How Odd of God to choose human beings, like me, to share the word of God with the world. Or
perhaps putting it a bit differently, what makes me think that my words
from the pulpit can be a vehicle for God to speak to a congregation? The
fact is, the effect of my words on a congregation isn't in my hands.
That doesn't mean I don't prepare or work hard at my craft. It simply
means that once the words leave my mouth they are no longer mine.Those are the kinds of things Willimon ponders in this excellent little book. The book How Odd of God is the published form of Willimon's 2014 Macleod lectures on Preaching at Princeton Theological Seminary. Willimon writes in the opening paragraph of the book's introduction that "election is God's act whereby our lives are wrenched out of our control and we are commandeered to witness, thereby enabling the joy of talking about something more important than ourselves, our families, or our churches" (p. ix). There is a clear theme throughout the book. Preaching has to do with God and not us. We preach because God chooses to speak through us. That is, it starts with theology, not anthropology.
To be honest, it didn't take reading this book to learn that lesson. In fact, it's among one of the first things I learned from Will when I was in seminary all those years ago. In full disclosure, Will was the Dean of Duke Chapel, when I was a student and worked in the Chapel on the religious life staff.
So I know Will's voice can be prickly. I learned, from Will and Stan Hauerwas, that serving as a pastor would require that I be willing to put my finger in the eye of the current experts on things religious, including preaching. That's what Will does in How Odd of God.
If I'm clear, then, I had to admit the obvious: This book will be difficult to digest for lots of people -- pastors who currently serve, and seminary students who have imbibed so much of what's taught in lots of preaching classes in lots of seminaries these days.
While Will certainly isn't a conservative, liberals will find his account of preaching even more difficult to absorb. That's because Will intends that preachers take God in Jesus Christ seriously -- that the scandal of the particularity that is the Incarnation and its election of human beings to participate in the work of reconciliation is a real thing.
Like Barth before him, Will insists in this important book that when preaching attempts to make the Gospel palatable to the modern world, it always loses something really important -- it loses the soul of the Gospel itself. Sorry, but if you went to a seminary where Schliermacher and Tillich were taken seriously, you'll scratch your head when reading this book.
It's hardly a surprise, then, that I'd find this book such a comforting challenge.
The book itself has seven chapters, that together lead us from the "oddness of God" to the homiletical implications of Barth's doctrine of election. Willimon isn't concerned about method in this book. He's interested in the vocation of the preacher. He wants preachers to take hold of their vocation so they can find freedom to witness to the Gospel. He's concerned that American Christians have come to believe that democracy makes it possible to follow Jesus and not get hurt. We're spiritual, but not religious, and when we embrace such a message than Christianity becomes non-threatening. In Willimon's mind that's not a good thing -- and I think he's right. Sincerity, not intensity, is the key marker of this modern Christianity. Thus, Christianity becomes domesticated.
(If you're looking for a how-to book, try Willimon's Conversations with Barth on Preaching; or, even better, try Barth's own Prayer and Preaching itself.)
In contrast to those (Tillichian) domesticated visions of Christianity, Willimon wants to put an uncontrollable God back in control. With Barth he wants our preaching to be Christocentric. He does this by focusing on the doctrine of election -- as famously rearticulated by Barth. That's an important phrase, because Barth understands election differently from most traditional versions that envision this in individualistic terms.* For Barth, God isn't choosing individuals, as if one person makes it into heaven and another doesn't. No, God is choosing humanity as a whole in Christ to be in relationship with God. This election isn't an afterthought; it is eternal. Election is about self-revelation of God in Christ. Willimon writes that "election is not so much a claim about our future destiny as about the primordial origin of God's history with us, that dynamic whereby God graciously, from the beginning, unreservedly engages our history and sets in motion our salvation, engaging and saving even to death" (p. 29).
So don't pick up this book if you're looking for a how-to-preach technique guide. Instead, Willimon focuses not on the "how" but on the "why" question. Preachers who pick up the book will find in its pages, challenges to conventional wisdom. Those challenges, though, are prophetic challenges based on Jesus Christ himself. And they're challenges that pastors need to confront.
What preachers will discover is a message about letting God be in control. They will hear that those who are elected to the vocation of preaching, if they are faithful to their calling, will let the Bible control their preaching. Willimon is an advocate of lectionary preaching (as am I -- mostly), and suggests that preaching is first and foremost an exposition of Scripture. This understanding is rooted in Barth's vision of the three-fold word of God. If Christ is the Word, and Scripture is witness to that Word, then preaching becomes the Word when it begins in Scripture and points to Christ as God's self-revelation. With this in mind, preachers shouldn't be concerned about making their message palatable to the surrounding culture. Here he points to a Kierkegaard statement that the biggest danger to Christianity isn't heresy, but cordiality. Again, this is the problem of liberalism, it domesticates Christianity. In our attempts to make our message relevant we lose the edge present in Scripture.
Preachers who are willing to take How Odd of God seriously will probably find a harder time fitting in in a domesticated, cordial Christianity. I can't say how often I hear churches say they want "relevant preaching". But I always wonder: "Relevant to what?" I'm really not interested in relevant preaching. I'm interested in revolutionary preaching -- preaching that acknowledges the freedom with which God confronts the world in Jesus Christ.
But in the end, How Odd of God is a comforting message for guys like me. I admit all the time that I'm really not a good preacher. I fail more often than I "succeed". But because God has chosen me to preach, my preaching isn't in my hands. That doesn't give me an excuse for shoddy sermons that are due to a lack of preparation. Letting God speak doesn't mean standing in the pulpit hoping God will say something! It's good to remember as well that as helpful as method and technique might be, ultimately what matters is God's Word and our witness to that Word. Thus, this is an important book for preachers to read, even if at times you want to put it down.
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* For Barth, predestination is God's choice and determination of his own being. God chooses to be the kind of God he is -- he elects to be the gracious God, the human God -- and he chooses not to be without humanity. God's eternal being is nothing other than this free decision. God constitutes himself in this decision. And the name of this decision is Jesus Christ.
This is why, for Barth, the doctrine of election is part of the doctrine of God: God is his own decision; he is who he elects to be. And this is also why Barth calls the doctrine of election "the sum of the gospel": The good news of the gospel is that God will never be anything other than what he has decided to be in Jesus Christ.
If we look into the face of God, we will never see anything other than the face of Jesus Christ. This is the meaning of election for Barth.