 |  Preaching to today's fragmented congregations.
Winter 2000
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Foundations Glorious Foolishness
Mark Labberton
January 1, 2000
Every preacher knows the moment. The music has faded, the congregation is seated and becoming still, the text has been read, the prayer finished, and the amen uttered. Then, for a brief moment, the preacher in silence looks into the faces of the congregation, as they return the gaze. The avalanche of words, which will tumble from pulpit to pew, has yet to begin.
In that sacred, compressed, expectant, momentary silence are many things, and not least this hope: that what is about to occur, especially if the sermon is a good one, will be foolishness from start to finish.
This is what I mean.
The fool's foundation
Good preaching is foolishness (1 Cor. 1:21) first because of its conviction that God exists. The preacher's foolish passion describes and depicts that before we human beings dance or weep, construct or deconstruct, self-actualize or empower, will or suffer, God is.
Little could be more audacious in a postmodern world than to assume, as the biblical preacher must, that the universe is not empty and meaningless, that reality is not our own making, that we are not free agents of self-will, and that our language does not constitute the universe.
Without such conviction, and even more, without such divine reality behind it, the preacher should never enter the pulpit. For unless God is, the preacher—well, forget the preacher.
The biblical premise for reality is named in Scripture's fourth word: "In the beginning God … " Change that fourth word to biochemistry, to power, to language, to culture, to spirituality, to economics, to sexuality, to intentions, to feelings, or simply eliminate God entirely, and there would be no word to speak to anyone, for there would be no world. In humble confidence, the biblical preacher ...
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