Contextual preaching declares the Word of God in the context of the social, political, moral, and economic life situations of the listeners. It hears and proclaims the Word for the immediate context of the congregation.
Preparation. In the preparation of a contextual sermon, exegesis and application are a single process. This premise is vital. Exegesis and application may never be regarded as two separate tasks. In order to preach in today’s context, the text and congregation must be brought face to face in the preparation of the sermon. Then the text begins to speak. Both the text and the congregation’s situation must therefore be fundamentally integrated. In the preparation, the preacher must listen to the text permeated with the exigencies and problems, the conceptual categories of the time. Thus, a creative confrontation is brought about, in which the text itself declares and expounds its message for a particular situation.
The preparation of a sermon cannot be reduced to a method, because when the text speaks, it is an event—a Word event. The preacher cannot manipulate this event according to his or her own designs. The exegetical method can, at most, remove existing obstacles so that the Word can speak intelligibly in the language of the age. Only a few principles relating to the movement from text to sermon can therefore be laid down.
The Congregation’s Situation. The preacher must grasp, must live, the situation and context of his or her congregation. The preacher must be involved with the “grassroots” experiences, the feelings, and thoughts of the members of the congregation. He or she must absorb their theology. If the preacher sits with the community, suffers with them, despairs and hopes with them, rebels with them against injustice and oppression, then he or she can relate the message of the Bible to their lives. This is the method of contextual preaching.
In order to translate the message into contemporary language, the preacher should be conversant with the art and literature of the time. Poetry, drama, novels, and graphic art all represent and clarify contemporary conceptual categories. They reflect modern humanity. Modern philosophy, political trends, and ideas also express reality as experienced and understood by people today. Dialogue with other sciences enhances one’s understanding of the mentality of contemporary society, for whom the gospel has to be formulated. It is in this reality, using these linguistic and conceptual structures, that the preacher must proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord.
The preacher must know the individual parishioners who make up the congregation, each with their own conceptual frameworks. He or she must share their particular world, their specific situation in history, and the innumerable problems of their existence. At this point, the message of the text must be made concrete. In such an encounter with the text, brought about by the preacher, God’s Word from Scripture addresses the congregation in a unifying way. This implies that the preacher must approach the text humbly. This unity between text and present reality is always wrought by God’s speaking through his Word, entering every age, demythologizing, expounding, and changing the situation.
Exegesis. Exegesis must assist the preacher by spelling out the message of a text as formulated in a bygone age. In scientific exegesis, the text is encountered by the preacher who is saturated with the realities of his or her own situation, a fact that cannot be denied. In exegesis, the preacher has to fathom the historical situation of the text in order to expound its message accurately, at all times allowing the present situation to confront the text. Exegesis is continued into and accomplished in the sermon. No text must be the subject of preaching unless it has addressed the preacher himself or herself.
Meditation. The encounter between text and the congregation’s situation takes place in the form of meditation. The text must be rendered concrete and contemporary in the mind of the preacher. This is why meditation is such an important element in the hermeneutic process. It builds a bridge between the text and the present.
Meditation is the process in which the text confronts the situation of the congregation, the word addresses it, and the text crystallizes in thoughts that are then expressed in the language of the listeners. In meditation the language of the text encounters contemporary language, bringing about confrontation and dialogue between the text and the present. This confrontation causes a merging of horizons—the preachers and the texts. Meditation is the way along which exegesis proceeds to the sermon.
In a sense, we can make a distinction between scientific exegesis and meditation, but we cannot divorce them. Exegesis interacts with the ideas it unleashes about the message of next Sunday’s text. Preaching demands creativity and imagination. It is an act of linguistic creation, but exegesis is the criterion for the ideas it releases. It is the criterion for the truth of these ideas, that is, whether they accord with the text. Every time the ideas stirred up by the text threaten to run wild, exegesis brings them to heel. Meditation, therefore, runs like a thread through the whole process of composing a sermon because meditation and the search for a relevant message are the same processes.
Text as Subject. In the hermeneutic interaction between text and contemporary situation, the text begins to address the preacher. The text as a subject now addresses the preacher as an object, interpreting the preacher and expounding his or her life and situation. This encounter between text and preacher is an opening up: the true word “penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow” (Heb. 4:12). Thus, in meditation, the confrontation between text and present reality ultimately possesses and overcomes the preacher. In this sense, the word passes through him or her and then to the congregation.
When the preacher is addressed by God’s Word, he or she consciously experiences the message for the age. The preacher is overpowered by the omnipotence of God’s mighty Word, which erupts into his or her life and situation. This happens as the preacher wrestles dialogically with the Word, which confronts the preacher at every level of his or her existence. And so the preacher comes to understand the message for the congregation. After all, preaching is the word of one who, having understood, wants to bring others to a similar understanding of the Word through the word.
The preacher now begins to express the message of God’s Word as experienced in his or her mind. It is inherent in human nature to articulate, and this articulation is a rephrasing. In other words, the preacher phrases the message in the idiom of the congregation. The text is made present and concrete by the translation of the message that illuminates the contextual situation.
In this process, the Word as Scripture gives birth to the living Word in the sermon, creating a similarity between the Word in Scripture and the proclaimed Word. This similarity does not imply replication or repetition, but a resemblance (as the child resembles the mother). The continuity lies in the message, the Word event in the text, which brings forth a new Word—the once only Word rephrased. The similarity between the written and the proclaimed Word is therefore not an identity in the sense of mere duplication. Preaching that allows the Word to speak in present reality remains bound to the text with an umbilical cord. Thus, the Word of God is heard in the present situation—in a new, unique way.
In the final analysis, the text is made concrete by the congregation, the interpreting communion of saints who, guided by the Spirit, understand the message as a body. The sermon opens up perspectives for the congregation and stimulates them in a particular direction. When, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, listeners go out into the world and live out God’s message in their community, the text is finally actualized. Then the understanding of the message for our day is fulfilled and the intention of the text is accomplished.
Summary. In summary, we are confronted with the problem of bridging an actuality gap—a problem of articulation. To solve this problem, text and present reality must encounter one another in the mind of the preacher/interpreter. This demands that the preacher know both his or her own situation and the situation of the text. When text and present reality thus encounter one another, the word forges the link between the text and the present by addressing a message to the present situation (the mind, being, and context of the listening preacher).