To preach or not to preach

An idle reflection for idle reflectors

Either/or situations are the mark of the existential—I am incapable of both marrying and not marrying; in some sense, regardless of which choice I make, I could possibly regret it. I am incapable of both killing myself and not killing myself; in some sense, regardless of which choice I make, I could possibly regret it. I am incapable of both joining the revolution and not joining the revolution, of both eating meat and not eating meat, of praising God and not praising God, of joining the revolution and not joining the revolution, of starting a family and not starting a family, of studying scripture and not studying scripture, of going to church and not going to church, of spreading radical literature and not spreading radical literature, of appealing for rights from those who govern and not appeal for rights from those who govern, of declaring myself interested in serious matters and not declaring myself interested in serious matters; in some sense, regardless of which choice I make, I could possibly regret it. I am incapable of both publishing meandering thoughts on no particular issue and not publishing meandering thoughts on no particular issue; in some sense, regardless of which choice I make, I could possibly regret it. This is the basic condition of the existing individual forced to exist in time, the place where choices are made.

Despite my selection of couplets above, organised in ascending order of importance and then scrambled into an order that a lesser mind might describe as random, I shall turn to a lesser question. We will surrender the desperate cry of the frustrated dialectician throughout history—“give me objective necessity!”—to someone who is a more serious thinker on more serious matters in favour of an either/or choice that is largely considered unimportant by various people from various creeds for various reasons: to evangelise or to evangelise. Our Hamletian Romanticism may now seem a little embarrassing in the context of such a silly choice, but we will be suitably embarrassed by the contours of our inquiry as we will leave genuinely serious matters such as race, class, gender, sex—all manner of things by which we can divide humanity into delightfully digestible binaries which are “objectively necessary” and, as such, the proper grounds for philosophical inquiry—to more serious thinkers with serious matters in their serious hands for their presumably serious readers attending to their own particularly serious ends. Theologians are not serious people, therefore we should not pretend that theology should deal first with such serious matters as if something relies upon their insights. As any good theologian would agree, we have our minds set on something we feel is more important—however, we have no obvious proof for this. The way we think is swept up in the way we feel about the world, as embodied souls, as mere contingencies who are promised that they are important, as the physical expression of the statement “that I am”. This falls short of a scientific or mathematical ideal: the mark of a truly serious thinkers.

The question “to preach or not to preach” can obviously take on a variety of meanings to a variety of people. This means that our topic of inquiry is already muddy, possibly even subjective, in nature—therefore, first, we should set our terms and thereby avoid the accusation that we are dealing far beyond our pay grade or area of expertise. Only then can we proceed, safe in the knowledge that we have carved out a readership who can appropriately engage with our topic, themselves presumably safe in the knowledge that their idle midweek reading is of no serious concern and instead relax into the comfort that there is no possibility of despair rearing its ugly head. This despair is, presumably, the lot of the anarchist, the conservative, the critical theorist, the fascist, the liberal, the Marxist who views the production of revolutionary literature—the mode by which hearts are won, romantics are born, science is theorised, society is deconstructed, etc.—as imperative for the serious matter of the human management of humans; if there is a possibility of creating a scientific and serious mode by which society can be liberated from the oppressive bonds of the bourgeoisie, the political class, the free-loaders, the fascist, the critical theorist, or the inaesthetic existence of the impoverished, then it is not only imperative but within their grasp to liberate society by the creation and promotion of the correct thoughts. Theologians, well-read loafers by nature, are better suited to wondering how to approach questions like whether we preach or do not preach—again, safe in the knowledge that this question is not a serious matter for serious people, having already declared that the role of “the engine of history” has been outsourced to one with inscrutable methods and inscrutable goals.

Setting up inaccurate terms

We have already started our questioning, rather improperly, with a presumption. For this, I apologise, my reader; we have assumed that preaching is something which could possibly interest someone and, if it could, it would then be a worthwhile, if unserious, pursuit. If we were philosophers, sociologists, scientists, etc., this would be practically sacrilege—the proper pursuit is for “objective necessity”, at all times, and yet something I have dedicated no time whatsoever to. I am fundamentally guilty, it seems, of that embarrassing tendency for those of us who have thought about things and decided that we should write about those thoughts—I seem to have “had thoughts” prior to writing, the original sin of the “necessarily objective” thinker. As Descartes, a philosopher with the keenest sense for identifying the “necessarily objective”, exposed with his famous cogito, I am just another case of a person who exists and goes about doing the embarrassingly subjective act of existing, thinking, feeling, and the like, prior to sitting down to write. In an age which demands an earnest reaction against fake news, a hard stance on whether gender and sex are different, a definitive answer on how many children people should have as well as with whom and where they should be born, etc. because of the very serious demands of the kinds of serious people who think about these things, this kind of unseriousness is not readily appreciated by those who would inform the people, that shambling mass, what they think. You and I, my reader, probably have a thing or two to learn from those very serious thinkers who search for the “necessarily objective”—particularly the libertarians and the utilitarians—because even scanning their work, it is entirely believable that these people have never had a thought in their entire lives. If only we could hope for such objectivity in theology.

Regardless, we are unserious thinkers and, as such, shall proceed unseriously. My exact presuppositions prior to thinking aren’t of particular interest to me, my reader, and I advise you not to interrogate them too much for fear of mistaking this for a serious piece of writing. Let us establish the dialectic.

Firstly, the left hand of the interrogation, “to preach”. Preaching, as varied as the numbers who would preach, like we already opined earlier, is a difficult idea to nail down—which, of course, makes it a bad topic for “necessarily objective” reflections. Taking on a variety of derogatory meanings in the wake of Christendom’s collapse and the rise of secularity’s presuppositionless mode of scientific enquiry—although, I must admit, I don’t understand how one can decide to do science or mathematics or any other mode of activity without first being personally engaged, i.e., having both felt the need to investigate and then acted upon this need via the best mode of investigation available to them, which sounds awfully subjectively-based to unserious thinkers like me—the preacher is a maligned and detested figure on all sides: both for having the gall to preach unserious matters to those who would listen on a weekly basis (or, if you’re extremely unlucky, a few times in a single week) and also for having the gall to preach unserious matters to those who have found themselves sat before the preacher on a weekly basis (or, if you’re extremely unlucky, a few times in a single week). Good preaching, at first appearances, seems to be for fanatics and those who would hunt chicken’s teeth. However, here are a few notions that I believe will be interesting for you, should you still be reading:

• Preaching, although always emerging from a particular tradition, is a kind of performance whereby holy or religious ideas are shared with others; it is expected that, during the oration, certain rhetorical and philosophical themes should play a part in what is delivered to the listening crowds, with occasional reference to a theologian or the thoughts of a theologian, if such a thing can find a space. I have shamelessly presupposed the particular preaching of Christians to be the target of my investigation, although I make no major commitment as to which particular flavour of the faith I plan to uphold. A theologian lacks the tools for that kind of categorical thought and, therefore, I will simply assume a broadly ecumenical viewpoint on the grounds that a strong stance on the “necessarily objective” correctness of a particular tradition seems almost antithetical to the gospel message. Such questions should be left to those who can speak without having thoughts.

• The purpose of preaching is multifaceted: we might expect all preaching to i) offer us insight into scripture in a variety of ways, ii) relate the scripture to the thoughts of very clever people who have also had thoughts throughout history, iii) relate it to our current conditions, thereby allowing us to presumptively assume that we have the faith to set to works, vi) relate it to the particular conditions of a people who are very much unlike us and were living in a different set of “current conditions”, thereby allowing us to become quite confused as to how we find the “necessarily objective” moral to take from the exploration, and v) appeal to a general theme, possibly allowing for some kind of ethical framework or a socio-political worldview to emerge from what is very much a very old collection of very old books and slightly younger letters. This last point—v—is, obviously, the grounds for a serious thinker, like a philosopher, to appear, of course, as ethics is a matter with which we must deal with absolute certainty, with a “necessarily objective” approach that allows only correct answers. We must not allow childish notions of “personally-held responsibility” or “a will for the good” to be the basis of a moral theory as they could be misguided or simply incorrect, which is a reasonable demand. As subjective opinions may lack truth values, they are obviously false and should be treated as such. Without consulting the libraries, I presume this is why we will find so little written about ethics—because it only deals in objective matters, such as moral facts, numerical probabilities, and (for those feeling suitably fighty and Victorian) the status of morality’s “necessarily objective” status as either real or non-real. These, as “necessarily objective” notions will leave a lot less room for movement when we are no longer weighed down by the ballast of our existence or the nuisance of having to think. But preaching doesn’t seem to ascend to these heady demands at all: it simply displays some stories for the listening, the loafing, and the sleeping, some quite charming and many more rather grotesque¹, about how God has operated within history or how certain people—including God Himself—lived their human lives—which seems invoke a kind of contradiction if you ask me—that we might glean a taste of and for ethical teaching or metaphysical reflection, but is quite clearly not its primary objective. The source material itself is not a textbook and offers no straightforward, objective answers which save us from the embarrassing prospect of having thoughts about it. Yet, this is the lot of the would-be preacher.

• Incidentally, it is not clear what scripture is actually meant to achieve as it appears to undermine itself consistently. For example, quite early on in scripture (although, not at the very beginning, which would be the proper way to deal with these things so that we could have our categories in order) there is a moral Law given to a group of people that many-to-most people listening to a Christian preacher do not belong. We can reorder scripture in our words, thankfully, allowing for us to get to the important truth values that we all signed up for—the ethical code—that we can examine through helpful examples that elucidate how we enact them. However, scripture seems to lack any of these examples at all: instead, we’re offered people either failing to hold to these principles or seemingly breaking them and being praised for doing so. The objectivity of this ethical code is apparently not objective whatsoever—it is a very subjective matter, which draws the moral agent into a situation where principles must be apparently broken before they are then praised for understanding their misunderstanding in the proper way. In this way, preaching what people ought to do is very difficult—it seems almost like a deeply personal matter that relates to how individuals draw from the source material, not an objective textbook on morality. As I said, my reader, it is a very unserious matter, however, so it is unclear why we would demand such things of ourselves.

• The matter at hand, preaching, is obviously celebrated within the source material. In particular, God seems to appear in human form and preaches to a rather small number of people, usually directly, in a person-to-person manner. Even when presented with “the crowd”, he refuses to speak directly with people. However, at the same time, the matter of having someone believe in that which is preached—the gift of faith, which we can deliver to the unbeliever by clearing away the scales from their eyes—is actually something that can only be delivered by God—oh, retract my last remark; apparently we lack the power to remove said scales. This seems like a funny situation to be in: while preaching is obviously celebrated, it is also useless without God’s intervention in the subjective individual. In that sense, preaching could be a waste of time if we do not start to preach when God is in the mood.

These are four simple, unserious theses, my reader. I understand that the human desire for the “necessarily objective” approach or even a scientific method by which we could acquire faith is lacking here. Sadly, the theologian can only blush; he lacks the tools to deal with matters objectively and, therefore, should remember to use the best of his skill set to simply appeal to the subjective side of the listener—if he should preach at all. It should be clear that the unserious business of theology is a matter of dealing with people in their particularity, in their presuppositional ugliness. The serious matter of providing the gift of faith, of facilitating conversions, is best saved for a more serious entity that can both look beyond the presuppositions ugliness of their own existence and the equally non-“necessarily objective” presuppositional ugliness of the interlocutor without being drawn into conversation, into comparison, into change by the experience of being in exposed to these ugly things. Presumably, there is some kind of calculus out there that would answer these problems, although I’m unsure how we would arrive at such a calculus without certain metaethical or even metaphilosophical presumptions—such matters are presumably reserved for those who speak without thinking.

On the right hand, “not to preach”. This is an altogether simple matter: all of the above, we would reject it.

Let us circle back to the question at hand: to preach or not to preach.

Investigating haphazardly

With our idea of what preaching ought to achieve, now we can proceed to the question of whether we should preach to the faithful and unfaithful alike or, rather, we should cease preaching as it is ineffective and can be replaced with more effective methods. I have been greatly enlightened by the ubiquity of American writers, for example, who say that spreading the faith to the corners of the world rests on their ability to live in total isolation in a cabin in the woods—which, I presume, is resting on some kind of Marxist dialectical reason whereby doing the exact opposite of what we want to happen will eventually lead to what we want to happen. In this isolationist retreat into nothing, they surrender the task of becoming the light that illuminates the dark, the salt that dissolves in the water of the world in order to raise their small gaggle of children to—well, presumably do the same as they are doing at the moment. The reinvention of the feudal smallholder, a Romantic image for many, seems to jar confusingly with the Christian message… but, these people insist that this jarring confusion is itself, despite no obvious scripture or traditional grounding, the message itself. What joy is found in the unseriousness of theology—it would appear, at first glance, almost as if we could justify each and every bizarre, passing thought that should come upon us, regardless of whether there is some kind of divine being out there to which we should justify our actions! Similarly, I have been enlightened by those who have adopted the methods of philosophy, science, and the like to talk about theology, thereby overcoming the issue that I never could—somehow moving from the simply presuppositionless to the exact opinion that they held prior to becoming presuppositionless, thereby vaulting over the issues of the unseriousness of theology by becoming “necessarily objective” in a way which is identical in form to their subjective opinions. As an inversion of the Marxist-American man-in-the-woods, these thinkers seem to move seamlessly from what we want to happen to doing the exact opposite of what we want to happen, before nestling back into the comfort of what we want to happen but academically respectable now. Such a thing I previously thought impossible before someone explained it so simply—it is a shame, however, that this esoteric knowledge has largely been locked behind paywalls because, I presume, this “necessarily objective” approach, which seems to be, in appearance and apparently only in appearance, a passionate desire justified through backwards reasoning, i.e., the fruits of personal reflection, would be the final irrefutable proof that God exists regardless of how one feels about that. Such shame must befall the Anselms, the Aquinases, the Descarteses, the Leibnizs of history, who simply never thought that proposing an objective, modern, respectable form of an argument for God’s existence was all that was needed in order to bring about the kingdom.

As an unserious theologian who has no time for such elaborate and apparently serious modes of inquiry, I will simply leave that particular apparently confused contradiction to serious thinkers who share their ideas without even thinking about them—or, for the most advanced, thinking them at all.

To preach

We have finally arrived at our first destination. However, it now feels that much of the discussion has been had—it appears that the veracity of the meaningfulness of preaching and, more broadly, theology, in general, is found not in the direct contact with the concepts themselves but in dealing with how they relate to one another. It would be improper to suppose this, however.

There is something that we can identify here, however, my reader. That, despite the overwhelming message here that the preaching and the scripture that the preaching derives its material from is not something which we can count as serious and, therefore, set to the business of applying truth values to certain propositions in truth tables—thereby saving those who come after us from having to engage in the embarrassing exposure that comes from having thoughts about things—which will put the ongoing debates that have plagued humanity since Adam first entered into matrimonial dispute, despite the problems that plague our unserious subject have been chopped up and allocated to the more serious thinkers of the world, despite the simple admission that people are not interested nor reliant upon the “necessarily objective” for their faith to remain, even if it falls below the threshold of certainty; despite all this, it is clear that there is also a positive aspect to preaching, something that says we do actually engage in something when we peach that has some purpose in the world. In a world, having learned again to turn to the sceptics, Hegel, and the like, where everything is understood in a series of “no!”s—possibly inspired by our Marxist American man-in-the-woods friend that we met above, who knows full well that understanding reality as an endless chain of “no”s relating to other “no”s saves him from having to ever actually plant a platform, a desire, a telos that someone could easily disprove with a certain kind of sagacious bend—we, the unserious theologians, shall embarrassingly venture out into the world where we say “yes!” to reality.

The alarming break that grinds all this glassy-eyed exposition to a stop, where we have forgotten to pay our respects to the subject-object divide—a thought that all presuppostionless philosophers arrive without having thought it before they started to think, if they had thought at all—which stops us from engaging in the serious matter of a theology which could convince the faithless to the point of saying “hmm, interesting” and could bemuse the faithful to the point of saying nothing at all, is that the evaluator of scripture—a rather brutish figure who threatens all those who think they have something to preach, possibly on the grounds that they have thought before they engaged with the source material—is not only ever-present before the preacher, but also present within the preacher who preaches in the mode of the good preacher and in the faces of those poor souls—the poorest of all imaginable being those who have to listen to a straight reading of the text—who suffer under the weight of the world and are offered the merest morsel as recompense: a sermon. Attempting to think seriously for a moment, it appears that the evaluator preaches himself to himself in the presence of himself—to slightly abuse Ockham’s razor, what precisely is objectively added to this process by having people carry out the process? Preaching then, it seems, becomes a matter of one individual living out a plan for all those who are subjected to it rather unparsimoniously by adding unnecessary factors to a practice which is necessary yet also, seemingly, unnecessary.

But to preach, still, does offer us some rather important things in the modern world—obviously, as all good knowledge we have in our modernist epoch, in the form of a binary. This binary comes in the form of the magisterial and the practical; although there is a certain attractiveness in opposing these as a positive and a negative factor, I am sure the “high church” amongst us, whose vision of indwelling is preceded by the aesthetic of “bells and smells”, would not be terribly impressed to be referred to as the “impractical”.

When the church exists as a corporate body, as a magisterial corporation that forms an institutional cornerstone in society, then preaching takes on the quality of authority. This authority, as is all good authority, is drawn then from the functions which grant it power: the larger church body, itself a respectable business, will need to provide and receive funds from congregants; the land on which a particular church will gain authority from rent paid; the political character of the church, if it should exercise it towards a particular end or not, will gain a certain authority in a concordance or opposition with a particular political stance adopted by the surrounding society; the continued allowance of freedom of expression means that the church is granted authority by the state; and so on and so on. This, then, delivers a certain respectability and granted authority that the preacher can draw upon in order to convert the would-be faithful. This, of course, sits awkwardly with scripture, where it is only God that is identified as the faith-providing factor, however, this is presumably some kind of metaphor which we can draw upon in order for us to avoid providing explanations which would put us at odds with the world—the task of the unserious but confused thinker. I again plead to my philosophically-minded superior, who no doubt has a preprepared argument that confirms this faith-statement—thereby absolving us from the duty of thinking about the problem for ourselves. In truth, it is as a rent-paying, corporate function of society which acts in accordance with the state and the worldly elements in the immediate vicinity of the church which grants it the authority to preach.

This, however, causes a problem for our Marxian-in-the-woods: how, precisely, do we gain such authority if we are isolated from a magisterial organization? Without the authority of the state behind it, how does this preacher gain authority at all? If we turn to these queer folk who stumble into contact with the society they so obviously pull away from—much like Diogenes the Cynic, completely opposed to the Greek civility he despised, but completely reliant thereupon in order for his survival—it is clear that “street-preaching” becomes a mode of gaining authority via the will of the individual; in a clear display of neighbour-behaviour, in becoming the object that is completely unlovable (because who would be converted by a street preacher? Such are the mysteries of the Lord!), it is all the more clear that standing in the street with a microphone and an amplifier² is the mode by which we gain the authority to grant permission to God to deliver faith to the unwashed masses. This, again, is far too much for my unserious approach to theology; in what way does this surrender of magisterial authority but wilful claiming of self-authority show that someone seeks first the kingdom? And, if this is the mode by which the Lord wished us to operate, why did He separate His revelation so distantly from the invention of the transportable amplifier? If God wished for us to preach merely by the mode of asserting self-authority in the presence of the unfaithful, what precisely does that mean for those who came before us and did not see that as useful? A conundrum, to be sure.

Despite their appearances, these two approaches have the same unifying factor: their “churchiness”. This might seem strange at first glance, however, it should be clear what is meant on reflection—they both gain their authority by some factor which allows for ethical implicature to be cast upon the unfaithful, the disaffected, or simply the bored, which, when authority is properly captured, is then granted to God. The case for magisterial and practical preaching, then, is most profoundly rooted in the notion that they provide God with authority; through their desired actions that they have lifted from their understanding of scripture, they are first to speak and then to consider. In this sense, “tradition” seems to be created by each and every preacher, a useful kind of “case law” compliment to scripture that the Lord was rather foolish to forget when he delivered His self-revelation to us unaccompanied. Again, I will need a serious thinker here to show me why this approach does not undermine conventional accounts of theological importance, e.g., divine command ethics, divine supremacy, Original Sin, the sinfulness of secular desire, etc., but such a case is made clear by this brief exploration that, no doubt, any further inquiry into these methods—both pre-modern and modern in form—presumably require no further investigation and can be taken on faith—grounded, again presumably presuppositionlessly, in the authority of the preacher alone or the preacher who stands as an approved functionary of the state—that they suffice in granting authority to God and then, as such, delivering authority to God.

Not to preach

Sadly, my reader, I find myself in a cul-de-sac of my own making. I have, somehow, managed to argue away from what I think—I might have accidentally argued out of the unserious grounds that theology rests upon and towards a serious investigation into the “necessarily objective” demand that preaching can be shown to provide anything at all, outside of light entertainment for i) those who were brought up listening to preaching and ii) fathers-of-five in midlife crises, who have turned ecclesiastical politics into their hobby instead of growing a garish hairstyle or learning to ride a motorcycle. Those groups are not the only groups that occupy the pews when Sunday morning rolls around, however, but they are i) a helpful defence against fanatics and radical political types who would use the church towards their own ends and ii) the mainstay of virtual spaces where adults can argue with children in order to quell their crisis thinking. But this notion, then, that preaching is the mode by which we deliver human-founded authority to God is a difficult one to argue around—does this mean that, if we should not wish to grant authority to God, that we should not preach?

The case is difficult; however, like all difficult topics, we might consider not what we ought to think, but rather what we ought to do. As the ethicist to the metaphysician, it is rather embarrassing to admit that something only makes sense in the realm of the practical as opposed to the abstract. Abstractions, perfectly objective in that they do not exist in the mind of those who think about the real problems of being a living and breathing person, are the mode by which we grant authority to the divine to allow faith to be delivered to both our own minds and the minds of those not yet converted. The preacher, as illustrated above, plays in this divine mysticism as a conduit, a stagehand who signals to the altogether disinterested or simply oblivious Almighty—over all but his attention—that there is a sheep in searching of being brought back into the flock. These particular types of preaching, noted in their “churchiness”, their ethical lessons, and their promise of the good life and comfort, are predicated on the idea that God is, at heart, an Epicurean. As such, one should think, we should also become Epicureans—hedonists caught up in the happiness of never thinking outside of the safe bounds of objectivity, of wielding scripture as the bounds by which the Lord is held, the blueprint for a good society or an ethical code. They grant authority to the Almighty—mightier still for being granted authority—and, as such, are the objective locus by which we understand theology. It becomes serious, matterful even, in the hands of the skill preacher, granted his official position by the state and the various other bodies which hand him authority as a placeholder until God is ready to be called to action, to be compelled to grant faith. The man-in-the-woods, the magisterial preacher, the philosopher-cum-divine-theorizer: they are united in this stance.

But, what should happen if we don’t take these modes? What should happen if we refuse to grant God authority? What happens if preaching, neither grounded in the authority of the state nor in the willfulness of the street-preacher, then proceeds without authority in a world that demands its authority is taken seriously? Again, I am but a humble, unserious theologian on this matter—and on this matter, I say that we might wish to stop preaching. To abandon “churchiness” in all forms, we should cease to preach and to simply proclaim; we turn away from ethical codes, from societal structures, from theo-sociological theories, and turn to what we might do. And, by rejecting the authority of the state (politely) and also the authority of the self (politely), we might find that there are avenues as yet unexplored, as yet untilled, as yet untouched. The preacher, it seems, carries the methods of the world in that they carry the methods which everyone appeals to—preaching to the choir, openly identifying a “gang” which will gleefully (or, possibly more often, reluctantly but consistently) received the ethical codes, the societal structures, and the theo-sociological theories; and, in doing so, draws the theological message into comparison with secular matters of ethics, society, and sociology. The preacher, it seems, reduces scripture to a thesis, a kind of divinely inspired treatise which we can critique and chew over, ponder and reflect upon, liberally gather up or ignore; God, by virtue of his comparison to the Epicureans, becomes an Epicurean in the comparative lens we apply to him. In the mouth of the preacher, it seems, this objective approach cuts off the mode by which God purports to reach out to us.

When we abandon these modes, these approaches which simply mirror the world around us, we might find something far more minor in character—a whisper in the desert, perhaps. In the space where the preacher, the presenter of theological theories of how to approach the issues such as love and war, works so deftly and powerfully, we find that there is the space where objectivity rules; the congregation is seemingly raised up above itself—however, in surrendering their subjective wants, desires, the love of the Lord and all that is good, remain rooted to the rickety pews that they populate. The mind ascends over the real, and Descartes and Leibniz are called into action once more as the ideal ascends further, further above the possible in the beautiful objectivity of the abstraction—what we think, it appears, is prior to what we do. Only in understanding that salvation comes through Christ—this understanding being absolute certainty, presumably grounded in a scripture that was yet to be written—could the disciples really take up their position as disciples; only in understanding what we must think can we actually start to do, possibly. The preacher, whether he be or merely speaks to the man-in-the-woods, the philosopher-philistine, the street-preacher, the magisterial conduit, begins all of life as if he were God: it is the thought that gives rise to the action, it is the ideal that gives rise to the real; much like God speaks reality into existence, the preacher creates his congregants ex nihilio. The one who proclaims, however, starts in the opposite sense; the congregation is met where they are met, in their ugly subjectivity, in their weariness, in their tired and broken bodies that long for Christ. They have thoughts and are reminded of them by their longing for communion—and, in this space, we find the proclaimer.

The “objective necessity” that my life should be mine and totally mine in toto is surrendered by the proclaimer; the “objective necessity” that all my choices spring from me and me alone is surrendered by the proclaimer; the “objective necessity” that there is a correct way to live ethically, politically, and sociologically is surrendered by the proclaimer; the “objective necessity” that we can grant God authority over us by the strength of our conviction and will is surrendered by the proclaimer; all is surrendered in the face of our task—our task to do. The one who has never had a thought at all looks upon the ugly, broken, and weary congregation and says “the Lord, I have decided, says we ought to live in such and such a way”; the one who is filled with the rush of blood in the face of the neighbour, the one who comforts the mourning, the one who holds with the meek, the one who tends to the hungry, the one who is merciful to the guilty, the one who is forgiving with the impure, the one who is peaceful with the enraged—the one who thinks from their life and about the life of the neighbour does not offer theories, they offer doing. Seriousness is abandoned, unseriousness is adopted—there is no time for thought, for reflection; there is only time for action, for doing, for subjectivity amongst subjects who do not grant authority but are gifted forgiveness. The proclaimer stands opposite the preacher—and the choice remains.

“Though it is often tried, such skills [of sanctification] can never be reduced to techniques. For example, learning to live in such a way that I need not fear death means coming to a real understanding that Jesus has for all times defeated death. The skill does not come easily, yet it is the truth. The challenge is in making it true for myself. But the good news is I cannot learn it by myself. We learn such a truth only by being initiated into it by others. That is why the question of the nature and form of the church is the center of any attempt to develop Christian ethics.”³

1. My reader, I leave it to you to decide whether these words describes the stories or the listeners.

2. Sometimes, tastefully complimented with some artistic expression in the form of a sandwich board or, for the less artistically talented, a simple posterboard.

3. “Jesus and the Social Embodiment of the Peaceable Kingdom”, from The Hauerwas Reader, p. 141, S. Hauerwas, ed. J. Berkman and M. Cartwright