Slow Of Speech And Unclean Lips

Historically, people who have risen to the occasion to speak of faith for their generation have been keenly aware of their own limitations-whether Moses, who was "slow of speech," or Isaiah, who was concerned that he spoke with "unclean lips." The question both Moses and Isaiah seem to be asking is, who am I to speak for God? And we wonder in turn, was it they who spoke, or God who spoke through them? These biblical images carry the weight of the question raised by the essays in this volume. How is preaching both the work of God and yet also a function of the individual's own person and identity? How is the preacher to conceive the identity he or she assumes when proclaiming the Word of God? Some of the leading educators in homiletics today propose a variety of possible preaching identities in this volume: preacher as messenger of hope, as lover, as God's mystery steward, as ridiculous person, as fisher, as host and guest, as one "out of one's mind," and as one entrusted. The result is an open-ended invitation for readers to identify their own preaching identity either in concert with one of the images presented here or of their own making, appropriately contextualized to their own ministry and theology

"Dialogical Preaching - Bakhtin, Otherness and Homiletics" explores the genre of preaching in light of theories of dialogicity and carnivalization developed by Mikhail Bakhtin. The Bakhtinian approach to preaching evokes ways in which historical acts and embodied experiences are transcribed in literary genres. The theories of carnivalization manifest the dynamic, other-oriented, interaction between reflexive texts and embodied acts. Experiences of otherness and difference play a central role in human communication as well as in theological descriptions of the relationship between God and humans. One of the central aims of this book is to explore ways in which 'others', different from the designated preacher, influence contemporary preaching practices and in that sense can be seen as co-authors. As material for this investigation the book provides analyses of four theologians who have contributed significantly to contemporary homiletical developments, namely those of the American homileticians Charles Campbell, John S. McClure, and James H. Harris and the Danish Systematic Theologian, Svend Bjerg.The homiletical analyses lead to the thesis, that the dialogical encounter between author, and addressees, analyzer and analyzed, is one of the conditions of interpretation and communication rather than a disturbance. The communication theoretical and practical theological analyses are discussed in light of Kierkegaard`s, Barth`s and Jüngel's emphasis on the 'qualitative difference' between God and humans. These concluding reflections suggest ways in which inter-human otherness can function as a dynamically conjoining rather than mutually exclusive difference between God as the 'Wholly Other' and 'other-wise' humans.

"Devoted to the legacy of the biblical prophets, identifies the prophetic moment in the lives of 18 biblical characters, offers up an intimate view of their inner thoughts, illuminates their ethical legacies, and challenges each of us to walk the path of the prophets today"--

Promise has a long pedigree in the history of Christian understandings of the gospel. This volume gathers together leading homileticians to consider the breadth of its understanding today in light of the struggle to reconcile God’s grace with God’s justice. Assuming that promise is a core sense of the gospel, how does this relate to the variety of contexts in which homiletical theology is done? In this final volume in the series, six homileticians from a variety of contexts and perspectives try to move specifically toward a homiletical theology of promise as a way to articulate the central theological gift and task that is preaching the gospel today.

The Overshadowed Preacher breaks open one of the most important, unexamined affirmations of preaching: the presence of the living Christ in the sermon. Jerusha Matsen Neal argues that Mary’s conceiving, bearing, and naming of Jesus in Luke’s nativity account is a potent description of this mystery. Mary’s example calls preachers to leave behind the false shadows haunting Christian pulpits and be “overshadowed” by the Spirit of God. Neal asks gospel proclaimers to own both the limits and the promise of their humanness as God’s Spirit-filled servants rather than disappear behind a “pulpit prince” ideal. It is a preacher’s fully embodied witness, lived out through Spirit-filled acts of hospitality, dependence, and discernment, that bears the marks of a fully embodied Christ. This affirmation honors the particularity of preachers in a globally diverse context—challenging a status quo that has historically privileged masculinity and whiteness. It also offers hope to ordinary souls who find themselves daunted by the impossibility of the preaching task. Nothing, in the angel’s words, is impossible with God.

The community of faith finds itself located precariously between Jesus' first and second comings, between the promise and fulfillment, between what God has begun in the gospel and what God has yet to complete. It thus finds itself proclaiming a gospel of life, love, hope, and faith in a world more characterized by death, hate, despair, and fear. The gospel insists that Jesus' death has shut the door on the age of violence and death, even as his resurrection has opened the door on the Age of Shalom and life. But in this tensive in-between time, those conflicting ages overlap, and the church struggles against powers and experiences that mock its message. Drawing on resources from the New Testament's vision of the apocalyptic gospel, Andre Resner urges the church and its preachers to engage in the linguistic practices of lament and proclamation as well as the embodied practices of justice-making and justice-keeping as counter-testimony to those powers that have been served notice in Jesus' life, death, and resurrection that their end is near. The reflections offered here model the kind of honest speech and risk of life to which the gospel calls its adherents.

The real question for homiletics in our increasingly postmodern, post-Christian contexts is not how we are going to prevent preaching from dying, but how we are going to help it die a good death. Preaching was not made to live. At most, preaching is a witness, a sign, a crimson X marking a demolition site. The church has developed sophisticated technologies in modernity to give preaching the semblance of life, belying the truth: preaching was born under a death sentence. It was born to die. Only when preaching embraces its own death is it able to live. This book, then, is a bold homiletical manifesto against preaching in support of preaching, and beyond preaching to the entire worship experience. It troubles modern homiletical theologies in light of the trouble always already at work within preaching. Hereby, it supports a way of preaching--and teaching preaching--that moves counter to the "wisdom of this world." It aims to joins in God‘s self-revealed counterlogic of superabundance that saturates and thereby breaks open worldly systems of thought and practice. The purpose of this book is to expose preaching to its own death-to help it embrace its death-so that it can discover what eternal and abundant life might look and feels like.

What is to be the church's response to the immigrant? Most immigrants in American society are seeking a better life. They are among the most vulnerable, possessing little and at the mercy of those they work for in the communities where they live. The essays in this book address issues for churches to consider as they seek to better understand how to respond to immigration. The book examines biblical, ethical, theological, and homiletical areas of the topic and includes contributions from experienced pastors, theologians, legal experts, and activists. With contributions from: Sarah Ellen Eads Adkins Claudio Carvalhaes Jason W. Crosby Miguel A. De La Torre Rebecca Hensley Robert Hoch Melanie A. Howard Maha Kolko Gerald C. Liu Joy Moore Heidi Neumark Owen K. Ross Lis Valle Michael Waters