Prophetic preaching condemns particularities and affirms generalities. It points to those values and hopes that are consistent with the reign of God and calls people to live by those values.
The Aim of Prophetic Preaching
Prophetic preaching is a contextual interpretation of God’s Word based on the belief that God loves us enough to disturb us. The gospel is not only “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,” but also “Blessed disturbance, we are Christ’s!” Indeed, the biblical narratives as a whole have to do with God moving in on the human scene and contradicting the way things are.
The late Rabbi Abraham Heschel described the function of the prophets as one of interference. The Scripture is in fact a story of loving interference and inquiry, bringing inconvenience in order to heal and hallow life. Burning bushes, whirlwinds, pillars of fire, Holy of Holies, the still small voice, prophetic woes, and “you have heard it said … but I tell you.” Only because God loves us enough to inquire, invade, and disturb is there transforming power in the gospel.
Popular and cultural tradition tends to produce unloving critics and uncritical lovers. The genius of biblical tradition unites judgment and mercy on behalf of a healing wholeness. God’s love is a disturbing influence and power; God’s judgment is a renewing and recreating catharsis. Critical love in the biblical sense is neither agreement nor rejection. It rescues from illusion and idolatry, pointing to a new future. For this reason, the community of faith must be encouraged to expect a biblically and theologically informed disturbance as a dimension of the redemptive Word. Otherwise, the ethos of the Christian church inevitably begins to sound and look like the surrounding culture and thereby loses its authority to change life.
Prophetic Preaching’s Context
The context for prophetic preaching is a theology that embraces all of life. If a congregation has a growing appreciation for the inclusiveness of Christian faith, then prophetic preaching will not seem an intrusion into so-called secular matters nor an abandonment of the biblical and historic gospel.
The preacher would do well in word and deed to lift up a gospel as concerned with principalities and powers as with prayers and piety, with structures and systems as with sermons and songs. More to the point, the preacher’s calling requires him or her to connect all of these, so that the church’s worship and the disciplines of individual piety point to the action of God in all of Creation.
Some ministers do this exceedingly well by emphasizing a theology of the Incarnation. Christ has touched everything and continues to do so because the Word has become flesh. Others focus on an Easter theology—that is, God is loose in the world and goes before people into every nook and cranny of Creation: on the road, in the breaking of bread, in daily toil. Whether the preacher centers on the Incarnation or on the suffering/sovereign, vulnerable/victorious Lord or on both, the results should be a context for faith and therefore for prophetic preaching in which political and economic issues are perceived as moral and ethical issues under the sovereignty of God.
Anyone who has served for any length of time in a pastorate can hardly fail to notice the close connection between the pastoral and the prophetic. Effective preaching always involves a relationship of trust between preacher and people, doubly so when it comes to prophetic preaching. If the preacher has moved toward the people faithfully as a shepherd, they may also allow the preacher to move toward them as prophets from whom they have already experienced care and concern. Lee S. Moorehead writes: “Since preaching is an audacious and almost arrogant business, we who engage in it ought to realize that we cannot be tolerated unless we speak out of lives of humble service” (Freedom of the Pulpit [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1961], 74).
The pastoral and the prophetic belong together not only in the functioning of the ordained but also in the covenant faith and life of the people of God. The prophetic ministry is not an elitist possession of the ordained, but the very meaning of being called into the covenant. To be called is to be sent, and it is for this reason that prophetic preaching and ministry are the functions of both preacher and listener in relation to the world.
Another contextual dimension for prophetic preaching, and one of critical significance for the preacher, is the history of this particular people—their characteristics, their customs, their ethos, their story as a people. Any interpreter or translator who does not know his or her people in this sense cannot preach with incarnational love. The story needs to intersect their story. The primary task of the preacher is to learn the story of the people whom he or she seeks to serve. This, of course, means listening to many people. The process is a labor of love requiring time and patience, but it is also a means of understanding the larger context which belongs to prophetic preaching.
One other contextual issue that deserves mention—the freedom of the pulpit. What does freedom of the pulpit mean to the preacher? To the people? What are its limits? The responsibilities of both clergy and laity? The issue of prophetic preaching is inevitably linked with a theology of the pulpit, suggesting a need for preacher and people to explore the preacher’s freedom of the pulpit together. Done carefully, it could pave the way for a mutual set of expectations for preaching, and especially for attempts at prophetic utterances.
The Way of Prophetic Preaching
No one can assume the mantle of prophetic preaching for long without learning some lessons about the gospel, the church, oneself, and prophetic preaching. Prophetic preaching is more likely to be on firm ground when it condemns particularities and affirms generalities rather than vice versa. Clear biblical mandates exist to condemn starvation, exploitation, and dehumanization. Furthermore, it is possible to be quite specific concerning causes as well as consequences, assuming appropriate study and research of the issues has been done.
The preacher can and must point to those values and hopes that are consistent with the reign of God. For example, in the name of the gospel, the pulpit may challenge the ongoing buildup of weapons of mass destruction, the lack of serious effort to negotiate international disarmament, and a governmental stance that favors the affluent and increases the misery of the disadvantaged. In the name of God, the preacher raises the humane question, challenges the moral ethos from a biblical and theological grounding, lifts up those values that appear to be consistent with the mind of Christ, and points to the judgment/love of God present in every situation. This is what is meant by affirming generalities.
However, it is more difficult and more questionable to identify the gospel or a Christian solution with a particular political or economic program, lest we legitimatize ideological stances. The preacher must be painstakingly careful about assuming the position of a policymaker or suggesting that he or she possesses the “how-to” expertise to restructure society. As Peter Berger has observed, “The idea that moral sensitivity somehow bestows the competence to make policy recommendations is delusional” (“The Class Struggle in American Religion,” Christian Century [Feb. 25, 1981]:196). The biblical foundation is more conducive to lifting up the purposes and priorities of the kingdom or of the mind of Christ than to detailing specifics of programs and policies.
Even denouncing or calling into question specific evils will likely require careful homework. Of course, some forms of oppression are so blatant that this is not the case. Frequently, though, one faces the likelihood of choosing between two or more undesirable possibilities. If a large corporation employing thousands of people is polluting a lake with waste by-products, for example, the choice may be between a devastated environment and the loss of jobs for hundreds of families, with the accompanying social consequences. One of the worst habits of some prophetic preaching is the naïveté and lack of good hard research undergirding the attempt.
There will always be an element of ambiguity in any complex social issue—if not in relation to ends, then in relation to means, and not infrequently in connection with consequences themselves. Irreducible ambiguity should not retard the preacher’s willingness to speak out from the pulpit, but the preacher’s own calling and responsibility to the church require him or her to be as well informed as possible. The facts, insofar as can be ascertained, are never all “in,” but the preacher should proceed on as solidly factual a ground as possible before presuming to interpret the gospel in relation to a specific issue. The credibility of prophetic preaching depends on trust and caring relationships. It also depends on the accuracy of information and knowledge so that the case is not prejudiced at the outset owing to ignorance and oversimplification.
The “Amos style” of prophetic preaching—that is, a stance from a righteous position as one of the basic prophetic approaches—has much to commend it. There are times when a preacher must take a stand and declare it without mincing words. To do less would be a complicity of silence.
Yet the efficacy of an inquiring mode of prophetic preaching is also appropriate in certain situations. In an oversimplified sense, one could say that the God-human encounter in Scripture focuses on combinations of the indicative and the imperative. The shape of the gospel at times is a form of the indicative, which represents proclamation, pronouncement, assertion: In the beginning, God created. God is love. The reign of God is at hand. The imperative mode of divine-human confrontation is frequently a command or exhortation: Follow me. Go into the world. Love your enemies. This mode is the call to action of much of the biblical narratives.
As biblical scholars have shown, the indicative and imperative are expressed in a variety of ways, and in Paul’s writing they have the closest connection—indeed, are inclusive of one another. Indicative statements may be used to exhort, thus carrying imperative force, and questions likewise may have an essentially imperative thrust.
The questioning, inquiring style has great promise in prophetic preaching. The inquisitive mode may be simply another shape to the indicative or the imperative, but it reaches out to the listener in a different way. The inquiring approach lends itself to a confessional style and to a mutual search rather than to dogmatic coercion. Also, there is less likelihood of misusing biblical texts than otherwise might be the case.
In Scripture, God is the ultimate questioner. As Gerhard Ebeling put it in The Nature of Faith (London: Collins, 1959), “When we speak of God, we are speaking of the radical question about where man is, the question which concerns him unconditionally.” In the teachings of Jesus, more than 150 questions are addressed to his disciples. What does it profit you to gain the whole world … ? Why do you see the speck … ? Which of you by being anxious … ? False prophets, ancient and contemporary, offer simple answers and an ecclesiastical happy hour as a substitute for worshiping the Holy One of Israel. Prophets of God raise penetrating and disturbing questions.
The inquiring style is conducive to growth for both preacher and listener. It appeals to imagining and to searching more deeply. And it suggests that, even in the name of God, preachers are frequently uncertain and befuddled like everyone else. There are countless problems in the preacher’s own time in history that were neither present nor envisioned in any direct sense in biblical times—such as nuclear energy, genetic engineering, and environmental complexities arising from modern technology. While perhaps not knowing the answers to many of society’s social ills and injustices, the preacher had better know the questions that lead and even drive humankind to watching and waiting in expectant ways for God’s prompting toward greater clarity and certainty.