I made a promise to myself many years ago that I would never again go to church on Epiphany; I could not hear one more sermon on the proof of the star or the perils of travel the Magi must have endured. No other text of Scripture seems to inspire such need for historical proof. But, if this story is history, and few biblical scholars would say so, its historicity is not the point; it is something told to make a point, a “gospel”. Preacher, preach that, and not the science of stellar movements or desert uncertainties. One may well see Luther pacing the narthex, waiting for the preacher to produce the wisp of manger straw or the coin minted by a Magi to prove once and for all this is historical fact: The Truth. The Truth, however, is not history; dogma asserts the Truth is disclosed within history, something very, very different.
So why do preachers think, in a day and age when people are conversant in so many fields that religion and its heartland, Scripture, must be mashed up and feed to them like pabulum? I once heard a preacher in a most august church tell the congregation that he had no idea as to the meaning of the text. It was not some rhetorical trick, for he proceeded to talk about something trivial that had no relation to the text. Had he the most modest ability to do his work and consult some learned books, he would have surely found material for a hundred sermons. Barth’s Church Dogmatics alone would have kept him well occupied for days.
Now I understand clergy can be busy, but preaching is a radical, fundamental charge. I also understand that a theological education and degree do not guarantee any knowledge of Scripture. In my own case my theological training was mostly weighted on ritual and dogma. Scripture entered the picture mostly in terms of “Proof Texts” for various dogmatic arguments. (Snippets of scripture were quoted as verification of a position, and although other snippets might work for the contrary, they were dismissed as either irrelevant or misinterpreted.) And as a result of such practice many, I have no doubt, have acquired academic credentials and ecclesiastical approbation, without knowing scripture, or for that matter, its reason for being, prayer.
Allow me to explain what I mean about prayer. In my student days I was immersed in prayer: the ritual prayers, the reading of prayers, the recitation of prayers, the formulas for prayer. The day was structured around periods of prayer. And it was talk, talk, talk: babbling to God, babbling before God. But that is not praying, it is saying prayers. Yes, there is room to place before the Almighty the needs and desires of self and others, to praise and thank. But, praying is first, foremost, and fundamentally being before God and listening to God. To listen you first need to shut up, to become quiet and pay attention. Some would call this meditation and contemplation. And this kind of prayer is the first of two requisites for one who would preach.
This first requisite is the subjective element; mental prayer with the mind turned on (meditation) or with the mind turned off (contemplation). In meditation scripture must be entered into with body and soul (Incarnation stands the central dogma of Christendom). The story must be entered into with the imagination turned on, and one must observe what happens. One must feel, see, touch, smell, taste the experience. In the power of imagination (the power of making images) one must behold (grasp with and in every sense) that which is revealed on the and to the most personal basis of self. The Jesuits call this the “application of the senses”. This is self-analysis before the divine, the experience of self as that which flows up out of the depths when one rests before the Holy as one experiences and understands it. If in meditation all systems are turned on, in contemplation, all are turned off, as best as is humanly possible. The mind is at rest, passive. It is not a simple task. There will come times, sometimes painfully long times, when one must wait in absolute silence, stripped of thought, of feeling, of expectation, times of waiting for God, times of simply being allowed by God until one learns to allow God to be God. Only out of such experience of the Revealed Word will the Scriptures truly be the Living Word.
The second requisite is the objective element. This is neither personal nor spiritual; it is intellectual; it is knowledge. The preacher must know not only the whole of Scripture, but what it means. Now this is not knowledge about proof texts for arguments dogmatic and moral. This is knowledge that allows one to penetrate to what is being said.
It is interesting that we expect some background explanation to understand Shakespeare, Milton, Virgil. They lived in worlds with customs, practices, world-views sometimes exceedingly different from ours. Yet we do not approach Scripture with the same cautions, despite the fact that Scripture is older and from an even more foreign culture.
The words, stories, poems, songs, histories that make up Scripture are wrapped up in idioms, world-views, expectations, customs, prejudices, passions, social structures that pre-date us by thousands of years. We scarcely can put on the mind frame of the Victorians, but we somehow think we can read a sacred text and overcome the distance of ages with the blink of an eye. In this we are deceived and in error. And even if we were not in error, the world in which we live and to which we are charged to preach is not the world of Jesus, or the world of Moses, or the world of Abraham. Our world does not think in terms of covenants in the same way the ancient Jews did. Our world does not think in terms of temple rituals, blood sacrifice and expiation so central to the way Jews spoke of their relationship with the Holy, so central to the way the early Jewish converts to Christ expressed their encounter with God in Christ.
Familiarity with certain words and terms does not mean we necessarily understand their original meanings. It is all too easy for people who are immersed in “church” to think in words they consider “everyday” terminology, but which are very “cult-specific” and not at all words of the people in the everyday world. If we are serious about Scripture, if we truly belief in God Incarnate, then it is time to learn the mind-set of the peoples who produced these works that we can proclaim their message, their meaning, to the world in which we live.
We need to stop “sermons” and teach this that people can once again have a sacred text understood. Sermon once had the connotation of a conversation. When is the last time a preacher took questions from the floor? Some will say I am advocating Bible Studies instead of a sermon. Fine, I am. Stop teaching a few, and teach the many. Do not hide the opportunity to educate and enlighten behind some closed door on a Wednesday afternoon, open it on every public occasion available: Morning Prayers, Evening Prayers, Eucharist, Sundays and weekdays.
I know there are some who this very moment are saying the Word of God is the Everlasting Word. It does not change. True. But if you mean by the Word of God that book set upon a brass lectern and ensconced in a grand temple of stone, you are wrong. That book is an idol. The Word of God is Living. It Exists in the proclaiming of the gospel. You can read the book. Scripture is proclaimed, lived, tasted, loved. This is core Christian doctrine: the Living Word is a Person, not a text. The Living Word is encountered through the text proclaimed to and in the world.
One may treasure words and phrases from a sacred text; one may feel their life is set by ideas garnered from that text, but woe to those who would sheath the Living Word in a dash of ink or a fleeting bit of sound. Do we adore an idol or do we take up the challenge of living life constantly anew following the Spirit where so ever it wills to blow?
All this talk about preaching has meaning only in the context of being-church. And I think a good deal of our problem with good preaching has to do with our self-image as church, so allow me to digress on church and church as the body liturgical.
The church in the mind of most people–in the world, the pew, the academy, the church office—is an institution with a precisely defined constitution and programs of operation. It is the mother, the magisterium (teacher), and the magistrate of the right way of believing, living, worshipping. This institution is a dominatrix for it has the final and absolute word on and in all things, and the power to enforce that word—in heaven if not on earth. But nowhere is such a creature understood in the early history of the Christian community.
Paul has vision of the body of believers as the very incarnate presence of God’s Word on earth, The Body of Christ. It is not a comatose being sustained on some cerebral input machine called the Church Office. It is a community of individuals with their component personalities and abilities.
The very earthliness of this community is also embodied in another great idiom of Paul, Bride of Christ. A bride implies a marriage contract and a consummation. An institution operating from top down is not a commune, and it is certainly not something that conjures up the attitude that begets a marriage. In institution where are the caresses, gentle and passionate? Where are the touching, holding, fondling, the penetrating, the filling, the giving in to the pain of labour, the bringing forth of something other than oneself? Where is the living flesh of the creature, the bride of the Incarnate One? There is no wedding without bedding.
Our culture has trivialized sex because we are, I believe, afraid of sex, and perhaps rightly so, for it is a fearsome and primal power, a power of life, of communication, of expression and release. But powers are for use within reason and not for cloaking within fear. In our being the Christian community there is neither logic nor life in the denial of the sexuality of our being. We cannot turn our backs on the fact that the holy is born only when one allows oneself to be ravished by the divine. This is the real stuff of religion, of faith, hope, love. It is messy, uncertain, always on the move. It is vital and vitalizing, passionate and impassioned. It is everyday life with a twist, and the twist is the divine, the holy, like some eternal gyration opening one up so the spirit inside can be free, can breathe, can exult, can passionately cry out “yes” to God. No doctrine, no biblical text, no prescribed ritual can stimulate that “yes”; it is the result of contact with another—the Holy One found incarnate here and now.
A church run from head office is not church. A church formulated in the halls of the university is not church. A church open on Sunday to grind out a program of reading texts and hearing the “same old” week after week is not church. Look at the great cathedrals and basilicas. Central to each of them is a table, indeed, “The Table” where it all began—that ritual meal among friends. But while that is central, there is a universe of space and places in those buildings and they say something very real about the church as a community. There is a preaching box, and a reading stand, and a presidential chair, and within the walls and without as well are nooks and crannies, vistas filled with light and art, spaces for music and noise, places to move about and some to be quiet. In these “churches” we find concretized in brick and mortar what it implies to be “church” in flesh and blood. They are not class rooms for reading and being taught. They are not concert halls or art galleries to lift up the spirit. They are not bastions of retreat from a hostile world. They are microcosms of people coming together in sundry ways and times to celebrate the fact that they are together, and in that to discover and treasure that they are—at the heart of it—called together, summoned—and summoned for a purpose: to be a light. That light flows as much within as without, and it reveals self as much as world. Just as the light created on the first day set the parameters of creation, this light is the font of the ever new beginning of a new creation. (Pace Fr. Kavanagh)
The earliest Christian celebrations were extended events of the whole community enfolding the day in song, prayer, reading, teaching, moving about, sharing a meal, and consecrating dawn and dusk. They were not mandatory in whole or in part. They were celebrations, and as participants in any celebration know, one cannot and does not get involved in every moment or movement. Forgive the pun, but feasts are always moveable; they have an internal fluidity that allows the participants to move in and out according to their abilities.
The rise of universities gave us theological scholars who set upon creating a systematic set of explanations to every possible question about God and divine activity in the heart of man and the world. The printing press made the Bible—a series of witness texts compiled in and by the church for the church—something everyone could handle and read line by line. Indeed, thanks to the printing press every line even got a number so one could map the co-ordinates! The out of control inventiveness and artistry of the medieval mind was countered by reformer zeal to educate. Reformer zeal was countered by Roman zeal to control and systematize. Some communities shrank into being clusters of book-readers, others shrank into chaplets of sacrament watchers. They all lost the vital and human impulse to celebrate. The Feast became a lecture or a performance. The Festival is now about hearing something, or watching something, or sitting in lines and reading line by line. Is there a party here anyone is interested in?
So how do we fix this? Should we re-arrange the way we do things? Should we turn our format upside down and start off with a “coffee hour”? If we do, then let it be a real time for sharing together. Hold it in a respectable setting, even in the church proper if that can work. Musty basements and drab halls do not say feast. Neither do insipid coffee and stale cookies. This aspect is liturgical no less than the offering up of bread and wine at the high table. Do not denigrate it.
The same ought to be said for a time of teaching. Do not feel every charactery of scripture need be read. Talk about things pertinently. Make a sound teaching of the scriptures, of church understanding of scripture (dogma, morals), of our shared history, vision, quest. Allow time for questions and discussion. In prayer, let the words not be “sound bites”; let there be some weight and scope. Consider the general intentions and thanksgivings in the Book of Common Prayer. Keep ritual action brief and reverent. A good ritual act ought to convey an enormous amount of inform-ation succinctly. A thousand words are not necessary. Give the words of institution: this is my body, my life, given, take it, share it. Break, pour, share. Let the actions speak for themselves. Explanations are best left to a teaching part. But do not fear allowing ritual actions to be interrupted by song, movement, etc. All this needs to be alive and flowing out of the sacred assembly and not the dictates of a text, a presiding minister or the choir. This is celebration not performance. Worship flows out of celebration not out of observation. And throughout all this allow each to enter this time in his/her own way, and take his/her own leave. Allow each a space for whatever response he/she is called to: mental prayer, further study, socializing.
Or, do we look to our first ancestors and do all this all feast-day long? Open the doors in the morning and have a series of celebratory events on going—some social, some vocal, some instructional, some meditative, some roving about, some ritualizing sharing a meal, some ritualizing the rise of day, some ritualizing the end of day. Provide a festival that lasts the day and into which each enters and leaves according to ability and/or inclination. It makes the work of the various ministers considerably more demanding than the schedule of 8, 9, and 11, but, as noted above, being church is messy and the First Minister of this community had demanded of him something considerably more taxing.
Let me return again to the subject of preaching. It is not the clergy but the whole community of believers charged to preach the gospel, the “good news” that the Power is alive and present and healing in the world in the church in Christ Jesus. The charge is not to create an aura of beauty, although beauty has a place. It is not a matter of what we like or want. It is a matter of doing the job we are given. We can comfortably ensconce ourselves in words and music and actions and architecture that cause us to gaze upward, but in doing that do we shut out, alienate, disenfranchise a host of others who would celebrate, who are looking for a festivity? I confess I am academically inclined and anglo-saxon up-tight to the core, so a service of well writ prayers, well read texts, sound preaching, good music and sensible ritual is cheery-good. But I also realize my tastes and modes of expression are foreign to the greater majority. So called “liturgical dance”, clowns doing a panto of a reading, strumming guitars, polka-vespers, and the like make me cringe with horror. But I must acknowledge that if we are to provide a feast for the world to be entered into, we need to provide a venue each can hear, see, taste, experience in their own language, his/her own medium of expression.
We cannot claim this format or text is the only way any more than we can claim heaven as our own. We cannot tell others their prayers are wrong, their church structure is wrong, their gender is wrong, their image of God is wrong, because they are not enough like us—who know with such perfect clarity that God has granted to us to be the sole and perfect keepers of the Truth. We are not given to define God. We are given to celebrate the presence of God.
We cannot make ourselves so busy with so much that does not eternally matter that eternity vanishes behind the flashes of self-importance and righteous indignation, behind the scribbles of synods and secretariats. We can be a network of institutions marching through to the end of history proclaiming the historical fact of the death of our founder. We can be a people with a vision: a vision that the source of life is love, that the end of life is love, love being about community, community founded in fore-giving one another, in understanding one another, in accepting one another, acknowledging that our vision of God as triune and holy and incarnate tries, ever so feebly, to give words to that vision. We can welcome all. We can sit comfortably row by row and read line by line. We can go to service. We can throw open a festival. We can spew doctrine. We can live a life together.
Our inheritance is a reality that God is and shall evermore be all in all. Let us be embraced, transformed, invigorated and inspired by that and allow the Creator, Redeemer and True Spirit—not ourselves–to be the founding, bounding and dynamic creator, redeemer and true spirit of who and what we are. In that the light of the nations is and ever shall be made manifest. And so we come full circle, for is this not the meaning of Epiphany: to risk ourselves to behold the Eternal shining through the fleetingness of flesh, to come and to adore the divine disclosed within the human?