man who would rather not preach, he adds, and cannot escape from it, ought ever to attempt it. Who, alas, is sufficient for these things? The answer is that our sufficiency is from God, who has spoken to us in His Word, and who has commissioned us to preach. Else, thinking up against these facts, no man could muster either knowledge or courage enough for the task, even if the right to attempt it could be claimed. But the preacher is under orders; he preaches because he must. It is the paradox of his office that he must “dare the impossible,” as Barth puts it, aware of an imperfect human instrument; but he can do no other, since his office is qualified as obedience, coming under the sign of the highest responsibility and promise.
For the preacher, to say it once more, is not a lecturer, nor a teacher, nor an exhorter; he is an ambassador of authority, a herald bearing tidings. His word is not his own. He has his message, as he has his office, not by virtue of a poetic temperament, a dynamic personality, or a mastery of fine phrases, but as a witness of the Word of God. A Christian preacher, says Barth, “does not speak in the way of a clever conversationalist who wants only to be listened to, or as a teacher who claims only attention, or an agitator who seeks only agreement, or as a person of importance who desires only acquiescence.” If he were any or all of these, men might well require his credentials, or regard him as an officious meddler and adventurer whom they have good right to warn off. No, the preacher is a bringer of the Divine Word, so far as human lips can upbear it, not denouncing men like the prophet, but calling for faith, repentance, obedience, and proclaiming the Gospel of Reconciliation in which warning is blended with “the wooing note” of love.
Here, then, in a swift sketch, is what Karl Barth means by preaching, and no one in our generation has done more to exalt the preaching office, alike in theory and in practice. It is remote from the artificial conception of preaching which regarded sermon-making as a literary act, and the sermon itself as an object to be achieved, if not an end in itself; a legacy from the Sophists, as Hatch taught us in a famous lecture. It is far more momentous and thrilling than the old evangelical three R’s, Ruin, Redemption and Regeneration preached with Animation, Affection and Application. It is too big for our current academic and homiletic definitions, in that it makes the sermon really an extension of God’s revelation of Himself, and of the record of His Word in the Bible; and therefore a sacrament in very truth.
By the same token, as will be discovered in the sermons here to be read, the vision of what preaching is determines the method and art of the preacher, so direct in its approach, so disarming in its earnestness, so deceptive in its simplicity. The sermons are unique both in matter and in manner, and no one can read them without feeling that we have in them a living Word of God in the midst of our confusions, when the soul of man is astray in its own life, and the nations grope in the dark without goal or guide. May the vision grow and abide.
St. James’s Church,
Philadelphia.
COME HOLY SPIRIT
The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein. For he hath founded it upon the seas and established it upon the floods. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart: who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity [loose doctrines], nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive a blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O God of Jacob. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors: and the King of glory shall come in. Who is the King of glory? The Lord strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle. Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up ye everlasting doors; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this king of glory? The Lord of hosts, he is the King of glory.—Psalm 24.
“The earth is the Lord’s and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein.” Is not all that we humans need to know really said to us in this word of the Psalmist? Is it not true that if we could rightly speak and understand such a Word, if we could say it and hear it so that it would rise and come out of the Bible and work in us, we should be helped immediately? But what does that mean? Certainly nothing else than that it would be so spoken and heard, not as a pleasing word of man, but as the Truth, even as the word that God speaks to us.
We are all seeking for such a word, one that is not simply another word. How often each one of us has longed for just this right word in sorrow or in some other situation! If we but bear a little of the burden and the hope of these times upon our hearts, we shall become humans who longingly look for the redeeming word. For the anxiety and the hope of today is due to the want of this word, and we can not rest in our quest for it. The variety of prophets today who profess to know something, and the thronging of men who desire to find something—these are proofs of this questing and questioning. And the worse the need becomes, the closer it approaches the one universal need which, like a flood, covers the whole earth, and from which no one can escape. The fewer the islands become which are not threatened by this flood of need, the more all the barriers which we have thrown up against it are burst because they are puny structures of man—the more do we feel that this redeeming word must be a primary, all-inclusive word which must embrace the whole world; it must be the one word along side of which there is and can be none other, even God’s word. Today we see clearly how all need hangs together. To really help a single unemployed family would mean that we have to create work. But to create work today would mean to solve the whole European problem of labor. Thus, that which apparently is a small thing is the greatest. Thus all need, even the smallest, is tragic—the cry of the hungry child is a terrible and fearful matter. These little means of ours can no longer help. Always and in everything we have to do with the total situation. And the help for the need must have a powerful character, the most powerful there is. The need today reaches as far as our portion of the earth, and still farther. “Europe”—that is the extent of our misery today; the “world” will increasingly be the name for need. How can any name be spoken that is smaller, less powerful than the name of God, the name of the Lord?
And
