'So to Speak' the Word of God

Years ago now, at a gathering of Partners in Covenant Communications, Herbert Palmquist opened a wonderful window for us all on the craft and art of preaching. It all began with the humorous story of an elderly janitor in the old Lafayette, Indiana, Covenant Church, who in taking him on a tour through the facility chorused all his descriptions of settings within it with the phrase, "so to speak." Pointing to the platform area, for example, he said, "There is where the choir sings, so to speak, and there [referencing the pulpit] is where the pastor preaches, so to speak." No matter where Palmquist was led the same chorus applied--the kitchen where the ladies cooked, the bathrooms where people "relieved themselves," curtained off places where Sunday School teachers taught, a janitor's room where his tools were--every place was tied to someone who did their thing there, "so to speak."

We were all in stitches, until Palmquist artfully transitioned to what he as a preacher had come to share. With an inviting wisdom born of disciplined labor over years and an evident awareness of the mysteries that remain beyond all our efforts to proclaim God's word, he invited us to explore with him what it means "'So to Speak' the Word of God. "

David Buttrick in his classic book on Homiletic (Fortress, 1987) believes that "a sermon built on "three points and a poem" is dead: rationalistic, linear, ineffective as it was. Even today's 'biblical preaching' gives us a past-tense God of past-tense events whose past-tense truth ('original meaning') may be applied to the world, while God remains hidden within a gilt-edged book." Such preaching, Buttrick says, failed to name God in the present world. Preaching "must dare to name God in conjunction with the world of lived experience." When we "name God with the world, then biblical stories become meaningful....

"So what are we thrown back on?" asks Buttrick. "We are flung back on a confidence in the gospel, trust in the grace of God, and prayer for the Holy Spirit with us... [Preachers] have been chosen to speak God's own word. No wonder year in, year out, preaching is terror and gladness.... We speak as we live, in the mysteries of grace."