Alive to the Word. Stephen I. Wright

He cites eight: entertainment, narrative, consumerism, an ethos of suspicion in public life and reluctance to commit oneself deeply, ‘virtual’ relationships, celebrity, ‘liquid modernity’ and a ‘post-Christendom’ era in which there remain remarkable signs of Christian life and influence. He proceeds to give an incisive account of the potential of this atmosphere for Christian communication of the gospel, as well as the paradoxes entailed in becoming so immersed in it that the influence is predominantly one-way, from culture to preaching.

      Here I want to take Standing’s argument a little further and summarize some ways in which preaching with its own ‘strangeness’ might already be positively influencing this strange contemporary British cultural pot-pourri, and could influence it further.

First, preaching may be a voice of reconciliation within the mistrustful and often polarized arena of public discourse. Deborah Tannen writes about the ‘argument culture’ which shapes so much of this discourse, especially in the media and politics.[9] Tannen is not at all opposed to argument per se, but rather to ‘ritualized opposition, in contrast to the literal opposition of genuine disagreement’.[10] Prime Minister’s Questions and tabloid journalism are examples which immediately spring to mind. One hopes that the echoes of a past in which the pulpit itself was a place for ritualized denunciation of ‘the world’, or other Christian traditions, are getting fainter now – though the memory of more adversarial times may linger, not least because ‘preaching’ has become associated with repeated scares about the ‘extremism’ of a minority of Muslims. But if preaching is allowed to be truly a vehicle for God’s own act of reconciliation (2 Cor. 5.18–19), its positive influence could be incalculable. The fact that many congregations are multicultural now places particular demands on the preacher, but also offers a glorious opportunity for the reconciling nature of this ministry to be manifested.

Second, preaching may come as a moment of refreshing and personal simplicity after the frenetic virtual world of internet exchange in which ‘friends’ may be ‘online’, yet are not ‘there’. This might particularly be true when preaching directly, interactively and without notes.[11] Preaching might call people out of over-immersion in the virtual and the impersonal. Tannen points out how one-way communication, such as the blanket email from boss to workers, or a message on an answerphone, can express aggression and therefore feed defensiveness in a way which does not happen in face-to-face communication.[12] Preaching may be largely one-way at the time, but at least the preacher is standing before the hearers, able to gauge their responses, and receive them orally afterwards. It may offer a salutary reminder to our culture of the vulnerability at the heart of personal relationships, expressed most clearly when we are physically present to each other.

      Third, preaching can also function as a necessary and reassuring voice of wisdom in an ether awash with ‘knowledge’ which few know how to judge. Maybe the very difficulty and strangeness of preaching – sometimes – is a vital pointer beyond the immediately exciting, ever-changing yet ephemeral world of the small screen.

      Fourth, preachers can use a language which deliberately eschews some of the debased forms of speech in circulation today. For example, the ideology of consumerism spreads in a sinister way from the economic to the linguistic sphere, and language shapes perceptions in all sorts of subtle ways (one hears, for instance, about the way people ‘consume new media’). This is a sign of the central place the desires of the self, and the desire for things now, have in the psyche of today’s society. All too easily, Christians may play along with this in the way that a variety of forms of church life and practice are ‘marketed’. Indeed, some forms of preaching can be in reality an exercise in self-marketing or church-marketing, whereas a conscious resistance to using such language can help preaching to be a truly transformative event. Our words can evoke another world, a sphere of free giving, a sphere in which others are as important as ourselves, a sphere in which patience is possible because the future is known to be far more glorious than the present, a sphere in which the human-driven ‘success’ of the Church counts for nothing in comparison with the God-empowered growth of his kingdom.

It is important to think particularly about the way in which the influence of preaching on culture (and vice versa) may change if it happens in the open air rather than within the safe walls of the church.[13] We will return to this topic in Chapter 8 when we consider patterns and practices of preaching. In the open, the preacher is much more obviously a competitor. There is no hiding-place. He or she may choose to imitate some of the tactics of other ‘open-air performers’ such as street actors, or to offer a ‘performance’ in stark contrast to theirs. Neither option should be prejudged as the more potentially transformative. The judgement and response of the public, if any, will be thoroughly conditioned by their expectations and preferences concerning what may happen in such ‘public space’. In church, the preacher is in an important sense on his or her own turf, in a position of control, and members of the general ‘public’ who enter will probably be aware on some level that they are moving into a different cultural arena. This may make them somewhat disorientated and vulnerable. Church buildings, therefore, certainly act to some extent as cultural ‘screens’ which may shield Christians from contemporary culture as well as shielding contemporary culture from Christian witness. Yet those individuals and groups who have the courage to take the gospel to the ‘streets’ may find that it yet has more influence there than many of us have dared to hope.

      Theology

Christian theology is the Church’s continued reflection on the meaning of God’s revelation and its implications for our lives. It never stands still, for as the world changes, so our interaction with God’s unique self-disclosure, in Israel and above all in Christ, must change too.[14] For a simple example, we might take our response to the phenomenon of consumerism, just mentioned. The Bible and Christian doctrine give us much practical and challenging guidance about attitudes to money and possessions, and a vision of that which is of true worth. But consumerism as we know it is a new phenomenon, which requires new thinking about how we relate this teaching to our own culture. The depth, or shallowness, of our thought about what it means to be a Christian in a ‘consumer society’ will be evident to others. To what extent is it hypocritical to enjoy its benefits (which are real) while decrying its practices? Simplistic challenges to ‘give’ when most people are in debt will be heard for what they are. Is it possible to ‘give’ when, in truth, you don’t actually ‘have’? In wealthier churches (which includes churches composed of people who can just afford high mortgages), how can preachers and congregations remember the poor, who are precisely those most taunted and excluded by consumerism? Such questions require careful and creative theological thought, not simplistic answers.[15]

      Preaching and theology (as we might say) ‘go back a long way’ together. In the early centuries of Christianity, before the Bible and other literature were widely accessible to the general public, and long before Christian theology broke from being an area of study confined to Church circles, preaching was the main means of both doing creative theology and voicing the theological thinking that had been shaping the Church. Indeed, some of those known as the greatest theological thinkers of the early Church are also those known as some of the greatest preachers, and vice versa: Origen, Gregory Nazianzen, Augustine.

If preaching is not such a ‘spearhead’ for theology today, this is not necessarily because either discipline has either declined or is discredited (though some say that both these things are true, of either or both discipline). It may be precisely because those early preacher-theologians did their job so well. For their preaching, and especially the Scriptural interpretation it contained, have survived to a remarkable degree in written form; nor did they see any divide between the oral and written aspects of their