American University Studies VII Theology and Religion, Volume 2

The Sacramentality of Preaching
SERIES VII THEOLOGY AND RELIGION VOL. 286
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
PETER LANG
Todd Townshend

Homiletical Uses of Louis-Marie Chauvets Theology of Sacramentality
New York y Washington, D.C./Baltimore y Bern Frankfurt am Main y Berlin y Brussels y Vienna y Oxford
PETER LANG
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Townshend, Todd. The sacramentality of preaching: homiletical uses of Louis-Marie Chauvets theology of sacramentality / Todd Townshend. p. cm. (American university studies VII, Theology and religion; v. 286) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Preaching. 2. Liturgical preaching. 3. Sacraments (Liturgy) 4. Chauvet, Louis Marie. Du symbolique au symbole. 5. Catholic preaching. 6. SacramentsCatholic Church. I. Title. BV4211.3.T69 251dc22 2009011011 ISBN 978-1-4331-0516-6 ISSN 0740-0446
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2009 Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., New York 29 Broadway, 18th floor, New York, NY 10006 www.peterlang.com All rights reserved. Reprint or reproduction, even partially, in all forms such as microfilm, xerography, microfiche, microcard, and offset strictly prohibited. Printed in Germany
This work is dedicated to Tyne Townshend and Seth Townshend, who were born while it was being written, in gratitude to God for their mother, Stacey Townshend. In them, and in all of my family, I recognize gift and grace.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................... xiii List of Diagrams ........................................................................................................... xv Chapter One: Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics............................ 1 Introduction................................................................................................................ 1 A Note about Terminology ................................................................................. 2 Liturgical Preaching, Sacramental Preaching, and the Sacramentality of Preaching ................................................................. 2 Word and Sacrament: Two Terms in TurmoilDuel or Duet? ............... 5 Liturgical Preaching 1950 to 1963 (the Commencement of Vatican II)....... 7 Textbooks ............................................................................................................... 7 Beyond the Textbooks: Five Protestant Voices ............................................... 9 H.S. Coffin: The Sacramental Sermon .................................................... 10 R.H. Fuller: The Liturgical Sermon.......................................................... 12 Donald Macleod: The Worshipful Sermon ............................................ 15 Thomas H. Keir: Preaching as a Sacramental Encounter ........................ 17 Jean-Jacques von Allmen: Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics ....................................................................... 19 Summary and Analysis........................................................................................ 20 Liturgical Preaching Before, During, and After Vatican II........................... 24 Points of Convergence in the Theology of Word and Sacrament............... 24 The Twentieth Century: A Context of Radical Change ................................ 26 Vatican II Theologians: Three Roman Catholic Voices ........................... 28 Otto Semmelroth ............................................................................................ 29 Karl Rahner...................................................................................................... 30 Edward Schillebeeckx..................................................................................... 32 Summary and Direction .......................................................................................... 34 Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics............................................... 36 Proclamation and Sacramentality...................................................................... 36 Sacramentality Defined....................................................................................... 38 The Sacramentality of Preaching....................................................................... 40
viii The Sacramentality of Preaching Chapter Two: Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order...................................... 43 A Trinitarian Approach to the Whole Mystery of Christ .................................. 43 The Linguistic Turn ................................................................................................. 48 The Human Subject in Language and Culture................................................ 48 Language as Instrument ..................................................................................... 49 Language as Mediation ....................................................................................... 50 Symbol, the Symbolic Order, and Symbolic Efficacy.................................... 53 The Ancient Symbol ........................................................................................... 53 Analysis: Four Traits of a Symbol and the Act of Symbolization ............... 55 Sign and Symbol .................................................................................................. 56 The Sign............................................................................................................ 56 The Symbol ...................................................................................................... 57 Symbolic EfficacySpeech as substantial bread ....................................... 60 The Ecclesial Turn................................................................................................... 62 The Christian Subject in the Language and Culture of the Church ............ 62 Patterns in Scripture: What Makes the Church the Church?........................ 62 Three Key Texts: Three Theological Insights about the Passage to Faith.................................................................................... 63 One Key Chapter: Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke.............................. 64 One Key Story: The Story of the Disciples of Emmaus as a Glimpse of the Church ..................................................................... 66 The Mediation of the Church: A Structure of Relations............................... 67 The Pole SCR .............................................................................................. 69 The Pole SAC .............................................................................................. 70 The Pole ETH ............................................................................................. 70 Summary of Chapter and Implications for Homiletics...................................... 72 A Trinitarian Approach to the Whole Paschal Mystery of Christ ............... 73 Language as Mediation ....................................................................................... 75 Sign and Symbol .................................................................................................. 75 The Language of the Church: Identity and Mission ...................................... 76 Where Does Preaching Fit In? .......................................................................... 77
Table of Contents ix Chapter Three: The Dynamic within the Structure: Sacramentality as Symbolic-Exchange and a Hermeneutical Lens for Preaching Grace............. 81 Introduction and Transition from Structure to Dynamics................................ 81 Mary Catherine Hilkert: Structure according to Imaginations ................. 83 Mary Catherine Hilkert: Dynamics (the Underlying Theology of Grace)......................................................................................... 84 Grace as Symbolic Exchange ................................................................................. 88 Gift Exchange: A Metaphor for the Relationship between Human Subjects .............................................................................. 88 Traditional Societies........................................................................................ 89 Contemporary Western Societies and the Vocabulary of Exchange ...... 90 Symbolic Exchange: Outside the Order of Value.......................................... 92 A Metaphor for the Relationship between God and Humankind .......... 93 Theological Advantages ................................................................................. 94 Theological Analysis ....................................................................................... 95 The Blessing Prayer as a Hermeneutical Key for Preaching...........................101 A Brief Excursus on Bless ...........................................................................102 Symbolic Exchange between Humanity and God: The Eucharistic Prayer .................................................................................103 (NP1) Thanksgiving and Praise for the Gift (past tense) .......................104 (NP2) Reception of the Gift (move from past tense to present tense) .....................................................................106 (NP3) The Promise of a Future which is already/not-yet......................107 Summary..................................................................................................................108
Chapter Four: Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory: A Conception ..............................................................................................111 Sacramentality and Homiletics.............................................................................111 Gods Present Self-Disclosure.........................................................................115 The Diagram as a Paradigm: Preaching from a Place in-the-midst: A Word from the Perspective of Faith ..........................................................117 In the Middle......................................................................................................118 Cautions .....................................................................................................118 As a Guide ..........................................................................................................120 Faith at the Centre.............................................................................................121
The Sacramentality of Preaching The Sacramentality of Preaching in Dialogue with Homiletics......................123 Preaching as EventSomething Happens ...................................................124 Preaching as PerformanceIt Does What it Says.......................................126 Preaching as Formation and TransformationThe Gift of Identity and Conversion ..............................................................................127 Trans/formation by Law or Gospel?.........................................................128 Law and Gospelthe Trouble-Grace school .....................................129 Summary..................................................................................................................131 Four Theses to Strengthen the Sacramentality of Preaching .....................133 The Diagram as a Heuristic: The Movement through SCR, SAC, ETH as Signposts for Preparation ........................................................................136 Homiletical Advantages of using Three Poles ..............................................136 Movement ......................................................................................................136 Various Perspectives.....................................................................................137 Creative Tension (a Charged Atmosphere) ..........................................137 Particularity ....................................................................................................137 A Biblical Pattern and Some Homiletical Guidelines ..................................138 Guidelines for the SCR Dimensions of Preaching ..................................140 On the Border of SCR and SAC ................................................................144 Guidelines for the SAC Dimensions of Preaching ..................................146 On the Border of SAC and ETH ...............................................................148 Guidelines for the ETH Dimensions of Preaching .....................................150 On the Border of ETH and SCR ...............................................................153
Chapter Five: The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson: A Practice............................................................................155 The Teaching and Learning of Homiletics ........................................................155 A Pastoral Homiletic.........................................................................................156 The Practice of Preaching Within the Mediation of the Church ...................158 Why Wilson ........................................................................................................158 The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Model, a Method, or a Grammar? .....160 A Habitus of Homiletics ..................................................................................162 The Community of the Practice......................................................................165 Incorporating the Sacramentality of Preaching into the Four Pages.........166 An Introductory Course in Homiletics ..........................................................167
Table of Contents xi Stage One of Preparation: To Listen .........................................................167 Homiletical Exegesis: A God-Centered Paradigm ..................................169 Stage Two of Preparation: To Converse...................................................170 Homiletical Theology: Focussing on an Action of God ........................171 Labelling Concerns, Sorting Out to Pages, and Theological Intervention .....................................................................172 Stage Three of Preparation: To Compose ................................................175 Stage Four: To Preach (and to Listen again) ............................................176 Summary of the Book ...........................................................................................177
Notes ............................................................................................................................183 Works Cited ................................................................................................................227 Index.............................................................................................................................235
LIST OF DIAGRAMS
1. The Paschel Mystery of Christ .............................................................................. 46 2. Language as Instrument .......................................................................................... 49 3. Language as Meditation........................................................................................... 51 4. The Symbolic Mediation of the Church: The Structure of Christian Identity ....................................................................... 68 5. The Structure of Christian Identity (revised)....................................................... 68 6. The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching .............................78, 117, 173 7. Gift-Reception-Return Gift.................................................................................... 93 8. Gift-Reception-Return Gift (expanded).............................................................108 9. Three Poles of Preaching......................................................................................136
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge the invaluable guidance given by Paul Scott Wilson, Stephen Farris, Arthur Van Seters, D. Jay Koyle, John Chapman, the assistance provided by Bob Gervais, Tim Vine, and Jeff Timmermans, and the support of Stacey, Robert, and Patricia Townshend. The author acknowledges with gratitude permission to reprint portions of the following texts: Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Experience, 1995 by The Order of Saint Benedict, Inc. Collegeville, MN 56321. Reprinted by permission of Liturgical Press. Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body, 2001 by The Order of Saint Benedict, Inc. Collegeville, MN 56321. Reprinted by permission from Liturgical Press.
CHAPTER ONE
Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics

Introduction
When we trace the stream of Christian preaching to its source, we do not find there a theological system, a philosophical idea or an ethical insight. We find, instead, a cry of surprise and wonder: The Lord has risen indeed!(Luke 24:34). This startled announcement of the resurrection of Jesus, spoken by astonished people who were only just beginning to believe it themselves, forms the chronological and theological starting point of all Christian preaching.1
The starting point of all Christian preaching is a cry of surprise and wonder. The cry is an act of worship. The starting point for this homileticthis attempt to understand what is happening in preaching and how to engage in it faithfully is the astonished confession that preaching participates in the very thing which gives rise to our worship and life as church: Gods self-giving in life, word and sacrament. In general terms, this study embarks from a theological starting point most simply described as faith seeking understanding.2 I seek ways to conceive, teach, and practice preaching as a believers task: a believer who not only proclaims or cries out with some great announcement, but also a believer who can guide others through a liturgical language-event where we think, receive, and respond to Gods gracious action. This approach combines an emphasis on the disclosure of Gods action, the centrality of the resurrection in the whole mystery of Christ, the role of language in preaching and the dynamic of grace and faith. All of the preceding will be considered theologically from an ecclesiological starting point.3 Just as it is important to have a clear awareness of ones methodological starting point, it is also important to acknowledge that we are in the middle of things. After delivering a lecture in a German University, Rowan Williams recalls being asked, What is your methodological starting point? His response articulates an understanding that we are always beginning in the middle of things. For the theologian:
There is a common life and language already there, a practice that defines a specific shared way of interpreting human life as lived in relation to God. The meanings of the word God are to be discovered by watching what this community doesnot only

when it is consciously reflecting in conceptual ways, but when it is acting, educating or inducting, imagining and worshipping.4
The preacher (or any other believer who gives theological expression) is likewise engaged in the middle of things, and the homiletician is responsible for taking into account what is already there. This includes the work of other homileticians through the ages, but also the already there of the rites, practices, and people involved in worship when we preach. We watch what the community already does and interpret it with a dual hermeneutic of suspicion and retrieval. A Note about Terminology Liturgical Preaching, Sacramental Preaching, and the Sacramentality of Preaching Liturgical preaching and sacramental preaching are terms that are generally used in a variety of ways. Part of the task here is the clarification of these terms. At the simplest level, these terms will be used in the following way: liturgical preaching occurs within any formal liturgy of the church, and sacramental preaching describes preaching that functions in a way analogous to the way sacraments functionin terms of its theological force and efficacy. In other words, for the purpose of this book, liturgical preaching refers to where it happens, and sacramental preaching refers to what happens. Clearly, there can be overlap between the terms, so at times I will also be using the combined term liturgical/sacramental preaching when both of the definitions fit. Here, these terms do not refer to preaching as instruction on or about the meaning of the liturgy or the meaning of the sacraments.5 The accent here is on the gracious eventfulness of sermon, sacrament, and life as expressed and experienced in the liturgy. It emphasizes the common ability these elements have to communicate in faith while forming us for witness to Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit. With an eye for what is complementary in the theological discourses associated with preaching and sacrament, this common ability can become a hermeneutical key for pastoral leadership and teaching. The Sacramentality of Preaching is a term I am using to categorize the dynamic structure underlying what happens when an event of preaching goes beyond the necessary discourse about God (propositional talk about God, information about God, cognition of God in the abstract) and becomes an encounter with God. The following few paragraphs are intended to introduce some of the ideas that will be developed.
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics
Preaching that is sufficiently shaped by sacramentality an understanding of the relationship with God in the time of the churchmay more fully and consistently perform a catalytic role within the medium of the church. To use scientific terms, such preaching is like a catalyst (or an enzyme, in the sense that it is produced by living organisms), a substance, usually used in small amounts relative to the reactants, that modifies and increases the rate of a reaction without being consumed in the process.6 Without dwelling on the analogy but wanting to be clear, we note that preaching is less a substance than a language event that is part of a larger event or process, and it serves to modify and increase the reaction within that event.7 Preaching is like a catalyst put into the mix of God, humankind, and all of Creationthe living reactants.8 The preached word, as part of the milieu of the church, can enable the participants (reactants) to respond to each other under different conditions than would otherwise be possible. The different conditions consist primarily in the recognition of Gods coming-into-presence for covenant relationship and the resulting transformation (formation) of people in relation to the God who comes. No language is adequate to term this encounter, but here we choose the language of sacramentality to describe it. The purpose of a focus on sacramentality, here, is to help preaching (and the church) continually break into the order of this beyond. If preaching is likened to a catalyst that the triune God may use to precipitate a process of events, the efficacy of the preaching process will move beyond the control of the preacher. Therefore, it will need to be tested or verified by its two primary intended effects: it will lead to a desire for sacramental gestures of reception and celebration of God, and it will send into a life of proclamation/witness those who have recognized and received God through this encounter. In these ways, the preacher is involved in leading and sending. Preaching is one element in the overall proclamation of the church; liturgically, it is still being considered as part of The Proclamation of the Word. What I am suggesting is that preaching, the rituals of liturgy, and sacraments all derive from sacramentality in the sense that sacramentality is a term for the prior communication or exchange between God and humankind that initiates the proclamation of it and celebration of it. A thorough understanding of the sacramentality of Christian existence will provide the preacher with a way to map out the genuine expectations that the churchand Godmight have for the sermon. Ultimately, I intend to show that the moments in preaching that we might call sacramental rest heavily on the preachers (and congregations) under-
standing and openness to this prior sacramentality and to its potential new occurrence in the moment of worship. Therefore, at a basic level, the sacramentality of preaching refers to preachings use of a theological dynamic which emphasizes encounter with God and response to God in the moment of worship - as opposed to mere awareness of God.9 The movement from perception of God to the act of testifying to God is negotiated by sacramental moments and threshold activities. In other words, proclamation leads to further proclamation by way of sacramentality. Later in this study I will expand on the idea that proclamation and sacramentality describe the two primary actions of Christian worship. I will be making the claim that these two primary actions must occur together for the sake of building up the church, and that they occur together in both preaching and in sacrament.10 In the celebration of sacrament, there is both proclamation and sacramentality. In the preaching and hearing of a sermon, there is both proclamation and sacramentality. Proclamation and sacramentality are two poles that exist in a creative tension which fosters theological imagination open to the disclosure of Gods very self and in which God raises up, for Gods self, a body in the world. My intention is that the meaning of these statements will continue to unfold in what follows. First, however, it is necessary to understand the usefulness of adding homiletical emphasis on this second pole, sacramentality. An assessment of some of the trends in the literature, that lead us to the term itself, may help to clarify this. The intention of this first chapter, then, is to gain some perspective for what follows. We will investigate various responses (from the 1950s and 1960s) to the debate over the relative place of Word and Sacrament in the life of the church. This will offer some historical and theological context for the early development of Louis-Marie Chauvets work which appeared in his first significant publication in 1979.11 This general time-frame saw great shifts in homiletics, sacramental theology and in the entire western culture. Without these shifts Chauvets project would have been neither possible, nor necessary. These writers prepared the theological way for future conceptions of the sacramentality of Christian existence (Chauvet) and the sacramentality of preaching. First, I will survey the ways in which Protestant homileticians have described liturgical preaching, or sacramental preaching, in the period between 1950 and 1963a period of intensified interest in the relationship between preaching and liturgy, word and sacrament. Then, I will show how these ways of thinking proceed from, and converge with, much of the work that theologi-
ans were doing on the Word of Godnoting, in particular, the dramatic developments in Roman Catholic theology immediately preceding Vatican II. The focus will be on finding the ways that these writers open up the possibility and necessity of sacramental ways of thinking about homiletics. Most of the proposals that we are about to assess focus on how preaching and sacraments are two parts of the same event, each performing in a distinctive mode. While retaining these distinctive modes, I hope to show the importance of seeing coherence, according to the work God wants to accomplish, in the function of preaching and sacrament. In order to aid Gods event of faith in the worshiping church, each element of worship must take its place next to the other in a coordinated, coherent manner. At the end of the chapter, I will return to the evolving notion of sacramentality and the suggestion that this dynamic can integrate with proclamation as two primary actions of Christian worship and two poles of preaching. Before elaborating on the structures and dynamics of sacramentality in Chapters Two and Three, a definition of sacramentality will be presented at the end of Chapter One. We will then be able to move on to the next chapters where the work of Louis-Marie Chauvet will be examined to deepen and clarify my use of the term. Word and Sacrament: Two Terms in TurmoilDuel or Duet?12
We need to be alert to the signals that theology is shifting on its foundation of doctrinal propositions and philosophical, psychological, political, and biological supports and is beginning to seek a footing in the churchs own activity of worship. - Richard Lischer.13 By reference to baptism and the Lords Supper, the origin and aim of preaching [as well as] the course it pursues, are more clearly defined, and the place of the messenger of the word is more plainly seenThe preacher may point to the sacrament on the one hand and holy Scripture on the other - Karl Barth.14
Theology both derives from Christian practice and leads to new or altered practice. Accordingly, theologies of the Word and theologies of Sacrament are formed by critical reflection that occurs in the middle of the ongoing practice of Christian worship. When Christians gather to worship God, something happens. Words are spoken, bread is broken and the mysterious, continuing passage from non-faith to faith persists. Most Christians will agree that, somehow, worship can be an event of Gods gracious, transforming action. However, this action of God, in worship, has been understood in divergent ways among Christians. This has lead to major disagreements and has resulted
in divergent practices being adopted. In many cases, the categories of Word and Sacrament have been opposed to one another. This has been especially true since the sixteenth century and can be seen in the divide brought about by Reformation and Counter-Reformation polemic. Since that time, the depictions of this divide have become caricatured and stereotyped, being overly simple and unduly negative. Yet, these generalizations persist because, in part, they are based on real patterns of practice and thinking. Over time, some aspects of popular church practice distort the best thinking of the church. These caricatured understandings of the issue have been variously divided in the following way: the expression sola scriptura in Protestantism has been interpreted to mean that only through Scripture does God reveal Godself. This is based on a poor interpretation of the Reformation emphasis on sola scriptura.15 For some, this led to an understanding that, at best, Sacraments are merely rituals that seal this gift of Word-revelation and, at worst, they can tend toward abuses and magical interpretations. Again, this understanding of sola scriptura is distorted and comes less from the teaching of the Reformers themselves than from popular practice and a caricatured view of Protestant theology. On the other hand, the popular expression ex opere operato, of Roman Catholicism, also had been distorted to mean that Gods manifestation is secured through the proper reception of sacramental elements.16 The word of Scripture and preaching is merely an opportunity for instruction or exhortation that might lead to such reception. What we notice here is that, in spite of the impression that these perspectives on Word and Sacrament are unreconcilable opposites, they both point to an identical realityGods self gift. There is agreement on the action of God as gift, but this agreement is obscured by a tug of war over how God reveals or manifests Gods self. Each view is overly invested in its opposition to the other. Theologies of word and sacrament have been playing tug-of-war, when they could be cast in a creative tension which facilitates an imaginative flow of life.17 In a tug-of-war, the tension is something to overcome. Or, to switch metaphors by paraphrasing Thomas Keir, what has become a duel should be recast as a duet. The homiletician would only want to wade into the middle of this dangerous duel, between word and sacrament, in order to be an agent of reconciliation. When the focus shifts from the how of word and sacrament to the purpose of Gods action, in and through them, the reconciliation of word and sacrament may be possible. It may even be argued there can be no divide between word and sacrament, but, rather, that a creative tension exists between them. The two
must not blend into a single action, because they are distinct, but how are they distinct? How do they stand in relation to one another? Are they in apposition or opposition? How do Christians understand what happens what is generated, what is givenwhen the Word is spoken and the bread is broken?18 If they are intricately related, yet distinct, what is their relationship? What does our practice and theology say about what kind of God we encounter in them? These questions are worth considering because these matters have great consequences, not only for our preaching, but also for the efficacy of the church as a sign of Gods grace. One might expect that homiletical literature, written in the 1950s and 1960s, most of it from Protestant sources, would show a clear lack of interest, if not veiled hostility, toward the notion of sacrament. One might also expect that the writings and liturgical documents from the Roman Catholic church during this time would show a dearth of interest and insight into the theology of preaching. As we will see, these expectations are also based on caricatures and they are overly simple and unduly negative. Therefore, after briefly acknowledging the influence of the commonly used textbooks of the era, we will now focus on homiletical publications which are categorized under the title The Setting - Liturgical in the two bibliographies entitled Recent Homiletical Thought.19 The focal point will be determined by this question, What, if anything, do homiletical writers say about the relationship between word and sacrament?
Liturgical Preaching 1950 to 1963 (the Commencement of Vatican II)

Textbooks The primary Protestant textbook on preaching, which influenced the first half of the twentieth century, was first published in 1870. It was written from a Baptist perspective in John Broadus On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. Based on an understanding of preaching as sacred rhetoric, the text is full of practical instruction on the selection, interpretation, and classification of the materials of preaching, and on the arrangement and delivery of a sermon. Broadus forcefully argued for preaching as the great appointed means of spreading the Good News.20 In an introductory discussion of how nothing supercedes
preaching in Christianity, Broadus allows that printing (the written word), and preaching, can complement one another, and that pastoral work and preaching must go hand in hand. However, in his view, nothing can take the place of power from the pulpit. He makes particularly clear that what he calls religious ceremonies cannot take the place of preaching nor do ceremonies even rise to the level of being complementary. He writes,
Religious ceremonies may be instructive and impressive. The older dispensation made much use of these, as we employ pictures in teaching children. Even Christianity, which has the minimum of ceremony, illustrates its fundamental facts, and often makes deep religious impressions, by its two simple but expressive ordinances. But these are merely pictures to illustrate, merely helps to that great work of teaching and convincing, of winning and holding men, which preaching, made mighty by Gods Spirit, has to perform.21
For Broadus, the prime consideration is that the fundamental facts of Christian faith are conveyed. Preaching is conceived of as a work of teaching and convincing, winning humanity to faith and holding the faithful to the truth. Everything else, including the ordinances of Baptism and Eucharist, are reduced to the level of illustration, merely aids to preaching. Broadus can be counted among the Protestants who fear the dangers of formalism; that worship must not come to rest upon the externals which only appeal to aesthetic sentiment and can never create devotion.22 This results in an earnest opposition to the imposition of any form of prayer23 and the impression that the remedy for worship lies in the freedom, spontaneity, simplicity, spirituality of New Testament worship.24 The Broadus approach to preaching worked well in its time and place, but, by 1958, H. Grady Davis publication, Design for Preaching, began a move away from what he viewed as a mechanical, prescriptive, rule-oriented process of sermon preparation; the move was toward a biological or living model for the design of a sermon. A sermon should be like a tree, he said, it should have rootsunfolding partsbranchesit should bear flowers and fruit25 Every discourse ought to be a living creature.26 The question for Davis was, how does a text come alive from a basic statement of truth about God to the living existential person-to-person relationship?27 His desire was to move preaching from statements of truth about God to a living relationship. In order for this to happen, Davis knew that traditional homiletics needed some insight it did not have.28 His work helped lead to a new homi-
letic based on the insight that content and form are two inseparable elements of the same thing in the design of a good sermon.29 Davis insight came from his own practice of breaking the traditional patterns and rules of rhetoric,30 a practice which led him to adopt a descriptive approach to homiletics. He intends his work to be primarily a description of what takes place in actual preaching, actual sermons.31 His book provides a new way to form sermons but Davis does not explicitly consider or comment on the purpose of preaching,32 nor does he write about the relationship between preaching and sacraments, nor the liturgical setting.33 Broadus and Davis say almost nothing about the relationship between word and sacrament. However, there is a notable exception in the introductory chapter of W. E. Sangsters The Craft of the Sermon. Before Sangster gets to the craft of sermon construction, he begins his book with a plea for preaching. In this plea, we see two important elements. First, the motivation for almost every writer on homiletics, after 1950, has been to defend the centrality of preaching in Christian life. Sangster is no exception. He makes an impassioned plea that preaching still be viewed as Gods chief way of announcing His will to the world.34 The second element is in response to the deprecation of preaching by preachers themselves. Sangster felt that several false antitheses were confusing the issue. It was becoming common to consider the duties of pastoral work and leadership of worship, as priorities, over preaching. He writes, liturgiology has displaced preaching in the interests of many who minister in holy things.35 Sangster goes on to say that, the tap root of this deep error is a low view of preaching. It is not seen as a sacramental act.36 A sermon is a human being speaking from God, he argues, preaching is the sacrament of the Word.37 Sangsters point of departure for homiletics is that preaching and worship are tied together in their dependance on the purposes of God and the activity of Gods Holy Spirit.38 He argues that preaching does something which cannot be displaced, and this something is the same thing that worship does. Therefore, if the preacher is wise, he will not force into ungodly opposition things which God has joined together. Preaching and worship belong to one another.39 Beyond the Textbooks: Five Protestant Voices With the exception of what we learn from Sangster, the influential textbooks of this period did not say much about the relationship between word and sacra-
10 The Sacramentality of Preaching ment. There are, however, several additional contributions from significant Protestant sources whose purpose was not to write a textbook.40 Most of the authors surveyed below were responding to the effects of the liturgical revival of the first half of the century. The relationship of preaching and worship suffered somewhat as a result of this revival, and two trends had developed. Donald Macleod described the two trends in 1960 by observing students who entered Princeton Seminary in one of two groups.
One group is excited over the contemporary liturgical revival and is engaged, quite unconsciously I imagine, in the slow murder of the sermon. The other group, largely conservative in taste and theology or Puritan in emphasis, sees worship as no more than preliminaries and preaching is the foremost consideration.41
Macleod considered each group sincere but less than half right. As we will see, Macleods voice was part of a growing chorus which felt that these groups were perpetuating a stubborn remnant of that ancient dichotomy which the Reformers sought to remove, namely the separation between Word and Sacrament.42 In a further attempt to see what, if anything, homiletical writers of this period say about the relationship between word and sacrament, we will now weigh the contributions of Henry Sloan Coffin, Reginald H. Fuller, Donald Macleod himself, Thomas H. Keir, and J.J. von Allmen. H.S. Coffin: The Sacramental Sermon In the autumn of 1951, at the George Craig Stewart Lectures on Preaching at Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in Illinois, Henry Sloane Coffin, formerly the president of Union Theological Seminary in New York, gave a series of lectures which were later published under the title, Communion Through Preaching: The Monstrance of the Gospel.43 In these lectures, Coffin decided to approach the theme of preaching by showing that both sermons and the Supper of the Lord are means of grace and media through which God in Christ offers Himself in personal relationship.44 Coffin is also reacting against the stereotypical dichotomy of word and sacrament, and the dual phenomena of a waning interest in preaching accompanied by an increased emphasis upon the Holy Communion and the frequency of its celebration.45 He responds with the provocative use of sacramental language.46 Further elaborating on the purpose of his lectures, Coffin goes on to say that,
without belittling either sermon or sacrament, it is plain that historically in the tradition of all Churches which are heirs of the Sixteenth Century Reformation both belong
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 11

together. It is the main point of these chapters to encourage sacramental sermons sermons which enable God to have face to face Communion with His people.47
To underscore his insistence that both sermon and sacrament are a means of grace and media for an encounter with God, Coffin makes use of the terms communion and mediation to speak of preaching. These terms, commonly used when speaking of sacrament, are intended to reverse the trend to disparage or murder preaching. Coffin laments that, in practice, preaching was being related to remarks, reflections, observations, which, like the terminology used to describe them, were shallow and glib.48 Preaching had given way, in some places, to ministerial chat. Coffins efforts here thrust the preaching event back to the level of an encounter with God, a theology of preaching which intentionally uses the vocabulary and dynamics of sacramental event. He writes,
Both Word and Sacraments mediate Gods communion with His responsive people. In both, therefore, He is contemporaneously present with them. In both He encounters us face to face. In the Lords supper we believe Him to be both Host and FoodHospes atque Epulum. In His preached Word, he is both speaker and Message.49
Here, Coffins agenda here is to speak again of Gods action and presence in the preaching of the Word. Without this high view of preaching, the possibility of fellowship with God seems to disappear into a spate of clerical verbosity. Fellowship with God depends greatly on the quality of worship and this quality of worship is neither based on taste nor on subjective preference; it is based on theology. The theology of preaching, together with the theology of worship, interpret the practice upon which our fellowship with God is based. In order to raise it to its rightful place, Coffin uses sacramental language to conceive of preaching, and he appeals to the Reformers for the theological backing to do so. The Reformers,
embattled against a degradation of worship, insisted that the Word must be linked with the Sacraments so that fellowship with God might become reasonable, the meeting of Person with persons, minds, hearts, consciences awake and in accord.50
Above all, Coffin is arguing for sacramental preaching emerging from the biblical material which lends itself to current needs and brings Gods personality to meet them.51 To summarize Coffin, we could say that sacramental sermons are biblical, current, and God-bearing events. He insists that the practice of preaching should be such that pleas for services without sermons would
12 The Sacramentality of Preaching disappear. Coffin closes his book by speaking of the epiphanic nature of the preachers calling; that
a few skillfully chosen wordsthoughts clearly in line with the mind of Christa man speaking earnestly of that which has mastered him, and there is something heard that all men with ears recognize as Divine. Think of what it means: it is the power of letting God become manifest.52
R.H. Fuller: The Liturgical Sermon In 1957, Reginald H. Fuller, a New Testament scholar by profession, a liturgiologist by avocation, and an Anglican priest by vocation,53 wrote a small book entitled, What is Liturgical Preaching?54 By this time, a budding interest55 in liturgical preaching had grown among those who were involved in liturgical renewal. With the theology and practice of the liturgy undergoing great study, the function of the homily, or sermon, also came under some scrutiny. With more scholars supporting the notion that the liturgy of the Word and Sacrament belong together,56 the issue developed into how Word and Sacrament relate within the liturgy. Coffin wanted all preaching to be sacramental in nature (a biblical, current, God-bearing encounter and response). Fuller, however, argued the need to distinguish between types of preaching in order to qualify what kind of preaching ought to take place as part of the principal weekly liturgical celebration. Fuller presumes that the only true preaching should take place at Holy Communion,57 yet he leaves room for a different kind of preachingwhat may be called evangelistic preaching. It is addressed to the outsider, aiming at decision and conversion.58 Evangelistic preaching comes under the heading kerygma, which he defines as a missionary preaching to the unconverted,59 and it is to be exercised by all.60 But, this kerygmatic preaching was not to be carried out at the principal weekly celebration since it is an assembly of the faithful. What Fuller calls Liturgical preaching, by contrast, is appropriate for the liturgy and is a matter of paraklesis. This preaching is a renewal and deepening of the apprehension of the kerygma in the already converted.61 In response to the title of his book, Fuller defines liturgical preaching:
the liturgical sermon announces the action of God which is to occur in and through the whole eucharistic action, including and culminating in the communion of the people (Its purpose) is to renew in the individual members the sense that they are members of the ecclesia, constituted as such by the redemptive act of God in Christ.62
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 13 This reaching back to the Baptism of the members, renewing in them the sense of membership in the ecclesia, and leading forward to the action of the Eucharist, places preaching between font and altar. The Word and Sacrament find their unity in the action of the ordained minister of the ecclesia.63 This action is ancient. Fuller compares the Liturgy of the Word, including the liturgical sermon, and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, to the double memorial of the Passover. Like the haggada of the Passover, the liturgical sermon is a discourse relating the meal and its elements to the saving acts of the Exodus.64 The second part berakoth - prayers of blessing over the elements, is related, through the liturgical sermon, to the redemptive events of the past, without which the Godward act would be meaningless.65 The service of the Word will recall, for Christians, the saving acts of Jesus Christ, the One who still constitutes the church, and in whom an expression of the churchs identity may be found. This service of the Word is based on an understanding of weekly celebration of Eucharist when the congregation is assembled as the congregation, the local embodiment of the People of God.66 This is important to Fuller because divorced from its proper context in the liturgical action, preaching degenerates in one or other of three directions. It becomes intellectualism, moralism, or emotionalism.67 He writes, (these) three kinds of preaching are individualistic. They leave man in his isolation. They do not draw him anew into the ecclesia. For unless a sermon leads to the liturgical action the ecclesia does not express itself as the ecclesia.68 For Fuller, the goal of preaching is to produce an ecclesiato build up (oikodomein) the Church.69 Preaching that draws individuals into the church, also draws them into an expression of true identity. Fuller writes, it is the essence of the liturgy that in it the Church acts in a manner expressive of her deepest being.70 For Fuller, and many others who believe in the catholicity of the local churchin the sense that at the moment of worship, in this particular time and place, those assembled are the universal churchthis is the only context for paraklesis, the type of preaching which he calls liturgical. In about fifty pages, Fuller presents many undeveloped insights which might have germinated into a full treatment of the theology and practice of liturgical preaching. Yet, this does not seem to be his purpose. Contrary to what one might expect, Fuller does not furnish a fully developed response to the question of the title, What is Liturgical Preaching? Rather, his basic argument is against the practice of celebrating the Holy Communion without a sermon. The Liturgical sermon has a particular, simple purpose: it is to extract from the scripture readings the essential core and con-
14 The Sacramentality of Preaching tent of the gospel, to penetrate behind the days pericope to the proclamation of the central act of God in Christ which it contains, in order that the central act of God can be made the material for recital in the prayer of thanksgiving71 thus drawing the faithful, anew, into the ecclesia. By the end of the 1950s, a movement was underway in homiletics, the shape of which would have been difficult to determine at the time. Some dramatically different proposals were coming forward and, especially in the work of Davis, a clear move was being made away from what we might now call the traditional homiletic of Broadus. While it was purported to be a general renewal of the purpose and place of preaching, the primary long-term influence of this period had more to do with the argument for a closer connection between the substance and the form of preaching. Coffin and Fuller were specifically calling for a renewal of preaching that might complement the strides being made in the liturgical renewal of their time. Each of them wanted to focus on the dynamic of divine encounter and the response of the believer. Each strongly argued for the inclusion of both preaching and sacrament in the liturgy. At the level of homiletical theory, however, both of these authors merely point to new language for preaching. There is no development of the landscape in this new direction. Coffin emphasizes the miracle of our calling as a sacramental manifestation of God in the sermon. Although this is a welcome and attractive concept, it is little more than a plea that preaching be conceived in a sacramental way. When he speaks of things as sacramental one might wonder what he, or anyone else, means by the term. There is a vagueness and ease with which the term sacramental is used. Taken too far, this can blur our understanding to the point that anything can be a sacrament. To help clarify, I have interpreted Coffin by using a summary definition of sacramental as biblical, current, and God-bearing but this, too, needs further interpretation. Coffin aims his rhetoric at those who would leave the revelation of God and the presence of God out of their conception of preaching, but he uses images and language which require more analysis than his lectures can give. Fuller also rightly places the focus of preaching on the central act of God in Christ. It is in response to the initiative of God that a return gift is made by the church in the prayer of thanksgiving. But, before this response can be made, the church must come to re-member the salvation of God. This is one task of liturgical preaching, but not the whole. Fuller gives a limited definition of liturgical preaching, but one upon which a more fulsome account could be built. One thing that is missing, when Fuller is urging the preacher to extract the core
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 15 of the biblical pericope, is help for knowing how to theologically determine the nature of the thing to be extracted. Further, Fuller gives examples that show how particular biblical texts can be related to texts of the liturgy, so that both texts can be used to preach the same thing; however, what is happening in the congregation, while this is preached, seems of little interest. The author speaks of giving priority to the response of the believer, but his writing reflects a clericalism which clearly puts the ordained minister in the spotlight, alone. This implies that preaching is simply provided for the listener. Fuller writes convincingly about the importance of the ecclesia but the action of preaching is unified and symbolized in the sacramental personthe ordainedrather than in the whole church. We can appreciate that Fuller moves liturgical preaching away from instruction, aiming at intellectual assent, and toward an evocation of faith,72 and that he insists that worship is two-way traffic73 between heaven and earth. This anticipates much of the homiletical development to follow. Donald Macleod: The Worshipful Sermon Like Coffin and Fuller, Donald Macleod published a book in 1960. His is a concentrated effort to make preaching integral and essential to the church.74 Again, the argument is made in defense of preaching. Macleod approaches the theology of Word and Sacrament from the perspective of the Reformed liturgical tradition and in response to a nagging question that he kept asking himself. In spite of facing sanctuaries full of people, the question was this: why is preaching not making the impact it ought to make upon this twentieth century society?75 In North America, the 1950s was an era of escalating interest in religion. People were attending worship in large numbers. But, Macleod wondered if this something in the wind was more traceable to a me-too-ism and the socially acceptable thing to do.76 This numerical success may have masked deep problems with the church in general, and with preaching in particular. Macleod had an early vision of problems which would surface later in religious illiteracy and lack of commitment to the Christian life which has since characterized the move away from mainline Christian denominations. In order to counteract this decline, Macleod writes with two main thrusts. The first relates to his nagging question. He argues that only preaching that declares the whole gospel of the New Testament with telling impact upon a company of persons united in an act of common worship can nourish and sus-
16 The Sacramentality of Preaching tain the Church at a constant degree of vitality.77 This first concern is twofold. It involves efficacypreaching must have an impact, and it involves communal identitythat the listeners are a company of persons united in an act of worship. Macleods second main concern is the tendencyto divorce preaching from worship, or to emphasize one at the expense of the other, which is to weaken both of them.78 Preaching is an integral part of an exchange between the saving Christ and his people which occurs in worship, and in life. The burden of Macleods argument is based on the solidity of a Reformed tradition which he wants to uphold. Perhaps influenced by Tillichs method of correlation79, Macleod writes,
in any truly meaningful act of worship, Word and Sacrament must be correlated. In Reformed worship the saving Christ is proclaimed through the Word, both preached and acted visibly in the Sacraments, and the congregationthe community of Gods peoplein response offers itself to him in adoration and in service to his Kingdom. Hence the genius of the Protestant religion is seen when all life becomes in essence a prolonged act of worship.80
Macleods central concern is for the participation of the congregationthe ecclesiathat they listen and respond together. Worship, to put it simply, Macleod writes, is the Churchs response to what God has done for men in Jesus Christ.81 This response is what he fears isnt happening. The reasons for this, he suggests, are at least threefold. First, the divorce of preaching and worship weakens both. The whole of worship is needed. The extreme positions, of what he calls the Protestant Word-Service and the Roman Catholic Mystery-Service, are not Macleods immediate concern: Our concern is more positive than merely to avoid the excesses of either school; it aims to secure wholeness in the act of Reformed worship.82 Second, Macleod critiques a one-way approach to preaching. Preaching that simply discloses the truth about God83 is one-way. Macleod speaks of how preaching may stimulate response, not just through revelation, but, in the other direction through adoration, celebration, joy. Macleod comes to this by saying that preaching itself is worshipand as he (the preacher) faces his congregationhe will address that Word to them, but there will be a sense in which he presents it also to God as his own offering.84 Third, Macleod urges that what may be most needed, to remove that which ails preaching, is a theological emphasis which is essential for shaping and making the action of worship meaningful. This theological emphasis is an understand-
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 17 ing of the Word as the activity of God. According to Macleod, this Christcentred activity of God is the theme of every sermon, as it is the theme of every sacrament. Where do we find an approach to wholeness? Macleod does not suggest a turn to the primitive church, nor does he suggest a conformity across denominational lines. Rather, he suggests that, the problem of wholeness demands a more basic treatment. It requires first of all the setting aside of all secondary discussions about what items constitute a proper diet of worship and to concentrate instead upon its essential meaning.85 He urges that we go past an understanding of the primacy of preaching to the primacy of worship as the Churchs supreme activity.86 Our thinking ought to include preaching in worship; within worship lies preaching. He argues that opposing the very terms preaching and worship, in an absolute way, simply disregards the practice of Christians since Christ. If an understanding of worship is developed in a manner where preaching lives comfortably and has its own role, preaching is seen as integral and essential to the church. Thomas H. Keir: Preaching as a Sacramental Encounter An approach very similar to Macleods comes from Thomas H. Keirs Warrack Lectures of 1960 in Glasgow. Keir turned these lectures into a 1962 publication, The Word in Worship: Preaching and its Setting in Common Worship.87 This work is also from the Reformed perspective and in response to the liturgical renewal of the first half-century. Keir writes,
I am more deeply impressed as the years pass that the witness of the contemporary liturgical movement is a timely one, that it represents one aspect of the religious revival of our time, and that it may yet prove to be an important if not indispensable element in the worlds Christian recovery. There are of course dangersit is surely providential that the revival of concern about worship has been movingparallel to the other vital movements of Biblical theology and parochial mission. It is thus appropriate that preaching be considered afresh.88
This fresh consideration involves paying close attention to the different aspects of the divine-human encounter, closely related modes of mans exposure to the central Word.89 Chapter one opens with an assertion: In the living thought of the Church the action of preaching is clearly understood to involve an encounter with God.90 It is through the lens of this encounter that Keir deals with the integral relationship between the sermon and the rest of the Churchs service of worship.91
18 The Sacramentality of Preaching Drawing from a trend common to many fields of enquiry, Keir wants to move the focus in sacramental celebrations from substance to action. Like all the writers we have surveyed thus far, Keir roots this conviction in the thinking of the Reformers, and in Reformed liturgical tradition. He writes,
The locus of significance of the Blessed sacrament is to be found not alone, nor perhaps even primarily, in the substance, but in the action; and that action is Gods giving of himself in gracious encounter. This conception dominates all Reformed worship.92
This gift of Gods self, in gracious encounter, is not only a definition of sacrament for Keir; it is also very close to his definition of preaching. For Keir, the power of preaching does not come from the personality of the preacher, yet he speaks of the preacher as a sacramental person and of preaching as a sacramental action.93 Just as he wants to move the focus from the substance of the sacrament to the action of the sacrament, Keir also wants to move the focus from the power of the preacher (individual) to the action of God in the church. Again, ecclesiology shapes the definition of preaching. Keir explains,
Preaching has been described as a manifestation of the Incarnate Word, from the written Word, by the spoken word, but it is even more than this. It is the occasion of encounter. Definitions may be multiplied endlessly; but whichever definition be preferred and whatever preaching is conceived to be, it is primarily and characteristically thisa personal action and that action is Gods.94
This action of God is in the midst of the church - to the church, and the effectiveness of any preachers part in this action is necessarily rooted in, and shaped by, the preachers functional theology of the church. Keir understands the church itself to be an ever-continuing action of God.95 He suggests that,
the characteristic functions of the Church are (a) the Sacraments of the Gospel which are not primarily Gods gifts of a substance but Gods gracious action; even while the consecrated substance is necessary for the action in the same way as there had to be an Incarnation that God might work a redemption; (b) the preaching of the Gospel, which is not primarily the presentation of ideas but Gods dealing with men, even though ideas are necessary for the dealing; and (c) the girding with a towel and serving.96
With an emphasis on the action of preaching being linked to an encounter with God and, with an ecclesiological grounding for the locus of preaching in this encounter, the approach to preaching changes. In a sense, Keir puts the preacher, not between God and the church, but among the churches in which,
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 19 and through which, God acts. The very existence of the church as the body of Christ means, for Keir, that between advent and advent the church is another kind of Incarnation and in that church, ordained persons become ministers of the Word in sermon and sacrament.97 Notable in this last phase is a subtle, but significant, shift. It is not just a shift in ecclesiology. It is also a shift in the theology of word and sacrament. Keir says that these ordained ones are ministers of the Word in sermon and sacrament. This is in contrast to the more common expression, ministers of the Word and Sacrament. For Keir, the encounter is with the Word. The mode of encounter is variable.98 Keir is beginning to speak of the action of God and the response of the church as sacramental. The dynamic itself is sacramental. The eternal Word operates according to every means possibletwo of these means being sermon and sacrament. In this sense, Keir asserts, the ministers are, or must become, sacramental persons. If preaching is to be sacramental, so must we.99 Jean-Jacques von Allmen: Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics When Keirs collected lectures appeared in 1962, Jean-Jacques von Allmen, a member of a National Reformed Church of Switzerland, contributed a similar, although more clearly articulated viewpoint. Particularly clear is von Allmens interpretation that God is not the object, but the source, of preaching. Preaching is speech by God rather than speech about God.100 It is Gods work, through the Holy Spirit, in our preaching, which establishes the connection between preaching the sacraments. Consequently, von Allmen speaks of how a homiletic which recognizes in preaching a sacramental aspect is becoming essential.101 Beginning with the title, Preaching and Congregation is a book which carefully considers the influence of ecclesiology and Christology on our understanding of Gods activity in both sermon and sacrament. Like Keir, who refers to ministers of the Word in sermon and sacraments, and the relationship of sermon and sacrament as a duet, von Allmen speaks of how it is always the Word that acts, in sermon and sacrament, in order to establish a dual testimony.102 The relationship is based on a mutual source and a common activity. Von Allmen notes, There is not the preaching of the Word of God and the sacrament: there is the preaching of the Word of God and the sacrament of the Word of God. That is to say that the Word is given to us in two forms.103 Much like the hypostatic union of the incarnation, the miracle of the Word of God happens fully in both its preaching and its sacrament.104 This interpretation recognizes, in preaching, a sacramental aspect, and, in sacrament, a homiletical aspect. Von
20 The Sacramentality of Preaching Allmen joins the chorus in his defense of preaching, and, like the four previous writers in this survey, makes a very strong appeal for a renewed understanding of sacrament. He echoes many of the concerns mentioned so far and, at one point in his writing, declares,
After these observations there is no need to further insist on the sacramental character of preaching. In particular the parallel with the eucharisttrue body and true bread! is immediately apparent. And it is by sacramental ways of thinking about homiletics, by a sort of extension of Christology, that we shall be able to re-discover both the joy of preaching and the right way of setting about it.105
Implied, in Von Allmens desire to help preachers rediscover joy in preaching, is the belief that preaching had lost its way. The right way of setting about preaching may never be fully grasped, but there was growing agreement that preaching had lost the source of its power and, as a result, had its ways all wrong. Following the path of both Coffin and Fuller, Macleod, Keir and von Allmen all wanted a stronger emphasis on what happens in preaching as well as a theological understanding of proclamation. Appealing to Reformation principles, each argues that preaching is an integral and essential part of a worship-event. Further, they postulate that it is the whole of worship which best puts us in contact with the power of the divine Word who, in the midst of worship, forms, and transforms, humankind. The whole of worship is an encounter with God, through the Word, whose activity is sung in a preaching and sacrament duet. If the five were to speak in unison, they might simply say that any loss of interest, surrounding the preaching of the church, will be reversed by turning again to the source of power revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the Word of God. Summary and Analysis If the mission was to establish the place of preaching within the liturgical celebration as a partner to sacrament, then this chorus of witnesses for preaching has made its case clearly and convincingly. These three Protestant North American writers and two Western European writers, who wrote in the 1950s and early 1960s, have shown a keen interest in sacrament and the Liturgical Movement of the first half century.
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 21 Their work can be understood as a rejection of the dualistic approach to preaching and sacrament; this latter implies that they are two separate entities, disassociated from one another. Such a dualism cannot be overcome; we either favour one entity over the other, or we merely juxtapose the two entities. Instead of supporting a dualism, these writers contribute to our ability to understand that preaching and sacrament each have unique surface structural identities, while they share the same deep theological structure and meaning. In my view, these writers have made an assertion, based on a theology of the Word, that the deep theological dynamic structure of preaching not only coheres with the deep structure of sacrament, it is identical. At this deep level, preaching and sacrament share a linguistic and theological structure that gives us access to an ever-deepening experience of the Triune God and the ongoing work of reconciliation, by the Risen Christ, through the Spirit. This insight will be expanded upon in the rest of what follows. For now, we underline that these writers help to open the door to such a claim while they also hint at ways to discern the differences in the surface structures of preaching and sacrament. At this point, we simply note the well-established desire for understanding the proclaimed word and the enacted sacrament as complementary. Interestingly, this desire is more rooted in a defense of preaching than an embrace of sacrament. These writers did not want to see preaching elbowed aside (nor slowly murdered!) by liturgical progress, so they make a strong argument that there can be no divide between word and sacrament. This is based on the principle that the source of power in both is the same Word. It is not surprising that these writers, heirs of the 16th century Reformation, would turn to Wordtheology in a crisis. However, it is not just a nostalgic retrieval of four hundred year old ideas; these writers were contributing to a stream of thinking that was gaining momentum in many areas of study in the twentieth century. Renewed understandings of the Word were benefitting from, and contributing to, the type of shifts that can be noticed in the writers surveyed above: a shift in the phenomenology of language, a shift in the concept of preaching as conveying truth to preaching as relationship with God, and a shift away from a focus on information (one way) to a focus on communication (dialogue). One can also see an early shift from the use of language to describe to the use of language to create. This is related to a move in ecclesiology, from a hierarchical understanding of authority, in both the preacher and the sermon, to a biological understanding of the role of the preacher and sermon in the life of the church.
22 The Sacramentality of Preaching We also find an onto-theological shift from the substance of preaching and sacrament to the action of preaching and sacrament. In Keir and von Allmen, particularly, this shift is from preaching, as an object (a sermon as a thing), to preaching as an happening (a sermon as an event). All of these shifts help prepare the way for sacramental ways to think about homiletics. Yet, even von Allmen, who gives us this phrase and who insists on the sacramental character of preaching, does not give any direction to preachers indicating how these shifts in understanding may be put into the practice of liturgical/sacramental preaching. He simply points to the possibility of sacramental ways of thinking about homiletics. From the perspective of the early twenty-first century, there is still relevance in these forty and fifty-year-old attempts to free Christians from the problem of worship that lacks an abundance of life. These writers have helped shape our questions; with them we now ask, how can preachers shape their preaching as closely as possible to the shape of the work that God wants to do in, and through, preaching? If preachers are to speak of Gods gracious encounter with creation, what is the nature of this encounter? What is its purpose? What is its end? Where is this abundance of life? By faith, we understand abundance of life to be the result of Gods offer of grace. It is the result, on the one hand, of whom God is and what God does, and, on the other, our response to God. These writers help us along toward better questions and directions of thinking. Often, however, the thinking, and our response to it, remains vague, abstract, difficult to employ. One of the reasons for this is that we are hampered by the hermeneutical ease with which terms such as grace, sacrament, encounter with God, word-event are used. There seems to be an assumption that everyone shares an identical understanding of their meaning, and thus, there is never a need to unfold the meaning of these terms. Yet, if we can apply some hermeneutical rigour to these terms, and examine the common understanding, we find another stumbling block preventing a breakthrough in how we can let a theology of sacramental grace shape our theology and practice of preaching. In addition to the barrier presented by the dualistic understanding of word and sacrament as mentioned above, a second stumbling block in these attempts to understand liturgical preaching might be the inability to depart from an instrumental view of both preaching and sacrament as a means of grace.106 The unity of the two had been argued on the basis that both preaching and sacrament are instruments of grace, but this only served to equalize them. It did
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 23 nothing to strengthen them. It did not offer a way to see how one strengthens the other. It did not offer any way to tie the surface structures to the deep structure of the Word. On the surface, they still seem be in a competition over which is the best instrument. Sometimes an underlying agreement is the barrier to renewal. An example of this barrier may be seen when Coffin opens his book with a quotation from the Ordination service (Book of Common Prayer), be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God and of his holy Sacraments. The coupling together of Word and Sacrament is agreed upon, but an underlying difficulty may be overlooked in the notion of minister as dispenser. To make the analogy explicit, a dispenser is a person, a machine or a container that gives things out in convenient or prescribed amounts. Therefore, if the minister is understood as the dispenser of the thingsthe Word of God and his holy Sacramentsin prescribed amounts, then how can anyone take seriously suggestions of an encounter with God in a biological or relational manner? The creative/reconciling action of God is communicated through a very limited device, and is contained in a very small object. How could this not cheapen the personal graciousness of God, and how could it not distract from the encounter which is mediated in worship? This instrumentality might also be found in Macleods effort to speak of preaching as communication. He rightly stresses that, in the biblical context, Word of God connotes action,107 but he then defines preaching in a way that diminishes the dynamism of Gods activity through the preached Word. He writes, in the barest sense, preaching is the transferring of something from one mind to another108 Indeed it is the barest sense when the dynamic of worship is mechanical (transferring), objectified (of something), and intellectualized (from one mind to another). Later, Macleod speaks against appealing only to the mind or only to the emotion,109 but his most basic definition, or analogy, of preaching, overwhelms this warning. It is a definition which leads to a very clericalized, individualized and possessive view of preaching.110 In an attempt to move away from the instrumental understanding illustrated in these two examples, one might stress that the words of preaching and the elements of sacrament are only signs, but again, this is a diminishment. Another option has been to suggest the abandonment of preaching and/or sacraments altogether. However, if this is truethat the analogy of instrument and production is a barrier to a fulsome understanding of grace why not simply abandon the analogy?
24 The Sacramentality of Preaching Analogies that refer to preaching and sacrament as means of Gods effective graceanalogies such as, instrument, channel, remedyare clearly limited, as those who first used them might readily confess. All analogies have limits, but the limits of these analogies may render them meaningless in this era. With these instrumental analogies, the efficacy of grace tends to rely on proper utilization by the minister, and they indicate a narrow bottleneck through which grace must flow. Further, these analogies are strongly individualistic, they are overly focused on an interior spiritual reception, and their validity is based on narrow criteria. Underlying, and perhaps undercutting, the arguments of the previous century of the need for sacramental preaching, is this basic understanding that the minister is standing between God and the congregation using the instrument of the sermon to produce or convey grace. Identifying and acknowledging the limits of these analogies does not to render them useless. It does, however, suggest that we ought to pursue some other analogies in the hope of finding fresh understanding. While these five writers do not elaborate a theology of sacramental grace that might provide a living principle to support their call for sacramental sermons, one can still celebrate their efforts to unite Word and Sacrament because they have located the incarnate-risen Word as the active element in both Scripture proclaimed and Sacrament celebrated. This alone goes a long way toward preparing the way for future conceptions of the sacramentality of preaching. However, these works alone do not take us far enough. We still need an analysis of the structures and dynamics that support a concept of gracious encountera gracious encounter that engenders faith, occurs in worship, and shapes our proclamation and celebration of God in Christ.
Liturgical Preaching Before, During, and After Vatican II

Points of Convergence in the Theology of Word and Sacrament In the 1950s and 1960s, the Roman Catholic church faced its own crisis in theological expression. Several key theologians came to the fore in this crisis, however, to write in a way that moves in the same direction as the key insights of Protestant writers. The heart of the movement was to use phenomenological and existential categories which allow proclamation and preaching to be understood as an event rather than a closed text. On the Protestant side, theologians, formed in a Neo-Orthodox framework, were speaking in ways similar to Ro-
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 25 man Catholic theologians struggling to live within, or struggling to move beyond, their Neo-Scholastic framework.111 These points of convergence are reasons for hope on the ecumenical front and some of this radical change has managed to bring Christians closer together.112 The theology of Word and Sacrament is one major area of change and convergence. Aloysius Church, a Roman Catholic writing in 1970 and looking back on this period, illustrates the remarkable speed of change in his church by comparing the encyclical Mediator Dei (1947)113 and the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy of Vatican II (1963), official church documents114 separated by only sixteen years. Both texts treat the season of Lent. From Mediator Dei:
At Septuagesima and during Lent our Mother the Church urges us again and again to meditate on our unhappy condition, to make a powerful effort to amend our lives, to detest our sins above all things and get rid of them by prayer and penance; for it is by continual prayer and repentance for our sins that we obtain Gods help, without which all our works are of no avail.115
The moralistic tone and emphasis in this statement is remarkable. The focus is on a human effort to amend our lives and get rid of of our sins so that, once accomplished, we may obtain Gods help (grace). As presented here, Lent is solely about straightening-up morally. In addition, the church is portrayed as an external authority, our Mother, who urges us to do certain things, rather than a body to which we belong.
In contrast, the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy (1963) reads: The season of Lent has a twofold character; primarily by recalling or preparing for baptism and penance, it disposes the faithful who persevere in hearing the word of God and in prayer, to celebrate the paschal mystery (n. 109)
Here the church is the faithful (those recalling baptism and/or anticipating repentance) who are disposedto celebrate the paschal mystery. This Lenten disposition to celebrate comes from the hearing of the word of God and prayer. Beneath this dramatic difference in tone is a profound change in theology. Obviously these changes have great implications for the preaching of the word. However, it may be instructive, first, to step back and seek some clarification. What happened between 1947116 and 1963 that would bring about the type of shift represented in the above example? Indeed, what shifts occurred
26 The Sacramentality of Preaching throughout the twentieth century to foster such change? How did an emphasis on hearing the word come about? The Twentieth Century: A Context of Radical Change All of the publications considered thus far, came to light near the middle of a century which presented Christian theology with many challenges. For many people, events of the first half-century had shattered the foundations of their confidence. The occurrence of two World Wars, the breakdown of Enlightenment thinking, cultural-philosophical changes which challenged the notion that human progress was the centre of all reality, all resulted in a loss of confidence in holistic systems and organizations. In the Protestant churches, dramatic change also came as a result of the challenge to Liberal Protestantism from Neo-Orthodoxy and the rise of the World Council of Churches in 1948. In the Roman Catholic church, a plethora of new developments challenged the stilldominant Thomism. These theological, philosophical, and cultural revolutions combined to set the stage for some radical changes in the practices of the Christian church. While it can be helpful to categorize theologies as Protestant or Catholic, the danger of oversimplification exists. Any points of convergence found in the theology of Word and Sacrament are probably based on developments in sources common to both church traditions. In this sense, these developments are ecumenical. Kenan Osborne identifies the following five converging factors which, from 1900 to 1959, contributed to extensive ecumenical change.117 First, critical research into the history of the early church put at our fingertips a quality of information regarding the history of sacramental practice that Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, or the councils of the church did not have. This resulted in an expansion of horizons beyond these authorities. The same could be said for the influence of historical-critical methods for the interpretation of the Scriptural word.118 Second, as we will see presently, Semmelroth, Rahner, Schillebeeckx and others echo Barths christocentric view of sacraments by speaking of Jesus as primordial (original) sacrament and the church as fundamental sacrament.119 This quickly became popular in Roman Catholic circles and it complemented the emphasis on the personal character of Gods self-communication in the Word.
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 27 Third, liturgical renewal called for universal use of vernacular, more participation by lay persons, a better understanding of historical practices, the union of liturgy to daily life and so on. These changes were catalysts for a renewal of the view that life is sacramental and that Gods Word is an event which happens everywhere, but is communally unpacked120 and celebrated in liturgical experience. Fourth, Osborne notes the importance of La nouvelle Theologie, rooted in Paris and Lyons, where Roman Catholic theologians started to ask how doctrine would relate to historical research. L. Charlier, for example, did not want to focus on a God who revealed truths, but rather on a revelation that is actually God, giving himself to us through Christ in the mystery of the incarnation, of which the mystery of the Church is only an extension.121 This emphasis on revelation as Gods gift of self (rather than truth) would become very influential in the years to come. Many of the nouvelle Theologie theologians were in dialogue with Protestant theologians of the day. For all of them, the goal was to use Scripture and categories from patristic literature (typology and allegory, for example), in order to find language which is closer to human experience. Osborne summarized their work as follows:
1. There is an adequacy in every era to define truth for future eras. 2. The traditional neo-scholastic view of revelation as the transmission of fixed concepts was replaced by a God who encounters the total person and communicates with that person in a historical dialogue. 3. No formula of faith can therefore exhaust the truth; it only can be exchanged for another formula more meaningful to the contemporary mind 4. Every formulation of a divine mystery is only the beginning, never the end. 5. A theory of the development of dogma was suggested that emphasized the social, historical, and non-conceptual forces impinging in this process122
Primarily, La nouvelle Theologie re-introduced biblical-patristic modes of thinking and, for Roman Catholics especially, brought neo-scholastic sacramental language into question. The fifth, and final, area of convergence, identified by Osborne, is the broad influence of contemporary philosophy. Taken together, existentialism, phenomenology, process thought, Marxism, linguistics, semiotics, and postmodern philosophy, constitute a philosophical renewal that theologians cannot ignore. There is no doubt that most people in the West have had their thinking influenced by these currents of thought. In order for theology to be meaningful, theology and practice must also take them into account.
28 The Sacramentality of Preaching Osbornes scheme is only one overview of a turbulent period of theology, but according to any interpretation, the twentieth century was a time of universal and radical change. Vatican II Theologians: Three Roman Catholic Voices
It is often implied that a great theological revival was unloosed in the Catholic Church by Vatican II. In reality, the best of the revival probably came before the Council was even announced.123
Having made some general remarks about converging factors that influenced the theological scene in the in the 1950s and 1960s, we now address more pointed homiletical questions. What do Roman Catholic theologians (Semmelroth, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx) have to say about the place of preaching within this relationship of word, sacrament and faith? and what are the consequences, not only for preaching, but also for the efficacy of the church as a sign of Gods grace? After the call of Vatican II (1959) but before its commencement (1962), the bishops worked in preparation with theologians they knew and trusted. Some of these theologians were invited to observe the proceedings, advising their bishops as it progressed. Otto Semmelroth, Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx were three such theologians. Their work, coupled with the five general influences identified by Osborne, was very influential in the evolving theology of their church. Each of them provided significant new approaches. This helped to shed light on the practice of Liturgy of the Word and Liturgy of the Eucharist, and on the ambiguous relationship between Word and Sacrament. It might be said that Semmelroth, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx were engaged in re-imagining the categories used to interpret the life of the church. This was a move to use phenomenological and existential categories for the dynamics of ritual proclamation. Both the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist, which previously had been seen in terms of text and rite, were now seen as eventful proclamation and celebration. That is to say, Scripture and Sacrament are not primarily things; they are events that express and celebrate Gods saving action in Jesus Christ. Instead of focusing on the book of Scripture, we may more appropriately focus on Proclamation of the gospel, on the basis of Scripture, which is an encounter with Christ. Instead of focusing on the bread and wine of the Eucharist (or the water of Baptism), we may more appropriately focus on the communal celebration of a dynamic mystery which is an encounter
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 29 with Christ. This encounter is common to both word and sacrament. All of this is rooted in a renewed understanding of church: an ecclesial sense of hermeneutics-proclamation and an ecclesial sacramentality. Otto Semmelroth Otto Semmelroth, S.J., writing from 1960 to 1962, moved in the same general direction as the Protestant writers identified previously in this chapter. He showed how the proclamation of the word and sacramental worship are a single work with complementary functions.124 By doing so, Semmelroth was one of the first prominent Roman Catholic theologians to pose questions about preaching as an efficient cause on the state of grace. He asks,
Does the preaching of Gods word continue to have only an indirect and preparatory significance for the bestowal of grace upon man? Or does preaching share really and effectively in the origin of mans justification and sanctificationin a manner similar to, or in connection with the causal efficacy of the sacraments?125
The language Semmelroth uses is subject to the same critique of efficacythat cause-effect, instrumental view of the dynamicbut we highlight here the notion that word and sacrament are in mutual relationship126 and that they share in the origin of justification and sanctification. The key, for Semmelroth, is that this mutuality and unity is to be found in both the content and the act. Semmelroth considered preaching to be an act with many layers. Like the celebration of sacraments, preaching is no less sign than cause. Here he is putting preaching on the same footing as sacrament. However, it was important for him to be faithful to the dogma of his own church, so he could not deny that the sacraments were the only effectual source of grace. Instead, without denying this, he expanded the boundaries of sacrament to include the whole liturgy including preaching. He went so far as to say that, Even when preaching and sacrament are performed apart from one another in time they supplement each other and constitute one single portrayal, as well as one single efficacious cause.127 For Semmelroth preaching is an event most like the incarnation. He writes, If the celebration of the sacrament points to Christs sacrificial death, then the preaching of the sermon points to the climax of Gods own sermon, the incarnation of his Son as the word of God to men.128 Yet, even here, the two are not separate, but integrated. There is not one grace which has its source in the
30 The Sacramentality of Preaching incarnation, and another with its source in the sacrifice of the cross. On the contrary, all grace comes from a single source.129 These ideas were significant departures from standard Roman Catholic thinking, at the time, yet they had enormous appeal. One reason for the appeal was that these ideas did not simply give the priest another tool of influence and control. On the contrary, Semmelroths theology was rooted in an ecclesiology of the whole people of God. When Semmelroth speaks of the saving work of grace being found through a corporeal reality, known as the church, he is not just talking about the church hierarchy. He does not talk about dispensing grace. He talks about the dynamism of grace in the whole church. When Semmelroth speaks of grace he does not mean that the fruits of a past saving work are stored up somewhere or other, and that the church has the job of distributing them. Rather, that the dynamism of the work itself (the past saving work of Christ) continues in the church.130 The church is primarily a sign of the actual reality.131 The actual reality is the continuing dynamism of Christs saving work. While continuing with the notion of church as sign, and with the use of the adjectives symbolic and creative before efficacy, Semmelroth does not want to diminish the view of preaching as a real event. Nor is he afraid to claim the event as one in which God is present. Anticipating a shift on the horizon of the homiletical world, Semmelroth asserts that Gods word communicates not merely knowledge and warning, but divine reality as well.132 Semmelroth also began speaking of a multivalence in the presence of Christ in the liturgy. As we will see later, this idea surfaces in Vatican II documents as the four-fold presence of Christ in the liturgy: in the elements, the proclaimed word, the praying assembly, and the presider. All of them are drawn into one unified proclamation event which bestows grace. Semmelroth challenged current thinking when he spoke of word and sacrament together as essential expressions of Gods redemptive relationship with creation. However, this challenge was deepened considerably in the work of Karl Rahner, S.J. and Edward Schillebeeckx, O.P. Karl Rahner Rahner clearly expressed his reason for investigating the relationship of word and sacrament. In 1960 he writes,
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 31

As soon as one asks oneself what this word of God in the Church precisely is, how it works, how God speaks in it, whom it addresses, what it should accomplish in the hearer, what speakers and hearers it presupposes and constitutes, a number of affirmations must be madeon the basis of scripture and by the nature of the casewhich, as we shall see later, have an astonishing similarity, to say no more, with the affirmations generally used to describe the sacraments. And this is the real reason for enquiring into the relationship of word and sacrament.133
Rahner laments the fact that Roman Catholics provide no space for a systematic theology of the word, and that the word tends to be viewed only as something which teaches somethinga word which makes a statement about something. Instead, it could be treated as the word in which the reality itself draws nigh and announces itself and constitutes itself present.134 As a result, a theme which appears to be highly relevant has remained to a great extent unnoticed in the Catholic theology of the last few hundred years.135 Rahner goes on to note that the present situation of Catholic theology, his own work included, wants to change all this with a sustained investigation into the living, efficacious, mighty and creative word of God.136 He argues for a more comprehensive understanding of the word. He argues for a revelatory word which is far more than statements. The word is a revelatory action and event in which the action is the word, because Gods word must produce what it says.137 This word of God is on the lips of the church, which speaks only because it has heard in faith. Here is an indication of Rahners strong view of the church as the continuance of Christs presence in the world as the fundamental sacrament.138 This understanding intentionally shifts the basic meaning of sacrament away from the objects of sacramental celebration to the subject(s) of itthe church becoming the body of Christ. The proclamation of the word is embedded in that body and expresses Gods offer of salvation to the world. Considering the vast quantity of written material that Rahner produced, one hesitates to summarize Rahners views briefly. However, his primary influence on the matter at hand was his embracing of the shift to language of encounter and event. Even more, Rahner steps back from the question what happens? to ask two prior questions: who happens? and where does it happen? His answers are, God happens as the Word of God, and the word of God happens in the church, for the world. Rahners theology assumes that relationship with God is the underlying mystery of the word, sacrament, and faith. The presence of God initiates the whole dynamic and must be the starting point. Liturgical proclamation, like sac-
32 The Sacramentality of Preaching ramental celebration, is an action embedded in the body of Christ and rooted in Gods definitive wordJesuswho as Risen Lord speaks to and through the churchs proclamation and witness. Before the occurrence of any ritualized proclamation of Scripture or celebration of Sacrament which might express the gospel, the Gospel Himself occurs as the primordial sacrament, which means that Christ is the actual historical presence in the world of the eschatologically triumphant mercy of God.139 Two concepts now significantly alter the understanding of sacrament: the church as foundational sacrament, and Christ as the primordial (original) sacrament working in and through his present body and foundationthe church. According to Rahner, it is within this church that Gods self-disclosure in word is happening ever anew. Edward Schillebeeckx At approximately the same time as Rahner, Edward Schillebeeckx was seeking a more detailed study of a phenomenological perspective on liturgical proclamation.140 Schillebeeckx believed that the revelatory word was located in the depth dimensions of human experience. These revelatory experiences Schillebeeckx calls sacramental encounters with Christ141 and they form one of two poles of Gods self-giving. The second pole is the living Tradition, found primarily in sacred Scripture. For Schillebeeckx, preaching is a participant in the second pole seeking further revelation from the first, and his theology of preaching has been described as a theology of paradosis or the handing on of the living tradition of the churchs faith.142 Preaching is a transmission of tradition, a transmission which is an essential moment in the revelation-faith dynamic through which God encounters humanity.143 Preaching however, does not transmit a message as much as it names the reality of Gods grace active in human history.144 Schillebeeckx is interested in showing how the relationship between God and humankind is historical and personal. He is trying to avoid extremes by navigating a common ground, somewhere between the Neo-Scholastic preoccupation with causality in the sacraments, which seems blind to any sense that Christ is personally active in them, and the tendency in Protestantism to abandon the objective character of sacraments and view them entirely as existential moments.145 In order to do this, he uses the language of mutual critical correlation to describe the relationship between tradition and our situation, the relationship between word and sacrament, and the relationship between God and
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 33 humankind. Indeed, mutual critical correlation might also be applied to his understanding of the relationship between the preached word and the celebration of the sacraments. Schillebeeckxs writing makes a three-fold contribution to this study. First, it is clear that Schillebeeckxs work complements all those who have argued for the dialogical relationship between word and sacrament. Like many others,146 he uses the Hebrew notion of dabar (word) as a dialogue between God and humankind in which the mystery of Gods saving activity is heard, uncovered, located, and made meaningful.147 This implies that the very nature of word is dialogical, as is the nature of sacrament. Therefore, it follows that word and sacrament are in a dialogical relationship. Second, he also supports the notion that there is a unity in the preached word and the sacraments when he calls them the two burning focal points148 within the church. Each has its own distinct manner, but theirs is a mutual revelation through which one real and active presence is found. Preaching and Sacrament need each other. Third, Schillebeeckxs work underlines and furthers the thinking found in Semmelroth and Rahner on the ecclesial nature of word and sacrament. The church is the realm of the encounter with Christ; it is the medium for the disclosure, interpretation, and celebration of Gods redemption of the world. These three wordsdialogical, unified, ecclesialall apply to the word, sacrament, faith relationship. At this point, Semmelroth, Rahner, and Schillebeeckx have provided theological insight and an expanded framework for the consideration of word and sacrament as happeningseventsencounters, in the ongoing redemptive purposes of God. In a publication from the year 2000, Paul Janowiak looks back at the time of Vatican II, and sees that the theological framework in the Roman Catholic church had shifted so much that some truly startling149 statements found their way into the documents of the Council. He summarizes the shifts by speaking of the changed understanding of the church in worship as articulated by these three writers:
The theological framework for a sacramental presence of Christ in the word has taken shape around three complementary understandings of the Church in her sacramental worship: (1) an ecclesial participation in the redemptive dialogue of Christ, as Otto Semmelroth envisioned; (2) an uttered word of grace, part of a single proclamation of Gods victory for us in Christ, as explored by Karl Rahner; and (3) a dynamic encounter between God and humankind, in which the revelatory word is heard and appropriated at both ambo and table, as Schillebeeckx declared.150
34 The Sacramentality of Preaching
Summary and Direction

In this chapter, we have seen some of the conceptual predecessors for both the work of Chauvet, and my use of his work, in homiletics. Out of a vast, and varied, field of study and practice, I will be suggesting some modest changes in emphasis and nudges in certain directions that will support current homiletical theory. These may contribute to larger shifts that are identified by Richard Lischer as new choices for preaching. Lischer, who conceives of preaching as the Churchs language,151 suggests that preaching must move from event to formation, from illustration to narrative, and from translation to performance.152 The Protestant writers discussed in this chapter did not complete any of these shifts, but they were voices who whispered about the potential of new directions. The Roman Catholic writers discussed here widened and deepened the notion of sacrament. This has enriched sacramental experience for many. It has drawn some non-Catholics back into using a larger sacramental language. The trends involved, in this larger understanding of sacrament, can lead to a more fruitful approach for linking sacrament with preaching. Most theologies of preaching already have a robust understanding of encounter with the Word, but this larger sacramental language seems more conducive to discourse on the many relationships of the Word within sacramental liturgy. Further, the understanding of sacraments, as ecclesial celebrations discussed in this chapter, can bring with it a different, perhaps renewed, understanding of church. The church now can be understood as the ground sacrament (grundsacrament, foundational) of Christ (who is the ur-sacrament, primordial). Thus, the church can be conceived of as the primary sacramental place, the graced space within which the Christ-saving-events are encountered, recognized, celebrated, and lived out. Essential to this understanding is an emphasis on the communitys role in the celebration of God in sacrament; this helps to overcome clericalized ideas of the gift of grace and individualized, privatized ideas of the reception of grace. This goes hand in hand with another important trend through these writings, that of the incarnational dimension of sacrament which views the world as a sacramental medium. Sacraments, understood as eventsgraced events, embodied eventsare, at the same time, celebrations and expressions of sacramental moments in human experience in the world at large. People who gather regularly around the churchs Eucharistic table, may begin to see that any encounter with others, around a table, could be a real sacramental encounter,
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 35 revealing the love, forgiveness and reconciling presence of Christ. The fruits of these anywhere encounters could then be gathered up and offered as one, unifying, act of praise and thanksgiving at the Eucharistic tablethe privileged symbolic place for interpreting and expressing thanks and praise to God. This can make the notion of sacrament less objectified, more accessible, and much less under the control of clerical elites. While there were many gains made through the writing of this period, there remain problems in what followed. These new perspectives for thinking did not move everyone. Despite the significant innovations in the world of Homiletics, by people like Grady Davis, for example, and, despite the outpouring of literature from the New Homiletic, propositional-instructional-discursive preaching still prevails in many quarters. Despite the Vatican II theologians genuine innovations in the concept of sacrament, the cultic/sacerdotal understanding of sacrament has not disappeared in Protestant, Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches. Old images and conceptions are very hard to displace, even if they are not working anymore. Often, what we need, instead of the complete replacement of old images, is the expansion of our horizons through the appearance of a new image or concept.153 If this new perspective overlaps enough with our current view, that it does not seem foreign to it, and, if it does not threaten to take away what we have, it can serve to adjust or correct our current view and open to us perspectives we could not otherwise see. Eventually, we may assimilate this new concept and voluntarily make it our primary viewpoint. What is more likely, is that we will find that the two views provide for layered meaning and thick description, or that the two views are held in a creative tension that is appropriate and desirable. Either way, new dimensions are being offered, new possibilities are presented, new choices are being made, and potentially helpful shifts are occurring if we do not settle for a lifeless status quo based on a limited telos or end-purpose for our task. What we have seen in this first chapter, is the offering of new possibilities for thinking and new trajectories, images, and conceptions for our vocation. Following on the work of those surveyed here, writers like Louis-Marie Chauvet, gave nuance to these ways of thinking, made them more precise, and made the effort to get behind the conceptions, to explore their core meaning more fully.154 If these writers from the 1950s and 1960s have shown us anything, it is that homileticians need not abandon theological or liturgical language for our con-
36 The Sacramentality of Preaching ceptions of preaching.155 New choices for preaching can be made with the churchs own language, and in my view, with the terms sacramentality, proclamation and all that relates to them. On a strictly theological level, most of the choices for preaching, since the Reformation, have been determined by those things which fall under the category proclamation, but I would like to argue that the evolving notion of sacramentalitythe other primary action of worshipmay act as a second horizon.
Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics

Proclamation and Sacramentality To facilitate this dialogue, let us share a clear understanding of what proclamation is. Proclamation is a general term signifying the activity of a herald (Gk. keryx) or messenger (angelos) in making public the content and meaning of what God has said or done for the salvation of the world.156 In most forms of Eucharistic worship, there is a Liturgy of the Word which is assembled around the proclamation of Scripture.157 Preaching usually finds its place in this liturgy of the Word. This is, in part, why proclamation is closely related to the images of herald, witness and confession for preaching. The preacher announces, interprets, instructs and adds personal, and official, emphasis to the importance of what is announced. While proclamation is an event of communication, it tends to be self-limiting in the sense that the proclaimer, whether herald, witness, confessor of the faith, teacher, interpreter etc., limits himself or herself to one-way communication, and to saying something about somethingnamely the truth about God and what God has done in Christ.158 At its worst, this announcement is made only in the past tense, as though Christ is not alive and not able to come-into-presence, or as though God, in Christ, was only active in the past of the Bible. Or the implication of the announcement is that the only path to faith is through intellectual assent to statements of faithconfession as the affirmation that a proposition about God is agreeable to the hearer. At its best however, the announcement also breaks open into an event of encounter with the living God, who promises life, and who keeps that promise, and who sends the Spirit to continue animating all of Creation. The announce-
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 37 ment can break open into a shocking, surprising, moving experience of the manifestation of faith in relation to Goda relationship leading to trust and obedience. Primarily, however, at its best and at its worst, proclamation is an announcement which necessarily precedes any possible recognition of, or response to, God. In other words, the Proclamation of the Word may include, but does not often intentionally include, a movement by preacher and congregation in response to God in heart, voice and gesture. This movement, during the Proclamation of the Word, is the point at which proclamation may give way to, or incorporate, the second primary activity of Christian worship, sacramentality. Normally, the term sacramentality is focused on the second liturgy within the liturgy, the Liturgy of the Eucharist. There is a tendency to limit the term sacramental to describe things closely associated with the prayers and actions immediately surrounding the table, and in distribution of the bread and wine.159 There are good reasons for carefully distinguishing between the two liturgies and the two tables of word and sacrament.160 But, instead of understanding them as parallel structures (never meeting), they may be better understood as two horizons of activity and meaning that meet in conversation; two horizons of activity and meaning that come together so that a meeting and conversation with God becomes possible, according to the activity of the Word and Spirit. The practical/pastoral opportunities found in the places where proclamation and sacramentality overlap, and transition, may have life-changing significance. When the announcement mode of saying something about something breaks into the encounter mode of saying something to someone and, when what is said is recognized as a word from God to me or to us, the activity of sacramentality has been ignited by the Spirit. It is not an easy distinction because both proclamation and sacramentality can happen at the same time, in the same word or action. But, when either proclamation or sacramentality is missing, the possibility of that ignition decreases. At the very least, the preaching of the Word has not been all that it can be, as an aid to the work of the Holy Spirit. It should come as no surprise that the Liturgy of the Eucharist has aspects that are primarily proclamation. The Great Thanksgiving, or the Eucharistic Prayer, could be considered a ritualized, prayerful sermon which perfectly proclaims the kerygma in a nutshell. Yet, most worshipers would insist that the Great Thanksgiving involves far more than talking about what God has done in Christ. Something happens, or is supposed to happen when we pray it, and that something has to do with communion between God and us. The Great
38 The Sacramentality of Preaching Thanksgiving does something more than that and it leads to something more within its own horizon. This more is often the missing element in liturgical preaching. The sacrament has proclamation qualities and preaching can have sacramental qualitites. And, if the one who presides over the Liturgy of the Eucharist incorporates this sense of proclaiming Good News through the action of Eucharistic prayer and communion, Christ is not only potentially present but Christ is potentially preaching. The work of the presider will remember the meaning of the sacramental action in symbolic language and the whole action will point to Christ. Sacramentality is interpreted and becomes known in the announcement of the kerygma. The one who presides over the Liturgy of the Word can incorporate the sense that God wants to speak to these people and, that by speaking, God wants to establish or re-establish a relationship with them. This is a relationship of trust and obedience. The risen One, then, in relationship, can be experienced as presently seeking the lost, presently judging the world as worthy of his life. The work of the preacher will lead to the recognition of encounter with Christ, and will model a response. Proclamation then serves its proper end, the purpose of God in Christ, through the power of the Spirit, according to the principle of sacramentality. Sacramentality Defined Kenan Osborne may be the only writer who provides a clear definition of sacramentality. Sacramentality, at its simplest level, occurs when there is an action of God, a blessing, and a subsequent human response.161 The chief thing to note, initially, is that sacramentality is an occurrence; it is neither a thing, not even a created thing, nor is it a human action. This definition begins to satisfy the desire for an analogy (for the dynamics of grace involved in Liturgical preaching) that is based on phenomenonolgical/existential categories but does not fall prey to the same instrumental/productionist notion found in earlier homiletical literaturea notion which we seek to avoid in our description of preaching. The first part of the definition acknowledges that human beings, preachers in particular, are not on the production-delivery side of grace; sacramentality describes an action of God. However, human beings, with all our capacities and
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 39 limits, are accounted for in the definition. Sacramentality describes not only an action of God alone; it requires a human response. In order to better gauge the limits of this definition, Osborne first highlights Gods freedom and the limitless possibility in this action when he says,
God, who is absolutely free, cannot be bound by any human, ecclesial, or ecclesiastical regulations. No creature restricts the actions of an absolutely free God. Nor can an absolutely free God be bound by any human, created, or finite conditions. In other words, there can be no a priori limitation on an absolutely free God who acts in an absolutely free way. Even the sources of revelation must be interpreted against the primordial freedom of God.162
This does not prevent God from choosing to act according to the patterns found in the history of salvation, but it recognizes that God is free to act in new ways as well. Thus, it requires human beings to be open to the possibility (the hope!) of a new thing. The action of God, the blessing of God that initiates this dynamic sacramentality, may be a shockingly new thing. Immediately however, Osborne also highlights the particular and specific limits of sacramentality when he adds, Gods action, blessing, is not a generalized action/blessing, nor is it an abstract action/blessing. The subsequent human response is likewise not a generalized or abstract response by generalized and abstract human beings.163 The action of God is particular and specific, and so, too, must be the human response. Here, Osborne helpfully provides another term; Haecceitas, a Scotistic term loosely translated as thisness.164 He says, A sacramental action of God only occurs in sacramental Haecceitas. There is no general sacramentality, a sacramental generalitis. Sacramentality is profoundly temporal, profoundly spatial, and profoundly relative.165 Using Baptism as an example, Osborne illustrates the thisness of each sacramental event.
If we consider the actual baptism of a specific individual named X, we find the presence of specific ministers, of specific family members, and of specific friends. We find the celebration occurring at a specific and unrepeatable moment of time, at a specific and unrepeatable place within the cosmos. The personal, physical, temporal, spatial coordinates for this actual moment of baptism will never occur again. Generic baptism is a figment of the imagination.166
So, for example, near the end of Symbol and Sacrament when Chauvet writes, creation is itself charged with sacramentality,167 we understand from the beginning that this is a dual-dimension description.
40 The Sacramentality of Preaching First, it is possible that God can act whenever and wherever God wants, within or beyond creation. And, second, creation itself alonedoes not provide all the elements for sacramentality, but creation does provide the specific and unrepeatable mediations of the action and the response. In other words, the world itself is not a sacrament and does not constitute an event of sacramentality without being recognized as a creation of GodGods current gift. Osborne says,
A cloud itself is not just somewhere in the sky as a cosmic sacrament. Trees are not just growing in some earthly forest as a worldly sacrament. Gods creative action may be in every cloud and tree and river, but the sacramentality aspect takes place only when this action produces a subsequent reaction from some human person. One can see many trees and experience nothing sacramental. Sacramental Haecceitas occurs when a human person or human persons begin to react to the blessing qua blessing of God in the tree, in the cloud, or in the river.168
In other words, created objects, living or otherwise, are not the focus of sacramentality; rather they are necessary meditations for the blessing relationshipthe communicationbetween God and humankind. God, whose action is judgement/blessing, cannot be understood apart from the ones God is judging/blessing. There is a specific dual-dimension to an event of sacramentality; there is an action of God, and a subsequent human response.169 There is an appealing tentativeness in saying that the world is the possible sacramental place that authentically honours both the freedom of God, and the necessary response of human beings. Accordingly, Obsornes definition of sacramentality is also tentative. In the following two chapters, we will pursue Chauvets understanding of the sacramentality of faith, in order to gain better criteria for the sacramentality of preaching. The Sacramentality of Preaching If the starting point of all Christian preaching is indeed a cry of surprise and wonder, this cry is an utterance in response to the recognition of something that God has done. In all that we have surveyed, it is clear that the action of God is established as the foundation for theological discourse and liturgical celebration. Any talk of Jesus as the primordial sacrament, or the church as the foundational sacrament, must always make clear that sacramental primordiality belongs to the action of the infinite God, rather to anything finite. Any talk of preaching and sacraments must always make clear that it is the Triune God, as Word and Spirit, who is the deepest reality involved, and the One who animates both.170
Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 41 God is the source and goal of life and liturgy;171 life and liturgy are from God and to God. Christian preaching offers the possibility of both an act of God and a response to God. I am not arguing that sacramentality is the dominant dynamic in preaching, but it is the other necessary dynamic, a second horizon, based on the same deep theological structures as proclamation. Incorporating sacramentality into our theology and practice of preaching may open possibility; it may create tension and excitement for preachings transition from event to formation, from illustration to narrative, and from translation to performance. Or, perhaps better still, with sufficient focus on the sacramentality of preaching, things like event and formation may become two poles of creative tension, each interpreting the other, so that together they may refer us to the work of the Risen Christ through the Spirit. This reference to the triune God, and the expectation of encounter and relationship with God, is the most powerful thing our foolish proclamation can do. And through our participation in it, God may decide to save those who believe. (1 Corinthians 1:18-25). The rest of this book will be an attempt to articulate how preaching responds to God, and participates in the passage to faith which finds its primary expression in liturgy. Preaching participates in this by continually opening up space for revelation and empowerment in the conceptual, ritual, and ethical life of the body of Christ. Within this space, God comes to usa continual advent and, in order to respond, we make a continual passage to faithfaith in this God who acts for us. The passage to faith involves a response to moments of recognition moments provided by God. Liturgical Preaching, I will propose, is the action that guides the church through these moments, and models a sacramental response. By grace, the recognition of Gods action for us, and presence to us, becomes immediate empowerment for life lived as Christs body in the world. The dynamic involved in this moment, as well as the dynamic leading to and from this moment, is grace itself, but we can be more specific. For our purposes here, I will be drawing attention to the threshold (or overlap, or tension) between the dynamic which leads to an encounter with God (which I am calling proclamation) and the dynamic which leads to recognition of God and engages us in the first steps of response to God (which I am calling sacramentality). I will seek ways to strengthen sacramentality in
42 The Sacramentality of Preaching preaching, as well as proposing ways to understand the sacramental quality and end of preaching. As we will soon see, Louis-Marie Chauvets whole project is an interpretation of Christian existence according to the sacramentality of faith.
CHAPTER TWO
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order

... in its various liturgical rites the church constantly proclaims that the grace God communicates to humans comes from the Father through the Son and in the Spirit.1 ... encounter of and communication with the living God are done through traditional and fully human materialsgestures, postures, wordswhich the church assumes in the name of Christ 2
In these statements, (the first referring to proclamation, the second to sacramentality) Chauvet proposes two primary theses which undergird much of his theology. The first relates to the Trinitarian nature of the grace proclaimed in the various liturgical rites. The second relates to the necessary mediation of the churchs assumed language for encounter and communication with God. Chauvets work must be summarized and reshaped in order to be of use to homiletics. My intention is that this work of harvesting for the sake of homiletics will be one of the primary contributions of this book. In addition to the work of recasting Chauvets theory, this chapter is also intended to provide theoretical background for subsequent chapters, especially chapter four. I will present Chauvets thesis relating to a Trinitarian approach and his argument for understanding language as mediation. Following that, I will discuss his turn to the church and some initial observations about the usefulness of this theory for homiletics will be presented.
A Trinitarian Approach to the Whole Mystery of Christ3

On the way to questions about how sacraments or preaching work, it is often simply assumed that God communicates grace to humans, and the church responds in thanksgiving and witness. With this unexplored assumption in the background, the inquirer dives directly into the mechanics of the sacramental event. Chauvet believes that reliance on this unexplored assumption leads to a narrow, instrumental approach, describing how God communicates. Therefore, for Chauvet, the how questions, while important, are secondary. Asking questions about how God works in the sacraments, or in preaching, or in the
44 The Sacramentality of Preaching world, can stifle other important questions about the identity of God and a resulting openness to revelation, or disclosure. In classical sacramental theology, the how questions ask things like, how can these visible, earthly, human elements communicate or convey divine grace? This leads to (and from) doctrinal questions pertaining to how God can become human while remaining divine, which, of course, leads to classical sacramental theologys point of departure, the incarnation; the Word became flesh and lived among us, fully human and fully divine. After his death and resurrection, according to the classical theory, the risen Christ ministers to us through his word and sacraments as extensions of the incarnation. The advantage of thinking in terms of a hypostatic union in Christology is that, when applied to the preached word and administered sacrament, it is a small step to the understanding that Christ is active in these elements of sermon and sacrament incarnationally. There is a disadvantage, however, according to Chauvet. If you start with the incarnation, and, even after the death and resurrection of Jesus, you continue to single it out as your point of departure, the dominant question is necessarily about how God comes to us in Christ, and the sacramental question is how can God communicate with us through the purely human means of sacrament? Chauvet points out that, the presupposition was that one knew in advance all about God and one applied this representation to Christ through the concept of his divine nature.4 Then, as Thomas Aquinas did, the humanity of Christ is likened to a conjoined instrument of his divinity, and the sacraments are the disjunct instrument of his divinity.5
The principal cause of grace is God, for whom the humanity of Christ is a conjoined instrument (like the hand in relation to the will) and the sacrament a separate instrument (like a stick, itself moved by the instrument joined to it, the hand). It is necessary then that the power of salvation descend from the divinity of Christ through his humanity until it reaches the sacraments.6
In this conception, the focus is on the stick in the hand of the divine Christ, or to use another analogy for the relationship, the brush in the hand of the painter, and the hand to the mind of the painter. This may be helpful as an analogy for how it happens, but Chauvet suggests that we do not know what it is. What happens? Why does it happen? Who is this God that we are able to say this about God? Chauvet asks,
Rather than How can God (it being understood that we know who God is) do such and such? would it not be more in keeping with biblical revelation and especially with the
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 45

scandal of the cross to ask Of what God are we speaking when we say that we have seen God in Jesus?7
Here we find a helpful question for homiletics. It may seem obvious for the preacher to keep his or her eye on the identity and mission of God, and many succeed in this task. But, the magnetism of the homiletical question, asking how God communicates with us, through preaching, may distract us from God. In other words, we run the risk of making the preached word an object, considering only its instrumental value, and then we focus on the mechanical details of Gods activity through preaching.8 Strangely, this may obscure the motivation or purpose God has for acting/speaking. It may also keep us away from knowing the character, grace, will and mission of God, thereby obscuring our own identity and mission. Homileticians may find help in the trajectory cast by Chauvet in the following three principles. First, because we want to remain open to the power of revelation, we do not begin with the assumption that we know exactly who God is. Second, we cannot know the full scope of who God is from the incarnation alone. And third, asking how God does something is important, but secondary, to asking why God would do itwhat kind of God is this? Following from these, and other concerns, Chauvets point of departure for sacramental theology is the revelatory event of the Cross, more specifically, the paschal mystery, that is, the cross of the risen One.9 The conception of the whole Paschal Mystery, emphasizing the cross of the risen One as its hermeneutical centre, is not a new theological starting point for preaching. There should be nothing surprising to us about using this Easter point of departure, since the primitive kerygma and the earliest confessions of faith were Easter proclamations.10 The Sunday gathering for worship was (and is) a celebration of the Easter event, in a manner which assumes (believes) that the Paschal event, somehow, continues in the power of the Holy Spirit. If it is true that the church believes as it prays (lex orandi, lex credendi), the Easter/Pentecost hermeneutic found in the liturgy is of great importance. It can be the starting point in any theology, and when taken in its full scope, it can be the primary hermeneutic of sermon and sacrament. Chauvet suggests the adoption of this dynamic from the start,11
To start from the Pasch, and not from the hypostatic union, is first to locate the sacraments within the dynamic of a history, that of a church born, in its historic visibility, from the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost and always in the process of becoming the body of Christ all through history.12
46 The Sacramentality of Preaching Thus, in history, the time of sacraments and preaching is located between Ascension and Parousiait is the time of the Church.13 The incarnation is not without importance, but it is interpreted from a theological perspective, found between Death-Resurrection/Ascension/Pentecost and the eschatological promise of His coming again. The following diagram illustrates this history.
Diagram 1. The Paschal Mystery of Christ14
The first emphasis, seen across the top of this diagram, is laid on the whole Paschal Mysteryfrom incarnation to parousia.15 It includes Jesus birth (the Word made flesh), his life as a historical reality, including his death and resurrection as the key to unlocking the whole mystery,16 his exaltation, the gift of the Spirit, and the promised Parousia. The second emphasis in the diagram is laid on the Time of the Churchbetween Ascension and Parousiawhere Chauvet locates the sacraments, and by implication, every expression of the gospel including preaching. There are consequences of this point of departure for theology and homiletics. First, the time of the church (the time of Christian Scripture, Tradition, preaching, sacraments, life lived in Christs name) is not a static prolongation of the incarnation, but it is the time when the body of these things is the major expression of the risen One in the world through the Spirit.17 Preaching, therefore, must be considered an integral part of the body of these things; it must take its place fully, but without claiming too much for itself at the expense of Scripture and Tradition, sacraments, and life lived in Christs name. Preaching does not stand alone, or apart, from the other elements of the body. Indeed, it must benefit from being in a complementary mode of relationship with these
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 47 things. Further, the body of these things, preaching included, must be seen as the major expression of the risen One in the world through the Spirit. This means that preaching can strive to be an expression of the risen One, not merely an expression of the preacher and his/her personality, or his/her learning.18 Second, if the Word made flesh, once-and-for-all, in the Incarnation, is currently, in the time of the Church, understood as the risen Lord who takes flesh today in the power of the Spirit, flesh that still bears the marks of the wounds of his death, then preaching may play a role in the formation of that flesh as the complex body of elements where the Trinitarian God is actively raising for himself a new humanity. By the grace of the Spirit of God, we live within that time and within that bodya body which is always in the process of becoming the body of Christ, until he comes again. From Chauvets Trinitarian starting point, especially his understanding of the time of the church, we see the importance of affirming at least two things: that preaching can be an expression of God, and that preaching can play a role in the formation of the body that God is raising for himself - the church. These notions point to something so central in Chauvets theory that it warrants placement as the subtitle of one of his books: the Word of God at the Mercy of the Body.19 This is how he refers to the activity of the risen One in the church. It also introduces his description of the dynamic involved in Gods active presence todaythe dynamic sacramental grace. Chauvet says this of the grace involved in the church celebrating sacraments,20
The theological affirmation of sacramental grace is understood in the wake of the churchs faith in the power of the risen One continually raising for himself, through the Spirit, a body of new humanity. Before the question of the efficacy of the sacraments we have the question of the active presence of the risen One in the world through the Spirit. This active presence is what faith is about. In this perspective, sacramental grace is nothing but one of the expressions of this faith. True, it is only one expression among others, but there is something radical about it in that, due to its eminently concrete and singular character, it is a buffer which tests or veri-fies the faith unceasingly threatened with drifting toward general and generous ideas on the active presence of the risen Christ.21
This active presence is what faith is about, what preaching is about, what scripture, tradition and the life lived in Christs name are about, and this active presence is the ultimate reference point for this study. But, even here, there can be no attempt to fully grasp the mystery of Gods active presence. Rather, an
48 The Sacramentality of Preaching attempt is being made to examine preaching when it is carried out from a perspective of faith, and as an expression and mediation of the risen One and his gospel.22 I will continue to assess the many implications, for homiletics, from what has been presented thus far, but, for now we note, at a general level, the emphasis on the active presence of the risen One in the Spirit, which continually raises up a body of humanity to live particular lives in Christs name, as well as the importance of testing our ideas about the active presence. The Trinitarian God is present, and active, in the very stuff of human life, but this activity is particular. We cannot allow a collapse of that distinction between Gods activity and human activity in the church. We want to protect against a simple equation of the word of the preacher and the Word of God. Chauvet helps us here because he shows that the celebration, by way of sacrament, can be seen as fully human acts, believed to be symbolic bearers of Gods grace and expressions of the humanity of the divine God. Thus, they are the embodiment of the theological in the anthropological.23 The same can be said for preaching. At this point we also note that the phrase the Word of God at the mercy of the body signifies a turn to mediation. The scandal of suggesting that the church is his body (acting as a buffer to test, to veri-fy, faith), suggests a turn to the church in the time of the church. Chauvet has said that, for some reason, the divine chooses to take place in the human. We see that, encounter of and communication with the living God are done through traditional and fully human materialsgestures, postures, wordswhich the church assumes in the name of Christ 24 We now may consider Chauvets argument for the necessary mediation of language, that fully human material. The focus in the following pages will shift from the theological to the anthropological.25 For the sake of a concentrated assessment of Chauvets thinking, homiletical reflections and observations have been put on hold until later in this chapter.
The Linguistic Turn

The Human Subject in Language and Culture This aspect of Chauvets work builds on the linguistic turn which influences many critiques of modern thought.26 He begins with the philosophy of language. Chauvet analyses the elements that constitute human existence and their
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 49 organization because of the claim that what is divine takes place in what is human. From the viewpoint of the human sciences, the church and its celebrations belong to what is called language: first verbal language of course, but also the language (or quasi language) of gestures, postures, movements, which are all forms of body language.27 Therefore, Chauvet wants to make this fundamental shift in the understanding of language, so that the language of the church has a proper footing. The following is necessary only in response to this assertion, about language, that; language is not an instrument but a mediation. Language as Instrument
Diagram 2. Language as Instrument28
Chauvets diagram can be understood by considering each arrow in turn. Arrow 1 shows the subject (the human person) in an immediate relation to reality29; Arrow 2 shows that reality enters the subjects mind in a natural way as a mental image, a perfect replica of the real; Arrow 3 shows that the subject can convert the mental image to language and communicate what he or she has perceived of reality. This seems like a perfectly natural, common-sense representation of how language functions. However, following on the insights of many philosophers30most of whom follow Heideggers notion of language as the house of being, and/or Wittgensteins language-games31Chauvet points out that, in this diagram, language is treated as an instrument since the human subject (or the person) is posited (at least logically) before it.32 This would mean that a person can stand outside language, outside culture, outside history and objectively label reality.33 Understood as an instrument, language is in the hand of the subject who wishes to convey information, meaning, or even to do a specific task with words. With this self-understanding, and from this perspective, human beings expect to have direct contact with reality and the goal is to surmount any obstacle between themselves and the real.
50 The Sacramentality of Preaching Chauvet calls this the temptation of immediacy or the desire for immediacy.34 It is a perfectly natural desire, but it is based on an illusion. Chauvet writes, Language is neither primarily nor fundamentally a convenient tool of information nor is it a distributor of carefully regulated titles. More fundamentally, it is summonsvocation.35 We learn to speak after we have listened to ourselves being-spoken and our world being- spoken. Even words spoken by a human voice, the sound of which disappears almost as soon as the words are uttered, are concrete mediations made of sensible matter organized by culture.36 However, if we limit our understanding of language to instrument, our task becomes an attempt find a direct line to reality in order to see face to faceor to be in a God-like position and possess the truth.37 We could then make an objective utterance through the instrument language. The key to such a task is to overcome all sensible mediations as obstacles. For Chauvet, this is an exercise in futility. Language as Mediation If language is contemporary with human beings,38 if we do not exist before language (and culture), then it follows that we come-to-be in language.39 Chauvet characterizes this understanding of language as a milieu, regarded as a sort of womb. He writes,
This term has the advantage of bringing us back to the fetal condition; from the time of pregnancy, the child is enclosed in a maternal womb which is not only biological but already cultural since the mother (modern psychology insists on the point) already speaks to her baby, shares with it, consciously and especially unconsciously, her emotions and feelings, and begins, most often without realizing it, to transmit to it the cultural heritage of the group, the mother tongue to begin with. [It is] a necessary condition of any humanization.40
This milieu is only the beginning of humanization, to be sure, but the analogy serves to show that we are always immersed in the mediation of language. It is not something we seek to avoid as an obstacle to reality.41 To understand language as mediation, Chauvet says, is to assent to the following diagram:
Diagram 3. Language as Mediation42
Arrow 1 shows that the relation of the subject to reality is mediated, consequently constructed, by language and culture; Arrow 2 indicates that precisely by constructing reality as world that subject constructs itself as subject.43 With this diagram Chauvet observes two things in relation to the human subject: first, at the fundamental level, language is not an instrument, but a mediationa wombthe subject arises and is maintained within it.44 Second, the diagram suggests that every properly human relation to reality is culturally constructed.45 The ordering of the world varies, depending on the language and culture which forms you. Language is like a womb, says Chauvet, but it can further be described as a lens which forms on the eye in the womb.46 A language/cultural lens eventually becomes invisible as you perceive your environment through it, and one can forget that, what looks like the most natural thing in the world is, in fact, a wholly cultural one. Thus far, Chauvets thinking on language is not original. It is, however, clear and it sets the stage for his original contributions. Language is a mediation, he contends, a womb in which we come to be, a lens through which we map meaning in the world. That, for Chauvet, is the nature of language. He then asks, what does language do? Using a famous lecture by Jacques Lacan on the stage of the mirror, Chauvet argues that the purpose of language is a distancing, a breaking of immediacy. By identity-naming it distances, thereby allowing for recognition. Lacan describes the stage of a human child, between six and eighteen months, when he or she looks in the mirror and simply sees the unrelated parts of a body.
In order to be able to identify itself, that is to say, to recognize that it is a symbolic whole the baby must hear itself named by someone, someone using its first name and subsequently a personal pronoun.47
52 The Sacramentality of Preaching By naming the child, that is you, name, in the mirror, the child can identify himself or herself. However, if the identified image is not then recognized as a representationthe lack of which might lead to drowning in the ideal image of self, like Narcissusit can become a deadly illusion. It must include a distancing, a distancing of self from that image in the mirror, breaking immediacy. Language opens the child to self recognition as a subject.48 Chauvet concludes that, such is really the primordial function of language: it places reality at a distance by representing it in sounds and chains of coded sounds and thus makes it signifying.49 Our world is full of such signification, always ordered, always socially organized. Using a phrase from Francois Flahault, Chauvet says that even simple acts in daily lifegetting dressed, eating, moving, suffering, finding pleasureall these continually plunge us into a world filled with symbolic reference points.50 The senses are stimulated by the matterthe elementsinvolved in these acts, but we perceive according to the thick semiological layer which surrounds them in language. The elements are integrated into an already-constructed, re-construct-able system. As Chauvet describes it, it is better to think of the subject being plunged into language, which functions as a mediation, rather than thinking of the subject standing objectively outside of language and using it as a tool. Language is understood as the sensible, cultural, institutional mediations which are not obstacles to be surmounted, but rather the womb in which we come-to-be and the lens by which we perceive. This understanding calls for a very difficult conversiona renunciation of the desire to be in direct contact with the real/truth, and an assent to the mediation of the necessarily ambiguous milieu of language. Eventually, we will see that Chauvet breaks from the anthropological realm to make a theological assertion about language, one which comes as no surprise to the Christian: the relation to God is mediated by the necessarily ambiguous milieu of the church. This conversion is to renounce the perfectly natural desire to do away with all these antiquated words, gestures, ceremonies and people (the language and culture of the church) and worship God in spirit and in truth (John 4:20-21, 24). Why can we not have a more spare religion in which contact with the pure word of God would at last be possible?51 The answer: because in the time of the church this is pure imagining. Nonetheless, Chauvet adds that this question,
expresses an intuition that deserves to be considered: that the church can never be in serene possession of its liturgical rites, that it must constantly resist the temptation to

imprison itselfas well as Godwithin them. For these rites, which have Christian meaning only if they are filled with the word and in-dwelt by the Spirit, contest the word of God in the very moment they attest it. In this sense the temptation to do away with them can be salutary.52
Chauvets concern is pastoral: we must worship God and carry out our lives in Christs service, reconciled to the necessary mediation of the language and culture of Christian community. Christian faith cannot be lived any other way, except by a plunge into the body of Christ, the church, which is both mystery and scandal.53 This statement must be theologically justified, and we will pursue this later in this chapter. For now, let us focus on the theological trajectory of the discussion on language. Chauvet concurs with the philosophers of language, on a general, anthropological level: we do not plunge ourselves into language because we cannot stand outside it, yet daily life constantly plunges us into itas a fish is in water, and water is in the fish. We are in a world of symbolic markers which situate us within an ordered space where we find our bearings. Symbol, the Symbolic Order, and Symbolic Efficacy If language as mediation is one pillar upholding Chauvets work, another pillar is the efficacy of symbol. This is part of his fundamental revision of the terms, or categories, used in classical sacramental theology. This shift, he suggests, is from cause and instrument to language and symbol.54 Since the category sign is associated with cause and instrument, Chauvet needs to distinguish between sign and symbol. This discussion will come after examining his response to the question, what is meant by symbol?55 Again, what Chauvet proposes for an answer is not original, but it is consistent, clear, and suggestive to the theological-homiletical imagination. The Ancient Symbol: Greek verb. symballein, to throw together56 A symbol opens a world of meaning. Chauvet offers some examples of this definition for symbol which I will use to explain the theory which follows.57 First: walls. Walls are everywhere around us. Our homes have walls; they can be imagined even when we are away from home. Castles have walls; taller and stronger than most, because they are meant to fortify. Walls are everywhere. Yet, anyone
54 The Sacramentality of Preaching who was alive for any part of the Cold War will immediately think of one thing when they hear - THE Wall. The Berlin Wall is probably the prime symbol of the Cold War. When it came down, it was clear that a world was changing, not just a wall. Even though this wall is now mostly gone, a little bit remains as a symbol, still heavy, Chauvet says, with a collective memory of sufferings and hopes.58 Much like some other walls, for example, the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem and the Great Wall of China, this Wall participated in something much larger than its pure and immediate function. Whole worlds of meaning come into focus with symbols like The Wall. We may notice that The Wall is not a symbol unless you are familiar with at least part of the world of meaning associated with it, meaning which developed over time. Otherwise, it is just a wall. A symbol opens a world of meaning, and it participates in that world. Chauvet provides a second example because symbols are not always things or objects; they can be utterances. If several Christians are walking down the street and they hear someone say, The Lord be with you!, they might automatically, and with a smile of recognition, say, And also with you!59 They would respond this way only because they have been in church. They have recognized something about what was said and who said it, and consequently, the whole world of church might come to mind. The inside of their church building might leap to mind, their friends at church, their pastor, the music, a cross, or something from the Bible might leap to mind. God might leap to mind! An utterance which catches us by surprise and yet opens a whole world of meaning. The same dynamic opens a different world of meaning when walking down the same street and someone says sharply, Atten - tion! The whole world of the military might come to mind, and perhaps your participation in it, the people you know who are in the military, your feelings about the need for the military and so on. Symbols can be spoken to evoke the recognition of a whole world of meaninga mediation which is capable of promising and performing salvation. We can see that some of the meaning a symbol expresses must be remembered in order to evoke. If a symbol is not part of the language of the culture, it must first become known, it must be revealed, given. The response of recognition, however, is only one trait of the symbol. Incorporating the few examples given above, Chauvet analyzes some traits of the symbol and then its distinctiveness from sign.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 55 Analysis: Four Traits of a Symbol and the Act of Symbolization Chauvet recalls what a symbol was in the past: a piece of an object given to contracting parties in order to allow them or their descendants to recognize themselves as parties in this contract.60 By fitting the different fragments together, the fragments (which carried the contract in their shape), allowed the bearers of the fragments to be recognized as covenant partners according to the written or oral law guaranteeing the legitimacy of the operation. In this one (tortuous) sentence can be found the four traits of a symbol. 1. Fitting together, 2. Crystallization, 3. Recognition (or identification), 4. Submission to the communal Other.61 Chauvet offers an example of these traits of the ancient symbol in action:
We are at the end of the second world war. A group of resisters secretly contacts two secret agents who do not know each other but are to cooperate in an operation of sabotage. Each of them is given half a bank note irregularly cut in half. At the appointed place, day, and hour, the two, discreetly producing their half-bill, recognize each other by joining the two pieces.62
Chauvet shows that the act of symbolization not only has four traits, but four moments.63 A. Symbolization is an act, not an idea. It is the joining together of two different items which fit. The fit then reveals a union of two (or more) different elements. Consequently, only differences can be symbolized. (B) Each of the elements is relevant only in its relation to the other. If the bank note were a five-dollar bill, half of it would not be two dollars and fifty cents, but zero. The half-bill refers to the other half and requires the memory of this fact and the imagination to see it happen in order for it to be of value. (C) The monetary value does not matter for the symbol to function. Neither its commercial value, its aesthetic value, its cognitive value (you dont have to know everything about it), nor its emotional value matter because, as Chauvet says, the symbol does not belong to realm of value or utility.64 Finally, (D) for the two (or more) people involved, the act of symbolization is simultaneously revealer and agent. Chauvet explains, B. By symbolizing, they reveal to one another their identity as secret agents, and at the same time they find themselves bound together in the mission entrusted to them, bound to such a degree that they are go-
56 The Sacramentality of Preaching ing to accomplish it at the peril of both their lives. The revelation of identity is supremely efficacious; it creates a bond or relation that causes the situation to be other than before. Such is precisely one of the characteristics of the symbol: it effects only by revealing; conversely, it reveals only by effecting.65 Here we arrive at the core of Chauvets theory, symbolic efficacy. The symbol is simultaneously revealer and agentit binds and transforms the situation of both people involved. In this understanding of symbolic efficacy, together with Chauvets understanding of symbolic exchange to be examined in Chapter Three, we find the aspects of his theory most applicable to homiletics. We will soon come back to these two issues: the nature of sacramental efficacy and the process of symbolic exchange. For the moment, we must clarify the relative difference between sign and symbol because it will round out our discussion of language and it combines, well, Chauvets theory of language and symbol. Sign and Symbol: two poles of human expression and two levels of language. What is the nature of symbol in relation to sign? Before considering what Chauvet says in response to this question, it must be noted that the use of the word sign here does not correspond well to the biblical use of the word sign. In fact, the biblical use of sign is much closer to what will be proposed as symbol. What follows is merely a heuristic device drawn from the study of language. Further, in the material, sensory realm of life, sign and symbol are always mixed together66 so their distinction is meant to demonstrate not the essence of either sign or symbol, but rather their mutual relationship. Sign and symbol are always mixed, but, as Chauvets analysis shows, the symbol cannot be understood as an offshoot of the sign, as if it were only a more aesthetic or complex realization of the (sign).67 Following Edmond Ortiques,68 Chauvet lists some of the principal differences: The Sign a. leads to something other than itself because it implies a difference between two orders of relations b. pertains to knowledge or information c. says something about something
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 57 The Symbol a. does not lead to something of another order than itself, but it has the function of introducing us into an order of which itself is a part. b. has no value as information c. says something to someone The word flower for example, can function either as a sign or a symbol. Here, the word flower functions as a sign.
I can enter a conversation about flower(s) because, having heard the signifier/flower (sound perceived by the ear), I have been led back to the signified flower (the concept) and because, interested as I am in botany and horticulture, I find pleasure in sharing with others my knowledge on the subject.69
However, the word flower can also function as a symbol.

If lost, alone in the Amazonian forest after a plane crash from which, by some miracle, I have walked away unharmed, I hear in the distance the word flower, my reaction is not to say to myself, Well! someone is speaking about horticulture; Ill join the conversation, but Thank God! Another human being! Im saved!70
The word flower, in this second case, has allowed for identification of a person with whom communication is possible, and thus the possibility of help salvation. This is a symbolic function of the word flower because there was a spontaneous connection of the word to the whole English language (the order to which it belongs, rather than to the concept flower), and subsequently introduces the possibility of another person, situation, world. Clearly, in the two examples, the setting and circumstances surrounding the utterance of the word flower play a major role in determining the level of its function. The symbol links us to the world of meaning associated with it and something better than understanding happens. It functions by maintaining us in the order of recognition, not of cognition, of summons or challenge and not of simple information; it is the mediator of our identities as subjects within this cultural world it brings with itself, whose unconscious precipitate it is.71 By contrast, the sign functions in the order of cognition. The sign pertains to knowledge, or information, and says something about something, while the symbol has no value as information and says something to someone. Chauvet puts it this way, the sign belongs to the order of knowledge or information or else value, whereas the symbol belongs to the order of recognition or commu-
58 The Sacramentality of Preaching nication between subjects as subjects and is outside the order of value.72 Again, this is not to say that there is a mutually exclusive relationship between sign and symbol, but that sign and symbol are ruled by two different principles.73 This is important to Chauvet because the scientific and technological world in which we live is dominated by the idea that every language should be the univocal language of science.74 Chauvet wants to stress that there are two levels of language, two poles of human expression. In order to elaborate further on how the two logics of sign and symbol interact in different degrees, Chauvet describes four scenariosfour language eventsand their relative place on the sign/symbol spectrum. 1. Scientific discourse.75 Wanting to be as objective as possible, the scientist presents a paper on astrophysics which attempts to be as close to the pole sign as possible. The scientist aims to eliminate factors of belief, ideology, preference and so on, in order to operate with neutral and purely informative speech. Chauvet notes that the pole symbol is not entirely absent because the human being behind the scientist cannot be entirely removed. Personal investment, history, character and other involvements play a role. Nevertheless, the nature and purpose of his or her scientific language is as close to the pole sign as possible. 2. The performative act of language.76 The next three language events lean toward the other end of the sign/symbol spectrum where the speaker (writer, actor, artist etc.) is engaged in a subjective and symbolic mode. Again, the opposite pole sign is not absent. As Chauvet puts it, if I tell you, I promise to come and see you tomorrow, it is clear that I am transmitting information: you is not your neighbour, tomorrow is not today.77 The information has value, but it is secondary to the creation of a new relation between the participants in the language act. Here, Chauvet refers to, and demonstrates, what linguists and philosophers like John L. Austin, have said about performatives.78 Chauvet writes, The performance consists in this: the situation between my interlocutor and me is not the same after as before: I am now committed to this person.79 In a speech-act or a performative, the communication is between subjects, it does not describe something, it performs it.80 The pole symbol is dominant. 3. Making Conversation.81 Chauvet arrives at his office and says to his colleague, Its a beautiful morning. Interpreting the dynamics of such an utterance, Chauvet writes,

In appearance, this statement is purely informative. If my colleague, who for her part had also had ample time to notice that the sky was blue, did not retort, Do you take me for an idiot? it is because she understood very well that it was my way of saying, Hello! Youre here and so am I. What about recognizing one another for starters?82
The primary pole in this language event is symbolor more specifically, symbolic recognition. Something is uttered, but something else is said, and understood, resulting in reciprocal recognition. Recognizing one another for starters is an essential aspect of making conversation. 4. The work of art.83 Referring to Van Goghs painting of the peasant womans shoes,84 Chauvet says that, Van Goghs intention when he painted this subject was not to instruct us but to allow the shabby shoes to do the symbolic work of tying-together (sym-ballein) everything that the shoes say. Quoting Heidegger,
in the dark intimacy of the hollow of the shoe is written the fatigue of the steps of labor Through these shoes pass the silent appeal of the earth, its tacit gift of maturing grain, the mute anxiety over the scarcity of bread, the silent joy of having once again overcome need, the anguish of an imminent birth, the shiver before a menacing death.85
What the painting says is that these shoes symbolically correspond to the real, they express a reality concerning human existence. To a person with no appreciation for art, or life, the painting may also say, here are two ugly shoes. The relationship between sign and symbol is complex. In order to avoid minimizing the importance of either one, Chauvet proposes the image of language walking on two legs: sign and symbol. Left to itself, Chauvet says, the symbol would drift into all sorts of fantasies and at the other end of the spectrum, the rational-critical discourse of the sign can have totalitarian effects notably in its variant, ideological scientism, which claims to control everything. Human beings also need to sing.86 As a result, Chauvets proposal is to find a balance on the two legs of language, sign and symbol. By way of summary, two statements may be made. First, the distinction between sign and symbol turns on whether the subjects as such are taken into account (symbol) or not (sign).87 Chauvet thinks of sacraments primarily in terms of symbol, rather than sign. Second, symbolic acts have the same characteristics as language acts; therefore, for Chauvet, sacraments are acts of symbolization which function according to the illocutionary dimension of language
60 The Sacramentality of Preaching and they effect their performance by instituting a relation of places between subjects.88 This results in an identification of the subjects. This interpersonal dimension is demonstrated clearly in ritual language acts. Chauvet examines the symbolic efficacy of liturgical expression where the clearest perspective for a theological description of sacramental grace may be found, and accordingly, a description for sacramental ways of thinking about homiletics. Symbolic EfficacySpeech as substantial bread89
Ritual symbol is the very epiphany of mediation thus we are led back from the symbol to the body.90
Earlier, I described how Chauvet contends that language is not only efficacious but, as the womb in which we come-to-be, and as the lens through which we perceive, it is what is most efficacious. Now, it must also become clear that, for Chauvet, this efficacy is symbolic efficacy. He writes, such an efficacy does not designate, as in science or technology, a transformation of the world but a transformation of subjects, a work that is produced in them and allows them to accede to another way of being.91 The child who only recognized himself in the mirror because he was named, is the recipient of thousands of words and gestures of love which enable him to grow into full status as a person and, eventually, to be able to speak and relate to others. We are loved into life. This is also true of the elderly. For the aged woman whose husband and old friends have died and who never sees any member of her family, life is not a life if she does not feel somehow recognized and loved by someone, beginning with a nurse perhaps; she can only let herself die. Chauvet characterizes this work, these words, as bread. Speech is the hearty bread which keeps human beings going. He says,
Without this bread of words (words that can be expressed as well by gestures and looks as by being actually spoken) human beings can only die sometimes it is enough to say a few words to someone for that person to feel alive again. On the other hand, it is sometimes also enough to refuse to answer someone for that person to feel negated and to suffer a wound that perhaps will never heal. Some words save; some words kill.92
The fruitfulness of the words partially depends on a gracious attitude in the one who speaks. The one who speaks must be, and must be perceived to be, ken-
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 61 otically giving oneself without any profit. This can be enough to be considered a gift of life. Chauvet comes to this conclusion in his assertion that it is always as a word that God is encountered.93 The efficacy of the sacraments is in the mode of the efficacy of speech. Chauvet writes,
The efficacy of the sacraments has nothing of a guarantee when we speak of symbolic exchange, the self-gift God offers through the sacraments does not depend on the personal faith of the subjects: God gives freely through the power of the Spirit; but the fruitfulness of this gift in those who receive it, that is, the reception they give to this gift as grace, depends on their faith.94
When the efficacy of sacrament is understood according to the efficacy of speech, it becomes clear that at least part of preaching and part of sacrament function according to the same mode. They have a common dimension. Part of each functions according to the principle of sacramentality and the efficacy of speech. The key effect of speech is the work that it does to transform people, not things. In the case of the sacrament Eucharist, the elements bread and wine may well be transformed, but that is almost incidental when compared with the real transformation of the people. The element transformed into the body of Christ is the peopleas they receive what they have been offered and as they become what God, through baptism, has made them. It is a real symbolic work of conversion that the bread, wine, gestures and words of Eucharist open as possible and tie-together (symballein). The work effected by the preached word of God in a ritual setting can lead listeners to this very moment of receptionand help negotiate the moment when Gods giving becomes fruitful. This fruitful response is for the sake of the world. In it, the risen One is raising for himself a body of new humanity in the world. Chauvet summarizes by alluding to the fable by La Fontaine titled, The Farmer and His Children.
The story is well known: a rich farmer, about to die, advises his children not to sell the land they are inheriting because a treasure is hidden there. After the fathers death, the sons so thoroughly plow the fields that there is no part of them where they do not work again and again. But they find no treasure. However, La Fontaine concludes, there was indeed a treasure: the work that causes the earth to be fruitful.95
Based on the type of efficacy described above, both preaching and sacraments can be compared to this eminently symbolic, though fully real, treasure.96 What Chauvet says of sacrament could equally be said of preaching,

In this perspective, there is no value-object to be found in the field of the sacrament because one does not get ones hands on God. Grace cannot be capitalized lest it destroy itself The treasure of the sacrament is found in the work of plowing, of turning, of converting to the gospel the symbolic field that Christians are.97
This work is done by human language. However, it only takes effect, and comes alive, through the Word and Spirit of God.
The Ecclesial Turn

The Christian Subject in the Language and Culture of the Church
The symbol is a mediator of identity only by being a creator of community.98
We now follow Chauvet in his turn to the church. Immediately, one may wonder what he means by the church. Chauvet clarifies, to be Christian is to belong to the church, and to belong to the church is to take part in the Sunday assembly.99 Chauvet says church and means primarily, the assembly as the agent of celebration, and secondarily, the universal church.100 In either case, Chauvet is directly addressing the difficulty, but necessity, of consenting to the church as a gift of grace.101 Patterns in Scripture: What Makes the Church the Church? 102 Chauvet looks for ecclesiology in Scripture. This does not include a search for evidence to justify the current structures of the church. Instead, he listens for a patternin a theological narrativedepicting the very first patterns inherent in the encounter with the Risen Lord. This is an Easter-Pentecost hermeneutic for the sake of a meaningful and transforming Christian life today. He calls this recourse to Scriptures the first step in the ongoing passage to faith. It also reveals the next steps which negotiate the passage to a free, gracious response. While Chauvet draws broadly from Scripture, the writings of Paul and Luke seem to influence his theology the most. At the risk of being overly simplistic, this portion of Chauvets theory is made up of two axes: the narrative of LukeActs provides one axis and Pauls theology of the cross is the other. Throughout Chauvets interpretation, we will continue to silently accumulate the implications for preaching, so that they may be used as a summary in this chapter and a transition for the next chapter.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 63 Three Key Texts: Three Theological Insights about the Passage to Faith Looking back over what Chauvet has argued, with respect to the human subject that people come-into-being, and understand their identity, within language we can now become more precise and specifically theological about what the case is for Christian subjects. People come-to-be Christian within the language of the church. Chauvet sees this as a constant process of metanoia from a lack of faith to faithful witness.103 The process has many distinctive features, but here we highlight the three key characteristics found in Luke-Acts for the passage to faith. A person comes to faith and witness a) in the time of the church, b) at Gods initiative, and c) through the mediation of the language of the church. How does one become a believer?104 How does one acquire Christian identity? We are not Christians by right of birth. A person becomes identifiably Christian when he or she makes a confession that Jesus is LordJesus is ChristJesus is Son of God.105 This is a confession of faith, in the sense that it expresses assent to faith given. It is a moment within a processa passage to faith. Furthermore, this assent to Christian identity must also be given within a Christian assembly and within an ecclesial pattern.106 How does one make this passage to faith? In response, Chauvet interprets three narratives from Luke-Acts, namely, A) The Road to Emmaus (Lk 24:13-35), B) The Road to Gaza (the Ethiopians baptism in Acts 8:26-40) and C) The Road to Damascus (the first account of Pauls conversion in Acts 9:120). He draws attention to the parallelism between them on three counts. First, in all three cases Luke places the action, according to his own chronology and theology, within the time of the church.107 The Lord is no longer visible. Beginning from Jerusalem (cross, resurrection, ascension) and until he comes in glory, the time of the church must be a time of encounter and witness (you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea, and to ends of the earth (Acts 1:8)) in a particular place (on the road A: to Emmaus, B: to Gaza, C: to Damascus). Second, all three narratives clearly show an initiative on Gods part. The Lord is no longer recognizable, but the Triune God is still at work in the story.108 In A: Jesus himself came near and went with them. (Lk 24:15). In B: the Spirit said to Philip, Go over to his chariot and join it. (Acts 8:29). In C: the intrusion into Pauls mission of the light and the voice of the risen, but not visible, Jesus.
64 The Sacramentality of Preaching Finally, the third parallel characteristic is that, in all three narratives, this divine initiative, which alone allows the witnesses to accede to faith, happens through the mediation of the church.109 The mediation itself is at three levels. 1. The first level of ecclesial mediation is speech. In A, on the road to Emmaus: the mediation is the kerygma of the church; the announcement (proclamation) by Jesus of his death and resurrection as the key to all the scriptures.110 In B: the Ethiopian cannot read without a guide (which the Spirit provides and the church isPhilip, as a member of that body.) In C: again it is the self-announcement of the crucified-resurrected One to Paul; the voice from heaven shows that he is alive in his church (I am Jesus whom you are persecuting Acts 9:5). All of these show that the divine initiative sets in motion a movement to faith, which prompts the witnesses to request something: A: Stay with us. (Lk 24:29) - B: What is to prevent me from being baptized? (Acts 8:36) - C: What am I to do, Lord? (Acts 22:9111) Here, as always, Godthrough the Word and the Spiritis the mediator. Speech is the mediation. 2. However, Chauvet notes, this faith remains incomplete as long as it is not informed by a sacramental gesture.112 In A: the breaking of bread, in B: baptism, in C: the laying on of hands, and baptism by Ananias.113 Only then in A and C are the eyes opened, is the sight restored.114 Just as speech, the proclamation of the kerygma (as the key to the Scriptures) is the mediation in the first level, a gesture of offer and reception (as expressed (sacramentality) by the elements hands, bread, water,) is the mediation in the second level.115 3. The third level of mediation is often ignored in the interpretation of these texts: the eyes open but on an absence. Chauvet shows that, in A, the risen One disappears as soon as recognized; likewise in B, Jesus witness, Philip, is snatched away by the Spirit. This absence knows itself to be henceforth indwelt by a presence116And because this presence has become invisible, the witness is urged make his mission proclamation117 the witness is urged to embody it.118 The passage to faith, which relies so heavily on the divine initiative and the Words interpretation, is incomplete without the gesture of reception and the act of witness, both of which are empowered by the Spirit. I will show, later in this chapter, how Chauvet develops this further within his structure of Christian identity, and in the discussion of symbolic exchange which will be presented in Chapter Three.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 65 One Key Chapter: Chapter 24 of the Gospel of Luke The three theological insights explored abovethat the action takes place in the time of the church, that the action is initiated by God, and that the action happens through three levels of mediation within the church (proclamation speech, gesture of reception, act of witness)lead Chauvet to narrow his focus and to refine his thesis, based on the three sections of Chapter 24 of Luke. First, the announcement of the resurrection to the women at the tomb (vv. 112), second, the story of Emmaus (vv. 13-35), and third, the appearance to the disciples (vv. 36-49). These stories identify what Chauvet has called the temptation of immediacy and the paralyzing entombment to which it leads. These stories also identify the liberating quality of that strange word spoken in the wake of an empty tomb. Again, Chauvet is most interested in the patterns, or the parallelism between the three texts. In all three cases, the disciples involved begin with a desire to find, to see, to touch the body of Jesus. They want direct access to the truth. However, the women did not find the body, Peter saw only linen cloths, and the disciples, in their fear and doubt, are prompted by Jesus to do that which they desiredto touch and see. Chauvet notes that these desires all refer to the corpse of Jesus.119 The implication essentially poses a question, perhaps the question when faced with this empty tomb: what if they had found what they were looking for? The answer: Jesus would still be dead. And in that moment, expecting to find a corpse, but faced with an empty tomb, everything is at a standstill in their minds: they have allowed themselves to be shut up in the tomb of death with Jesus, and their difficulties are a heavy as the stone that closed the tomb.120 Thus, the followers of Jesus must be freed from this desire to find/see/touch in order to be transformed by the hearing of a word, and commissioned as witnesses to the Word. This freeing is effected by a recourse to the Scriptures.121 The disciples let the stranger take the initiative and speak. The two men in the tomb say to the women, remember how he told you that the son of man must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again? On the way to Emmaus, the stranger (Jesus) says, how slow of heart to believe was it not necessary?Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. With the disciples, Jesus says, everything must be fulfilled thus it is written In each case, the followers have their minds opened by a new interpretation by the Word of God, according to what had been said and written.
66 The Sacramentality of Preaching One Key Story: the Story of the Disciples of Emmaus as a Glimpse of the Church.122 The question Chauvet puts in the mouths of the disciples is still a central question of faith: if it is true that Jesus arose and that he is now alive, how is it that we do not see him, that we cannot see/touch/find him?123 As we have seen, Luke responds by telling the story of conversion which happens, over and over again, on the road to everywhere. On the road to Emmaus, traffic travels two ways. As Chauvet says, the round trip Jerusalem-Emmaus-Jerusalem is exactly what every human being must realize in order to become a disciple of Jesus, the Christ.124 The round trip can be read geographically, theologically, and symbolically as a performance of conversion which gives competence for witness. Competence is obtained a) by confessing that we do not know everything about Jesus of Nazareth (24:19), and by entering into dialogue with the risen One, b) by coming to rest at table with the risen One where the pattern of to take/to bless/to break/to share is performed in prayer and action, resulting in recognition of him, and c) confessing the absence or emptiness as good news because this emptiness is now full of a presence which is to be announced that same hour.125 This is a scandalthat both God and the witness consent to the word of God at the mercy of the body. That God entrusts the word to those the risen One meets, calls, and names, and they arise, go, and tell. They agree to be his body. Chauvet writes in summary,
It is impossible to recognize the risen Jesus without oneself being impelled to rise in newness of life, therefore being entrusted with announcing it. In any case, the classical pattern of the stories of Christs manifestation in the New Testament attest to this: after stressing the initiative of the risen One, who shows himself, and the recognition by the witnesses of this being the same as the crucified Jesus but in another form, it always ends on a command to go on a mission: Go and tell.126
This mission is communal. Based on this newfound faith in the crucified and risen Jesus, the divine presence-in-absence creates a communion (koinonia) whose central purpose is to announce and embody the good news in its life together. This life together, as church, is impossible without obtaining the competence given in this passage from non-faith to faith, a competence given by the crucified-risen One himself:
For it is he who explains the meaning of the Scriptures; it is he who presides at the breaking of the bread; it is he who continues his service to humans through that of his disciples. To obtain all of this, you must dis-enthrall yourselves from your (quite natural)

desire for immediate proofs of him. Failing this, you can only reduce him to your own ideology and your own preconceptions: he no longer is for you the living One (see Luke 24:5); by submitting him to your desire and your previous convictions, you manipulate him and thus make him a corpse again127
Chauvet finds in this scriptural discourse the pattern for the discourse of the church, and by implication, for its preaching. He insists that you cannot arrive at the recognition of the risen Jesus unless you renounce seeing/touching/finding him by undeniable proofs. Faith begins with this renunciation of immediacy and a turn to the mediation of the symbolic order proper to the church.128 Chauvets contention, here, is that when asked the question, if it is true that Jesus is alive, how is it that we cannot see/touch/find him? Luke would answer, that very desire is preventing you; live as church and you will recognize him. Living as church is assent to the symbolic mediation of the culture and language of the church.129 A lengthy, but important, quotation from Chauvet qualifies what he has just said and leads us into the next section,
The church is not Christ, but his symbolic witness, which means that its original and constant raison detre is to direct everything back to him. It is in the church that faith finds its structure because the church is in charge of keeping alive, in the midst of the world and for its good, the memory of what he lived for and why God raised him from the dead: memory through the Scriptures, read and interpreted as speaking about him or being his own living word; memory through the sacraments, recognized as being his own salvific gestures; memory through the ethical testimony of mutual sharing, lived as an expression of his own service to humankind.130
It is in the church that faith finds its structure. Following on this interpretation of select narratives in Luke-Acts, we have in place the concepts which help Chauvet map a structure for faith within the church. This is the structure that I intend to adapt for homiletical use. The Mediation of the Church: A Structure of Relations In order to see how the concepts relate to one another, Chauvet visualizes the structure of Christian identity in the following way:
Diagram 4. The Symbolic Mediation of the Church: The Structure of Christian Identity131
The diagram was simplified by Chauvet for publication in The Sacraments. As one can see above, the diagram in Symbol and Sacrament has God (the Father) above Jesus Christ (the Son), and there is a vertical line along the left indicating that the whole structure is in the Holy Spirit (making it clearly Trinitarian). Jesus Christ also has an additional designation (Original Sacrament), and the church represented by the dotted circle is additionally referred to as fundamental sacrament. In my estimation, these were omitted in The Sacraments for the sake of clarity rather than to represent a change in theory. The following diagram is the simplified scheme.
Diagram 5. The Structure of Christian Identity (revised)132
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 69 Perhaps the first thing to note about both diagrams is that the church is not Jesus Christ, it exists in relation to him. This distance between Christ and the church is important to remember when referring to the church as his body; it is especially important for those who misunderstand this and live too comfortably within the church. On the other hand, it is possible to misunderstand in the other direction by rejecting the church in order to find Christ themselves, on their own, directly, somewhere outside the church.133 Understanding language the way he does, Chauvet insists that there is no direct line to Christ, neither inside the church nor outside of it. A second initial observation is that the circle, representing the bounds of the church, is a dotted line. The church is not a ghetto says Chauvet, it has its existence and meaning only because of its relationship to the reign134 Third, within the church, the double arrows indicate that each element takes on value only because of its relations, of difference and coherence, with those elements which surround it.135 The whole of the structure is primary, and at the centre of this whole is faith. This will help us to situate preaching within a whole where everything holds together. As visualized in the diagram, we can see that faith lives in the space between three elements: scripture, sacrament and ethics. These elements are in relationship to one another as poles.136 Normally, balance is found between two poles, or, with the image used for sign and symbol, the balance is found on two legs. Nevertheless, part of the creativity so prevalent in Chauvets thinking is the result of his openness to a third termusually a forgotten term. The suggested image here is tripod or what Chauvet calls the tripod of Christian identity; to attempt to stand on only one or two of these legs means that we risk tipping over.137 Yet, Chauvet admits, the image of the tripod is deceptive because it represents something static. This is a model of the life of faith which is dynamic and it is normal that at times there will be shifts in the centre of gravity. Chauvet calls these three elements the marks of the reign. These marks of the reign relate to one another in a gravitational sense, as poles, with all the forces of attraction and repulsion necessary to keep things in orbit. Equilibrium is sought in the relationship. The Pole SCR The first of these poles is Scripture. This is not just the Bible itself, the text of Scripture, but it is also the particular way of reading the Scriptures portrayed as the unfolding of the apostolic churchs confession of faith.138 Scripture, for Chauvet, is a way of classifying everything that concerns understanding faith, eve-
70 The Sacramentality of Preaching rything that pertains to knowledge of Gods mystery revealed in Jesus Christ.139 The pole Scripture is the attracting place of cognition: basic catechetical instruction, and the whole body of patristic, medieval, reformation, modern, and contemporary theological reflection, all of which depend on Biblical revelation. Because this pole represents more that simply the book called the Bible, I will use the symbol SCR for this pole. The Pole SAC The second is Sacrament. Again, this involves far more than the objects, rites, and ceremonies of what we call the sacramentsit includes all the various forms of celebration that the church performs in memory of Jesus death and resurrection.140 This is a question of living symbolically what one is attempting to understand theologically.141 Sacrament for Chauvet, is a way of classifying everything that has to do with ritually expressing gratitude to God and ritually celebrating faith in the Triune God. Ritually expressed meansin the liturgy as the primary symbolic place of these expressions. Of course, this includes the celebration of Baptism and Eucharist as major sacraments, and the minor sacraments, but it also includes Christian funerals, occasions of profession, penitential celebrations, and celebrations of the word in groups large and small which are not strictly sacramental but are replete with sacramentality.142 The pole Sacrament is the attracting place of ritualized recognition: gestures of reception, offering, recognized exchange between God and humanity, and us, one to another. It acts as a place of transition from the book to the body. Again, to remind us that it represents more than simply the sacraments, I will use the symbol SAC for this pole. The Pole ETH The third is Ethics. This does not just relate to morals and values as attitudes, nor just to private interpersonal relationships, but also to the collective ethical conduct by which Christians testify to the gospel by their actions.143 Ethics is a way of classifying all that pertains to action done in the name of the gospel as a free gracious response of the church. The pole Ethics is the attracting place of praxis: it is in these actions that faith, and all that which has been proclaimed and celebrated, is veri-fied (made-true).144 These actions are also the place where the priority of love, in service to others, becomes the primary return-gift of Christian livingof Christian identity.145 For this pole, I will use ETH.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 71 The following chart lists some of the characteristics of each pole:146 Scripture (SCR) understanding faith gift of knowledge cognition thinking the world kerygma (believing) Sacrament (SAC) celebrating faith gratitude recognition singing the world leitourgia (celebrating) Ethics (ETH) living in faith return gift to others praxis acting in the world diakonia147 (loving)
Chauvet wisely refrains from claiming too much for these theoretical types concretely, all nuances exist.148 What he wants to show is that any overemphasis on one, or two, of these poles is at the expense of the other(s). Fixation on any one runs the risk of idolatry and the attempted manipulation of God.149 The poles are also presented in a way (a triangle) that allows space, between them, for faith to live. Chauvet writes,
it is precisely this space which concretely mediates the distance between God and us, our respect for Gods difference. The space is uncomfortable because it constantly maintains an emptiness. But this emptiness, which the imaginary constantly strives to fill, is what lets Jesus truly be the living One and respects his lordship. It is also what gives Christians room for play by allowing individuals to breathe freely within the faith of the church, instead of submitting them to the uniform mold of one ideology. To be healthy, faith requires that Christians find their own balance on this tripod the right balance is, as in walking or bicycling, always unstable.150
Consequently, there are times when the centre of gravity needs to shift in one way or another for a time, but the whole weight of Christian identity can never rest on one poleit would collapse the space for faith. Similarly, the triangle of the three poles is surrounded by that dotted line representing the church. The balance of the individual Christian is always found within the balance of the local manifestation of church, in its catholicity, where Christian identity is given. The arrow from Jesus Christ to the church indicates the source of this identity and confesses that the church is not Christ but his symbolic witness the first step of faith, according to Chauvet, the renunciation of a direct line to Christ. From the moment that the disciples faced an empty tomb until His coming again, we see that faith beings with an assent to the loss of direct contact with Christ. The time of the church means that, for a time, the church itself
72 The Sacramentality of Preaching is the mediation and stumbling block (buffer) expressing the paradox of presence-in-absence. The following sequence is Chauvets way of arguing this. Resurrected, Jesus is the Living One,151 and, ascended, he is withdrawn and lives in God the Father. In this time of the church the Lord is no longer visible;152 his physical absence is obvious in every way. Yet the Absent One is present in his sacrament, which is the church.153 The church is the church when rereading the Scriptures with him in mind, when repeating his gestures in memory of him, when living and sharing between brothers and sisters in his name. Chauvet concludes, It is in these forms of witness by the church that Jesus takes on a body and allows himself to be encountered.154 Nowhere in these texts, from Luke-Acts, is the church mentioned directly but, those who gather in Christs name will recognize themselves there. Above all, the church today may recognize the inherent struggle, this never-completed task of consenting to the presence-of-the-absence as Chauvet calls it. He calls us to give up a lost hope, of grasping the dead body of Jesus, by living in the new hope he promised as risen Lord. Nothing is complete in the time of the church. The task of becoming-Christian is to live in the promise, as the sacrament of his coming reignas church. Church is the privileged place where we see that the path to our relation with God passes through our relation with human beings,155 and where the alliance with Jesus can be lived only in the mediation of alliance with others.156 Chauvet insists that the liturgical assembly is certainly not the exclusive place where this occurs, but it is the primary symbolic place.157 Chauvets line of thinking, as proposed in this chapter, is full of pastoral consequences. The consequences for homiletics, however, are never articulated by Chauvet. I will now summarize the line of thinking by pointing out some initial implications for homiletics and preaching.
Summary of Chapter and Implications for Homiletics

Having a sense now for Chauvets language, conceptual structure and theology, it seems almost strange that he makes only passing reference to the homily. So, here we ask, what are some of the advantages of looking at things this way for homiletics? In his introduction to Symbol and Sacrament, Chauvet suggests that sacramental celebrations place us in both the figurative order and the pragmatic or-
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 73 der.158 He describes sacraments as symbolic figures allowing us entrance into, and empowerment to live out, the (arch-)sacramentality which is the very essence of Christian existence.159 This involves the understanding that revelation is immediate empowerment, an empowerment which must act as revelation. Whatever we are permitted to see in the sacramental celebration, is given to us so that we may live out of it. In order to apply this language to homiletics, one could simply place the word sermon or homily or preaching at every instance of the word sacrament in the theory and sort through the implications. Using the quotation above, for example, we test the potential of Chauvets theory in just this way;
preaching allows us entrance into, and empowerment to live out, the (arch-) sacramentality which is the very essence of Christian existence.
Preaching neither replaces nor supercedes the role of sacrament, it simply shares in the same end-purpose, alongside sacrament. Couple this type of juxtaposition with Chauvets theory about what this arch-sacramentality isthe admirabile commercium described in the next chapterand the advantages for homiletics begin to suggest themselves. When speaking of sacramental efficacy, Chauvet has shifted the emphasis to an understanding akin to the efficacy of speech. When speaking of the theological dynamic involved in sacrament, he emphasizes simultaneous revelation and empowerment. When speaking of our relationship to God in life, he uses a language of grace shaped by the notion of sacramentalitysymbolic exchange. His theory opens many possibilities for speaking of preaching in the same terms as sacrament, rather than in contrasting terms. Yet, as I will show, preaching has a uniqueness that keeps us from collapsing our understanding of preaching into sacrament. Once the two can be described in common terms, the distancing of preaching from sacrament is important in order to keep the two in relationship. This will be described more fully in Chapter Four but, for now, some common ground has been established in the language, conceptual structure, theology, and modes of efficacy of both preaching and sacrament. The following paragraphs suggest, briefly, from each section of this chapter, possible advantages for homiletics. A Trinitarian Approach to the Whole Paschal Mystery of Christ The first set of advantages for homiletics can be found in Diagram 1 (The Paschal Mystery of Christ),160 where we consider the event of Christ in its histori-
74 The Sacramentality of Preaching cal fullness, and thereby infer that preaching is placed in the time of the church. We do not live in the time of the life of Jesus. Preaching and Sacramental celebration speak of a time-in-between. God has accomplished something in Christ, and God has promised something yet to come. Preaching is located within a dynamic history; we bear the joy of the already, and the distress of the not-yet.161 Such a perspective helps the preacher address, and make positive use of, several theological tensions found in the gospel, not the least of which is the inherent paradox and ambivalence found there. First, this perspective can help to steer the preacher away from sermons that trivialize the gospel. This is a major weakness in some preaching, and a barrier to preaching that fosters hope and celebration. The ambivalence found in the time and place of preaching can be authentically reflected in the sermon as an unsweetened assessment of the human condition. At the same time, and in an equally strong way, the preacher can speak of our hope that this condition has been redeemed in Christ, and that the fullness of reconciliation will be fulfilled in him, through the power of the Spirit. Second, with the whole Paschal Mystery in mind, Easter/ Ascension/ Pentecost can become a focal point, and primary hermeneutic, for both homiletical exegesis and homiletical theology. We interpret Creation, Incarnation, the life of Jesus, and, even the final Parousia, through the lens of this mystery of Christs dying and rising again and the sending of the Spirit. Chauvets focus on the Word of God, as the expression of the Triune God, can help portray preaching as an essential expression of the risen One, in the world, through the Spirit. This places, on preaching, part of the responsibility to act as a mediation for the active presence of the risen Christ. Preaching contributes to the task of negotiating the passage from non-faith to faith by being speech in this time and place, using language attuned to the unique moment provided, for worship, by every gathering. And, finally, a Trinitarian approach to the whole mystery of Christ moves the focus of homiletics away from questions related to how God is involved in preaching to questions related to why God is involved in preaching. What kind of God is this who makes use of our preaching? Why would God do that? The whole Paschal Mystery must be the starting point for knowing, recognizing, and living-into Gods active presence in the world today. The churchs faith in the power of the risen One is strengthened and deepened through preaching and by celebrating this active presence.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 75 Language as Mediation The second set of advantages, for homiletics, follows Chauvets interpretation of human existence. Acknowledging that we live in the time of the church, and that we have no direct line to Jesus, in the way that the disciples did before his death, we must think in Trinitarian terms, and we must consent to mediation. Here, Chauvet teaches us the necessity, but the difficulty, of turning away from our temptations of immediacy, and turning toward the forms of mediation that God provides through the gift of fully human materials.162 These materials can be animated by the Holy Spirit, to be continually raised by as a body for Christ. Because Chauvet claims the possibility and necessity (because we live in this time-in-between) that what is most divine takes place in what is most human, I find it an advantage to think of preaching as part of the human milieu. Even though it is human, and clearly limited, God chooses to take place in it. This helps us to assess how Gods speech is related to human speech. Chauvets discussion of the efficacy of speech and the mediation of language can be used in homiletics almost without translation. When helping students reflect on what happens in preaching, Chauvets theology of the Word, arising from these theoretical foundations, can be engaging and credible. The images used to visualize language as mediationa womb, a lenshave often been used in homiletics, and could be developed further. Sign and Symbol While Chauvet uses the distinction between sign and symbol to show how sacraments are primarily symbolic, the sermon seems to be the ideal place to transition between the two levels of language. The advantages of this theory are many. The preacher can become more conscious of opportunities to break into another part of the spectrum between sign and symbol, and thereby break into another level of language. The preacher might become more intentional in the use of poetic, evocative, celebratory language when the content of the sermon calls for it theologically. To do so, the preacher may take encouragement and guidance from the language and patterns of the rite. Homiletical decisions, about when to shift from education, to liberation, to celebration for instance, may be aided by these distinctions. Chauvets interpretation of sign and symbol may also give the preacher a greater choice of metaphors and models for the
76 The Sacramentality of Preaching language of preaching, such as walking on two legssign and symbolin preaching. Further, the inverse relationship of the dynamics involved between explanation and evocation can be developed from this theory. Symbolization, as an act, may suggest a stronger emphasis, in the sermon, on events and actions and may be used to enhance a dynamic understanding of homiletical language. The concept of poles and the creative tension found in the space between them, as introduced by Chauvet, are not new to homiletics. Notwithstanding this, there are places where Chauvets structure may enhance and enrich the homiletical theory with which it resonates. The Language of the Church: Identity and Mission The consent to mediation is important to Chauvet, and to our discussion of homiletics, only because it is a consent to disclosure. Disclosure, of course, is, for the Christian, that revelatory word of life, spoken by the Word. The Word is speaker/spoken, and recognized as the Word of God, in and through the language and culture of the church. Chauvets structure of Christian identity, found in Diagrams 4 and 5 (Christian Identity),163 has important implications for homiletics. Not only does it address the formation of Christian discipleship, but also the ongoing transformation performed by the Word of the gospel. As Chauvet says, the revelation of identity is supremely efficacious; it creates a bond or relation that causes the situation to be other than before.164 Preaching continually seeks to be part of that faithful disclosure of the identity we have in Christ, but not simply by talking about that identity. This is a first step. Preaching also leans toward an illocutionary-like purpose by being speech that creates a bond, or relation, with God as well as between brothers and sisters. The church needs to think and feel and live-out-of our identity in Christ. Arthur Van Seters neatly expresses this ecclesial need and the urgency of the homiletical task,
To preach is to act ecclesially, to build on the supposition that this body of listeners intends to believe and live as baptized members. They are a corporate entity belonging to one another and to Christ. But they desperately need to know and feel what this means.165
Using an adapted form of Chauvets diagram of Christian identity (the symbolic milieu of Christian existence), I will explore the opportunities presented to
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 77 the preacher. I will then build of the suppositions that prevail when the sermon happens within that structure. Where Does Preaching Fit In? One question the homiletician will be asking while assessing Chauvets theory is, where does preaching fit in? For example, where does preaching belong in the diagram of Christian Identity? What is its place? My early assumption, in response to this question, was that the Proclamation of the Word, including the sermon, would go under the umbrella term SCR, or Scripture. This would be true especially for the type of preaching that may be called biblical prepared from a set of lectionary readings, and preached in a liturgy of the gathered church. The homiletical task would then be to describe the relationship between the poles, in much the same way that the relationship between sermon and sacrament has been assessed, or the relationship between sermon and ethical conduct, applying the sermon to behaviour and action in life, and so on. However, while thinking this way, I came across something P.T. Forsyth said in his 1907 Beecher Lectures. The preacher mediates the word to the church from faith to faith.166 Forsyth did not use these words in exactly the same way that Chauvet does, but the notion of preaching from faith to faith pointed to the middle of Chauvets diagram, not to the pole SCR. Therefore, I propose the following: Preaching can be conceived from a place in the middle of the triangle maintained by the poles SCR, SAC, and ETH, in the space made for faith.
Diagram 6. The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching
In a theological manner, this implies a spatial location for preachingthe place of preachingbut also an understanding of its dynamicwhat takes place in preaching. As part of the preparation to preach, the preacher would intentionally vary the interpretive approach (perspective) by ranging from a focus on cognition (SCR), to a focus on recognition (SAC), to a focus on praxis (ETH)from kerygma to liturgy to diakoniafrom understanding to celebrating to livingfrom thinking to singing to acting in the world. The preacher strives to give each perspective its turn to see and hear the text, and the world, differently. In the moment of preaching, the preacher acts to guide the church through these different perspectives and experiences in its continuing conversion to the fullness of the gospel.167 This is a continuing conversion to the mission of God who summons and sends in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit. Preaching is responsive human speech in the sense that it depends on what has been revealed or given, but also in the sense that we have been invited or summoned to respond in this way by the God whose continued activity will flow from it. By placing preaching in its rightful liturgical/theological environment, these various influences can appropriately enhance a hearing of the Word. Admittedly, as Rowan Williams says when discussing Revelation and Trinity, talking about an activity flowing from, between, within, three termini does not easily lend itself to conceptual tidiness.168 In Chapter Four, this new dia-
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 79 gram will serve as an untidy conceptual model for assessing the homiletical use of all that has been presented from Chauvets theory thus far. Some of the concepts mentioned above will be considered in detail and will be used to describe an underlying theological structure for the sacramentality of preachingpreaching that seeks to maintain the space for faith. However, this will only address one aspect of Chauvets theory that can be used to strengthen homiletics. We now move to Chapter Three where I will present the second aspect of Chauvets theory that suggests itself strongly to homiletics. This is a structural conception for the dynamic of sacramentalitythe nature of grace.
CHAPTER THREE
The Dynamic within the Structure: Sacramentality as Symbolic-Exchange and a Hermeneutical Lens for Preaching Grace
Preaching allows us entrance into, and empowerment to live out, the (arch-) sacramentality which is the very essence of Christian existence.1
Introduction and Transition from Structure to Dynamics

We see, in Chauvets theological structure, a deep grammar for Christian existence, a grammar that will contribute to a homiletic that endeavours to take seriously the formation and celebration of Christian existence in the liturgy. Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching contributes to the formation of a community over time by consciously aligning itself with its primary scene, which is the worship service.2 If Richard Lischer is right, and the basic unit of meaning on Sunday morning is not the sermon but the service,3 then preaching will be better enabled to partake of this liturgical scene by incorporating into its own structures and language the grammar of the gathering, indeed the grammar of the whole existence of that body. This does not weaken the role of the sermon in the service. It strengthens it. In Chauvets structure, the whole is dependent on all of the parts, and each part has relevance only in its relation to the other parts. It is important to stress that Christian existence is the life of individual subjects who make up a body. The body precedes the individual and, until the Parousia, this body, assembled for worship, is the primary expression of the life and promise of the risen One.4 In the power of the Spirit, this body is repeatedly scattered (sent) and gathered (called), in his name, until he comes. Chauvets turn to the language and culture of the church, and his description of the churchs internal structure and dynamic as the languagethe mediationwithin which God makes faith possible, provides homiletics with what it needs to map the liturgical environment theologically, in order to better guide the assembly through that theological environment.
82 The Sacramentality of Preaching This environment is not just the liturgy itself; it is the continual process of coming to Christian faith and celebrating what God has done, is doing, and will do, for the whole world. The liturgy is where we receive and respond to this Good News.5 The church continually comes to faith in the tensive relationship between Chauvets umbrella terms, Scripture (SCR), Sacrament (SAC), and Ethics (ETH). The relationship functions like orbits in a solar system, where the tension maintains distance and proximity, while in motion. The Christian solar system is the primary place where God creates space for faith. This idea of a dynamic system will help us situate preaching within a whole, where everything holds together. We now transition from looking at Chauvets structure or grammar, to an assessment of Chauvets proposal for the dynamics of grace in action, or the functioning of that structure. Chapter Two emphasized a static structure that provides stability at a deep level. Preachers need to be conscious of the deep structures that influence them as they prepare and preach sermons, and the structures must be tested and renewed regularly. Yet, Chauvets theory offers homiletics something more than a structure. He goes one step further than most of the people who have argued similar structural features of Christian existence; he proposes a dynamic model of grace in action. In Chapter Four, I will come back to the theory described in Chapter Two and offer further assessment of the advantages we find for placing homiletics and preaching in that structure. First, though, we focus on that which puts the structure in motion: Gods selfgiving relationship with humanity, known as grace. What follows is merely one particular way to articulate gracious relations. However, many theologians (and homileticians/preachers) use the term grace with hermeneutical ease and thus have no way to articulate gracious relations. We often hear about grace as the central concept in Gods relations with creation, but we rarely hear an attempt to define the term grace. Frequently, when we speak of grace, it sounds like a thing, a valuable object that God gives to us, or a wonderful liquid that God pours over us. We have already discussed the limited value of such analogies, so we now seek an additional way to conceive and articulate grace. Grace is surely undefinable, ungraspable and uncontrollable, as Chauvet has clearly argued with respect to our relations with God; but, it is not unthinkable. Mary Catherine Hilkerts work will assist this transition from the structure to the dynamics through an analysis of her work, Naming Grace. The core of Hilkerts book is a theology of preaching and an underlying theology of grace.6 She does not claim that her work emerges from the field of homiletics. Rather,
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 83 she says, my work comes from the perspective of a systematic theologian reflecting on the preaching ministry of the church.7 While Chauvet does not sustain any reflection on the preaching ministry of the church, he and Hilkert still have much in common. Hilkerts theology of preaching draws from some of the same developments in theology as does the work of Chauvet, but hers differs in that it is from a North American perspective. In addition to this, both are internal critics and appreciative members of the Roman Catholic church, a church like any other church, they say, constantly in need of reform. Finally, Hilkert and Chauvet are spiritual siblings in the Order of Preachers, The Dominicans. Mary Catherine Hilkert: Structure according to Imaginations Hilkerts theology of preaching begins by contrasting what she calls the Dialectical Imagination and the Sacramental Imagination.8 She summarizes and contrasts them in the following way: The Dialectical Imagination - stresses the distance between God and humanity - the hiddenness and absence of God - the sinfulness of human beings - the paradox of the cross - the need for grace as redemption and reconciliation - the limits and necessity for critique of any human project or institution, including the church - the not-yet character of the promised reign of God. The Sacramental Imagination - emphasizes the presence of the God who is self-communicating love - the creation of human beings in the image of God (restless hearts seeking the divine) - the mystery of the incarnation - grace as divinizing as well as forgiving - the mediating role of the church as sacrament of salvation in the world - the foretaste of the reign of God that is present in human community wherever Gods reign of justice, peace, and love is fostered.
84 The Sacramentality of Preaching Interestingly, Chauvet does not fit into either imagination camp, although evidence of every point abovefrom both imaginationscan be found in his work. Chauvets work seems to be an effort to hold to the two imaginations in a creative tension, or to synthesize them. More specifically, when using Hilkerts terms to describe Chauvets work, one can see that he has adapted the Sacramental Imagination so prevalent in catholic theology.9 For example, while the Sacramental Imagination stresses the mystery of the incarnation, we have seen that Chauvet prefers to interpret from the perspective of the whole Paschal Mystery with the focus on the cross of the risen One. Further, Chauvet stresses both the distance between God and humanity and the presence of the God who is self-communicating love. He stresses both the limits of the church and the mediating role of the church. An image for Chauvets work would not be the bridge between the Dialectical and Sacramental Imaginations, as Hilkert suggests for the function of Paul Tillichs work. Instead, his structure provides a three-way dialectic option by positioning the elements of both imaginations in a triangular relation of the poles SCR, SAC, and ETH.10 Nevertheless, whether the image is bridge or triangle, both Tillich and Chauvet speak in a way that leads people to recognize their human situation in its depth dimensionsto open up an empty space in the soul. Both of them interpret the biblical symbols and Christian message in a way that reveals the religious response to that empty space, the real power of New Being available in, and through, Jesus the Christ.11 Thus, Chauvet combines the imaginations as described by Hilkert; he focusses on the response in the empty space of human experience, and he asserts that the Christian response is according to the underlying logic of grace. Mary Catherine Hilkert: Dynamics (the Underlying Theology of Grace)
... hearers of the word are confronted with a decision: Do they want to participate in Gods reign by living according to the new logic of grace? Living by the new logic of grace, however, means not being ruled by any other logic such as the logic of the market, or the logic of success, or the logic of the rulers of this world.12
Hilkert readily admits that she did not define the term grace in her book Naming Grace. She writes, I dont think I could or can fully describe the term grace precisely because it refers to the mystery of God in relation to us.13 However, having been pressed to delve further into the question, she describes her approach in a later paper for Societas Homiletica. Wanting to avoid a word
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 85 study approach to defining grace, she puts the emphasis on Gods offer of friendship with humankind that is offered definitively in Jesus Christ.14 Hilkert wants to rethink the dynamics of the preaching event, and the preparation for preaching, by beginning with the presence of the Spirit, mediated through creation and human life, rather than by beginning with the authoritative word of God challenging and transforming sinful humanity. From a beginning focus on grace and pneumatology, she believes that grace is offered to all creatures. It is salvation. Grace is Gods self-communicating love, the love who comes to us and draws us into participation in the divine life.15 Grace is Gods favour. It is the liberating power behind the exodus event. It is the creative energy that is the source of all that is, the faithful and forgiving covenant relationship that God extends to Israel in spite of betrayal. It is the firm and reliable promise of God to provide future salvation for all of creation.16 Grace is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus not only preaches grace, he enfleshes or incarnates grace.17 Jesus is the grace of God. Clearly, it takes many theological terms to describe this grace-in-action: salvation, redemption, sanctification, freedom, transformation, new creation, reconciliation, justification,18 to name but a few. For Hilkert, grace also includes notions of divine indwelling,19 healing from sin, and our transformation, by the Spirit, into participants in the divine nature.20 Yet grace is never a human possession. It is the relationship or encounter with God made possible in and through Jesus Christ.21 Here, Hilkert briefly refers to the term sacramentality, using it to describe the broader context and the grace that happens in it.22 We are called to this grace, and by this grace we name it in light of the story of Jesus so that it will reconfigure our imaginations and move us to action.23 What is grace? Hilkert wisely resists defining it simply; it appears that she would prefer to have us narrate it24 by making connections between the occurrences of grace in the story of Jesus, the story of our own lives, and the actions of the church at worshipthe liturgy in which grace is named. Hilkerts description of preaching, as naming grace, can be appreciated, first, because her concise treatment of both the Dialectical and Sacramental Imaginations lays the foundation for grounding a Christian sacramental proclamation in a theology of revelation25 She has done some of the work that she attributes to Tillich, in bridging the two imaginations and rooting her own tradition more deeply in revelation. In the second instance, one can appreciate that her portrayal of preaching as naming grace requires three qualifications: (1) the experience to be named is human experience in its depth dimension; (2)most peoples experience of God is in the face of and in spite of human
86 The Sacramentality of Preaching suffering; and (3) the interpretive keys to identifying grace in human experience are located in the biblical story and the basic symbols of the Christian tradition.26 She urges that preachers go to the boundary of human experience to locate the transcendent within the immanent, and, once having located it, to spend time in contemplation of the experience. In her view, it is especially important for preachers to pay attention to experiences where suffering abounds and grace is difficult to locate, let alone name. In the story of Jesus, Hilkert claims, we discover that all of humanity has been united with God. Therefore, in preaching, we do not offer an interpretation of human life; rather, we invite each person who hears to make Jesus story ones own and, in doing so, to experience ordinary human life as graced. A question arises from Hilkerts work, however: What is naming? More often than not, Hilkerts conception of naming grace seems to be a pointing-to grace. This is a necessary element in preaching grace, but the task does not end with mere pointing-to. In some of what Hilkert writes, and in a lot of preaching about grace, the reader/listener is led right to the point where naming grace could become a summons to grace and an experience of grace. We remember Chauvets assertion that, language is neither primarily nor fundamentally a convenient tool of information nor is it a distributor of carefully regulated titles. More fundamentally, it is summonsvocation.27 As I have sketched it, preaching grace needs to incorporate both proclamation (talking about grace, pointing to grace) and sacramentality (saying grace to someone, an offer of grace, a summons to grace, a charge in the vocation of gracean encounter with Grace itself). The preacher needs to be aware that merely pointing-to grace runs the risk of distancing too much, and making the one who names grace, and the one who is to hear/see it, objectiveas though the preacher has direct contact with reality and simply uses language as a tool of information and title giving. The risk is made more severe in the preacher who might relish the opportunity to name and thus controla powerful role. In my view, the preacher must not conceive naming grace as the task of surmounting all obstacles to direct contact and possession of the divine, and to, in effect, wrestle the bestowal of grace away from God. Like Adam, human beings are given the power to name everything except Godso that we would avoid the sin of attempting to become like-a-god. Thus, preaching leans away from a scientific-sign type of language and it leans toward an illocutionarysymbolic type of language.28 The act of preaching is the act of referring us to
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 87 God, and referring Gods action to us. It is a witness to grace that leads to recognition of Gods gracious action in lifeespecially life in its depth dimension. Therefore, like Chauvets symbolic language, preaching must include a level of language (or a pole) that is generally ruled by the following principles: a) it is language that opens a world of meaning by drawing us into the order of grace to which it belongs; b) it is language that has no real value as information, it refers to things beyond value;29 and c) it is language says something to someone, it is intersubjective. With an understanding that preaching grace involves naming grace and narrating grace, these guidelines can help the preacher to avoid sounding like one who is the source of grace and truth, or one who controls its dispersal. Instead, the language of preaching can allow the listeners to recognize themselves, and their lives, as graced by God, and help them to respond accordingly. Here, the function of preaching is to identity-name, directly and indirectly. The function is to provide just enough distance from God (and distance from the temptation to be our own god) to be in relation to God. The milieu of the church allows for this, and the common Christian identity can become the environment in which God uses all the necessary reference points, levels of language, and poles to work a transformation of human existence into Christian existence. In other words, by plunging ourselves into the identity of the church and the matter of the church, we plunge ourselves into the Christian medium of Gods self giving. The preacher then guides the church toward recognition by naming and narrating occurrences of grace in life. Like the baby learning to recognize herself in her image, that is you, name, in the mirror, the preacher helps the ones who seek God to recognize themselves in the stories and symbols of God in Christ, that is you, name, in the boat with Jesus, that is you, name, refusing to have your feet washed, that is you, name, hearing your name spoken by the gardenerthat is your voice responding, Rabboni! When we become named as the recipients of grace, we are enabled to name and narrate our own experience of grace, and we become the namers and narrators of grace everywhere through a life of witness.30 What is naming? What is grace? Maybe a clearer question for the preacher is how do human beings come to know and experience grace, and how can we respond to grace? This is where we part company with Hilkert and allow Chauvet to respond.
Grace as Symbolic Exchange

The preacher guides the church through its perception of, and participation in, grace. She positions her speech in such a way that the communication between God and humans is manifest while, at the same time, preserving the radical difference between God and humans. Chauvet speaks of a path by which we may perceive grace, so that we may speak of it, and experience it. Grace, he stresses, cannot be reduced theologically to this, but understood within this perspective.31 This perspective he calls Symbolic Exchange. In order to understand how Chauvet gets to this analogy (or metaphor) for grace, we will follow the steps in his thinking. First, we will examine the economy of gift-exchange, as shown in the gift/ reception/return-gift schema of Marcel Mauss in his celebrated work The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies.32 Mauss theory, which has some serious limitations, simply provides Chauvet with another heuristic device. It is a way to consider how human subjects interrelate in the sphere of gratuitousness, beyond the order of value. This anthropological model of giftexchange is then transposed to a theological model which Chauvet calls Symbolic Exchange; this, in turn, serves as a perspective from which (or through which) one can construct a theological discourse on grace. I will then analyse Symbolic Exchange theologically by considering a similar proposal from constructive theologian Kathryn Tanner who seeks economies of grace. This will be followed by a review of Chauvets own test for the process of Symbolic Exchange in the demonstration of how it functions in the Blessing Prayers, especially the Eucharistic Prayer, or Great Thanksgiving. Gift Exchange: A Metaphor for the Relationship between Human Subjects
The gift is without doubt what, among our institutions, best resists the imperialism of value.33
Chauvets first step is to use Mauss work to suggest that there are exchanges, in every society, that lie beyond the order of utilitarian or market value. For his part, Mauss was involved in polemics with English utilitarianism and was trying to prove that society can cohere even without modern market mechanisms. This contention fits with Chauvets desire to articulate a theology of sacramentality which, while it maintains a certain pragmatism, counters the utilitarian
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 89 bent in modern life that distorts our conception of grace. When Chauvet introduces the concept, he stresses that the outstanding characteristic of this process is that it functions outside the order of value. Because of this, it opens for us a possible path by which to theologically conceive the marvellous exchange (admirabile commercium) between God and humankind which we call grace.34 Traditional Societies Chauvet makes use of three basic features found in Mauss analysis of archaic societies.35 First, as a system, gift-exchange was a total social fact. This means that the system of gift-exchange, (a) pervaded the whole social hierarchy involving the greatest and the least, (b) it pertained to exchange between individuals and exchange between groups (other tribes), and (c) it applied to the exchange of everything from food, to women (through marriage), to gestures, banquets, services and so on. What is most astonishing to us Westerners, is that this included the exchange of consumer goods.36 Consumer goods got caught-up-in, and distributed by, a system whose primary purpose was social coherence. Second, it is an exchange in the symbolic order, as opposed to the order of utility. This means that there was a way of relating, in these societies, that had nothing to do with business. It involved super-abundance and graciousness, on that level of relationship where alliance, friendship, affection, and recognition reside. Finally, it involves one in a structure of necessary or obligatory generosity. The free gift-exchange creates or recreates the relationship bond because there is an unspoken reality lying beneath this exchange; whoever receives the gift will, at some point, give someone else something for nothing. It was a circuit of obligatory generosity.37 Chauvet simplifies the scheme by describing the logic of gift-exchange in traditional societies with the following,
Subject A having gathered coconuts, donates the harvest to subject B who, having made some pottery containers, gives them to subject C who at the end of a day spent fishing gives the fish to subject D, and so on. Neither A nor B nor C nor Dcalculate for how much they have harvested or fabricated goods and how much they have a right to in exchange.38
Again, this type of gift-giving is gratuitous, but it is a necessary gratuitousness. There is an obligatory generosity at work in the continuing exchange, for no one is free to refuse the gift and no one is free to let the gift-giving stop with
90 The Sacramentality of Preaching them because it would short-circuit the socio-economic system. Further, to refuse would be to place oneself outside the society, the group, the clan, thus dishonouring oneself, ones family, and the whole society. The key features of this system were: a) everyone in society was included, b) it worked for individuals and groups, c) consumer goods were valued primarily as a medium of exchange for the purpose of social coherence, d) this social coherence relied on the gratuitousness of the gift and the obligatory return-gift to a third party. Contemporary Western Societies and the Vocabulary of Exchange The findings of Mauss are relevant to Chauvet because they are present (although often hidden) in every human society and thus, shed light on the dynamics of our present-day systems.39 Our own vocabulary of exchange reveals similarity and difference: give-take, buy-sell, loan-borrow, giff-gaff.40 All of these expressions imply an exchange but, creeping into the exchange, are two elements which consign them to the order of value: payment and equivalence. Our vocabulary for exchange betrays the emergence of a primarily binary system, where there is no third party. By contrast, in the symbolic exchange of the archaic societies, the structure is ternary. When the terms are binary, the notion of gift is removed. Product X is exchanged for value Y, in kind or money, as a payment. The return-gift, in a binary, market system, is essentially payment which discharges relationship. If payment is delayed, the relationship is one of indebtedness. This subtle difference is an essential distinction for Chauvet, and one which he believes stems from the ascendency of the notion equivalence and the use of money. He writes,
For in our societies, so many centuries of metaphysical tradition, technological civilization, and the dominance of business values have passed, enshrining the notion of equivalence, that by an almost historic fatality, our languages have forgotten the original ambivalence of the vocabulary of exchange.41
In other words, we have lost sight of a whole realm, within our social systems, where exchange has nothing to do with commodity-exchange, nor payment, nor indebtedness. We have lost sight of true gift.42 Notions of equivalence and payment elbow aside an additional realm where super-abundance, graciousness, alliance, friendship, affection, and recognition exist.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 91 Again, careful attention to the vocabulary of exchange may be fruitful for interpretation, as we will see with a brief study of the words donner, ambivalence, and ambiguity. In many languages, the English word gift has several distinct and parallel words. Often, a verb translated into English as to give comes from the Latin root do-, which together with da- receive, seems to complete the gift-exchange vocabulary. However, according to Emile Benveniste, meaning is lost with this simple etymology of do-. He considers that do- properly means neither take nor give but either the one or the other, depending on the construction.43 In English, take can have two opposed meanings: to take something from someone, but also to take something to someone, to deliver something to someone. Similarily, writes Benveniste, do- indicate(s) only the fact of taking hold of something; only the syntax of the utterance differentiated it as to take hold of in order to keep (= take), and to take hold of in order to offer (= give).44 He concludes, that the most characteristic verb for to give was marked by a curious semantic ambivalence45 The words give and take are linked by a polarity where each of the words may retain both contrary and parallel meaning. This is almost a definition of the word ambivalence, (ambi- both + valere to be powerful, to be worth) where something can have either or both of two contrary or parallel values, qualities or meanings.46 This is the coincidence of opposites rather than the equivalence (equi- equal + -valere to be powerful, to be worth) of two terms. Some might want to say that there is no ambiguity in what is said by means of ambivalent words, but this, too, misses a meaning of the word ambiguous. Most often, the word ambiguous refers to something doubtful, questionable, indistinct, obscure, not clearly defined, but it can also refer to words or other significant indications admitting more than one interpretation or explanation.47 Ambiguity can indicate a double sense or that the terms are equi-vocal, they drive both ways, (amb- both ways + -ag-ere to drive). These semantic distinctions become significant when Chauvet draws a contrast between gift-exchange in the order of value and symbolic-exchange in the order of non-value. Give-and-take in a binary market system is contrasted with gift/reception/return-gift in a ternary symbolic system. Here, we will clearly see the difference between to take hold of in order to keep (= take), and to take hold of in order to offer (= give), a difference Chauvet thinks we have forgotten. What has been sketched so far reveals two of Chauvets primary assertions. First, in order to bear fruit in a theological model of exchange and to indicate
92 The Sacramentality of Preaching an economy of grace, the system of exchange must be ternarythere must be a third term. Second, what makes us live is not primarily the order of the useful (or useless) but the order of graciousness, of superabundance, that which is thrown in for the bargain.48 Only that which lies outside the order of value allows us to live as subjects. It structures all our relations. Therefore, the theological model for an economy of grace must focus on that which lies outside the order of value. How then, do we determine this dimension? What belongs beyond the order of value? Symbolic Exchange: Outside the Order of Value The preceding excursion through the vocabulary of exchange was necessitated by the ascendency of the notion of equivalence and the loss of ambivalence. Unlike the situation in archaic times, most present-day societies use currency as a medium of exchange. This produces the idea of exchange value, exact value. The item is worth exactly this amount of money. Equivalence adds another dimension, beyond the dimension of usefulness, to exchange in the order of value. In order to show these two dimensions, while adding a third in the order of value, and then to draw a contrast between these three and a fourth dimension beyond value, Chauvet uses the work of Jean Baudrillard49 to describe four distinct logics of value:
1. A functional logic of use value, based on utility (for example, an automobile as a means of rapid transportation) 2. An economic logic of exchange value, based on equivalence (the automobile as equal to so much money) 3. A differential logic of sign value, based on a code of difference (the automobile as sign of a certain standing or social position)50 4. A logic of symbolic exchange, based on ambivalence.51
The first three belong to the order of value and the fourth to the order of non-value, indicating that symbolic exchange is beyond value.52 Within the symbolic logic of non-value, what is important is less having than being.53 There are some things which are beyond value. Buying a car is not the same as falling in love. There is a realm of human relationship that can deal only in the logic of the symbolic order.54 It is distinct from the logic of value; it is be-
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 93 yond value. It is not primarily useful and it is not based on equivalence nor on a code of difference in position.55 The contrast is best described by comparing business/market exchange and symbolic exchange. There is a realm where the predominant logic of the marketplace cannot smother that of non-value which is that of symbolic exchange.56 The level of exchange found in the marketplace seeks to satisfy itself, immediately, through the possession of objects; on the level of symbolic exchange, the satisfaction comes from more and other than what the objects are in themselves.57 The exchange of yams, shells, or spears, as objects, is based on one of the first three logics mentioned above: the functional logic of use value, the economic logic of exchange value, or the differential logic of sign value. However, when the object is a single red rose, given from the hand of man in formal attire into the hand of a woman in a bridal dress, the principle which rules is one of super-abundance. The true objects being exchanged are the subjects themselves.58 This does not mean that the gift must be useless or valueless but, rather, when an object is given expressly as gift, any value this object might have on the open market is eclipsed by a referent which is beyond value. Having demonstrated the importance of a ternary structure for giftexchange, the importance of a focus on that which lies outside the order of value, and a way to distinguish between the logics of value and non-value, Chauvets next step is to apply this anthropological framework to theological realities. If it is true for the human subject, how is it true for the Christian subject?59 Eventually, he will ask, how does every sacrament show us how to see and live what transforms our human existence into a properly Christian existence? I will eventually extend this question to consider its implications for preaching and homiletics.
Diagram 7. Gift-Reception-Return Gift
A Metaphor for the Relationship between God and Humankind The preceding discussion can be boiled down to this one assertion: it is the process of gift-reception-return gift that structures every significant relationship.60
94 The Sacramentality of Preaching Therefore, Chauvet concludes that it may be a way to understand the most significant relationship. He writes,
To consider the grace of God theologically, and more specifically sacramental grace, in the order of symbolic exchange, has for us the immense advantage of situating it from the start in the area of non-value(like) manna in the desert: grace is essentially that which cannot be calculated and cannot be stockedit belongs to what is thrown into the bargain and to super-abundance.61
Also like manna, it may be useful or valuable for survival on that particular day; but, what is thrown in for the bargain (the providence of God in this case), is beyond value. This leads to another assertion:
this concept of graciousness expresses only one dimension of grace. There is a second which it does not show: the precedence of Gods gift which, according to the theological tradition, grace also implies. We must then complement the concept of graciousness with that of gratuitousness. This is an equally precious word because it indicates that we are not at the origin of own our selves but that we receive our selves from a gift that was there before us. A free gift, which can in no way be demanded and which we can in no way justify.62
Chauvets thought here relies on the unification of the two concepts. God reaches into the very corporality of believers, primarily through the order of non-value, and provides mediations through which we become part of that grace-filled communication we call sacramentality.63 Theological Advantages The complementary concepts of graciousness and gratuitousness, present in Gods action of self-giving, are not the only advantages of using Chauvets structure. His project is a threefold move away: (a) from the analogies of production for the working of grace in the sacraments, (b) from cause-effect notions for the efficacy of the sacraments, and (c) from the impasse caused by the false dichotomies and dualism inherent in binary systems. As an alternative, Chauvet offers (a) the analogy of symbolic exchange in the order of non-value, (b) he shifts to the perspective of language and symbol and (c) he structures the order of grace and the identity of the church in a ternary fashion. These three shifts have major advantages for a theology of sacramentality which, in turn, can be applied to liturgical preaching. First, as mentioned above, the structure is more akin to grace, making it a better analogy for grace. If sacraments are conceived as ecclesial mediations of the
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 95 exchange between humanity and God the approach is relatively akin to grace or at least, the approach is more like grace than the productionist scheme.64 A move away from the analogy of production is advantageous for theology and preaching because no longer must there be a human intermediary between God and humankind. Celebration no longer has to rely solely on the functionalvalue, economic-value, or differential-value of grace in the sermon or sacrament. The analogies of grace in the imagination of the church may be guided by a theological structure that is more akin to grace. The creative tension between law and gospel may be illuminated by the distinctions found in the structure. The whole celebration, and its participants, may enter into a symbolic exchange in the order of non-valuethey may be allowed entrance into, and empowerment to live out, the life of grace revealed and operating in the presence and activity of Christ. Second, the structure and its dynamic process is a better analogy for the space of grace. Chauvet argues that the space or place where grace functions and becomes effective is most like the communication, by speech, between subjects. Language is the original space of symbolic exchange, and it is the place where we see that the efficacy of speech is not in the order of value. This insight is of great relevance for any discourse of theology or preaching where language is the primary medium. Third, theology and preaching can benefit, in myriad ways, from a threeway dialectic of exchange. Generally speaking, Chauvets use of the category gift, and his joining the three moments or positions of symbolic exchange, has at least three advantages. First, the gift is primary. Gods gratuitous action is the gift. Gods grace is not something due and it is not a response to merit. Grace comes from Gods pure initiative, that of love.65 Next, the gift must be received as grace.66 This requires that the return-gift not be understood as payment, but instead, the only return-gift properly offered to the giver is a spirit of gratitude, a word of thanks, an increase of love for the gift-giver. Last, when the gift (Gods self-gift of grace) is received as grace, a return-gift must go to a third party by means of a life of witness. This functions incidentally as verification of love, conversion of heart, and faith. Theological Analysis Chauvets schema is ripe with implications for the theologian and preacher. A conception of grace which does not limit, but offers the possibility of expanding, our ability to recognize grace-in-action, is welcome. We may be better able
96 The Sacramentality of Preaching to encounter grace, live in it, and live out of it. The need for an economy of grace is great. Perhaps the content and the form of Christian proclamation can be re-imagined once again to speak a startling word of grace. Kathryn Tanner, in her essay Economies of Grace, says she finds it an advantage that, when applied to conventional thinking, a re-imagined Christian theology has a heightened ability to startle.67 Like Chauvet, she seeks to reimagine or reconstruct our social relations according to a wider, and fuller, reality. She bases this attempt on a presupposition: social relations are susceptible to human influence.68 This acknowledges that social relations are constructed and, therefore, they can be changed. We are not irrevocably determined by our culturesociety. The possible expands beyond the actual. Also like Chauvet, Tanner builds her proposal, in part, on the anthropological model of gift-exchange as she seeks an economy of grace. The difference is that Tanner finds gift-exchange wanting, and thus her work may act as a suitable critique of Chauvet. Beyond this, an opportunity may be presented. Tanner addresses the economic sphere in a way that may deepen and supplement Chauvets description of symbolic exchange. Tanner makes constructive Christian theology perform as sociocultural criticism.69 She begins with gift-giving by asking this question,
The anthropologists description of practices of gift-giving among Fiji Islanders may be wild from a modern Western viewpoint and therefore enormously expansive of the Western imagination of economic relations; but why or how should we take these descriptions into account when we re-imagine our own future, given their relative historical independence of the Western economic practices?70
Furthermore, to Westerners today, it is likely that the Christian views concerning economic practice have become almost as strange as the views of Fiji Islanders. Or perhaps, even for Christians, Christianity is not acting as an alternative to market mechanisms. It is not contributing, as a prophetic voice, to critique the dominance of market economics, but it is acting, rather, as the primary source for feeding the spirit of capitalism. Tanner writes,
Christian theology regains its ability to startlewhen basic Christian notions of God and Gods relations to the world are themselves viewed as economic in nature. Relations of exchange and the circulation of goods, broadly construed, are at issue throughout the fundamental story that Christians tell about God, creation, providence, and salvation in Christ.71
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 97 Tanner evaluates what she calls other contenders for a radical expansion of the social imaginary by theological means, and find(s) them wantingless radical, less disruptive, and therefore less significant as interventions on the present scene.72 One of these alternative logics is the use theologians have made of the anthropological discussion of non-commodity gift exchange. Tanner is after a more thoroughgoing economy of grace or gift. John Calvin seems to offer a robust theology of grace which would fit the category of gift and function as an alternative. For the purpose of analysing Chauvet, Tanners treatment of Calvin deserves closer attention. Tanner puts together the two sides of Calvins theology and finds that the underlying paradigm is still legal requirement. The one side of Calvins theology is promising. Calvin is eager to emphasize the sovereign gracious God giving gifts from the ever-flowing fount of goodness. Tanner articulates this side of Calvins theology as follows,
God is not a harsh taskmaster paying wages to servants but a doting parent of wayward children who are lovingly chastised and rewarded despite their faults simply because they are Gods own, the heirs to the parents fortune in whom God wishes only to delight.73 All we do is by Gods grace, and therefore the very notion of merit is destroyed.74 We receive a reward not because our works earn it but because God out of kindness has simply set that value on what we do.75 We are to keep the law as an act of honor, reverence, and gratitude, not as any simple obligation externally imposed by divine demand.76
Clearly this is a God of grace, where Gods gift is offered freely (at Gods initiative) and for nothing (not owed due to human fulfilment of condition, nor in anticipation of return payment). However, there does seem to be a condition. As Tanner says, on the other handGod does seem to be setting us a task, to be greeted by either rewards or penalties.77 This other side of Calvins theology, she articulates as follows,
We should use Gods gifts for the purpose for which he gave them to us.78 They have been entrusted to our use as stewards, and we must one day render an account of them; a reckoning will one day be make of our use of them.79 Gods gifts are held by us like the usufruct of a field by anothers liberality; and therefore when we do what the owner of the title of the property requires of us, we have only carried out services owed.80 We do not need to pay the debt of perfect performance of Gods law or the penalty for failure to so perform, but someone still has toChrist.81 Looking to that perfect payment, God overlooks our own failure to provide what is due; and upon that forgiveness, give us the benefits that are the reward of it, the benefits that are properly owed to someone perfectly obedient.82
98 The Sacramentality of Preaching When these two sides are put together, it is very hard to exclude the suggestion that, here, grace and liberality are simply being made to fit a context of legal requirement.83 Even if it is Gods selfGods Sonfulfilling the condition, the promising language of gift is undermined by the language of tenancy, loan, and payment. Tanner considers Calvins theology of grace a less radical, less disruptive alternative because of its inherent logic of indebtedness and obligation If not Calvin, then who helps us articulate an economy of grace as gift? Tanner is not satisfied with Calvin because she seeks to avoid indebtedness and obligation in order to make the idea of grace the incontrovertible and perhaps exclusive organizing principle of a theological economy.84 To do so would require the avoidance of all language of ownership or loan and instead to develop what it means to hold oneself and the whole of the world as gifts of God and then ask about the character that legitimate social (political/economic) exchanges might take on that basis.85 Tanner points to several theologians who attempt this, namely John Milbank, Stephen Webb, Catherine Pickstock, and Douglas Meeks (to a lesser extent). These various appeals have different emphases, but generally, a theological account of grace is somehow proposed as a modified version of giftexchange. Although Tanner makes no reference to his work, Chauvet would seem to fall into this category; a theologian attempting to articulate an economy of grace, analogous with gift-exchange, which reflects a Trinitarian understanding of God who communicates with Gods own creation by way of self-gift. Tanner describes the irresistible appeal of these archaic economies to theologians who see some sort of this-worldly imitation of (or participation in) the mutual love among Trinitarian persons.86 Gift-exchange, as these theologians use it, shows how possession seems always shared in a fluid circuit ever returning to their initiating source and flowing out again to meet needs.87 However, Tanner refuses to look past the fact that gift-giving is sustained through a system of obligations, and increasing indebtedness. The close relationship that non-commodity gift-exchange brings about seems based on a mutual dependence and claim. Whereas an exchange involving moneyor equivalencetends to break off relations, thus ending the claim of indebtedness, gift-exchange builds up relations by creating claims between subjects. Theologians like Chauvet who use gift-exchange as a model, do so primarily because the objects of the exchange are really the subjects themselves. In Chauvets model, there is a dramatic difference between market exchange and symbolic exchange, or between value and beyond-value. Yet,
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 99 Tanner wonders if these contrasts are not too easily overblown.88 While usevalue is subordinated in gift-exchange, there is still the prominence of an increase or profit in social standing, establishing relations of superiority and subordination.89 In other words,
Competition among gift-givers is therefore not unusual: often an initial gift is more than matched by a return gift, setting off a chain reaction whereby each struggles to maintain the upper hand in relations of indebtedness.90
Tanners critique is persuasive. At a purely human level, it is possible that gift exchanges are, at bottom, contractual commodity contracts and that this aspect is simply occluded by the participants.91 We may be simply pretending that an object presented as a gift really is a gift, all the while wondering about its value in terms of use, equivalence, and sign. Further, is it really a gift if it obligates us to the giver? As John Milbank asks, Can a gift be given?92 Chauvets work answers, yes. Yes, when the giver is God, and when the gift cannot be commodified. Tanners critique is a startling caution for anyone using these socioeconomic models from anthropology; it also serves to highlight what Chauvet does theologically with the gift-exchange model. Chauvet makes the theological step of putting God in the place of gift-giver. The importance of this emphasis, when used theologically, shows at least two things: the symbolic exchange of grace is based on ambivalence, and the symbolic exchange of grace is not reciprocal, but is structured with three terms. First, based on ambivalence (both positive and negative poles, contrary or parallel meaning), symbolic exchange has an inherent ambiguity which corresponds to the actual experience of life, and its dynamic is paradoxical, much like the central claims of Christian faith. It is true of any exchange, as Tanner asserts, that one is liberated from relationship by making payment and freeing oneself from obligation, but free for what? Autonomy? Do we seek independence and isolation from God and from one another by become a law-unto-ourselves? The ambivalence here does not lead to autonomy, but to liberation for service. It is similar to what Paul speaks of in Galatians 5:13, for you were called to freedom brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom for selfindulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. There is a paradoxical liberation-for-service in an invitation to bear one anothers burdens. (Gal 6:2) Once free, the only thing that counts is faith working (made effective) through love.(Gal 5:6) This love is directed back to God, but simultane-
100 The Sacramentality of Preaching ously to neighbour. So, Chauvet holds up two key concepts: first, the both (ambi) strong (valere) of ambivalence found in symbolic exchange allows space for exchange beyond value without controlling or eliminating all potentially dis-graceful mis-uses of the relations established through it. Sin, although defeated in Christ, still exists alongside grace. This ambivalence will persist until the Parousia. Second, the paradox of being liberated, in order to become slaves for one another, indicates what kind of shared-life Gods gift calls us to. Chauvet makes much of paradox, which is described as the indirect revelation (para) of the glory (doxa) of Goda madness from which the power of God breaks forth (1 Cor 1).93 The paradox of who God is, and who we are in Christ, resides in a continual advent which is exposed to the risks of history, but free under the Spirits inspiration. Like Paul, Chauvet is always guarding against the notion that human beings can objectively grasp or control the whole Truth. To do so is to break the relationship by cutting off the crucial and creative tension or distance between subjects. The second element of Tanners critique which serves to highlight a strength of Chauvets proposal, is this: in all the theories of gift-exchange she analyses, the priority is given to reciprocal relations. In Chauvets use of giftexchange the priority is not placed on the mutuality, equality, or reciprocity of the exchange. Because of his emphasis on the theological distinction between giftexchange and symbolic exchange, based on the distinction between exchange in the order of value and exchange in the order beyond-value, the priority is placed on the impossibility of mutuality, equality and reciprocity. How does a human being have an equal relationship with God who gave everything and has everything one could give back? How could the exchange be characterized as reciprocal? It cannot be described that way. Instead, Chauvet shows how the exchange, in grace, with a God of Grace, is beyond-value; consequently, human participation is best expressed with a third term. The Christian subject returns thanks and praise to God and returns gift to a third party through the life of witnessing to faith. The same holds true when symbolic exchange occurs between human beings who follow this theological path.94 In Christian marriageor in any relationship of lovewhen someone gives oneself to another through vows, the offering of hands, and the giving of a ring, a return-gift of self may be the perfect response. However, it cannot be reciprocal according its utility, equivalence, or even sign. It is beyond any value or obligation. These two human beings are becoming one in Christ.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 101 On the cross, Jesus gave himself. How would one value that? How does one receive it, respond to it, reciprocate? Nothing in the order of value will do. Tanner and Chauvet seek the same alternative economy. In fact, a key term Tanner uses in her satisfactory proposal, is eucharist. She eagerly acknowledges that,
Onecannot pay God back for what one has been giventhere is nothing more to us, we have nothing more than what is simply our own, to give back as payment; we can only give back gifts received. All our gifts to God take on the character, then, of Eucharist offerings; we offer up to God the bread and wine that are already Gods gifts to us as creator, empowered to do so by the gifts already received by humanity in Christ.95
Our gifts to God take on the character of Eucharistic offerings, and as Chauvet proposes, Gods own self-gift is revealed and operates within the whole of this Eucharistic exchange. Within the text and action of the blessing prayers we find this aspect especially visible.96 Before moving on to assess this eucharistic quality of symbolic exchange, we note that Tanners critique of gift-exchange assists us in evaluating Chauvets use of symbolic exchange. Where there is (and always was) the risk of deflating Gods grace by turning the notion of symbolic exchange into another indebtedness scheme, there is also the opportunity to use it as a genuinely startling recognition of the hidden-revealed gift, operating in sacramental celebration, including the preaching that is part of this celebration.
The Blessing Prayer as a Hermeneutical Key for Preaching

In his discussion of sacrament as a language event, David Power writes,
The Word of God is addressed to a particular community through its own traditions. It is a Word heard in the power of the Spirit and a Word which in the same Spirit moved the community to the blessing of God which it prays over the elements and in conjunction with the ritual action. It is indeed the blessing prayers of sacramental rites which reveal how the Word proclaimed, the inner action of the Spirit, and the rites that surround the use of the sacramental elements come together in a single act of communion.97
Power argues that blessing prayers are the key for guiding the interpretation of both the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the World. The blessing prayer of the Eucharist is an obvious example, and Power uses it to reveal vital charac-
102 The Sacramentality of Preaching teristics of both the prayer, and the whole ritual action, including proclamation. Blessing prayers are relational, symbolic, prophetic, creedal, narrative, eucharistic and doxological.98 These characteristics help restore the event-character of prayer. However, the most important characteristic of the hermeneutical key is found in the word blessing. A Brief Excursus on Bless I have used the word blessing previously when defining the word sacramentality.99 Sacramentality, at its simplest level, occurs when there is an action of God, a blessing, and a subsequent human response. This definition gained some nuance through Chauvets symbolic exchange (gift-reception-return gift) theory of grace, which demonstrates that the human response is two-fold: a reception with thanks to God, and a return gift to a third party in the name of God, all of which occurs primarily in a realm beyond-value. The first part of this two-fold response to God is based on two different understandings of to bless. The definition/description implies that God blesses and that God is the blessed One. It always starts as a blessing action of God toward humanity, but the God who blesses cannot be understood apart from the ones God is blessing.100 In other words, it is appropriate that the word blessing stands between God and humans in this definition, because the human response to God is also through blessing. A study of the biblical words translated to English as bless, blessing, to bless, reveals a meaning that might be called multi-directional. Certainly there is an emphasis on Gods character and action in the Greek word charito [to show grace, to bless] as it is only used in the New Testament in connection with divine charis (Lk 1:28).101 But the Greek euloge [to speak well of, bless] is also a very significant term in the New Testament, and it is the translation for the Hebrew word group brk, a most important concept in the Old Testament and in Judaism.102 Both of these word groups denote a transfer by words and acts. They are speech-acts through which human beings can bless God. These take their first form as prayer to God, especially in the sense of giving God thanks, praise, and glory.103 The blessing from God and the resulting blessing of (to) God constitute an event of sacramentality. Together, they are the conditions for the predictive makarios [blessed, happy] found in beatitudes, a distinctive joy which comes through participation in the divine kingdom,104 or in chara [joy] found
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 103 throughout the New Testament, especially in Paul as the joy of faith (Phil. 1:25) and fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22).105 However, this joy is not complete and grace is not gracious until, out of love and thanksgiving, the gift of God is returned to a third party as a eulogia, this is the second form of reception and response to Gods undescribable gift.(2 Cor. 9: 5-6, 15)106 It is clear that many of the terms I have been using are bound up with one another gift, grace, blessing, faith, and so on. It may also be clear, that the privileged symbolic expression of this symbolic exchange of grace, between God and humans, can be found in sacramental worship. While preaching itself is an offeringan offering of God, an offering of the preacher both to God and to the church, and an offering of the church to others in thanksgiving to Godthe sacraments can function as a deep grammar and hermeneutical key for ordering and focussing this offering. In particular, the narrative discourses found in the sacraments, namely the blessing prayers, can give focus to preaching as a real offering or bestowal of grace and faith.107 Symbolic Exchange between Humanity and God: The Eucharistic Prayer Chauvet himself uses the Eucharistic prayer to verify his theory of the symbolic exchange between humanity and God because this is where it is especially visible.108
The grace of the Eucharist is finally our own becoming eucharistic people, that is, our becoming sons and daughters for God and brothers and sisters for others, in communion with the Son and Brotherthis grace is given to us as a task.109
Using Prayer 2, from the Roman Missal, we will follow Chauvets narrative analysis of the blessing prayer in order to show the possibility of its use as a hermeneutical key. This prayer is chosen from many prayers (all of them show this pattern) because it is the most concise, and because it contains the framework modelled on the prayer found in the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus c. 215). The parts of the prayer are commonly held to be: opening dialogue, thanksgiving (preface), Sanctus, first epiclesis (epiclesis on the gifts, or epiclesis of consecration), narrative of the institution, anamnesis, second epiclesis (epiclesis on the assembly, or epiclesis of communion), intercession for the church on earth, for the dead, eschatological prayer, doxology. Chauvets analysis, however, is not focussed on the parts but rather on the gear wheels with which they mesh.110
104 The Sacramentality of Preaching In other words, his focus is on the narrative mechanism that allows the people who pray and the prayers, to function eucharistically. Narrative analysis of these prayers shows that giving thanks to God, in a Christian manner, is not a natural matter but demands a complete itinerary.111 This is an itinerary of conversion. God must give the competence for this conversion. The itinerary that the Eucharistic Prayer makes us travel is the way that Christians are called to walk throughout their lives. If the Eucharistic Prayer makes us travel, one might inquire about the stages of the journey. Chauvet claims that this mechanism moves us from a negative situation of lack and stops when the lack is filled. The lack to be filled is indicated by the initial dialogue, Let us give thanks (and praise) to the Lord our God.112 This is the program of the whole text between the initial dialogue and the final doxology, through him, with him, in him, in the power of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours almighty Father, for ever and ever. Within the program is an indication of how we acquire the competence to perform this act of thanksgiving (the lack to be filled) and praise (the fulfilment of the program, returning grace/glory to God.) Chauvet delineates the three movements or steps in the program using the nomenclature, NP1 (narrative program 1) NP2 (narrative program 2), and NP3 (narrative program 3). The principal (overall) program is laid out with the: initial dialogue The Lord be with you. And also with you Lift up your hearts. We lift them up to the Lord. Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right to give him thanks and praise. (NP1) Thanksgiving and Praise for the Gift (past tense) Narrative Program One (NP1) begins with the preface (initial thanksgiving) Father, it is our duty and our salvation, always and everywhere to give you thanks through your beloved Son, Jesus Christ.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 105 He is the Word through whom you made the universe, the Saviour you sent to redeem us. By the power of the Holy Spirit he took flesh and was born of the Virgin Mary For our sake he opened his arms on the cross; he put an end to death and revealed the resurrection. In this he fulfilled your will and won for you a holy people. And so we join the angels and the saints in proclaiming you glory as we sing (say) and moves to the Sanctus. Holy, Holy, Holy Lord, God of power and might, heaven and earth are full of your glory. Hosanna in the highest. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Hosanna in the highest. The focus: Here, the church gives thanks to God for creation but, specifically, for the salvific mission of Jesus the Son. The focus is on giving thanks for the history of Gods opening the path of salvation: creation, covenant/promise, liberation from bondage, renewal of promise in the prophets, and so on.113 In Prayer 2, salvation history is summarized (symbolized) in Jesus the Christ. It is the biblical past reread Christologically.114 The task: This part of the prayer proclaims what God has done for (or what God has given to115) humankind according to the Scriptures, and culminates in the gift of the historical (born of Mary, dead on the cross) and glorious (risen) body of Christ. Chauvet interprets why this is not the end of the prayer when he says,
The fact that the text continues after the praise of the Sanctus demonstrates that the principal program, in spite of appearances, is not fulfilled: to give thanks in a properly Christian way demands other conditions, especially the reception of the gift, which up to now has been spoken of exclusively in the past tense.116
106 The Sacramentality of Preaching (NP2) Reception of the Gift (move from past tense to present tense). Narrative Program Two (NP2) moves from the epiclesis on the gifts117 Lord, you are holy indeed, the fountain of all holiness. Let your Spirit come upon these gifts to make them holy, so that they may become for us the body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ. to the narrative of the institution Before he was given up to death, a death he freely accepted he took bread and gave you thanks. He broke the bread, gave it to his disciples and said: Take this, all of you, and eat it: this is my body which will be given up for you. When supper was ended he took the cup. Again he gave you thanks and praise, gave the cup to his disciples and said: Take this all of you and drink from it: this is the cup of my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant. It will be shed for you and for all so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me. Let us proclaim the mystery of faith: (choice of four acclamations) to the anamnesis (development of the institution narrative). In memory of his death and resurrection, we offer you, Father, this life-giving bread, this saving cup. We thank you for counting us worthy to stand in your presence and serve you.
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 107 The focus: This time Jesus is given (Holy Spirit sent) as a present under the mode of food and drink and no longer the historical mode; he is given in the present and no longer in the past.118 The task: To give thanks in the present (standing before you) for the present. But, of course, the prayer is not complete yet. Chauvet claims, there is still something needed: that we become ecclesially what we are going to receive eucharistically.119 (NP3) The Promise of a Future which is already/not-yet. Narrative program three (NP3) contains a second epiclesis, a request that the Holy Spirit come upon us and unify us May all who share in the body and blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit. in the Roman Missal it then includes intercessory prayer for the church militant and triumphant120 (not included here)and a final eschatological prayer: that one day we may share eternal life with all the saints. Have mercy on us all; make us worthy to share eternal life with Mary, the virgin mother of God, with the apostles, and with all the saints who have done your will through the ages. May we praise you in union with them, and give you glory through your Son, Jesus Christ. The task: That we become ecclesially what we are going to receive eucharistically, (or have just received in NP2.121) In this part of the prayer, we look to the future, eschatologically understood, that is, stretched between two poles, the already and the not-yet: a description of the church. The final doxology, then, marks the fulfilment anticipated. Chauvet summarizes,

We may note that the completion of this performance by us requires a competence which demands that God alone can be the operating subject in each of the three programs. It is God, the text tells us, who makes us able to celebrate his own glory. But he does so only if we are active, through our discourse of prayer, in expressing to him our thanksgiving and requests. And the basic Christian petition is the petition for the Spirit. (Luke 11:13)122
What this analysis of the Eucharistic prayer renders, homiletically, is guidance for gaining clarity in the focus and task of preaching. What the blessing prayers do not provide, however, are the details and particularity of the worshipping moment.123 The sermon must still unfold the good news and timeliness of what God has done, is doing, and will do. The sacramental prayers simply model the shape and give theological focus to the sermon, while the sermon gives Haecceitas (thisness, particularity) to the prayer and action of Eucharist. Summary The following diagram expands on the preliminary diagram of gift-receptionreturn gift. It attempts to incorporate all that has been said about symbolic exchange and the three narrative programs or moments of the Eucharistic blessing prayer. It will also lead to, and contribute to, the discussion in the following chapter.
Diagram 8. Gift-Reception-Return Gift (Expanded)124
Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 109 As with everything concerning God, Chauvet writes, from the first we declare grace to be irreducible to explanations.125 Chauvet does not pretend to explain grace, as much as he wants to help us think about it with new categories and language. The theologians task is to render thinkable what we believe.126 He concludes by asking again,
What is grace? We will never be able to define it positively as something facing humans which stands by itself. We can express only the symbolic labor of birth which it carries out in us: the labor of the ongoing passage to thanksgivingand to living-ingracewhich makes us cor-respond to this God who gives grace and is revealed in Jesus.127
In the name of Christ and by the power of the Spirit, the church receives and recognizes faith as a gift from the Triune God. In this gift of faith, God simultaneously raises (justifies) and sends the body of believers in witness. The life of witness rests on faith given by grace as a gift. Living-in-grace means that the whole church must be a joyful witness and guide for others. We are not free to let the gift-giving of grace stop with us. The preachers own faith, therefore, as a member of this body, is a first condition for the possibility of preaching, and a continual passage to faith characterizes the burdensome joy of preaching.128
CHAPTER FOUR
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory: A Conception

Conception: that which exists in the mind as the product of thought. This chapter provides a conceptual framework for liturgical/sacramental preaching that maps its theological environment and challenges such preaching to take its place fully in the worshipping life of the church. This perspective helps maintain the many creative tensions necessary for maintaining the space of faith.
You perceive what high ground I take. The preachers place in the church is sacramental. It is not sacerdotal, but it is sacramental. He mediates the word to the church from faith to faith, from his faith to theirs, from one stage of their common life to another.1P.T. Forsyth
Sacramentality and Homiletics

Part of the homileticians task is to analyse how concepts and theories from various fields relate to preaching. The specific responsibility is to weigh their value, and judge whether or not they might be of help in preaching. In Chauvets work, I have recognized two primary aspects that can make a contribution to homiletics. First, in Chapter Two, I summarized his general theology of sacramentality and reshaped his structures to incorporate preaching. Second, in Chapter Three, I presented and analysed his proposal for a theology of grace. I have harvested these theories in order to unite the activities of word and sacrament in Christian worship. There is a large body of literature in the field of homiletics and some of it corresponds to, or resonates with, these ideas. Therefore, this chapter is largely an examination of that literature, as it relates to the ideas considered thus far. While drawing selectively on recent theory in homiletics, I will be attempting to use Chauvets sacramental theology in an attempt to further clarify the identity and task of the liturgical/sacramental preacher, in order to strengthen the preaching of the church. I believe his theory offers homiletics two primary benefits. Thus, I am using the term the sacramentality of preaching in two ways.
112 The Sacramentality of Preaching First, I will be pursuing the task articulated by the writers surveyed in Chapter Oneto reverse the trend to disparage or slowly murder the sermon and continuing the attempt to thrust preaching back to the level of an encounter with God. In doing so, I am nudging homiletics toward the intentional use of the vocabulary and dynamics of sacramental-event. As sketched near the end of Chapter One, I am suggesting that preachers can benefit from distinguishing, in worship, between the two primary poles of activity and language: proclamation and sacramentality. In 1 John 1, we find a biblical example of these two poles functioning together,
(1:1) We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life (2) this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us (3) we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
A declaration is made (proclamation) about what they heard, saw, and touched. After this life was revealed to them, they testify, proclaim. This is speech about something. However, the purpose of the declaration is also articulated; we declareso that you may have fellowship with us a fellowship (koinonia) that is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. This so that implies that the proclamation (declaration) leads to something; fellowship in the body of Christ with the Fathera relationship with Godan exchange with God and others (sacramentality). Proclamation and sacramentality describe two qualities of language that occur both in preaching and in the celebration of sacraments. I am suggesting that preaching need not be restricted to proclamation (declaration) leaving sacramentality to the sacraments. Instead, while preaching does lead to the gesture of reception and celebration in the sacraments, it must first incorporate sacramentalityan actual exchange with Godinto the sermon itself. Indeed, this happens in most good sermons. The preacher tells us what happened, she says it can happen now, and then she speaks in a way that opens every possible avenue to its actual happening in the congregation during the sermon. This is so that all may recognize and experience the fellowship they currently have (or can have) with God and with one another in Christ. The preacher attempts to lead the hearers to a moment when they are open to revelation, and into this moment the preacher speaks in a way that imaginatively and faithfully involves the assem-
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 113 bly in a performance of the Word of God. The mystery is that when this is done in faith with reverence, God shows up.2 God does not have to show up. God is free. Yet God desires these openings even more than we do, and God comes to us in them. Often we need only a glimpse of recognition or a glimmer of experience in order to break free and respond to God. This recognition, reception and response is in relation to God, and so it is God who comes in the preaching moment to enable our physical and ritual response of movement toward font and altar, and our response of movement toward the world bearing Good News. The dynamics involved in the argument for increased attention to sacramentality as a necessary pole in preaching, are similar to the dynamics in the argument for a so-called linguistic turn, in the philosophy of language, as discussed in Chapter Two. In the linguistic turn, the general aim is to reverse the priority of thought over language. The assertion is that language has a worlddisclosing dimension, and the communicative function of language ought to be emphasized over its cognitive function. However, I am not suggesting a turn to sacramentality in the sense that it reverses the priority of two terms (proclamation and sacramentality) as much as I am suggesting the re-balancing of the two terms in creative tension. The cognitive function, as the primary mode of proclamation (declaration, announcement, information, understanding, sign, saying- somethingabout-something etc.), must be put into a creative tension with the communicative function of sacramentality (recognition, reception, communication between subjects, exchange, symbol, saying-something-to-someone etc.), and both of these activities must find their rightful place in the Liturgy of the Word and in the Liturgy of the Sacrament(s) being celebrated. Within this linguistic turn, speech-act theories can be applied to preaching in order to clarify the poles in tension, and to show how a single utterance can perform on several levels. My use of the term the sacramentality of preaching in another way, as well, will be the primary focus of the current chapter. A second use of the term may bolster the first use, by following Chauvets theology of the sacramentality of faiththe sacramentality of Christian existencein order to speak clearly of the place of preaching. I will be using an adapted form of Chauvets diagram for Christian existence to show the place of preaching, in the diagram, and, thus, in the life of the church. This second use refers to the purpose of Christian existence and preaching in general, and it contributes to (or corresponds to) an understanding of what takes place in preaching as part of the
114 The Sacramentality of Preaching action of the whole liturgy. I contend that if faith itself can be described in terms of sacramentality, then preaching can too. Preaching can be described in this way, but should it? Does preaching need to be described in terms of its sacramentality? In one sense, the answer to this question is no, because, even if we used other language to describe the occurrence that I am calling sacramentality (sacramental activity), something could still happen when we preach. It must be clearly understood that the language we use to conceive preaching does not determine what God chooses to do in or with it. Nevertheless, the attitudes, practices, theology and imagination of the preacher strongly influence the shape and emphasis of a preaching ministry. We are called to be an aid in the encounter with God,3 and to guide Gods people through the continual passage to faith. Indeed, faith is the basis and starting point for the preacher, and the preachers goal is that faith itself be given in the sermon. Faith is what comes from hearing the Word in preaching; faith is what allows us to recognize and receive Gods reconciling work in and through creation. The language of sacramentality then, (as a description of what it means to lead a Christian life in faith) can be vitally helpful in forming the attitudes, concepts, and practices involved in that passage to faith. Generally speaking, the churchs concept of proclamation is so strong, and our understanding of what a sermon is supposed to do, and what it is supposed to sound like is so strong, that homiletics now needs to emphasize the end of our proclamationwhat is the ultimate purpose of proclamation? I am using the language of sacramentality to describe a path to that end. Echoing Chauvets language, and extending it to include preaching, I submit the following proposition: if the purpose of the sacramental liturgy is to allow entrance into and empowerment to live out the arch-sacramentality of faith, and if preaching is to contribute to this purpose, it is very helpful to be able to conceive preaching in the same terms that are used to describe the nature and purpose the liturgy, in particular, and the nature and purpose of Christian existence, in general. Again, my use of sacramental terms for preaching is based on the assertion that the preaching and hearing of the Word and the celebration of a Sacrament are complementary modes of mediation for Gods presence and activity in our worship, and in our lives. To use the same terms for preaching means to use common terms for the two primary dynamics (proclamation and sacramentality), and a common model (diagram) for that environment of mediation. Having used the word model several times, it may be helpful to sharpen the language describing my use of the theory, especially pertaining to my adap-
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 115 tation of Chauvets structure for Christian Identity, Diagram 6 (The Place of Liturgical/ Sacramental Preaching).4 It will be used in two ways. First, the diagram will be used as a paradigm for indicating the place of preaching in the church. Here, liturgical preachers will find help for situating themselves in the theological environment of a sacramental liturgy. This is a relatively static look at the burden that the preacher/sermon carries: namely to guide the church through an event of disclosure (or revelation) and empowerment. This will have broad theoretical and practical implications.5 As a paradigm, the model surveys the ecclesial ground, or environment, within which each element is situated. Second, this same diagram will be used as a heuristic to guide us through the field of operations involved in the sermon itself, what takes-place in preaching.6 It is helpful to know what is going on around you, theologically, and to operate accordingly. What are the people doing together with God before I preach? What might God be doing with us while I preach? What will we be doing together with God after I preach?7 What current events are pressing in on us as we arrive at worship and are sent from it? What is unique and unrepeatable about this moment of speaking? These phenomena can become resources for the language, theological structure/shape, and content of the sermonso that all three cohere. This heuristic approach looks at the burden that the sermon carries according to its operation. Using Chauvets assertion about sacraments, I suggest that the sermon is revelatory insofar as it is operative, and it is operative insofar as it is revelatory.8 Preaching needs to be understood as both because, as a revealer of the alreadythere of Gods gift of grace, it also facilitates an event of sacramentalitythe reception and response to that grace, in both the act of ritual celebration and in life. In order to keep the discussion related to literature in the field of homiletics, each perspective on the diagram will refer to some homiletical contributions and debates that are related to this study. Due to the constraints of this project, these will appear mostly in the notes. They will be highly selective but by no means comprehensive. Gods Present Self-Disclosure All of the elements under discussion begin with an openness to revelation. The preacher cannot operate, within the church or in the world, without first open-
116 The Sacramentality of Preaching ing his or her own imagination and life to God. Preaching is rooted in a corporate and personal openness to the revelatory process or event. This must precede, and pervade, the entire preaching event. Further, the preparatory process, leading to the sermon itself, must have a revelatory character as well. Rooted in biblical revelation, this new utterance of preaching intends to become the possible place of Gods new speech. Consequently, preaching involves both a creative response to revelation and the creative initiation of a new text, or medium, that is potentially revelatory. Preachers accept this responsibility to create a new text for God and Gods people through the preached sermon, and make every effort to develop a sense and understanding of the occasion into which it is spoken. Preachers shape their speech in such a way that it might create or maintain a space for faith, offer a perspective9 on Christian life, and encourage a hearing of the Word according to the various dimensions of the worship event. As part of the conclusion to his study of doctrinal preachers through history, C. Colt Anderson deduces that,
Preaching was an effort to create a space within which the audience would be led to an encounter with the inspirited word. The readings, the environment, and the occasion created the height, width, and length necessary for the preacher to lead his audience into the world of faith.10
Liturgical Preaching can be described as an effort to create a space, in the speaking and hearing of a sermon, that incorporates the various dimensions of worship and leads to an encounter and exchange with God in the realm of grace.11 This space exists on at least three levels: in the mind of the hearer, in the actual physical setting of worship, and in the ongoing activity or story of a local Christian community. Within a sacramental liturgy, preaching will be portrayed as guiding the church through its continuing conversion to the fullness of the gospel, and to the mission of the God who summons and sends in the name of Christ and in the power of the Spirit. This conception of preaching places the event in the creative, empty, tensive place of faith found in the middle of Chauvets triangle - Scripture, Sacrament, Ethics - which, itself, is within the church and in relation to Jesus Christ.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 117
The Diagram as a Paradigm: Preaching from a Place in-the-midst: A Word from the Perspective of Faith
It is now conducive to focus on my adapted homiletical version of Chauvets diagram and the implications of conceiving the preaching event within it. This will be followed by an assessment of how this sacramental theology of preaching is similar to some current conceptions of preaching. Then, we will go through each element of the diagram in turn, trusting that each pole will get its turn, in order to fully engage with that dimension of the process. In the following diagram, brought forward from Chapter Two, preaching is conceived from a place in the middle of the triangle maintained by the poles SCR, SAC, and ETH, in the space made for faith.
Diagram 6: The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching
The diagram forms an ecclesial pattern. Each element of the pattern is only valuable in relation to the others. The whole is primary. First, we focus on the centre of the diagram. There we find preaching in the place of faith. There we also find the congregation, from whom the preacher comes and to whom the preacher speaks.12 The preacher is commissioned to utter a word that guides them through their continuing conversion to the fullness of the gospel and, in the act of preaching, the preacher and congregation move together, through the
118 The Sacramentality of Preaching various dimensions of their common Christian identity and existence, toward the renewal and redemption of all life.13 The preacher is in the middle of the congregation, and in the middle of the language and culture of the church, as a guide. In the Middle In the middle of things can be a good place to be. Here, being in the middle means to be in the midst. The word between usually involves only two limits but, as in the case of boundaries (Switzerland lies between France, Italy, Austria and Germany), it has the connotation of among. To preach in the midst of a worshipping church is to speak to people of faith, supported by their faith. It is also to preach in the midst of the continual passage to faith that we undergo individually and corporately. The notion of preaching from a place in the midst captures the complexity of this role, without being overwhelmed by it. The preacher stands in a place where one can be receptive in faith, and do by modelling confession of faith and response to God according to prompting of the Spirit. The preacher does not have to master, or control the situation. Rather, the preacher attunes herself to biblical patterns of proclamation and sacramentality and then uses that biblical witness as a lens through which to view the world. The goal is to open and maintain a space in the hearing of the church where the Holy Spirit can do what the Spirit wills. Therefore, the preacher must be constantly attunedattuned to the prompting of the Spirit, attuned to the memory and hope of people who live between Ascension and Parousia, attuned to the sacramental Haecceitas (thisness) of the moment, and attuned to the need for gestures of reception, oblation, and obedience in order to fully respond. In the middle of the church, the preacher moves together with the church through the various aspects of Christian identity and Christian life. This is not just pointing from a static location (which Naming Grace can be); rather, it is living-into those poles to see what is happening there. Each sermon is a guided tour of each aspect of Christian identity, and the continuing passage to faith, hope, and love. Cautions There are some dangers in seeing things this way. First, the place of preaching is not between God and the church in any sense of being a narrow portal, con-
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 119 duit, or intermediary. The preacher is not on the midpoint of a straight line between God and other human beings, but rather the preacher stands slightly back, and speaks into a spot between God and the hearers, in the space of separation where by faith we find our convergence with God.14 The space, however, must be recognized and emptied in order that God may come to judge, reveal, and bestow.15 Frederick Buechner relates this idea of empty space to the telling of truth with words. For him, the words put a frame around the fullness of the silence offered as truth.16 Speaking of a particular (male) preacher, he writes,
Since words are his chief instrument, words are what he chiefly has to use but remembering always the silence that his words framethe silence that his words are born out of and that his words break and that his words are swallowed up bymay well convey the mystery of truth better than the words themselves can just as the empty space inside a church may well convey better than all the art and architecture of a church the mystery of that in which we live and move and have our being. We put frames of words around silence and shells of stone and wood around emptiness, but it is the silence, the emptiness themselves, that finally matter and out of which the Gospel comes as word.17
The preacher speaks as clearly as possible, always taking great care to avoid sounding like the source of truth. Preachers speak into a clearing in life, and place words around and into the space of encounter with God, trusting and petitioning that God will make the gospel come out of those places as Word. It is only in this sense that we place ourselves and our words in the middle. Second, the conception of a central place, for the preacher and congregation, in this model, neither implies nor condones an androcentric view, or anthropocentric interpretation. The emphasis must be clearly theocentric. Speaking from faith to faith, in the centre of the church, places preacher and congregation in the centre only because that is where Christ is found and that is where the Holy Spirit works. At the same time, Christ and Spirit are external to the whole diagram, acting upon it, as well as within it. Third, the action of the preacher must not be in the likeness of an overbearing maestro, controlling and conducting the groups performance to his own glory, but rather as a humble servant of the orchestra, to whom the orchestra grants the privilege and responsibility of leadership. A better image for the preacher within this model is as a guide.
120 The Sacramentality of Preaching As a Guide For use in this model, guiding is the strongest image available for the role of the preacher in relation to the church. In the pilgrimage of formation and transformation, a guide is one who is being led by God, and who has been appointed by the group as one who is involved in the same process as they are. A guide goes with you.18 A good guide accompanies the pilgrims. A good guide is concerned with hospitality and protection. A good guide shepherds. A good guide has been through the site so many times that he has become familiar with the details, yet he never loses the ability to be astonished by that which he sees and interprets, and he never claims credit for the beauty of the attraction as though he made it.19 The pilgrim will recognize the site as lifeindividual lives, set within a communal life. The attraction or the site is the very air we breathe, the matter of life, the elements of Christian existence. There is a great level of trust conferred upon one who guides. The guide is to negotiate, as in to steer, the listening church to the throne of Gods judgement and grace20 The guide is also entrusted to warn the pilgrims of dangers in their environment, and in their perception of it. At times, the guide intentionally plunges the hearers into a state of dislocation, disillusionment, and distance from God, so that God has room to move upon us and upon our present constructions of reality.21 This understanding of preaching requires sensitivity to the danger involved for the preacher as well. As Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, preachers must reach for reverence in the act; who will volunteer to conduct lightning from heaven to earth? Who will offer a guided tour through the beating heart of God? People more faithful than we have gotten killed doing things like that22 Preaching is a dangerous, risky thing to do but this does not become a reason to avoid the act of preaching. It only becomes a more important reason to reverence it. Along with the three cautions above, there are three basic criteria that apply to the task of guiding the church into relationship with God through preaching. They are: (a) Scripture and Tradition must shape the pattern of our guiding; (b) Sacramental haecceitas, or the uniqueness of the present moment the present encounter/exchange with God must be accounted for in the guidance; and (c) the depiction of life in Gods name must include an ethical aligning of the self and the church to Gods mission and Gods eschatological promise. This must be the telos of the event, and everything must, in the final analysis, be referred to God.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 121 These three criteria anticipate some of what follows. Presently, I will discuss some of the operations the guide must help the church attend to at the three poles of the diagram, and how each of these poles can shape the preparation and preaching of specific sermons. However, before doing that, we need to address the other element moving with the preacher and congregation in the centre of the diagram, faith. Faith at the Centre23
Blessed are those who have not seen and yet come to believe. (John 20:29)
In the moment when John, evangelist of the fourth gospel, explains the purpose of his writing, he is very clear,
These things are written so that you will come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30)
There are two parts to Johns purpose, as expressed in this sentence. In the first part, he refers to the process of coming to believe that something is truethat Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. The process of becoming Christian involves the confession that Jesus is Lord, Messiah, Son of God. However, because Gods purposes do not end there, Johns purpose does not end there either. John goes on, and that through believing you may have life in his name. A confession that something is true, may turn out to be nothing more than mental acceptance of information or an idea (as important as this is). Yet, when combined with a life lived through that confession, a relationship is established. The acceptance moves from the mind and enters the whole life of a person. By means of believing (an activity), belief becomes living faith. Faith is a living perspective on the reality of God giving new life to us right now, in his name.24 Belief that Jesus is Lord is now rooted in the life of faith shared with others. It is rooted in an event that has been fulfilled among us (Luke 1:1), an event we did not see, yet we come to believe. Our own faith always starts out as faith in someone elses faithand it may end that way as well.25 This is assent to a person, an activity, and a practice in relation to others. It is not just believing something about something. It is believing something about someOne with whom you have a relationship that is concretely mediated through the worshipping assembly, and concretely manifest in a common life of obedience. This is
122 The Sacramentality of Preaching the key to the act of faith: it is the reception of your life lived in Christs name. The truth of believing that is found through believing. As an instructor in homiletics and a preacher, when I speak clearly of the purpose of my teaching and preaching, I suggest a purpose similar to that of John. This textwhether it be a sermon, a classroom lecture, a publication is written/spoken for the same purpose: that those who hear may come to believe in Jesus the Christ and that through faith in him they may be church, and by the power of the Spirit they may receive their life together as church in Christs name. If one interprets this statement to mean, solely, that the hearer must be persuaded to believe that the words of the speaker are true, or that the speaker is in possession of faith and truth and bestows it or distributes it for blind consumption, then the statement is immodest and inappropriate. The preachers primary task is not to become a source of information or knowledge, asserting opinions and seeking agreement. Rather, the preacher primarily involves himself or herself in an act of faith and, in response, seeks an assent to faith which will break open the possibility of life in Christo. When the efficacy of this continual coming-to-faith depends on language, the preaching utterance must have an illocutionary-like aim: a new relation of places between subjects. This relation arises, and is recognized as Christian, only within the language and culture of the church, our common world of Christian meaning. It is precisely a new relation of places, between subjects, that any sacramental expression aims at instituting and restoring in faith.26 If preaching is conceived as a sacramental expression, then its aim can be to institute and restore subjectspeopleto one another, and to God, in faith. Of course, the whole effort is in response to God the Holy Spirit, by whom, with whom, and in whom we surrender the effect and render the glory and honour. To believe in, which fundamentally means to put your faith in someone, is an act of faith. We assent to preaching, and reverence it, because of our relation of place with this Spirit, and our assent to the Spirit as the guiding principle of our interpretation and preaching. We always assent to a relationship with God on divine terms, and the Spirit of Gods function is less of the locutionary order (the content of the statements on God) than of the illocutionary order (the work it does concerning the truth of Christians relation with God and with one another) and the perlocutionary (the witness given by their lives).27 Thus, our homiletic must take this into account and make sure that in our preaching the illocutionary and perlocutionary modes are fully engaged. To take these
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 123 modes into account is to take the sacramentality of preaching into account. We are interested in the ongoing transformation of subjects into believers. Chauvets theory helps us to see that the Word enfleshed is confined neither to the realm of thought nor to the realm of materiality. The transcendent God is present to us in the sense that we are within Gods grasp. We do not grasp God, nor do we embrace God, as much as God grasps us, embraces us, sets us right. As soon as we recognize this, we are told do not hold on to me (John 20:17)do not clingbut go!tell, and embrace others as I have embraced you. As Gerhard O. Forde has written, it is a somewhat risky business to describe faith and its effects.28 Conscious of the risk, I do so not only because the word faith appears at the centre of my diagram for preaching, but also because faith seeks understandingeven partial understandingof our relationship with God and neighbour. In these post-modern days we recognize that every human assertion of truth is in part, and that practices of faith are becoming the most meaningful way to express things religious.29 Faith at the centre means God at the centre.30 By putting preacher and congregation, with faith, at the centre of this diagram, we establish, not only the initial, conceptual place of preaching, but also its place as a Christian practice. Faith is not static. It is not an objective destination. We do not climb into the middle of a diagram and find faith there. Rather, faith is a gift, a mode of being, a process, an event, a performance. Therefore, before describing the other elements of the diagram and their roles in the operation of preaching, I offer the results of a selective survey of homiletical literature that pertains to these three faith/preaching characteristics: event, performance, and the formation/transformation process.
The Sacramentality of Preaching in Dialogue with Homiletics

The theology Chauvet proposes is drawn largely from the biblical writings of Luke and Paul. While Luke-Acts and the letters of Paul form a considerable portion of the New Testament, their theological understandings are not the only ones in the New Testament, nor is Chauvets the only acceptable sacramental theology. Accordingly, while my extension of Chauvets work into homiletics will not be the only appropriate understanding of preaching, it does resonate well with the major themes in contemporary theologies of preaching.31
124 The Sacramentality of Preaching The theology of preaching that is being developed from Chauvets sacramentology may be categorized as an ecclesial event of encounter with the triune God: an event that is simultaneously informative, performative, and trans/formative.32 When God wills it, preaching is both revelatory and operative. Everything in the sermon should lead to the assent-to-faith/reception-offaith, which leads to the life of faith. Yet, the preacher does not want to be understood as the source of these things; preaching is initiated by God, the event is Gods, the performance is Gods. At some point, the sermon ought to move beyond our grasp. So how do we understand the role of Godthe divine being, and the role of the preacher and the churchthe human beings?33 There is no easy answer to this question. However, as a contribution to the vocation of preaching, I am trying, in various ways, to make such a response thinkable. Based on many of the same influences discussed in Chapter One, homileticians and theologians who have ventured claims, about a theology of preaching, spoke in similar ways. One cannot be sure that there is agreement between them however, because these writers rarely refer to one anotherthey dont seem to be in conversation with one another on this issue.34 Nevertheless, there are some common emphases that resonate with what has been presented thus far. Two things, in particular, are worthy of note at this point. First, each of the following theological considerations of preaching builds on the previous one, and can be found in the theology of preaching being presented here. Second, these discussions aim at the nature and purpose of the preaching ministry over time, as opposed to single sermons, or isolated acts of preaching. Preaching as EventSomething Happens The first emphasis flows from the strongest theological influence of the previous century, the work of Karl Barth.35 For Barth, Gods self-revelation occurs through the Word of God in Jesus Christ, the Word of Scripture, and the Word of preaching.36 This supports his understanding of preaching as an event of God; God in Christ visits us, comes to us, and speaks to us through Scripture and preaching. Thus, preaching is an event and is part of a larger languageevent, or Word-event. According to Barth, the church itself is an event that exists for the sake of witnessing to Jesus Christ. However, Barth was extremely reluctant to grant that the Spirit would bring communion with God to human beings through any embodied forms of the churchs life. In other words, Barth
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 125 would have strongly resisted the idea of human beings or human language as a medium for grace. This is consistent with his desire to use the notion of event to stress the freedom of God and how God sets people free to be Gods community. Here Chauvets move away from seeing sacraments as things through which grace flows, or from which grace is poured, and his move toward seeing their efficacy through the dynamics of speech, by which God gives to us Gods very self, accords well with theologies of preaching based on what Barth wrote about the word as a revelatory event of God. Yet, Chauvets understanding helpfully tempers the emphasis on the objective nature of the event of God found in Barth and in the theologies of preaching influenced by him, while maintaining the freedom of revelation.37 We saw, in Chapter Three, that grace is also described in terms of eventan event of symbolic exchange between a wholly other God and human beings, but this exchange has an intersubjective element as well.38 It is an event of encounter that creates a relationship of trust and obedience but is, at the same time, a personal, experiential, more general form of revelation. Stephen Farris has written what is perhaps the clearest and most concise homiletical treatment of the revelatory language of preaching. He moves the goal of the preacher beyond the proposition of meaning and understanding to a prayer that the sermon may become an encounter between the congregation and the living God.39 This comes through hearing and speaking a word from God that discloses Gods own self. Further, Farris accents the personal nature of this revelatory speech: Revelation is always from someone to someone.40 Thus, the purpose of preaching is to be an event of revelationthe disclosure of Gods own self in the face of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spiritthat results in trust and obedience which together make up the reality of love.41 Preaching is not just speech, it is a distressingly particular42 event that God freely enters into, and through it, God touches us. Two questions still tend to arise from theologies of preaching-as-event: what is the outcome of this event, and what are we to do? In part, Farris is so helpful because he is specific about the end of preaching: What happens in the event? Revelation happens. Most conceptions of preaching as event do not help us to align our homiletical purposes to any end.43
126 The Sacramentality of Preaching Preaching as PerformanceIt Does What it Says There are several ways that homileticians have used the idea of preaching as performance. H. Grady Davis led the way in the late 1950s by likening a sermon to art, a painting, music, a play, or a story told aloud.44 The sermon moves, expresses something. It performs. Nicholas Lash, who uses the idea of performance differently, wrote an influential chapter entitled Performing the Scriptures where he describes biblical interpretation as the church rendering the Scriptures, bringing them into play in the life of the community.45 He says, the performance of Scripture is the life of the church.46 More recently, Jana Childers has used the term performance in yet another way. By casting preaching as theatre, it becomes a creative event that facilitates openness, creating a space where listeners can be open to change, shaping a moment when the congregation can say a yes or a no that comes from more than the cerebrum.47 She asks, what do lively sermons do? They open, draw, and hold people, creating a moment for God to move in.48 The language of preaching does something. Because language itself is eventful, it has effect. Gaining focus for the homiletical use of performance might best be accomplished by considering two dimensions of performance in the preached word. The first dimension corresponds to the actual words of the preacher. Here, we consider the linguistic issues involved in what J. L. Austin calls language acts or performatives.49 We saw, in Chapter Two, how Chauvet uses this notion to describe the likeness of symbolic acts and language acts. This is a key dimension of the sacramentality of preachingit is always as a word that God is encountered.50 A performative utterance says something and, does something, at the same time. While preaching must include clear declarations locutionary actsthere are other linguistic modes that better serve the sacramentality of preaching. The illocutionary and perlocutionary dimensions of language must be incorporated at the points where hearers might be most open to recognition and response. This recognition and response is less to the word of the gospel than to the risen One, Jesus Christ. However, the actual words of the sermon are essential, as they are part of the medium for the work of encounter and the catalyst for its occurrence. When this encounter happens, the Spirit of God has used the medium of the preaching in the church to speak, shape, invite, demand, and bestowto do this work and to draw out these and other effects. It is in this way that the second dimension of performance in preaching determines the efficacy of the first. The Spirit of God is the active agent in
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 127 preaching, the function of which is, as we have already said, less of the locutionary order (the content of the statements), than of the illocutionary order (the work it does concerning the truth of Christians relations with God and with one another), and the perlocutionary order (the witness given by their lives).51 Later, when discussing the properly sacramental moment in preaching,52 I will refer in more detail to the Spirits role in this performance. For the moment, I want simply to note two points: (a) that notions of performance, in homiletical theory, derive both from art/literary theory, and from theology; (b) that it is helpful to distinguish (as far as this is possible) between the human and divine dimensions of performance. Charles L. Bartow speaks directly to Gods self-performance in Gods Human Speech: A Practical Theology of Proclamation. The following is an example of the theological use of performative language. Preaching is understood as an event in which God uses fully human words to achieve divine ends. God reveals, or discloses, Gods own identity through this performance and enrols, or presses, the faithful into a response of service.53 Charles Rice, and others, who have written in support of a narrative approach to preaching, often do so because of the performative nature of story-language and the encounter with God that the preacher can facilitate through it.54 Paul Scott Wilson designed his early theory, out of the insights and observations made by literary critics and the Romantics, to make theological/ homiletical applications with regard to metaphor. The motive lurking behind his work was language renewal for the renewal of faith.55 The tensive quality of language required a dynamic understanding of the effect that occurs when figures of speech, such as metaphor, are used in preaching. Listeners must be drawn into the language; they must participate in it in order to understand it. In this creative tension imagination and faith can find room to move. It is a charged atmosphere within which faith becomes possible.56 The performative event, in Wilsons theology of preaching, is theological, we break open the biblical text and allow Gods word to move out into todays world with the same transforming power as it held for the original hearers.57 Preaching as Formation and TransformationThe Gift of Identity and Conversion What happens in the event? What does God do in the performance? At this juncture, the theologies of preaching diverge slightly in their understanding of
128 The Sacramentality of Preaching the primary effect of Gods performance in preaching. One complicating factor is whether the issue at hand deals with one sermon, or a whole preaching ministry over time. Related to this is the issue of whether God acts primarily on individuals or the community as one body. The debates about these issues are difficult to organize and synthesize, clearly, as they tend to flow just under the surface of the writing. Nonetheless, those who espouse transformational preaching tend to focus on how preaching effects individuals, and how the sermon ought to make a difference in someones lifea difference that turns the person toward God.58 In my experience, what seems to distinguish the approaches to preaching as trans/formational relates less to an articulated theology of preaching than to an attitude, and theological perspective, about other persons and communities. At issue is our basic theological anthropology and the motivation for anyone (ourselves included), moving toward conversion. The question is, what actually works to create change, or the desire to change, in another person or in a community? Trans/formation by Law or Gospel? I have been asking questions about what influences the nature and quality of the preaching event. What kind of event-of-God, what kind of performance, what kind of trans/formation will it be? If we seek trans/formation, why do we do so? What do we hope will be accomplished in the effort. What will work to get us there? It is a very complex issue that cannot be completely solved here but, preachers who seek to make a difference in peoples lives tend to lean one way or another between two options. According to some, the best way to convert people is through warning, threat, and identification of sinfulness, in order to create distaste for self, fear of consequences and, thus, a desire for change. However, even if they preach with this emphasis, most preachers would not identify themselves with this description; it sounds too preachy.59 This way is like a valid John-the-Baptist type of preaching. It can be prophetic. In response to it, people run for the water (of baptism) for fear of the consuming fire set loose on the land. There is good news in what John says, (the Kingdom is near!). The emphasis, however, is on the wickedness of the world and the hearer. The advantage is that it creates a crisis and opportunity for those who believe in a God who desireth not the death of a sinner, but rather that he would turn from their wickedness and live.60 The disadvantage, however, is that the
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 129 impression left by this approach is dominated by the image of our wickedness. Gods desire for us to turn is not heard as grace. Further, sinners seem to be left to do this work of conversion on their own, without help for the turning. The help from the preacher is often limited to analysis of the nasty situation and an exhortation to clean upor else.61 The other primary way to convert a person, or to initiate a change in them, is through the pouring-out of oneself for the sake of that person. This approach to change relies on the witness to Christ, which creates a taste for God and joyous anticipation of what the change will mean. This approach is relational. This approach involves follow-through and a commitment to the other person. This approach provides help. This is the action of loving someone into that liberating moment where Christ is recognized and received, and, through Christ, the individual becomes a loving person. It is to love them into loving, to grace them into graciousness, to lead them to liberation by helping them cut the chains, by pouring Christs affirmation on their God-given identity, and by helping them to recognize how far short of this identity their behaviour falls.62 This way is like a Jesus-onthe-Cross type of preaching, where he absorbs and embraces wickedness and offers, in return, life in its fullness. The first way corresponds to an emphasis on judgement, the second to an emphasis on grace; neither emphasis, alone, is preferred. Both ways are needed. With a judgement emphasis, the change comes negatively as a turning away from something to be despised. With a grace emphasis, the change comes positively from turning toward something more compelling than our own sinfulness. Both ways are needed. When judgement is preached, the hearer (or the hearing community) decides I will changeWe will change. When grace is preached, the response is I am redeemed! We are a redeemed people! Lord, change our hearts this time. Your word says it can be. If one chooses between the two ways, one can get caught up in the old lawgospel debate. However, there is no need for a debate over the relative merits of law-based preaching or grace-based preaching because they are simply two sides of the same coin, the coin of salvationthey are necessarily in tension with each other. Law and Gospelthe Trouble-Grace school In my view, the formation of human beings in the image of Christ, and the transformation of our lives to conform to Gods purpose, are best accomplished with a general emphasis on the grace side of the equation. However,
130 The Sacramentality of Preaching the key to this is the understanding that Gods grace requires Gods judgementthat every judgement of God is a gracious action toward us. Preaching is more compelling and it leads to a more significant response when the preacher provides sufficient focus on a mighty gospel and on our relation to the God who has already brought us a mighty long way. As much as anything else, the key issue is the attitude of the preacher toward other human beings, an attitude that manifests itself in the preaching. Is the preacher a grace optimist or a sin pessimist?63 This attitude (theological perspective) shapes the preaching language that is used, as well as the theological emphasis, in the quest for metanoia. However, this also involves something that lies beneath or inside our attitude. It points to the theological framework hidden beneath the surface of our preaching, a framework that coheres with our understanding of the theological end of Gods event. Paul Scott Wilson teaches that there is a homiletical equation, with judgement and grace in it, and it looks like this: judgement + grace = hope.64 Preaching is an event of God in Christ, which means that preaching is an event of Easter hope. With this understanding, the end of preaching is the experience of genuine hope in the reconciling power and promise of God in Christ. It is a hope made genuine by the Holy Spirit of God. This ought to shape not only the content and form of the sermon, but also its hidden framework. Wilson has recognized that hope comes in the tension between trouble and grace, and that these two theological categorieslaw and gospelhave been lurking around the pulpit since the time of the early church even though they have never been fully explored.65 He categorizes the various attempts to articulate the usefulness of law and gospel, for theological reflection and homiletical structure, as the law-gospel school, or in his preferred terms, the troublegrace school.66 These are two terms that must sound together, in preaching, in much the same way that proclamation and sacramentality must sound together, and word and sacrament must sound together. In Chapter Five, I will return to Wilsons use of trouble/grace and incorporate the hermeneutic of grace, from Chauvet, that I proposed in Chapter Three, but, for now, we simply establish law and gospel as two more terms that the best preaching will hold in tension. Trans/formation, that has occurred in the event of preaching, is best identified and verified by the quality of the ongoing ministry of the community. Yet, at an individual level we can better sense when this occurrence has been especially for us. We know that we have not just heard a sermon; we have also received it as true for us and we are moved to respond in kind. We know that
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 131 we have met God, in the action of sacramentality, in the midst of an oral event. We have known/experienced grace, and we have been given again the gift of Christian identity and faith. This identity can only be recognized as in Christo in the midst of the church. The biggest difference a preacher can make, in the life of an individual or a church, is to help them to see themselves and others differentlyto see themselves as in Christ, as God has revealed them. The preacher asks, what is your stance before God? How do you see yourself and others in the face of God? The preacher then guides the church to a terrible, glorious moment when we are addressed by the Almighty. We are named by God, and our stance before God is simple obedience to that revelation of identity in Christ. If nothing else, the attempt to speak of this, and model this, ought to transform preachers. Preachers who understand their task as an informative, performative, and trans/formative ecclesial event of encounter with the triune God, will find themselves empowered by a hope that keeps them seeking elements for preaching, elements that will lead others to faith and hope. Those who preach and those who listen, wait for [someone] to make God real to them through the sacrament of words.67 This is why it is a ministry of the whole church. The preacher listens to the listeners for their faith and for the faith that has been traditioned (passed-on) to them. This is also why the preacher and the congregation study the whole language and culture of the church for its theological structures. We preach in and from the church; we preach from faith to faith. It should come as no surprise, then, that these evolving notions, of preaching as event, as performance, and as trans/formation, resonate well with what Chauvet says about sacramentality. He has been influenced by the same people and ideas that have influenced the direction of these theologies of preaching. My aim here has not been to make clear distinctions and then choose from one of these options. My aim has been to stimulate new homiletical discussion in these three areas with added emphasis on them as liturgical event, liturgical performance and liturgical trans/formation. Chauvets insights contribute to this continuing homiletical conversation.
Summary
What I have laid out thus far addresses some of the thin areas in the homiletical literature. Recalling earlier chapters, I have brought attention to the few examples of scholarship that address the relationship of liturgical preaching to
132 The Sacramentality of Preaching the study of liturgy and sacrament. I have offered some indications of how word and sacrament can complement one another, both pastorally and theologically. I have applied, to homiletics, Chauvets critique of the overemphasis on instrumentality, usefulness, value, and direct efficacy. I have joined with others in pushing for preaching to be understood as an event of God. To that end, some distinctions have been made between proclamation and sacramentality. In all of this, my over-arching goal has been to seek a deep structure for liturgical preaching that will undergird the form and content of sermons. Chauvets sacramentology has offered frameworks for Christian identity and Symbolic Exchange that are being adapted here to better enable liturgical preaching. Thus far, the focus in this chapter, and my use of the diagram for the place of the preacher, has pointed to a few key priorities. First, it is important for everyone involved in the liturgical event to understand that the preacher stands with the people of God. The church, as the body of Christ, invokes the Spirit and listens-through our own voices for something else. Our voices echo the witness of Scripture for today, but we still listen-through that sound for the voice of God. This means that the preacher will understand the sermon event as essential to, but subservient to, the communicative grace of God which takes place in it. Second, it is important that the language of preaching be put in creative tension with the patterns and language of worship. Together, God uses them to bestow the gift of identity and mission on the church. This revelation of identity (Gods identity and our own) is, as Chauvet says, supremely efficacious. Third, because this giving of identity and mission relies on a desire for continual conversion to the fullness of the gospel, so should the sermon rely on such a desire. Thus, both sermon and rite/celebration contribute to a mutual evangelization and sacramentalization, a complementary action that propels us into a life of witness. The argument for giving increased attention to the Sacramentality of Preaching is based on the belief that it contributes to the teaching and learning of homiletics and to preaching grace. The preceding pages have presented the theory and shown the benefits of attending to these things. It is now time to consider how this theology of preaching needs to be condensed into some propositions for practical use.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 133 Four Theses to Strengthen the Sacramentality of Preaching I contend that giving increased attention to the sacramentality of preaching will require the preacher to seek the following: 1. The preacher seeks revelation through biblical encounter. This biblical encounter leads to divine encounter that leads to relationship with God. My notion about the sacramentality of preaching accords well with what Stephen Farris says about preaching being an event of encounter between text and contemporary listeners.68 Preaching is rooted in the Scriptural text and our encounter with it. More importantly Farris goes on to say, I believe that the true word of God for us is the word that happens between God and the congregation as a result of this encounter between the biblical text and the people.69 Several theological assumptions can be deduced from that one sentence. First, if we agree with Farris, we believe things about the word of God more than we know them. Second, we believe that the word of God is for us. Third, we believe that the word of God happens, it is not primarily ink on paper. Fourth, it happens between God and each human being, in the form of congregations in particular. And, finally, this word is as a result of an encounter with biblical texts. Revelation is the self-disclosing activity of God, and Farris adds, the concept of revelation is meaningless without a doctrine of the presence and work of God.70 2. The preacher seeks divine encounter by simultaneously attending to the revelatory, and operative, dimensions of Gods activity. It is necessary that preaching both models, and fosters, a creative fidelity71 in which the preacher proclaims, not only what God has done in the past, but also Gods gracious judging/redeeming action in the present, and Gods promised future. The preacher then focuses, not only on history and memory, the placement of faith-events in time, but also on how that history is pierced by the more profound theological context of justification by grace through faith. We also proclaim and seek the intrusion of the philanthropic God into the human situation today,72 as an intrusion of judgement, mercy, and promise. The sum of these intrusions, as interpreted through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit, is the ground of our hopeour future. All of human history and culture is capable of being understood as the possible place of Gods gracious activity. This activity is transforming, causing metanoia, resulting in koinonia.73 The theological task of preaching is to learn and articulate, to find and proclaim, this
134 The Sacramentality of Preaching intrusive action of justice and mercy by God. The preacher seeks to know the patterns well because they reveal the ways in which God has acted; but, the preacher also seeks to be open to interruptions and reversals, leading to a new creation, made by the overturning, transforming word of God. 3. The preacher attends to the sacramental haecceitas (thisness) of the church gathered for worship. The preacher also seeks the possible place of sacramental moments in the sermon and in the greater liturgy. A vital element in the preaching ministry is the ability to ask theological questions that correspond to each unique situation (while taking care to ask only questions to which the gospel actually responds). We have been given the grammatical logic and syntax of Christian tradition itself as witness, and, through this structure, one can properly refer to God, no matter what the circumstances. However, the circumstances matter a great dealto those who hear the sermon, and to God. Each gathering of the congregation consists of specific unique individuals (and specific unique ministers), in a specific and unrepeatable moment of time, at a specific and unrepeatable place in the universe. The personal, physical, temporal, and spatial coordinates for this moment of preaching will never occur again.74 These coordinates are a marvellous guide for the preacher who seeks to incorporate the dynamic sacramentality into preaching. Sacramentality is profoundly temporal, profoundly spatial, and profoundly relative, because it is an exchange/encounter with the living God. These sacramental moments in preaching lead to faith, trust and obedience in the One who addresses us and embraces us. The properly sacramental moment in preaching occurs when the word, spoken in the name of Christ, is recognized as the word of Christ himself. At the Christological level, this is the moment when the Word, which, through the Spirit, comes over the verbal elements, is spoken by Christ himself, the Word of God. At the Pnematological level, this through the Spirit is the arrival of an illocutionary force in the language which effects what God intends.75 According to Chauvet, moments like this are nothing more than a point of passage, they are not the end or final purpose of either sacraments or preaching. However, it is the point where the word, heard in the Scriptures, comes alive in our lives. Thus, it is an obligatory point of passage. It is this passage that makes it possible for daily life to become a liturgy, a spiritual sacrifice to the glory of God.76 The role of preaching, in this point of passage, is to lead up to it, to bring the church to the moment of recognition and response to Gods gift, and then to lead in the celebration and enjoyment of both the gift and the response.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 135 As noted in Chapter Three, a key element which leads to sacramental moments in preaching is a focus on grace as beyond value and the break with the useful. We break away from value, usefulness, and the commodification of the every day in order to open up a space of gratuitousness where God can come.77 When attending to the particularity of the lives of the hearers, it is important to remember that everyday things and events will transform symbolically in the moment of sacramentality. They move beyond value.78 4. The preacher strives to have preaching take its full place in the liturgy. The preacher models the process of sacramentality through the sermon as an event which enables the church to see (recognize) and live (respond to) the gift and call of Christian existence. This approach requires homiletics to place heavy emphasis on the idea that Ecclesiology serves Revelation, and that Revelation is immediate empowerment for the mission-church. Everything the church does, thus everything the preacher does, is in service to Gods mission as revealed through Jesus Christ in the power of the Spirit. There are at least two advantages to the exploration of preaching within this understanding of mission-church: (1) as the place of distinctive talk about God the church, through preaching, liturgy and catechesis, learns its own language of faith in order to become a trustworthy witness; and (2) as the place of Christian metanoia, the activities of the church attest to the grace that forms us, transforms us, and draws us into the fullness of Christs mission. Placing our conception of preaching within the church serves the belief that the primary purpose, of In-church preaching, is to guide and enable Out-church preaching.79 Or as Saint Dominic said, collective ecclesial community is The Preaching of Jesus Christ. In his view, the church was to be the preaching or The Holy Preaching.80 At the turn of the twentieth century, P.T. Forsyth spoke, not only of sacramental sermons but, also, of the church as the one great preacher, and the first business of the individual preacher is to enable the Church to preach.81 Karl Barth stressed that neither sacrament nor preaching has any significance except within the church.82 More recently Richard Lischer83, William Willimon84, and Charles Campbell 85 urge an understanding of preaching which is shaped by the peculiar language of the church for the sake of building up the church. The church assembled is the medium/environment of encounter with Christ. The church takes not only the good news of such a hope everywhere it goes but, also, a practised ability to discern the possible places of further encounter.
The Diagram as a Heuristic: The Movement through SCR, SAC, ETH as Signposts for Preparation
We now shift to a discussion of how the components of the diagram can be used as a set of operations, in sermon preparation, as we attend to each of the three poles responsible for maintaining the space of faith. These poles are three distinct perspectives for preparation, but they also provide structure and tension in the listening experience of the hearers. If the preachers starting place is imagined in the middle of Chauvets diagram86the place of faithand those assembled to worship are imagined in the same place, moving with the preacher through the diagram, we may be able to describe various moments of both sermon preparation, and sermon reception, at the same time. I will do this by focussing on each pole in turn. In addition, as we move from pole to pole, I will describe some aspects of the view from that pole and the opportunities arising from the creative tension between the poles. This approach presents several homiletical advantages. Homiletical Advantages of using Three Poles
Diagram 9. Three Poles of Preaching
Movement The need to provide for movement has been a key insight in the New Homiletic87. We have become familiar with phrases like, the sermon is a process of
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 137 discovery (Craddock), it moves through a field of consciousness (Buttrick), it is plotted over time (Lowry). In the conceptual model that I propose, the preacher and the congregation can move together, in faith, and survey the landscape of Christian identity from various perspectives. Various Perspectives Matters of truth are hotly debated in post-modern times. The New Homiletic strongly criticized the cognitive-propositional manner of speaking for its authoritarianism (and for its mind-numbing boredom). The New Homiletic tends to prefer movement or dynamic speech over static speech. It also calls for interpretation that acknowledges pluriform meaning. There is a surplus of meaning (Ricoeur) in the text, in the context, in the church, in life. In the model that I am proposing, assertions will be strongest at the points of paradox, symbol, and ambiguity, where two or meanings are strongly true. This will reflect the nature of life in the time of the church between Ascension and Parousia. While this makes room for doubt, (not a blind triumphalism), the conversation is not between opposing world views, but between Gods judgement and Gods mercy. Creative Tension (a Charged Atmosphere)88 Many homileticians have contributed to an understanding of the value of tensive language. This model seeks to place both preacher and congregation within that tension and to find equilibrium according to the Haecceitas (thisness, uniqueness) of their situation. There is no universal consciousness to which we can speak, so each listener finds his or her own equilibrium; but, this is found within the church, and in relation to Jesus Christ in Word and Spirit. While in the process of sermon preparation, the preacher must experience the tension of these things in relation to one another. Thus, it is useful to cast this as part of the task (experience the tension!) early in the process.89 Particularity While there is no universal consciousness, liturgical preaching may assume that the hearers are baptized, or potentially coming-to-baptism. This means that the language of the sermon will be theological and concrete. It will speak directly to matters of faith, from a perspective of faith. We all need constant evangelization.90 There is a Christian tradition handed on in liturgical preaching and it forms the church as the Holy Preachingwitnesses to faith in Christ. The
138 The Sacramentality of Preaching goal of preaching, as I conceive it, is to guide the church into such a participation in the world that the gospel of Jesus Christ is heard and embraced and, that in the embrace, God embraces the world. This task of the church always exists in relation to the reign, which is necessarily rooted in the particulars, the soil of everyday life. Thus, the preacher and the congregation move together, through various perspectives, in a charged atmosphere, toward a particular revelation and empowerment. A Biblical Pattern and Some Homiletical Guidelines Not unlike the experience of the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, the churchs encounter with the risen Christ is a passage-to-faith that entails a threefold pattern:
First, an initiative of the Risen One that imposes itself on the witnesses; second, the recognition by a faith that has eyes (oculata fide) of the Risen One as the same as the Crucified One, but living henceforth in a completely altered stateas a spiritual body (soma pneumatikon) says Paul; third, the sending of the apostles into mission.91
I suggest that the combined effort of preacher and congregation, in an event of preaching, is a performance of everything in the passage-to-faith except the actual gestures of reception made by the congregation in the liturgy (the actual gestures related to the pole SAC), and the response of lived-faith in the world (the actual responses related to the pole ETH). In other words, the act of preaching a sermon, or hearing a sermon, does not do all the work necessary in the passage-to-faith. However, preaching is responsible for its role in a ritual metonymy that imagines, anticipates, and motivates the gestures of reception and response. Indeed, the preacher does everything possible to remove barriers and make those gestures possible. Using the language of Luke 24, preaching leads to the moment when the hearers say to the risen One, stay with us. It is the transition to receptivity, to dis-possession. The elements that lead to this are primarily related to the pole SCR. However, the conceptual elements of the pole SAC must also be incorporated into the structure and language of the sermon in order to anticipate the Sacraments as gestures of receptivity and oblation. Likewise, the pole ETH must be incorporated into the sermon so that it will take its full place as a moment of sending to witness and summoning to worship.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 139 For the sake of what follows, we now briefly recall the three poles and their relation to the basic plot and pattern of the biblical narrative found in Luke 24, the Road to Emmaus. SCR in Luke 24:13-35 (understanding leading to faith)92 1. God, the risen Christ, mercifully intrudes into the human situation and engages the troubled disciples, 2. He listens to them to find out what their perspective is on the events, 3. Christ interprets all that the scriptures say about him, so that they may believe. 4. They do not recognize him, but they know enough about him that they ask him to stay with them. 5. They welcome him, receive him. SAC (memory leading to hope) 1. The guest becomes host at the table in their home, he takes what they offer, blesses it (thanks), breaks it (necessary), and gives it to them. 2. Their eyes are openedthey recognize himand then he vanishes. 3. In memory, they realize that the risen One was there, acting. 4. They look back and say, what happened there, along the road? Were our hearts not burning within us? 5. This burning in the heart is recognized in belief. ETH (will leading to love) 1. That same hour, their belief could only exist as faith if they expressed what they had seen to others. 2. They returned and found the eleven and their companions gathered, saying The Lord has risen indeed! 3. They already knew, because the Lord has also appeared to Simon and others. The word of announcement is met with Amen! We have seen it too! 4. Together they become a sign, not only of the unity of hearts engendered by faith, but also of the manifestation of this unity in the sharing of goods and lives. They become the messianic community. In this plot, we note again that competence is obtained (a) by confessing that we do not know everything about Jesus of Nazareth (24:19), and by entering into dialogue with the risen One, (b) by coming to rest at table, with the risen One, where the pattern of to take/to bless/to break/to share is performed in prayer and action resulting in recognition of him, they move from the desire for immediacy by recognizing the whole liturgy as his prayer and his action and (c) confessing the absence or emptiness as good news because this emptiness is now full of a presence which is to be announced that same hour.93 How does this instruct the preacher in preparation? First, conceptual patterns can act as checklists to ensure that important elements are not left out, and to ensure that other elements are not over-emphasized. In a sense, our received narratives and structures oversee the general pattern for preaching and test it
140 The Sacramentality of Preaching for gospel shape. The second way these three poles can function, however, is to initiate thinking for sermon composition. At the beginning of the sermon preparation process, the preacher can ask questions that stimulate imagination and offer interpretive directions. The preacher asks, what is needed in this sermon for each of the following to occur:94 Scripture (SCR) understanding faith gift of knowledge cognition thinking the world kerygma (believing) Sacrament (SAC) celebrating faith gratitude recognition singing the world leitourgia (celebrating) Ethics (ETH) living in faith return gift to others praxis acting in the world diakonia147 (loving)
What is needed in the sermon to help us understand, know, think, accept? What is needed to help us celebrate, thank, remember, recognize, sing? What is needed to help us live, give, practice, act, witness and serve? These questions are most fruitful when we start by making them strictly theological, and when we apply the Summary of the Law95what is needed to help us understand, know, think, and accept God and neighbour? What is needed to help us celebrate, thank, remember, recognize, and sing God and neighbour? What is needed to help us live give, practice, act, witness and serve God and neighbour? Guidelines for the SCR Dimensions of Preaching What approach to sermon preparation and preaching will best help us understand, know, think, and accept God and neighbour? Douglas John Hall has written helpfully about the importance of thinking the faith, and the need to pledge ourselves to the overcoming of the (artificial) gap between thought and act, and so to become more serious about both. The point of praxis, he writes, is not to substitute act for thought, deed for word, but to ensure that thinking is rooted in existenceand committed to its transformation.96 This is what I seek in the movement though a conceptual map of the liturgical environment, not only to bridge the gap between thought (knowing the gospel, SCR) and act (doing the gospel, ETH), but also to create a space that can help us negotiate that gap. The preacher must incorporate some practical steps that will help the church to receive its own thought, to receive its own identity, and to respond ritually as part of the passage between knowing and doing.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 141 Chauvet writes, Like so many other words which end in urgy, such as dramaturgy or metallurgy, liturgy is a practical activity.97 In liturgy, the intention is to initiate or restore communion with God. This is our intention as worshippers, because it is also Gods intention for us. Thus, the communication of information, and the cognitive thinking about something elements of the liturgy must always serve the communion intention. This implies that cognitive elements are necessary, especially in preaching, but not in the form of didacticism or moralism. The intention of didacticism is instruction for the sake of knowledge, and the intention of moralism is instruction for the sake of virtuous behaviour. If the sermon is to cohere with the intention of the liturgy, the focus, persistently and pervasively, must be on our communion with God in Christ. We let all knowledge and virtue flow from that. So, the pole SCR provides the preacher and congregation with a moment and a perspective for thinking of a certain kind. The end purpose of our thinking-together in the sermon must aim toward our communion with God, rather than toward our knowledge or our virtuous behaviour. Further, the sermon does not participate in the kind of thinking that attempts to be an objective, critical inspection of reality in order to master reality, because this might be an attempt to master God. Any knowledge that we gain from our thinking is a gift from God, a revelation. Yet, there is conceptual work to be done in order to receive this gift, and there is an appropriate demand for intelligibility in worship which must be honoured. Chauvet puts it this way, our celebrations must sufficiently speak to the brain in order to speak to the heart.98 This demand for intelligibility may be best addressed in the sermon. Some of the details of how the preacher might go about this will be offered in the next chapter, related specifically to how the preacher approaches the Biblical text. For now, we hold these few principles in mind as conceptual guidelines for the particular kind of thinking involved at the pole SCR. The thinking of both preacher and listener must be exposed to the possibility of falling into unbelief. This is a risk. It requires that the preacher not lean finally on evidence, science, or explanations of truth as self-justification, but rather on a first person expression which indicates the speakers receptivity to Revelation past and present, and the acknowledgement of sin and its overcoming it in Christ. The preachers knowledge must be well developed, but preaching, as a theological act, begins with the abandonment of certainty about our prior convictions. This is followed by an openness to the possibility that our ideas of God may be strengthened or transformed by an encounter with
142 The Sacramentality of Preaching God and an acknowledgment of the sinfulness that an encounter with God reveals, judges and heals. These two movements are attempts to subordinate those things which hinder humility when listening to the scriptures. At the pole SCR, the Bible, as the Word of God, is venerated as Scripture. In worship, the Bible is treated with great respect, usually holding a place of its own in the actual worship space. The public reading of the Bible as sacred scripture is an essential action following every in-gathering of an assembly for worship of God. Yet, we do not worship an objecta book. In a sense this book is like a tabernacle for the stories and symbols of our faithstories and symbols that combine with other literary material to provide an interpretive witness that opens a world full of meaning. Yet, while the book surely contains, stores, and preserves the stories and symbols, they are not objects for inspection or consumption as much as they are interpretive lenses for perceiving and receiving our lives in Christ. When we read the Bible for preaching we are seeking to look where it is looking.99 The book is full of written texts that function as icons rather than as idols, in the sense that an icon is an image that opens to an infinite depth. The idol and icon are not necessarily two different things, but they are two different ways of looking at the same thing. The idol is a projectionsomething that comes from us. The icon, on the other hand, is a revelationsomething that comes from beyond. Consequently, the sermon that is preached from Scripture may best function as an icon.100 At the pole SCR then, our thinking is shaped by a confession of Scriptures authority, an authority based on its function and its Spirit-bestowed capacity to quicken the church to truthful speech and righteous action.101 The truth spoken and the righteous action belongs to the triune God, but speech and action are given to the hearing church as its way of engaging with the world. The hearing church is fitted to the shape of Scripture by the Spirit. Thus, we seek Gods present help for the engagement with both scripture and the world. This presence and help is best found when we focus our reading on interpreting what may be called the God sense of the texts themselves. The God sense of a biblical text may be defined as those dimensions of it that speak of Gods nature, acts, and relationship to humanity and creation, and that enables the Bible to be read as Scripture, the book of the church. The God sense is not a singular meaning but several meanings.102 Preaching, then, follows the God sense of Scripture and invites the church to do the same. At the pole SCR, these several meanings are tested by critical methods. The best use of Historical-Critical biblical scholarship, in the preaching ministry
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 143 of the church, is to use it, not as a source for determining what to preach, but rather as a test for problems in what we have read and our hearing of it. This form of critical-cognitive thinking keeps us from being too imaginative and too naive, and thus it helps the preacher to be faithful to the text. This is criticism as discernment. It needs to be rigorous. Every clearly invalid claim must be discarded or reinterpreted. However, the details of this thinking need not be preached, only the result. In this way, a critical approach to scripture can be modelled in preaching as imaginative and faithful Christian thinking. Finally, at the pole SCR, preaching participates in a pastoral thinking-thefaith within the unique circumstances of the hearers. Good preachers incorporate a homiletical haecceitas (thisness) into each preaching event. Together, the preacher and congregation spend time thinking about their lives theologically. A theological lens for focus on our lives, in Christ, becomes the gift and goal of this pole in the diagram. The key to the pole SCR, in the preparation of sermons, is an acknowledgement that understanding/knowing/thinking the beliefs (particular historical/cognitive themes or claims) of Christian existence is a vital element in coming to faith (a basic orientation and attitude, primal and often nonconceptual), but it is only part of a continuing process. At the pole SCR, we become receptive to God in mind but it is only by virtue of Gods gratuitous gift of grace that humanity can become receptive. Thus, the whole liturgical Proclamation of the Word must aim toward this gift being given again, and in such a way that the poles SAC (the gesture of response) and ETH (the life of those sent in witness) are also necessary. Chauvet has given us some of the conceptual apparatus and language for this coming to receptivity. The cognition pole of thinking leads to informative speech but does not stop there. It also goes beyond information by using oxymoron, metaphor, metonymy, ambivalence, ambiguity, symbol, and every other linguistic means available to authentically reflect life in Christ, symbolically shape consciousness, and provide the conditions for perception of the gospel which leads to encounter with Christ.103 The cognition pole shows its limits, however, and its need for the other two poles, exactly at the point where it breaks free from being an expression of empirical knowledge. Faith is not based on things that we can verify with understanding, reason, and mere observation. The role of thinking is to continuously nurture and deepen faith to the point where all of life becomes theologically significant. As a result, preachers do not have to play the pseudointellectuals game of pretending to be pure mind.104 On the contrary, precisely as frail creatures of dust, we have vested interests in our subject! It is a
144 The Sacramentality of Preaching matter of life and death to us.105 Clear thinking is necessary in life and death situations, and helping others to think their way into a deeper, more significant faith is part of the preachers task. It is a necessary part of the greater process called metanoiataking on new mental habits, a change mind, repentance.106 Further, it may be necessary to move-on from cognition simply because we dont want to imply that our only sin is ignorance. Being-saved is not simply becoming-cognizant, although it is a necessary term. On the Border of SCR and SAC The value of this diagram is not only found at the three poles; it is also found along the lines between them. Here, we briefly notice some key elements in the movement from the pole SCR to the pole SAC. Charles Bartow has rightly said of the worshipping church that, we sing even because we truly know more than we can say, and of preachers, we cannot measure up to the task of putting it all in straightforward prose.107 Our thinking-speech leads us to things that are beyond saying, beyond thinking. In the movement from SCR to SAC, the preacher and congregation see and experience the liminal points, or threshold moments, between fresh thinking and openness to movement and change.108 Perhaps the most important thing to notice in the movement from SRC to SAC is that this is the most likely place for the transition between the activities proclamation and sacramentality in the sermon. Here, the cognitive function, as the primary mode of proclamation and the pole SCR (declaration, announcement, information, understanding, sign, saying- something-aboutsomething etc.), are put into a creative tension with the communicative function of sacramentality and the pole SAC (recognition, reception, communication between subjects, exchange, symbol, saying-something-to-someone etc.). The tension between SCR and SAC can take many forms but all of these tensions stem from the presence of a creative force at the centre of the preaching ministry. The creative force is a person, but it is not the preacher. It is the personal, living God that the preacher preaches. God gives Gods very self through preaching. We do not restrict our preaching to explaining the logic of Jesus teaching, or our teaching about faith in him (doctrine). Somewhere along the line between SRC and SAC, the preacher and the congregation turn to God in person, even as they recognize the ways that God has been with them all along.
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 145 Along this line, we may experience the properly sacramental moment in preaching when the word spoken in the name of Christ is recognized as the word of Christ himself. In this moment, the sermon itself is given over to the hearers and to God, so that, liberated by the encounter with Gods Word, the church can respond with gestures of reception at the pole SAC. An example of this dynamic, and an example of how an encounter with God may be immediate and yet mediated by a messenger at the same time, can be found in this Advent sermon from Lilian Daniel. After considering Marys conversation with the angel Gabriel (Lk 1:26-38), the preacher says,
We dont see Mary ending the conversation with the angel by saying, Thanks for the update Gabriel. Consider me informed. Im moving ahead with total clarity. Ill take it from here! Instead, in a state of perplexity, she simply offers herself up to God, just as she is let it be with me according to your word. It could be that this is exactly what God is looking for. Exactly what God needs in order to come to us. The openingthat perplexity brings.109
If this is correct, our thinking at the pole SCR does not need to result in total cognitive clarity. Instead, the tension involved in perplexity may provide an opening. Perhaps, like many who listen to sermons that talk about faith and tell good news, Mary listens to the angels speech and thinks to herself, Impossible impossible impossible. But when the angel finishes the speech with these words, for nothing will be impossible with God, Mary responds, Amen, let it be with me according to your word. The perplexity, ambiguity, ambivalence, resistence, and fascination that dominate our thinking when presented with the gospel, open us to the hearing of a word, and then it all simply resolves when we are visited by God.110 Something is put into our lives and we respond, Amen, offering ourselves to God. We do not go away with everything solved, but we go bearing the fruit of this divine visit. This is the type of dynamic that transitions the hearing church from SCR to SAC, from thinking to singing, from cognition to recognition. For the preacher, this is the point where language about God breaks into language from and to God. It is not that this relational dynamic is absent in thinking, because in worship our thinking is wrapped in prayer. It is more so that the Spirit intercedes with sighs when our words cannot express the fullness of Gods address and gift. In linguistic terms, along the line between SCR and SAC, the preacher toils away in the locutionary, but also uses language in a way that provides material for the Spirit to takes us in flight through the illocutionary and the perlocutionary. The hearing church then lands in the moment of recognition.
146 The Sacramentality of Preaching Guidelines for the SAC Dimensions of Preaching What is needed to help us celebrate, thank, remember, recognize, and sing God and neighbour? In Chauvets theory, this is the pole that negotiates the passage from language to body, from word to practice.111 When disciples of Christ respond to his presencehis merciful intrusion into the everydayand when they respond to his proclamation with the desire that he stay with them, the biblical pattern in Luke 24 suggests that the invitation is accepted. What then? The guest becomes the host at their table, and they follow him to the table. Homiletically, there is both a conceptual/figurative and ritual/pragmatic response sought here. There is the task of attending to and saying those things which may lead our hearts and minds to receive Christto receive what he has to offer and wholly accept it, assent to it in faith. These are the conceptual/ figurative considerations that the preacher takes into account, especially in preparation. In most liturgies however, there are also silences, vocal responses and physical movements, gestures of response to the Word that worshippers make to signify and manifest the response.112 These consist of song, confession of faith in creeds, intercessory prayer, confession of sin and absolution, gestures to exchange the peace of Christ, ritual offering, and movement to an altar or table. Good homiletical theology and strategy in a such a liturgical setting will anticipate these responses and work to make them significant moments of remembrance, repentance, recognition, and thankful celebration for the forgiveness and reconciliation found in Christ. We may even see the risen One who we have met again in the preached wordlead us through these responses on the way to the table, the table where he then takes what we offer, blesses it (thanks), breaks it (necessary), and gives it to us. In this way, in this moment, revelation is immediate empowerment113revelation is reconciliation.114 When the worshipping eyes are openedthey recognize him at rest with them at the tableand then he vanishes. Looking back, they realize that the risen One was there, acting, not only in the liturgy but also along the road leading to this moment. So what kind of theological task does the sermon carry out in relation to the pole SAC and the liturgical celebration of sacraments? The question is twofold. First, in relation to the pole SAC, the thinking of the preacher in preparation is combined with his or her spiritual experience in preparation, and, together, they guide the thinking and spiritual experience of whole congregation in the mo-
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 147 ment of preaching itself. In other words, the preacher intentionally focusses on finding and expressing experiences and affirmations of encounter with God in life. This is done in a way that relationship with God is offered and known in the moment of preaching. The preacher does not only attend to sermon reception, but to an ecclesial reception of God in the moment of the sermon. Using the pattern of the Emmaus story again, the goal of the pole SCR is to get to the point of stay with us and the goal of the pole SAC is to follow the Stranger to our table and to recognize him, there, as the crucified and risen One.115 At the pole SAC, our response moves from openness to him (an initial reception of him), to recognition of him as the same Jesus who was crucified but is now risen (a second reception of him), to a recognition that his presence is also an absence that requires something of us (it empowers and sends at the same time). This ends in an affirmation of the faith that burned in us while in his presence, and fuels our rising from the table to go tell in his absence. I have been emphasizing that all of this can happen during the sermon. However, for it to be ritually manifest and ecclesially active (as opposed to a strictly individual response), a second focus is required of the preacher. This moves beyond scriptural patterns and images conceived in the mind, and beyond the memory and recognition of sacramentality in our own lives, to the communal and particular expressions of the church in the liturgy. While preparing, the preacher remains responsible to the pole SAC by asking questions like, where in the actions and words of the liturgy does this particular sermon find its best response? Often this response will become manifest in a peak moment of the sacraments being celebrated (perhaps in the reception of the bread and wine in Eucharist, or in the pouring of water in Baptism), but there are many other liturgical moments where this reception of Christ might become real. The preacher asks, based on the witness of scripture and his or her own witness in preaching, will the hearing church recognize and receive Christ as they stand to confess their faith? Or will it be as they kneel to pray for the world and/or confess their sin? Today, will they really know the amazing grace of God as they hear words attesting to and offering Gods forgiveness in Christ? Will it be in a silence, in the music, in an exchange of peace with a forgiven and reconciled brother or sister in Christ? Will it be as the gifts are brought to the altarwill one of us see their whole life being placed on that altar? Will recognition come as we catch a glimpse of a mother putting the bread of life into her childs mouth? The preacher must imagine and anticipate all of these possibilities and more, in order to use every linguistic means available to shape consciousness,
148 The Sacramentality of Preaching and provide the conditions for response. The preacher makes the most of the culture and language of the church in and through its rites and celebrations, by charging the atmosphere with tension, space, image, sound, and reverent expectation that God is in the room and wants to do something for us and with us. Paul Janowiak writes, The environment for the sacramental affirmation of faith on the part of the assembly is not only the right and obligation of all preachers to produce, but the condition for the possibility of sacramental efficacy for the church as a whole.116 The words accompanying and preceding the sacramental action demand a prior faith and receptiveness in both the preacher and the congregation. In a sense, I have been arguing that significant participation in the sacraments must be preceded by preaching with a sacramental quality. It is a condition for the possibility of sacramental efficacy. This sacramental quality of preaching is not based on a guaranteed, productionist, matter and form type of emphasis, but rather on an understanding that there is a sacramental quality to the efficacy of speech. This opens the way for describing the event of grace in the Liturgy of the Word and preaching as a sacramental word, as sacramental grace. If we understand preaching to be both preparation for, and an integral part of, sacramental activity, then the theological task of preaching is to guide the assembly to a place of openness to faith given, and receptivity to the gift of divine justice and mercy. For the unbaptised, this is articulated in the words of the Ethiopian, Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptised?(Acts 8:36) For the baptised, this is articulated in the Amen as a response to the Eucharistic utterance the body of Christ. Receiving the body of Christ and becoming the body of Christ, the church moves away from the sacramental moment with Pauls question on their lips, what am I to do Lord? (Acts 22:10). It is an experience of grace, of course, that leads us to the pole ETH. On the Border of SAC and ETH We noted earlier that, on the border of SCR and SAC, we find the limits of cognition and the necessary movement to recognition and reception. Between the anticipation of sacramental celebration and the ritual participation in those actions, preaching can create an environment of breakthrough. When it does, the actual celebration of sacrament is likely to be intense and highly significant, often an emotion-filled event. However, the sacramental celebrations can also be disappointing, or simply unremarkable. When the actions and objects do not
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 149 symbolically open a world of meaning, they can end up looking like nothing more than a dribble of water and a morsel of bread. Thus, we are sent away from sacramental celebrations without any awareness of their fullness. This lack is a characteristic condition of the time of the church; everything we know and do is only in part. However, the root of this is in exactly the same place as the root of our hope. Richard B. Hays, in his commentary on First Corinthians 13: 8-13 concludes,
The eschatological reservation looms heavily over all that we say and do: We know only in part and act constantly on the basis of incomplete information. We have no choice about that in this time between the times. The force of 8-13, however, is to encourage us to have a sense of humility and a sense of humour about even our gravest convictions and activities. When the perfect comeswhen we see this life from the other side of the resurrection, we will discover that even the things that have seemed most glorious and exalted to ushave been childs play.117
At the pole SAC, the preacher seeks to provide a glimpse of the glorious and exalted in the midst of the every day, and a desire for the moment where, at table or font, we taste and see the goodness of God in Christ and yearn for the fullness of his coming. As Chauvet says, in Christs presence (his continualcoming to us), we must hold ourselves in mature proximity to his absence. Somewhere in the tension between the poles SAC and ETH, the preacher takes time to attend to the mystery of the glory of God in the face of the Crucifieda paradoxical truth that strengthens the hope, resolve, and unity of the church. In the tension between the poles SAC and ETH we find an understanding of our identity and mission. Or, in other words, on the line between SAC and ETH the preacher attempts to foster and sustain the hope of the church while attending to the questions who are we now, and what are we to do? As mentioned earlier in this chapter, in order for preaching to be an event of hope, it must hold law and gospel in tension. Usually, the movement of the sermon is from law to gospel, but it is also possible to preach law as gospel.118 This is one of the primary tasks of the movement to the pole ETH. Staying as far as possible from moralism, the third element in our triangle must be rooted in joyful mission. Gods kenotic gesture in the life, death and resurrection of Christ is not a warning, scolding, guilt-inducing act, so neither should the preaching of it be. The intention is not to make people change by making them feel worse about themselves, or by laying down a list of heavy duties to perform that are intended to win Gods approval and thus win Gods grace. Gods act of
150 The Sacramentality of Preaching love is a gift that swallows up sin and death, and turns the devils work into life for all. Therefore, once the trouble of our human condition has been judged by God, and this judgement has been articulated through the sermon, and once the hearing church has confessed both their sin and their faith as a response to the judgement and gracious redemption articulated and experienced in the sermon, the law-as-gospel comes into play as celebration and guided-empowerment. Arthur Van Seters shows that Christian ethics is a response to grace and a yearning to live as disciples. He writes, Those who seek to follow Christ seek an ethic of grateful response and yearn for normative standards, principles, values, and rights to clarify their discipleship.119 For the penitent, worshipping church, the law is best employed after our recognition and reception of all God has done for us in Christas a guide for the redeemed.120 This indicates the primary focus that the pole ETH will provide. In a sense, the function of ETH is carried out in the liturgy of the world, and it has both a sending and a summoning quality which can be anticipated and incorporated in the sermon. Guidelines for the ETH Dimensions of Preaching What is needed to help us live, give, practice, act, witness and serve God and neighbour? What is needed to help the church become the Holy Preaching of Christ? At the pole ETH, faith transitions from inside the community to outside the community where it is tested for faithfulness. The language and structure of the church, the story of the Paschal Mystery of Christ, becomes the pattern and shape of our own story in the world. In our lives, and in our life together as church-in-the-world, we continue to receive the grace of God as a gift and we respond with return-gifts to others. Again, the value of the pole is conceptual and practical. On the conceptual level, the preacher and congregation think-through-praxis, and on the practical level, we anticipate the actions following the liturgical dismissal, Go in peace to love and serve the Lord. The actual dispersal of the church into the world and the action of that body is the Holy Preaching. In a priestly manner, the preacher is responsible to the pole ETH by gathering up all the gains and losses in the life of that body, and offering them to God to be celebrated, redeemed, and trans/formed. The preacher then helps the members of the church to open their hands to the promise and their hearts to the sending. Within the moment
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 151 of preaching, these things are conceptual and by the power of the Spirit they happen according to the efficacy of speech. However, these things are verifiedbecome real (or not) in the common life of the hearing church. David Buttrick describes three moments in consciousness as a way to focus on three parts of a single action. This is similar to the dynamic involved in relationship among the three poles we have been discussing.121 He considers praxisthe third moment which roughly corresponds to the pole ETHthe most difficult to describe. Part of the challenge is the variable character of such moments, where the ambiguities of being-saved-in-the-world are intense. These are moments when people and communities wonder what they are doing and what they should do. Praxis, Buttrick contends, is consciousness in a situation, oriented to the futurethat draws on the past in memory.122 These comments point to two of the primary considerations at the pole ETH. First, at the pole ETH the actual realities of the homiletical and sacramental Haecceitas (thisness) come into play in the sermon. The ETH dimension of preaching takes into account the unique details of each persons life, and while the person is hearing the gospel, these details flood their interpretation, filling the empty spaces with meaning and divine encounter. The variables of lifesituation in a congregation are almost countless and they require the preacher to have comprehensive pastoral contact with its members. At the very least, these relationships are necessary for sensitivity to sermon reception at the pole ETH. In other words, the preacher has to know the people in the congregation very welltheir hopes, fears, pains, weaknesses, strengths, history, and their maturity in faith. Knowing this, however, does not make it easier to preach at the pole ETH, nor do these details usually become the actual content of the sermon. However, knowing this does point to the fertile milieu of need and faith found in the worshipping assembly. Second, this is the dimension of preaching where it is appropriate for people to wonder what they have done and what they should do. It gets personal at the pole ETH in the sense that here, in life, the response of faith is veri-fied (made genuine). It is absurd to think that one could undergo a genuine experience of recognized exchange with God, in grace, without it bearing fruit in ones life. Chauvet is blunt at this point; grace is always given as a task to be performed.123 But what a task! In the performance of the life imagined and disclosed at the pole ETH, the collective memory and pattern of the faithful, causes the present to bulge and open onto the future.124 The task is to live in grace with our brothers and sisters as the ecclesial body of Christ, and to be raised up continually by God into wave after wave of surprising opportunity.
152 The Sacramentality of Preaching The key to retaining the joy is to remember that the competence for this ministry is first a gift and then a task; it does not entirely come from within. Perhaps the primary prerequisite for an ethical Christian life is to have encountered the risen One and recognized him as the crucified One. The Christian (in the church) is then able to see life and the world as graced by the God who is revealed in Christ, and, in this revelation, he or she finds immediate empowerment for following him and living into that grace. Consequently, an intense and joyful desire arises to participate in Gods mission. It is not a desire to capture Christ or cling to the wonderful moment of recognition. It is a desire to go and tell what God has done so that others may come to the wonder of faith in him. This dynamic is also the primary prerequisite for preaching and hearing the gospel at the pole ETH. So often, preachers confuse preaching on ethics with moralizing to-do lists, filled with the impossible task of saving ourselves, or worse, the task of saving the sin-sick world. The mission then becomes non-Christian, even anti-Christian, because it denies that we have a Saviour. This heresy must be avoided. Preachers do not usually set out to be Pelagians.125 However, without sufficient focus on Gods grace/gratuitousness and the dynamic of sacramentality, the sermon can cast an impossible burden on the congregation and the application of the sermon to life will function, theologically, as judgement. Another impossible burden can come from the linguistic function, or the form of language used to speak about judgement and grace. When considering the question, whats the matter with preaching? David Bartlett points to the tendency for preachers to devote themselves to showing sin and then telling about mercy. Basing his comments on the old admonition from creative writing; show; dont tell, he writes, for the most part we show evil and the tell about goodness.126 Instead of simply cataloguing distress, Bartlett advises the preacher to give attention in the sermon to the apocalyptic promise. Show mercy, he implores, picture transcendence, and get specific about the reality of Gods grace and mercy. These are tasks related to the pole ETH in the sense that we show both the action of God and our response in daily life. The tendency and danger at the pole ETH, is to show how far short of an acceptable response our lives have been, but the responsibility of the preacher here is to highlight all the ways in which our lives have been, and can be, a faithful response. This does not mean that we gloss over the manifold failures, but rather that we showor narratefaithful response in spite of our failures, or in the midst of failure. This attests to Gods empowering presence, drawing gospel life out of the deadness of our lives. The preacher aims to use a signifi-
Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 153 cant portion of the sermon to narrate127 faithful response in action and in detail, and we rely on the powers of recognition in the hearing church and the work of the Holy Spirit among them. When the preacher shows Christian witness, the pole ETH becomes a place of attractionit becomes a moment of celebration. I have said before that the end purpose of our thinking-together in the sermon must aim toward communion with God, rather than toward knowledge or virtuous behaviour. Thus, the elements of sermon preparation and preaching at the pole ETH, must have a Missio Dei focus, rather that right living focus. This is not just for the sake of the various members of the church, but also for the sake of witnessing to the world in all that we do. The continuing conversion of the church itself serves as a witness to Gods ongoing act of reconciliation in Christ, and the congregations common life acts as a hermeneutic of the gospel. As Lesslie Newbigin wrote, the only hermeneutic of the gospel is a congregation of men and women (and children) who believe it and live by it.128 At the pole ETH, we are engaged in a thinking-through-praxis that guides our sermon design toward forming the church as the Holy Preaching. On the Border of ETH and SCR Life brings us back to worship. Experience of the marvellous exchange with God and others in the world evokes the desire to praise and thank God. This desire, along with the need to re-immerse ourselves in the kerygma (SCR) and leitourgia (SAC), draws us back to engagement with the Word in Scripture and Sacrament where, together, we rehearse our recognition and response and we celebrate all that God has done, is doing, and will do. When our lives have genuinely been a living-in-grace witness to Christ, we will find that people will come with us as we return to worship, people who were not there the last time. These are the ones God is calling to return, or to come for the first time. Our life together, in and out of worship, is the possible place of mediation for their encounter and reconciliation with God. This movement back to worship with others completes the hermeneutical, homiletical and liturgical process as expressed in the triangle SCR, SAC, ETH, so that it may begin again in our continual conversion to the fullness of the gospel.
CHAPTER FIVE
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson: A Practice
Practice: (I) to work at, perform, repeat in order to develop and maintain, to put into action; (ii) a habitual way of being; (iii) a cooperative human activity; (iv) a vocation.
The Teaching and Learning of Homiletics

The concepts and insights that have been accumulating do not form an independent homiletical system. The intention has been to emphasize certain theological and practical perspectives on liturgical/sacramental preaching so that current theories and practices can be enhanced. Chauvet has helped in this task most significantly with his dual hermeneutic of sacramentality and grace and his diagram of Christian Identity which I have adapted to include preaching. From this, I have proposed a way to conceptualize the place and purpose of the preacher in the ecclesial and liturgical environment. From the title onward, the term the sacramentality of preaching has referred to a quality and intention of preaching that I think is generally forgotten, ignored, or undervalued. For the sake of this chapter, I will also use the term simply as a label for the perspective that I have been fostering through the first four chapters. In this usage, it is a short-form for the trajectory of thought in Chapters One through Four. In Chapter Five, I will use this conception in order to strengthen the teaching and learning of homiletics according to the theological structure proposed in the homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson. The structure and focus of this chapter will be quite different from all that precedes it. It will contain a more personal and pedagogical focus. Nevertheless, what follows is based on the first four chapters.
156 The Sacramentality of Preaching A Pastoral Homiletic A pastoral homiletic is one that will also be helpful beyond the confines of a liturgical sermon because preaching arises from and addresses the many nonliturgical events of lifelife situations into which a Christian minister is drawn. If the whole church gives the gift of pastoral authority and responsibility, it is the particular people of a local assembly who make it real by drawing their ministers into situations where lives are literally being trans/formed by Word and Spirit. Standing at the side of a hospital bed, for example, in the midst of a Christian family that is saying goodbye to one of its members, the preacher/pastor remembers all the times he has stood with them as a person witnessing to the Word in moments between font, table, and life.1 With this particular family, at the renewal of fifty-year-old wedding vows, followed that week by a funeral. With this family, at two weddings and four baptisms. With this family, every Sunday morning, surrounded by genuinely beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, the church. The preacher looks around that hospital bed and remembers standing with each person at various times and in various circumstances. They had invited him again to guide them through this moment of Christian existence. With the Scriptures in hand, their particular lives in mind, and the best of pastoral/homiletical theory and theology under his arm, he remembers what to say in these moments. It is not a sermon in the conventional liturgical sense. It is metaphorically and literally the first words of a song they knowa song they want to sing. He knows that even in this moment, as they near the edge of the grave, he can speak the gospel and lead them in the song, Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia! Give rest, O Christ, to your servant with your saints, where sorrow and pain are no more, neither sighing, but life everlasting. They re-member the gospel that he has proclaimed in their midst, they re-cognize the presence of Christ and the power of the Spirit in the moment, and they gladly respond by joining in the song. In the song, this loved one is offered, finally, to God. It is a moment replete with sacramentality, and a moment of powerful witness to other people in the hospital. The preacher speaks in the midst of moments like this, and God does wonders that are seen and heard. The preacher, therefore, keeps drawing open a space for Word and Spirit to move into hearing. The preacher looks for the openings when they are presented as gift. Moments of sacramentality, however, require a prior evangelization, even as every evangelization requires sacramentalization.1 Singing a song of faith at the grave is not likely to be an expression of faith, praise and thanksgiving for those
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 157 who have never been incorporated into the church. The majority of people in our society have no link to the church and its language. With no Christian memory or knowledge, they cannot re-member or re-cognize God coming to them in the presence of Christ by the power of the Spirit. Yet, with or without our knowing, God still comes to us. God is reaching out to us and inviting us to the font and to the table. In these cases, where the language and culture of the church is unknown, the preacher leans toward the SCR pole of our triangle, working to establish an understanding of faith, the gift of knowledge, helping listeners to come to cognition, helping them to think-the-world through the kerygma. This is the work of proclamation as it leads to, and makes possible, moments of sacramentality and the resulting life of faith. The process of coming to faith, and remaining in faith, requires both proclamation and sacramentality. Pastors find themselves in the midst of the churchs ongoing process of coming-to-faith, and, knowing their particular responsibility in that process, they spend a great deal of energy and time preparing for these moments of speech and action.3 Chauvet has shown that the process of conversion itself is a performance. It is a passage from non-faith to faith, from eyes closed to eyes opened, from a lack of comprehension to recognition, and, as such, it requires a certain competence. It is not a solo, virtuoso, performance, but a personal participation in a larger interaction of words, gestures and movements that help us to recognize and express our story as part of Gods story. As church, we continually perform this story as we enter-into it and live-out-of it. Therefore, performance is the constant dynamic at the centre of life in the church, and, thus, the centre of the life of a preacher. It is the dynamic of church, no matter who the individuals are who comprise the assembly in a particular place. It is also the response required of every human being in order to become a disciple of Jesus Christ. This process involves gift-giving and returning gift, the unblocking of various impediments to reception of the gift and response and the animation of particular materials (people, places, things) for the sake of the gospel. Beginning with any preacher, then, the renewal of faith involves the development of competence for guiding this performance. Homiletical theory, at its best, contributes meaningfully to the development of this competence.
The Practice of Preaching Within the Mediation of the Church

Why Wilson? I have chosen to show some of the contributions of this work by applying it to the work of Paul Scott Wilson. This is somewhat arbitrary in the sense that these ideas could be integrated with the work of many other homileticians. Yet, from the many competent homiletical guides, I choose Wilson primarily because of the simplicity and clarity of his The Four Pages of the Sermon grammar. It is precisely at this level of grammar that Wilsons work accords well with that of Chauvet. The Four Pages4 works very well for teaching homiletics at an introductory level because it is simple without being simplistic. It is rooted in sophisticated theories and it serves just as well to guide preachers with extensive experience, as it does to guide beginners. Further, while I continually test various theories in practice, I have structured the majority of my own sermon preparation with Wilsons theory for approximately eight years. Perhaps, most importantly, Wilsons theory works well because it addresses the greatest failing of preaching todaythe tendency to leave God out of the sermon and to speak as though the God of grace is not in the room. Not every homiletical theory is designed to address these tendencies, and theory alone may not be enough to ensure a homiletical focus on Gods presence and action, in liturgy and life. It is the combination of homiletical theory and the preachers underlying theological perspective on Christian life that most effectively addresses this failing. For example, Stephen Farris starting point for Preaching that Matters is the whole-hearted belief that God speaks to us through the Bible and through preaching. The very first words of the book indicate the importance Gods action in preaching. He writes, There is little point to preaching and certainly none to listening to preaching unless God speaks to us.5 In a sense, Farris is saying, this book is more than one sentence long because I have faith in the God who speaks to us. Indeed, faith comes from Gods speech. There is a witness, a testimony to faith, lying beneath our efforts. The very first words of another publication by Farris indicate a second, essential characteristic of the preaching life. In Grace: A Preaching Commentary, he begins, I could not write about grace if I had not first received it on every hand.6 Every preacher must be able to receive at least two gifts: faith and
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 159 grace. He or she must have faith in the presence and activity of God, and must find the God of grace in life. In my own teaching, I have stressed that the only way a student can fail a class sermon is to leave out God and/or leave out grace. I say this for the sake of the student and the church. It is a matter of survival. It is also far more satisfying and enjoyable to preach (and hear) a gospel that the church actually believes, student preachers included.7 Our faith can influence the learning environment of the homiletical classroom, or the worshipping environment of the church, as much as, or more, than the theories themselves. However, it is not enough to make the inclusion of God and grace in a sermon the standard test for good preaching, without homiletical guidance for the faithful and imaginative inclusion of God and grace. A lot of good models and guidelines for preaching can be followed meticulously while still leaving God and the grace of God out of the sermon.8 God and grace must be explicitly woven into the guidance and grammar of the homiletic. Wilson provides the most comprehensive theory to work with in order to achieve this. Further, he provides a homiletical structure that is most easily compared to what is offered in my adaptation of Chauveta spatial, dynamic, theologically tensive structure. Both Wilson and Chauvet have designed frameworks that are explicitly theological. Another primary strength of Wilsons theory is related to his concern for those who hear the sermon. This concern for the listener has been a strength of the New Homiletic, and Wilson, beginning with Imagination of the Heart in 1988, addresses the homiletical function and structure of language and imagination, in order to stir the faith of others, and to take an invitational stance by involving the listener and evoking a response.9 The last fifty years of homiletical theory has generally stressed, the preachers use of language and images to create a world in and through the sermon in which the listener is invited to dwell for a while, and the listeners role in completing the meaning of the sermon in their thoughts and actions.10 Wilson builds on this emphasis, and more recently, with the metaphor of moviemaking, he provides a way to combine most of the benefits of contemporary theory, uncluttered by academic detail and weight.11 Those who hear the sermon are accustomed to this visual art form, and the world that a movie can open to them, while preachers can learn from the movie director (and/or editor) in order to make homiletical decisions about how to show or film sermon ideas and propositions in action, in dialogue, and in context.
160 The Sacramentality of Preaching The Four Pages of the Sermon: A Model, a Method, or a Grammar? While Wilsons work is broadly appreciated and used in homiletics, there is some confusion about what exactly his theory is and how it functions best. Two leading homileticians have made what I consider poor evaluations of Wilsons The Four Pages of the Sermon. These assessments do not miss the essence of Wilsons work as a model or as a method; in fact, they give excellent short summaries of the work in that regard. What they miss is the aspect of Wilsons homiletic that gives gospel power to any model or method of preaching; they miss the fact that it arises from and addresses faith. Ronald J. Allen was one of the first homileticians to recognize the significance of Wilsons approach. He included it in his own textbook on preaching even before Wilsons book was in print.12 However, the quick response to Wilsons work may have contributed to a superficial appreciation of what the Four Pages can fully be. For Allen, Wilson simply offers one option to be chosen from the smorgasbord of patterns available.13 More surprising however, is that, several years after its publication a seasoned homiletician like Thomas G. Long has missed the underlying key to Wilsons homiletic.14 Long casts Wilsons Four Pages as a theologically driven master sermon form.15 Long, who has always appreciated that sermon form significantly influences what happens to the hearer in and through the sermon,16 is missing something when he focuses his analysis on questions related to Wilsons sermon form. Long, in my view, misses the significance of what Wilson calls deep structure. He focuses on what Wilsons deep structure means for sermon structure and refers to Wilsons deep structure only in terms of sermon organization.17 This undervalues how deep structure can significantly influence what happens to the preacher and the hearers, over time, and, often, without their conscious awareness of it. In other words, while surface structure (the actual words and arrangement of the sermon) and deep structure (the hidden dynamic/structure beneath the surface) must be closely related, deep structures do much more than serve as the master organizers of sermon structure.18 Deep structure provides a theological dynamic for guiding the whole preaching process, the whole life of the preacher, perhaps even the life of a congregation. Deep structure is drawn from the dynamic of the gospel which itself, in turn, is drawn from the pattern and promise of Gods relations with humanity and creation. These dynamics significantly influence what happens in peoples lives and their interpretation of what happens. It can also influence what happens within the listener during the sermon, as the surface sermon
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 161 structurethe actual words and organization of the sermonserves a deeper dynamic that reveals Gods presence and activity. The dynamic is a structure only in the sense that the elements are in relationship with one another, that they can be spatially conceived, and that, when tied together as a whole, the elements provide strength and consistency to the variations of language on the surface. In the descriptions offered by both Wilson and Chauvet, the deep structure creates a space of creative tension where meaning and faith are made possible. This may be why Wilson has recently preferred the linguistic term grammar for this deep structure.19 This weakness in Longs assessment of the Four Pages may result from the fact that he groups it with what he calls problem-solving forms that move toward resolution. Resolution is a supple word that can be useful and accurate for what Wilson intends as the outcome of a sermon; however, the word solution is not an appropriate word for the end of the movement, from trouble to grace, in Wilsons theory. Wilson strongly resists the problem-solution pattern. It is also a misunderstanding of Wilson to say, as Allen does, that the Trouble-Grace, Law-Gospel pattern in his Four Pages theory moves straightforwardly from a problem to Gods gracious resolution.20 The disclosure of trouble is not simply the identification of a problem for us to solve, it is an accounting for sin in all its dimensions. It is our acknowledgment, before God, of our failure to uphold the Law, or at the very least, the identification of a misplaced confidence in our ability to uphold the Law on our own. Therefore, it is a problem only in the sense that it is the only problem, and, as such, it ought to lead to something stronger than high listener appeal, or fresh insights.21 The disclosure of trouble must lead to repentance, and a yearning for the God whom we desperately need. Wilson is clear that we preach from trouble to grace in order to foster hope. Thus, if there is any resolution, it takes the form of a response to Gods saving grace as Christian hope in action. Further, Wilson accounts for how hope springs most genuinely from homiletical acknowledgement, and use of ambiguity and paradox, because that is how most of us experience life. Preaching grace does not have the effect of erasing the trouble; rather, preaching grace is a way of putting our trouble in perspective before the cross of Christ who has taken our place, entered suffering, and gone into death for us, and thereby accomplished something so decisive that all life is changed by it.22 The way to appreciate grace as grace is to set it next to our trouble. Juxtaposing trouble and grace by placing our trouble at the foot of the Cross, or in the lee of the Empty Tomb, is to say that one never
162 The Sacramentality of Preaching forgets the other, or erases the other. In a very clear section identifying typical problems in preaching grace, Wilson writes,
Preachers mistake trouble and grace for problem and solution. The gospel is not a bandage or fix-it. The gospel is primarily a relationship of faith and trust in God who is revealed in Jesus Christ and comes to us in the power of the Holy Spirit in the midst of joy and sorrow. Everything is not made all better according to our plans; yet, in faith we claim that everything is made new through the liberating and transforming power of the sovereign God.23
It is clear that the ambiguities and perplexities of life cannot be erased in the sermon, if only because we live in what Chauvet calls the time of the church, between Ascension and Parousia. This can serve to highlight Wilsons emphasis on offering Christ in the midst of life, and it is one example of how Chauvets perspective meshes well with Wilsons theory. There is not space for me to continue with a full appreciative summary and critique of Wilsons work here, but I can highlight both the strengths of it and the places where the supplementary theory contained here has strengthened my use of the Four Pages in teaching. These modest insights are the result of both academic analysis of the theory, and giving the theory a real try in practice, as a practice.24 Therefore, before moving on to the details of homiletical instruction, I will briefly discuss not only how homiletical theory can operate as a set of ideas but, also, how it can operate at a deeper level as it is anchored in the body or the daily practices of individuals and groups. The combination of Wilsons homiletical theology and Chauvets sacramental theology can shape the habitus of the preacher: the totality of learned habits, skills, styles, tastes, and other perspectives that operate under the surface. A Habitus of Homiletics The confusion over the role of the Four Pages as a model, method or grammar is clarified by use of the theory in actual teaching and preaching. In my experience, it is all three. First, it is a sermon model in the sense that the four distinct pages (and other recognizable aspects of the theory) can be identified in the actual sermon as it is preached. Of course, most listeners will not need to know the theory to understand and appreciate the sermon but, for the purposes of a homiletical classroom, the common language of the theory, along with Wilsons various
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 163 guidelines and checklists, provides very clear, qualitative standards for homiletical analysis/feedback and evaluation. Second, the theory can be used as a method for preparation in the sense that it offers a procedure, a systematic way that sermon preparation can be laid out and followed.25 Finally, there is the use of the theory as a homiletical grammar. Underlying theological grammars for preaching do not dictate only one sermon form, nor do they confine the preacher to only one method for preparation. Grammars are basic principles for shared knowledge in any area. As in language, grammar is a structural system of rules, implicit in the language itself, that allows for common recognition of meaning, and for the generation of an endless number of sentences and further meanings. A theological grammar reflects the dynamics implicit in the gospel, and provides normative structures for the generation of an endless number of imaginative expressions that are faithful to the gospel. Wilson suggests that the Four Pages is first and foremost a grammar instead of a method or a model,26 and a grammar is designed to permit variety and enhance creativity. He writes,
If preachers are aware of their grammatical options, sermon composition is a fluid process. The creative energies of the preacher, like any artist, are then concentrated in an efficient manner on things that the theory does not dictate.27
A grammar dictates, it orders, it prescribes but, in the case of a theological grammar, it must also describe the gospel, and suggest the outlines and dynamics for further descriptions. The preacher must learn to trust the grammar, which means that it must be continually tested for coherence to the gospel. Even then, trusting the grammar matters only if the gospel is trusted. Preaching is still a matter of faith. This is where the combination of Chauvets structure of theological relations (the Diagram of Christian Identity and Symbolic Exchange) and Wilsons grammar (the Four Pages) has led me to see the significance of the preachers habitus of homiletics. Recognizing that no theological grammar can comprehensively represent the absolute fullness of the gospel, a grammar can, nonetheless, help the preacher become conscious of his or her theological and spiritual habitus, and it can help to refine it, or form it, into an essentially gospel shape. A habitus can be understood as the modus operandi at the heart of participation in structures and in processes. Christine Firer Hinze, notes that anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu describes the notion of habitus as,

a system of lasting, transposable dispositions which, integrating past experiences, functions at every moment as a matrix of perceptions, appreciations, and actions and makes possible the achievement of infinitely diversified tasks.28
However, a habitus of homiletics cannot be limited to a focus on what we may achieve. It also makes room for functioning as a mediation for the relationship with God, and for interpreting that relationship, and for responding to it. There is a divine/human movement and tension in a good theological habitus. It helps us to access and receive what God offers, and it helps us to respond by moving toward God. Therefore, the cultivation of a habitus of homiletics should be one of the primary goals of an introductory course in homiletics. Theological education, as a whole, can involve the intentional cultivation of an integrative pastoral imagination29 and, depending on student readiness, the homiletics classroom can be a place where this cultivation is significantly deepened and begins to bear fruit. Because a habitus ought to be resilient, in the sense that it contains elements that help with both self-correction and fortification, the notion of practice can supplement my understanding of habitus. Alasdair MacIntyre argues that practices such as teaching, and, I would add, preaching, are more than instrumental activities.30 There are both external and internal goods involved in a practice, and it is the internal goods that fill the practice with meaning and purpose.31 Internal goods are evident in both the excellence of the goods appropriated in the course of the practice, but also in a certain kind of life that points to the integration of the practice in life. These internal goods may serve better to intensify the relationship of the individual to the community of the practice than the external goodsthe actual empirical products or possessions resulting from the practice. However, practices are not arbitrary; they have a history involving the authority of standards that have proven to be trustworthy. This does not mean that they are immune to criticism, but rather that they are first received and then critiqued. A habitus of homiletics relates primarily to internal goods. Therefore, the preacher learns to put received theory into practice with a hermeneutic of temporary trust that may, or may not, lead to lasting trust. This action allows for genuine testing by the church of the theorys trustworthiness in relation to preaching excellence, the quality of preaching life, and congregational life.
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 165 The Community of the Practice Normally, the church will let the preacher know if his or her homiletical theory is healthy through the signs of health in its life together. Feedback from individual listeners, about a sermon, is the most obvious and overt kind of testing. It can be the least reliable but it must be seriously considered. This comes verbally and through body language in and around the worship event, and usually relates to one particular sermon. Another kind of feedback also comes from individuals, but it relates primarily to the person of the preacher (ethos) and to his or her preaching ministry, over time. A third kind of feedback is the mission and ministry of the congregation, again over time. A healthy, mature congregation, active in faith, is an indication that many things are being done well; one of them is likely to be preaching.32 But, finally, the preacher will also know from his or her own praxis, and homiletical theory is a vital part of this. Beyond the fact that it arises from and addresses faith, I have found that an aspect of Wilsons homiletic that gives gospel power to any model or method of preaching, is the way it leads to a correlation of the faith of the preacher and the faith of the church. It correlates our common bad news and the universal good news.33 Further, it is coherent as a correlation of what we do and what God does. The relationship between bad and good, between us and God, or between any two things in relationship, is full of ambiguity and tension, but, by faith we can, and must, reverently risk an attempt to speak Gods Word. The combination of courage and humility that is required for the task can be provided through the spiritual experience of the preacher as he or she values ambiguity and tension in the preparation and preaching of sermons. The things that the preacher is led to think about, pray about, and say to others, can be the mediations through which God comes and speaks to us. These are the things that God puts in our minds and hearts, the things that God allows us to see and hear, for the sake of Gods mission. When a person genuinely experiences the tension between law and gospel, between sin and faith, between light and dark, between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, the joy of the gospel can burst into and out of their life. The experience is sacramental. Homiletically speaking, if a preacher wants to incorporate sacramentality into preaching, he or she must share the experience of meeting Christ in the movement from chaos to order, bondage to deliverance, rebellion to obedience, accusation to vindication, despair to hope, guilt to justification, debt to forgiveness, separation to reconciliation, wrath to love, judgement to forgiveness, defeat to victory, death to life.34 There is a fluidity to the way we listen
166 The Sacramentality of Preaching theologically for the sake of preaching. As Richard Lischer writes, the death of Jesus reveals Gods wrath and Gods love; the call to discipleship both stings and encourages the Christian; the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican sends decidedly mixed messages, depending on the character with whom we identify.35 The heart of Wilsons theory is this tensive gospel dynamic with a long history. The law-gospel, or trouble-grace dynamic is a hermeneutical lens and homiletical tool that has long been a dominant theological theme, as a movement or school, in homiletical literature. It is rooted in Tradition and flows from Scripture. While Wilson does offer a fresh and highly useful model for sermons and a method for preparation, the deep structure part of Wilsons theory offers, not a prescriptive formula for successful preaching, but a kind of phenomenology of law and gospel as a dynamic that works in all Christian preaching.36 For centuries, whether used consciously or not, this dynamic has proven to be very effective as a guide to the vocation of preaching.
Incorporating the Sacramentality of Preaching into the Four Pages

Wilsons homiletic and my use of Chauvets sacramentology combine in several ways to support the four pedagogical intentions offered by the authors of Educating Clergy,
1. Developing in students the facility for interpreting text, situations, and relationships; 2. Nurturing dispositions and habits integral to the spiritual and vocational formation of clergy; 3. Heightened student consciousness of the content and agency of historical and contemporary contexts; 4. Cultivating student performance in clergy roles and ways of thinking.37
Using Wilsons theory as a foundation, I will now indicate where the contributions of the previous chapters, especially as synthesized in Chapter Four, bear homiletical fruit for teaching and preaching. The twofold purposes are to indicate points where the teaching and practice of preaching based on Wilsons theory may be enhanced, and to draw together the accumulated insights about the sacramentality of preaching by showing them in practice.
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 167 An Introductory Course in Homiletics The following is structured according to how I currently teach Homiletics 204, the first of two required Homiletics courses offered in the Master of Divinity program at Huron University College in London Ontario.38 My own version of the Four Pages begins with a sort of underlying grammar for the course syllabus. I begin with a description of four stages of the preaching cycle and repeatedly recapitulate our progress with reference to it. These are four stages of preparation, or four modes in the rhythm of the preaching life: (1) to listen (2) to converse (3) to compose (4) to preach. All four stages involve the preacher in a hermeneutical and homiletical process.39 The first two stages, to listen and to converse, are given extra attention in the course because in the flow of parish life, they tend to be done too quickly, if at all.40 These first two stages will receive slightly more emphasis here because they are the two stages at which the contributions of Chauvet carry the most influence. However, for the sake of completeness, I will also be discussing stages three and four. Stage One of Preparation: To Listen The starting point for preaching is revelation, the disclosure and gift of Gods very self through the Paschal Mystery of Christ, as witnessed to by the scriptures. This cannot be underestimated in its importance for preaching, nor for the health of the church, because a distortion in this starting point is the source of our every ailment. This is how Fleming Rutledge describes the current problem with preaching in mainline Protestant churches,
I believe that the essential problem can be precisely identified in the words of Jesus to the Sadducees: Is not this why you are wrong, that you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God? (Mt. 22:29; Mk. 12:24) Jesus point against the Sadducees is that the power of God is able to create an entirely new reality that transcends all human categories.41
Rutledge argues that this power (and its link with the scriptures) is less heard from mainline pulpits, either as thunder or as a still small voice, because we have largely ceased to believe that God speaks, let alone that God is able to create new realities through speaking.42 She argues that, having been cowed by the liberal intellectual elite into an embarrassed acknowledgment of belief in God (or worse, capitulation to their skepticism), many mainline preachers have
168 The Sacramentality of Preaching turned to an emphasis on spiritualitywhich means an emphasis on anthropology. The subject of these sermons is not God.43 She writes,
We have gradually come to believe that God has no power and has not revealed himself to usOver and over again, for years upon years, I have listened to sermons which begin well but drift off before the end. The staying power is not there. The mighty climax never takes place. Preachers begin promisingly and then the conviction and the narrative force just dribble away. In the final analysis the problem is not rhetorical; it is theological.44
So, from the beginning, we approach the homiletical task theologically. In order to do this in the classroom, I introduce this stage with a lecture-style discussion of revelation that closely follows Stephen Farris first chapter of Preaching That Matters, a book that is required reading, followed by a presentation of Chauvets Paschal Mystery of Christ diagram.45 This introduces a theological starting point for preaching, based on its primary dynamic and theological history. It introduces and begins to answer the question, Why preach? Then, we go straight to the primary witness to this revelation, the Bible. I assume the authority of the Bible as the churchs Sacred Scripture46 and survey the Nine Theses on the Interpretation of Scripture in The Art of Reading Scripture.47 After establishing a conceptual focus on revelation and the sacred scripture as witness, we then approach the actual text by opening ourselves to God. Preachers are sent by the church to prepare a new text based on a sincere love of scripture as witness to God and a trust in the power of God to create new realities today. This is best accomplished when it begins in prayer. Thus, the listening stage always begins with prayer and the use of prayer is modelled in class. Historical models are provided through examples such as the following.
Lord, as I read the psalms let me hear you singing. As I read your words, let me hear you speaking. As I reflect on each page, let me see your image. And as I seek to put your precepts into practice, let my heart be filled with joy. Amen. Gregory of Nazianus (329-389)48 O Creator of the universe, who has set the stars in the heavens and causes the sun to rise and set, shed the light of your wisdom into the darkness of my mind. Fill my thoughts with the loving knowledge of you, that I may bring your light to others. Just as you can make even babies speak your truth, instruct my tongue and guide my pen to convey the wonderful glory of the Gospel. Make my intellect sharp, my memory clear,
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 169
and my words eloquent, so that I may faithfully interpret the mysteries which you have revealed. Amen. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274).49
These prayers open us to revelation and begin the process of listening by guiding and encouraging the preacher to seek God. Homiletical Exegesis: A God-Centred Paradigm Like Chauvet, who insists that presence/absence of Christ is at the centre of Christian life,50 Wilson has made it a priority to put the work of God at the centre of preaching. He has most persistently done this by calling for homiletics to undergo a paradigm shift to put God at the centre of scripture.51 Springing from his study of early and medieval interpretation of scripture, he has helped preachers recover the senses of scripture that focus on God and Gods purposes for humanity and creation. These in turn provide a focus for the preacher through what he calls the God sense of scripture.52 In this perspective, the Historical Critical method, the dominant approach to scripture in recent theological education, is one step toward the goal rather than the goal itself. He writes,
The historical critical method has never been able to account for how the word of God in a previous age is the word of God today, and that can be argued as a basic requirement for a hermeneutical method. If preaching God were placed at the centre of scripture, the goal of the preacher would no longer be a fixed interpretation of the text. The preachers aim would be to develop a fluid relationship with God who acts in particular ways in and behind the biblical text and in our world to reveal divine and human nature and to make all things new. In other words, the authority of scripture would again become the explicit authority of God to speak in the lives of the community of faith.53
Wilson does not pretend that this is an easy shift to make, saying, this can be a frightening notion, for it is easier for humans to talk about texts than it is to talk about God.54 It is also an exciting notion because the preacher is being encouraged to attend to both interpretation and event. In the listening stage, we lean toward the text with the understanding that reading can be an event of God. We open ourselves to a disclosure that can generate new questions, not just answers to old ones. God invites us into Gods world. Historical Criticism has taught us to step back from the text in terms of our spiritual engagement with it. This encourages the preacher to take a step back from reading as an event of encounter.
170 The Sacramentality of Preaching Therefore, I suggest the importance of using all the skills learned in Biblical Studies (primarily Historical Critical skills) at a later stagefor the purpose of testing ourselves for faithful interpretation. Biblical scholarship can be engaged in stage two: to Converse. There, it serves a negative function, it clears away questionable interpretations and it refines earlier questions. However, during this first stage, we step into the text so that we can dwell in it imaginatively, until it dwells in us fully. In the second stage, we then drink the wine of Historical Criticism to the dregs for the sake of imaginative and faithful interpretation. The book The Four Pages of the Sermon offers no exegetical guidelines for preaching because the focus is on deep structure and sermon composition. However, good God-centred exercises for exegesis are found in Wilsons The Practice of Preaching55 and in Stephen Farris Preaching That Matters.56 The key to these questions is their theological focus. The students are encouraged to pray, read their biblical text aloud and then answer the questions without the use of commentaries. The goal is to let the scriptures set the agenda which, by faith, means that we are letting God come to us, and interpret us, through this world of the Bible. As Ellen Davis says, The reward for learning to listen to the Bible on its own terms is that a more spacious world opens to us.57 This accords well with Chauvets desire to let the mediations of the church, scripture included, allow entry into something. We do not grasp and control meaning when we listen, rather, are invited into a possible world. Stage Two of Preparation: To Converse Once we have made every attempt to listen, we acknowledge that we cannot totally put aside all that we bring to the reading of scripture for preaching. The layers of presupposition and the impulsive responses combine to reveal our biases and preferences. However, the conversation with scripture has already begun in a more positive way as well. It is important to be quiet before we speak and to consciously or actively listen, but we listen in order to speak. Moreover, we are called and gifted for the ministry of bringing various voices together in a conversation. Our own voice is a large part of this exchange or interaction we call conversation. Therefore, it is important to leave time in the process for God to speak through the experience of life and for us to respond through a relationship with the elements around us. Barbara Brown Taylor puts it in the following words:
Once I have done my homework and have a decent idea what the text means, I give it a rest. Understanding is not enough. I do not want to pass on knowledge from the pul-
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 171
pit; I want to take part in an experience of Gods living word, and that calls for a different kind of research. It is time to tuck the text into the pocket of my heart and walk around with it inside me. It is time to turn its words and images loose on the events of my everyday life and see how they mixall the parts of preaching can be taught: exegesis, language, metaphor, development, delivery. What is hard to teach is how to put them all together, so that what is true is also beautiful, and evocative, and alive.58
This second stage is about how it all mixes together theologically, or how all the voices combine into a conversation. There are many homiletical theories that suggest conversation as a collaborative approach to preaching sermons,59 but the conversing that I refer to in this stage is all done in preparation, or pre-composition. The conversation at this stage accomplishes two things: it sets free our own theological imagination and it generates imagination and faithfulness through a dialogue with the various authorities. This stage values experience, our own, and the experience of the church through the ages, and today.60 Wilson acknowledges this as an important part of the hermeneutical process. It provides a key step for opening the possibility of moving beyond explaining the text, and into the realm where sacramentality flourishes. These exercises Wilson calls concerns of the text and concerns of the sermon; they are at the heart of the preachers task.61 Homiletical Theology: Focussing on an Action of God The process of coming to concerns of the text/sermon is similar to the process of creating a spark of energy between two electrical poles, or a spark of imagination between two individual words, phrases or ideas.62 The difference is that, here, the focus is on the juxtaposition of groups of words, or short phrases from the biblical text, with connected, but not identical, phrases from our situation. In the transposition a third identity may be produced as a spark of imagination that can lead to the essential meaning of the sermon.63 In my experience, the two most fruitful steps for beginning preachers are found in this process of coming up with concerns of the text (ex. 7.1 and 7.2) and transposing them to our situation (ex. 8:1). It is also helpful to use Wilsons theological inversion exercise (ex. 7:3) in order to balance the focus, or find a focus, on judgement (trouble) and/or grace.64 When the students submit themselves to this process, they tend to come alive with excitement for preaching. I say submit themselves to the process because, initially, there is a general resistence to the slow pace and the tension involved in it. As I wrote earlier,
172 The Sacramentality of Preaching during the process of sermon preparation the preacher must experience the tension! For some students, the homiletics classroom can be a hive of anxiety and nervous tension and their energy must be calmed and focussed into a creative tension. Natural intuitive leaps in the processes must be slowed and steps toward creativity and imagination must become conscious, so that they can be followed sequentially and repeated. For other students, often quite intelligent ones, the problem is the opposite; there is nothing but a blank page and a blank mind. For them, tension must be generated. This is done by pulling apart the poles when they are touching, or, alternatively, bringing them into proper proximity for relationship and spark. All preachers, at one time or another, experience both of these extremes. Thus, it is useful to cast this goal (experience the tension!) early in the process. We actually want to get frustrated and have breakthroughs. Demonstrating this is a risk for the instructor who will also feel the tension as the process occurs in the classroom. However, the creative process usually involves making a mess and then cleaning it up. Nothing replaces demonstration for making this point with the students. Up to this point, the various exercises simply create what one student called a rats nest of ideas. This is a good term for it and it is a good way to leave it for a while. If the preacher allows for it, time, prayer, and some theological brooding will help when we return to the preparation process to sort out the mess. Labelling Concerns, Sorting Out to Pages, and Theological Intervention The rats nest of ideas starts to take on meaningful shape when the concerns of the text/sermon are each assigned a theological label, T (trouble), G (Grace) or N (Neutral).65 The students are given a one-page handout with four columns corresponding to the Four Pages. Each phrase then can be assigned a place in one of the columns. A concern that is from the text and functions theologically as trouble, goes to Page One. A concern of the sermon (this is a concern involving our situation, or our world) that functions as trouble, goes to Page Two. A concern of the text that functions as grace, goes to Page Three. And a concern of the sermon that functions as grace, goes to Page Four. Here we note that, once all of the concerns are sorted out, there may be some blank spots. These are not a problem yet, and they may even suggest the places where fresh insight will occur.66 Once again, students are encouraged to let this initial, skeleton outline sit for a while. When the preacher comes back to it, he or she is ready to do a final
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 173 step in the stage to converse, a step that serves to deepen, clarify, and unify the sermon. These concepts are helpful for strengthening the preachers conception of grace. Preachers who use the Four Pages as a theological structure for preaching will be required to have a robust, and nuanced, understanding of trouble and grace. Even though Wilson clearly defines and distinguishes between trouble and grace, pointing out the relationship between the two,67 and despite excellent advice designed to avoid common problems in preaching grace,68 students still tend to gain a clearer understanding of trouble than of grace. Insights from Chapter Three can provide an additional way to deepen the students understanding and experience of grace. There is no attempt to explain grace. However, with new categories and language at his or her disposal, the beginning preacher finds help for thinking about it. A second place where my adaptation of Chauvets theory has improved the use of Wilsons theory, pertains to the quest for unity, depth, and clarity in a sermon. Because this stems primarily from Chapter Four and my adaptation of Chauvets diagram, it is reproduced here for convenience.
Diagram 6. The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching69
Insights from this conception of preaching can be applied to the use of The Tiny Dog Now Is Mine (TTDNIM).70 For example, the creative tension between the poles SCR and SAC can provide a perspective for reflecting upon
174 The Sacramentality of Preaching the ways that Doctrine relates to Need. By the end of Page Two, in a Four Page sermon, the listeners should have a very clear idea about what the trouble in the Bible is (Page One), and how some version of that same trouble, is also our trouble (Page Two). This trouble should be felt deeply, with both the nod and the shock of recognition that Gods judgement revealed this trouble, or need. By the end of Page Two, the need for Gods grace must be clear. Then, on Page Three, the preacher declares Gods gracious action in a God-sentence (Major Concern of the Text) like, God interrupts his own wrath with his own love. The preacher talks about what God did in the text to address the trouble in the text. The listeners, however, are already anticipating Page Four and the ways in which the preacher will talk about how God addresses their trouble (Major Concern of the Sermon). The key here is for the preacher to acknowledge that both proclamation and sacramentality are at play and that, while talking about what God has done or will do, the preacher can lead the congregation in believing that God might be doing these things even now. When this belief is part of the preacher, the words will come out with an immediacy, authenticity and eventfulness that might otherwise never be attained. This is a likely place for the transition (or a glimpse of the transition) between the activities proclamation and sacramentality in the sermon, a transition between the activities associated with the pole SCR and the pole SAC. However, this potentially sacramental moment can be undermined by saying something about God that does not correspond to the Need. Therefore, the preacher will take great care to analyse the Doctrine involved for its coherence with the Need.71 Students are encouraged to spend twenty minutes with a good Introduction to Theology textbook, in order to check the correspondence of Doctrine and Need. The additional benefit is that this often provides a refined theological pathway for thinking the sermon, and speaking it. Doctrine is of primary importance for helping to clarify and deepen our preaching and preachers must learn to interpret life according to it. R.E.C. Browne writes, It is not that doctrine is supremely important and that life proves its importance; it is that life is supremely important and doctrine illuminates it.72 A life of need is illumined, by doctrine, with knowledge of God Another place where my modified diagram can contribute to the use of TTDNIM, can be found in relation to Mission. The tensions, between the poles SCR and ETH, and SAC and ETH, open two perspectives for avoiding moralism and strengthening what Wilson teaches about joyful Mission. For example, if a text is interpreted conceptually as a promise of God (SCR), and it is received,
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 175 believed, and trusted as a divine promise in the present (SAC), it will make a difference in how we live now (ETH). Even though the promise is to be realized in the future, it makes a difference now. This points to how a mission can be joyful. Our mission is a response to the grace that opens up a future, a grace that opens us to hope. The key to having joy in the mission is to avoid casting the listeners back on their own resources to create this future. We respond to Gods future. This can be encouraged by removing all conditionals and speaking in the indicative mood to strengthen grace, especially near the end of a sermon, where Mission is most clearly articulated. These are a few of the ways that my diagram, in Chapter Four, contributes as a theological and liturgical checklist before moving on to sermon composition. Stage Three of Preparation: To Compose Up to this point in sermon preparation, nothing about the final wording of the sermon has been decided. However, if the sermon had to be preached at that very moment, the sorted out, Four Page point-form outline would provide a skeleton upon which the preacher and the Holy Spirit could put flesh. Of course, this is a risky proposition because images need to be tested and sifted for effectiveness, and language needs to be honed for optimal hearing and understanding. Beyond this, the actual process of sermon composition and editing ought to take time. When any of the first three stages are rushed, preaching starts to get thin. However, the outline will give the preacher confidence that the sermon holds together, even before it is composed. This stage of preparation involves the production of a script. Here, the preacher can learn from the novelist or poet. We do not imitate the novelist or poet as much as we, get ideas of how to bring that amazing intersection of the ordinary and the astonishing together.73 We learn from them because they are good at showing us real things, as they are happening, with language that evokes a world of meaning. Preaching is always show-and-tell time and showing is at least as important as telling. The script can also be written for use in a way similar to the way a script is used in the performance of a play. There is improvisation and different contexts will lead to slightly different renderings,74 but, generally speaking, the performance remains faithful to the script. We have prayed that the Holy Spirit would move in the production of it. Therefore the Holy Spirit may have a stake in it and may have plans to use it in a particular way. While the script is used like the script of a play, the process of writing it is
176 The Sacramentality of Preaching more like the production of a film. Films can be cut and edited. Films can move, and jump locations, in a way that a play cannot. Flashbacks can often help us to better understand current situations. These are some of the reasons why Wilsons image of filming for sermon composition is helpful. However, in teaching preaching I do not insist on the strict use of this filming mode for student sermons. Some student preachers run with it and do wonderfully well. Others can go too far. Still others cannot seem to make it anything more than an exercise. Therefore, I teach the approach as a concept for making decisions about narrative detail, perspective, focus, and dialogue. These four considerations function well to guide composition and, together with the knowledge that after the sermon is preached the instructor will ask the class what did you see?, preachers tend to compose with sensory language and keen timing. At this point in the class, the Four Pages have already functioned to organize the filmed script of the sermon. From the beginning, the theological dynamics of the grammar both fund and found the sermon. Together with a balanced naming-and-narrating style of language, these theological girders for the sermon open a space for light and life in the hearing of the Word. The space is filled by the movement to faith. The final step in this stage is the simultaneous process of final editing and practising the sermon aloud. The preacher is listening for the sound of his or her own voice as it will be heard by worshippers. It is the appointed time for worship that deems the sermon ready to be released to the Spirit, who will do what the Spirit wills with the preacher and congregation, as they are open to the Spirit.75 Stage Four: To Preach (and to Listen again) Some students are surprised that their course in introductory Homiletics incorporates no training in speech, oratory, or any other communication skills for public speaking. This is because I believe that effective delivery of the sermon is a function of the preachers faithful desire to say what he or she has prepared to say. The preacher who bears the most important news in the world will be heard. Good delivery is first and foremost a product of deep faith. This is the only proper way to be impressive in the pulpit. The goal of the preacher is not to become the focus of the congregations gaze, but to provide focus for their gazing on God in Christ.76 Therefore, I do not stress speaking skills unless they are completely absent, and the only instruction on
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 177 sermon delivery, in the first course, is implicit in the three stages of preparation.77 However, this does not mean that the actual preaching of the sermon is unimportant. This book has been an attempt to use theory that informs and sensitizes preachers to the liturgical environment because it is so important. We are encountered by Christ there. The revelation of our identity in Christ happens there. We are sent in joyful mission from there. Our whole existence becomes properly Christian there. Preaching guides these happenings. This whole Christian life, including preaching, is only possible because of Jesus. His preaching, combined with the rest of his life, fully became gospel only through his death and resurrection. His real presence now is also known as an absence, and we await his coming again. In the meantime, his Holy Spirit comes to animate us in proclamation and sacramentality. During this time between Ascension and Parousia, proclamation and sacramentality are just two of the many sets of poles that exist together and in relationship. The time of the church is ambivalenttwo things are strongly true, death and resurrection. Therefore, the preacher always speaks two words. As Frederick Buechner puts it,
the preacher speaks both the word of tragedy and the word of comedy because they are both of them the truth and because Jesus speaks them both, blessed be he. The preacher tells the truth by speaking of the visible absence of God because if he doesnt see and own up to the absence of God in the world, then he is the only one there who doesnt see it, and who then is going to take him seriously when he tries to make real what he claims also to see as the invisible presence of God in the world? Sin and grace, absence and presence, tragedy and comedy, they divide the world between them and where they meet head on, the Gospel happens.78
The preacher seeks to have the gospel happen. Consequently, he or she stands to take that place in the midst of the church, providing guidance for the continual coming-to-faith, and leadership for the preaching mission.
Summary of Book
In Chapter One, we saw some highlights in the development of sacramental ways to think about homiletics. The value of thinking this way is, in part, to assure that our preaching has sufficient focus on the action of God and human response. Proposals in the Protestant churches that argued in favour of preaching, understood as a sacramental act, were responding to a tendency, at the
178 The Sacramentality of Preaching time, to devalue the sermon in favour of liturgical progress. It was also an attempt to move forward from a very strong Neo-orthodox influence and theology of the Word. In the Roman Catholic church, the authors we surveyed struggled to move, beyond a strong Neo-Scholastic framework, toward a heightened awareness of the Word, especially in the liturgical homily. The underlying critique, throughout the chapter, was that many of these authors rely heavily on notions of instrumentalityan objective view of the production of grace, or a narrow channelling of grace through a minister who acts as intermediary. The direction of travel for this grace through Word and Sacrament varied in its emphasis but the minister was still seen, functionally, as mediator. All of these ideas converged and coalesced around the time of Vatican II. Through the 1970s and early 1980s, sacramental/liturgical theologians, like Chauvet, made their early proposals in an earnest attempt to address these ecumenical developments and to contend with post-modern theories. Simultaneously, the New Homiletic took off on the strength of some similar developments and needs of the church. We left this survey at the early point of both of these movements about 1970. All of this shows the background and need for Chauvets theory. In Chapter Two, we saw three unfolding stages of Chauvets theory. First, we noted his theological starting point: a focus on God through his emphasis on the Trinity and the whole Paschal Mystery of Christ. Among other things, this puts God firmly at the centre of our relationship with scripture and it suggests an Easter/Ascension/Pentecost hermeneutic for our preaching. It also emphasises that we live between Ascension and Parousia in the time of the church. With this properly theological starting point, I began by asking Chauvets preferred questions. He does not begin by asking how God works through preaching and sacrament, but rather, by asking questions of Gods identity and mission. What kind of God is revealed in Jesus Christ? Why does God want to work through various mediations? What are the purposes of God? The next part of Chapter Two followed Chauvet through his move from instrument to mediation in our understanding of language. This led to a focus on Gods relations with humankind through various mediations, especially the Christian mediationthe culture and language of the church. With Chauvet, we then considered the question, how does this God relate to us? We then considered his answer, through language and symbol. This latter requires our consent to mediation through the efficacy of speech, and it emphasises relations rather than objects. Illocutionary and perlocutionary linguistic modes were deemed to
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 179 be most akin to the activity of the Holy Spirit in language acts, especially preaching. This was followed by a description of Chauvets turn to the churchthe language and culture of the churchwhere sacramentality is expressed and celebrated and the world is understood as the possible place of sacramentality. With Chauvet I asked, What is mediated? Our identity in Christ. Where? Within the language and culture of the church. Chauvet offers a diagrammatic structure for understanding the milieu of Christian existence, and he shows how that milieu acts as a revelatory and operative mediation for the exchange between God and humanity. Chapter Two concluded with a focus on the place of preaching in the church, where I suggested that the conceptual place of preaching can be conceived of as being in the middle of the structure, within the triangle maintained by the poles or marks of Christian Identity (SCR, SAC, ETH). Preaching exists in the space made for faith. In Chapter Three, the focus shifted to finding a hermeneutic of grace and to using Symbolic Exchange as an analogy for communication between God and humankind. Using the categories of Mary Catherine Hilkerts theology of preaching, we assessed the merits of Chauvets theory for preaching grace and found that it helpfully incorporates both the dialectic imagination and the sacramental imagination. We also noted how Chauvet helps us to avoid any conception that might position the preacher in a totally objective place when naming grace. While appreciating Hilkert, I suggested that preachers can think of the task not only as naming grace, (pointing to grace from a position outside of language), but also as narrating grace, (showing grace in action where it can be recognized and anticipated as part of life). Chapter Three concluded with a move to the functioning of Chauvets structurean economy of graceand a theological assessment of his gift-reception-return gift model for Symbolic Exchange. Chapter Four related all of the previous discussion to homiletics. In an adapted version of Chauvets diagram of Christian Identity, liturgical preaching was conceived from a place in the middle of the triangle maintained by the poles SCR, SAC, and ETH.79 The preachers role is like that of guide, in the midst of the congregation, in the midst of the language and culture of the church, moving with the congregation through their common identity in Christ. The continuing passage to faith was the primary purpose of the movement, and Gods promise of reconciliation was the end-hope and goal. The concep-
180 The Sacramentality of Preaching tion was then assessed with respect to its place in relation to recent theologies of preaching. The theology of preaching that developed from Chauvets sacramentology was categorized as an ecclesial event of encounter with the triune God: an event that is simultaneously informative, performative, and transformative. This discussion was followed by some general concepts to which the preacher must attend in order to increase the emphasis on the sacramentality of preaching. Finally, the three poles, SRC, SAC, and ETH, were each examined to discern what the preacher and congregation might gain from the perspective provided by that pole, by the activity attracted there and by the interaction between the poles. General guidelines were then proposed for the work of sermon preparation and preaching with respect to each pole, and with respect to the tension experienced between the poles. In this, the closing chapter, I have pointed to some of the ways that this proposal can make a positive difference in preaching, in the teaching of preaching and, consequently, in how preaching is learned. I have emphasized that both Chauvet and Wilson have designed frameworks that are explicitly theological, and that their theory is most useful at the level of grammarin the structure-ofrelations that they propose. What is offered in my adaptation of Chauvet combines well with Wilsons theory and, together, they offer homiletics the option of a spatial, dynamic, theologically tensive structure. I have, then, suggested that these structures are worth learning because of the influence they have on our habitus of homiletics as it relates to the practice of the church. Finally, I have described a process that can help develop that habitus, while it leads preachers through the preparation and production of sermons. As a whole, this book may be summarized as an attempt to harvest ideas from two related fields in order to encourage a new discussion relating to how these conceptions might be united into a habitus of homiletics for liturgical/sacramental preaching. This habitus must relate primarily to the internal goods of the practices of the church. Therefore, I have made an attempt through the door of ecclesiology. The practice of preaching, again following MacIntyre, refers to preaching as an established, cooperative Christian activity through which goods internal to preaching are realized in the course of its operation. These goods are the goods of God. Unlike MacIntyres external goods which, when achieved, are always some individuals property and possession, the internal goods of preaching increase and expand as they are achievedtheir achievement is a good for the whole community which participates in the practice. This is why preachers, who continually, faithfully, and
The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson 181 imaginatively develop the practice of preaching, will find that the faithfulness of their preaching ministry will increase. We now live in the time between Ascension and Parousia, where preaching and sacraments exist together in the grace and promises of God. Any attempt to establish and follow standards of excellence in this practice of preaching will be appreciated by the church. Yet, like the life of the church itself, preaching excellence must come from faith, move by faith, and move toward faith. Preaching is rooted in a cry of surprise and wonder at the news of a risen Christ, and its end is found in the Amen at the centre of God, where we will find all things reconciled in God.
NOTES
Chapter One Sacramental Ways of Thinking About Homiletics

Thomas G. Long. Theology of Preaching, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, ed. Alister E. McGrath (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993), 461 2 The dictum Fides quarens intellectum (faith seeking understanding) is usually attributed to Anselm (1033-1109). In his Proslogion,Chapter 1, he writes, I do not endeavor, O Lord, to penetrate thy sublimity, for in no wise do I compare my understanding with that; but I long to understand in some degree thy truth, which my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand that I may believe, but I believe in order to understand. For this also I believe, -that unless I believed, I should not understand. http://www.netlibrary.com/Reader/ The notion is biblical, it can be found in Augustines sermons, especially Sermon 68 on the New Testament http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/htm, it was strongly held by Karl Barth, Anselm : Fides quaerens intellectum : Anselms proof of the existence of God in the context of his theological scheme (London : S. C. M. Press, 1960) and it shapes this work. 3 A renewed emphasis on ecclesiology as the starting point has been described as one of the more promising developments in the theology of preaching. Thomas Long writes, this approach offers the possibility of harmony between the dogmatic and practical approaches to the theology of preaching. Thomas G. Long. Theology of Preaching, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, 465-466. 4 Rowan Williams, On Christian Theology (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000), xii. 5 While my proposal for increased emphasis on the sacramentality of preaching is designed to draw the worshiping church more deeply into participation in the sacraments, it is also designed to draw the church more deeply into Scripture and the whole life of faith where we can find ourselves participating in sacramentality everywhere. This is to distinguish it from Mystagogical Preaching which is preaching on the sacraments. Mystagogical preaching is closer to thematic preaching where the topic of the sermon is explicitly related to one of the sacraments, usually Baptism, Confirmation, or Eucharist. The instructional tone flows from the previous three stages of the Catechumenate and intends to evoke, clarify and enlarge the hearers understanding of the sacraments they have just received. The sacramentality of preaching by contrast refers to a quality of preaching that may never explicitly mention the sacraments but, rather, it is shaped by a focus on the dynamic structure underlying those privileged expressions we call the sacraments. This quality in preaching may evoke, clarify and enlarge the hearers cognitive understanding of the sacraments, but this not the primary goal, and it is only part of the task. The primary task of liturgical preaching reaches further; it also has aims beyond cognitive understandingto the recognition of Christs presence/absence, and the assent to Gods activity in our lives as expressed in the sacraments. Emphasis on the sacramentality of preaching will help preachers raise these further aims, and demonstrating some uses of this dynamic structure and quality is the burden of this work. For an extended study of Mystagogical Preaching see Craig A. Satterlee,. Ambrose of Milans Method of Mystagogical Preaching (Collegeville: Pueblo/Liturgical Press, 2002) esp. p. 145. Also, Craig A. Satterlee and Ruth Lester, Creative Preaching On the Sacraments (Nashville: Discipleship Resources, 2001). 6 The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th ed., s.v. catalyst.
1

An example of a moment where evidence of this modification and increase in reaction may be found is in the response of the listener to what is known at the end of a sermon. There is a great difference between the response, Ah, now I know this or that! Thank you preacher. and the response, Ah, now I am redeemed! Thank you God. The responder to a proposition about God can only affirm or deny agreement with the speaker. The responder to a redeeming encounter with God is a new creation. Both responses are necessary and may be considered two levels of response to two poles found in preaching. 8 Specifically, in the case of liturgical preaching, this refers to human beings involved in the act of Christian worship. 9 Awareness is one goal of proclamation and it is both a prerequisite and a result of sacramentality. It is a key element in preaching, but it is not the final purpose of preaching. Thomas G. Long in his description of the preacher as witness asserts that the witness must both see something and say something, that the preacher must both perceive and testify, and that the preacher must become aware of some event and must make others aware of that event. Thomas G. Long. The Witness of Preaching (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989), 78. Longs description is very helpful in that it aids our understanding of the transition from being a witness to bearing witness (p. 79). But I would like to focus and extend the discussion of this image for preaching (witness), or any other image, by asking for what purpose and according to what theological criteria? This question might come after Long writes, The one who has been sent to Scripture on behalf of the people and encountered firsthand the claims of the text now turns to tell the truth about what has been experienced (p. 79). The preacher does this so that people will be aware of the truth? Yes, but not only that. We also turn to tell because of the experience itself and the need for it to be shared. We make claims (the message) because we have been claimed (the intention)(p. 85). Therefore, we speak with the hope that people will have a similar experience of God in an encounter of judgement and grace, and similarily be claimed. Then they can become witnesses too, to the reconciling, redeeming power of that encounter. Long is keenly interested in the generation of experience, and he is aware of what I am noting here, as the discussion of Fred Craddock that follows indicates (p. 80-82). Further, Long (following David Kelsey) speaks of how the goal of the preacher is guided by the idea that the biblical text actively shapes Christian identity. Like the text, the sermon is to say things and do things too. (p. 84). Homiletically, Long refers to these two tasks as focus (what the preacher says, what the sermon is about) and function (what the sermon does, or what it causes to happen in the hearer that leads to formation or transformation.)(p. 88). It is the combination of the awareness of Gods judgement and grace and the experience of it that makes formation and transformation possible. This is part of the reason for my emphasis on the combination of proclamation and sacramentality. 10 Paul Janowiak S.J., is one writer who speaks of liturgical proclamation as a sacramental act, and refers to the two primary actions of worship using the terms sacramentality and proclamation. Janowiak is arguing for a similar understanding of the sacramentality of the Word but in a different way. Paul Janowiak, The Holy Preaching: The Sacramentality of the Word in the Liturgical Assembly (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 2000) especially Chapter 2. 11 Louis-Marie Chauvet, Du symbolique au symbole: Essai sur les sacraments (Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1979). Louis-Marie Chauvet, O.P., has been teaching sacramental theology at lInstitut catholique in Paris since 1974, and is a parish priest in the diocese of Luon. His work has been a significant contribution to theology, providing a fresh and innovative sacramentology under a general theology of sacramentality. Chauvets theory is based, in part, on the efficacy of speech, and as a whole, it provides pathways, frameworks, and language for an understanding of word and sacrament that can be adapted well to homiletics. As indicated in the title of this book, his work is the primary resource being used in what follows. 12 Thomas H. Keir., The Word in Worship: Preaching and its Setting in Common Worship (London: Oxford University Press, 1962), 35, 36-37.
7
Notes 185
13 Richard 14
Lischer, A Theology of Preaching: the Dynamics of the Gospel (Durham: Labyrinth, 1992), 13. Karl Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel, trans. B.E. Hooke (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1963), 1228, found in The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present,. ed. Richard Lischer (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2002), 429, 431. 15 Properly understood in the context of Sixteenth Century reforms, sola scriptura is a rejection of the idea that revelation is given apart from Scripture, and a rejection of the church as the supreme interpreter of Scripture. Sola scriptura is the insistence that Scripture itself is its own best interpreter and that Scripture directs the churchs interpretation. 16 Properly understood, the phrase ex opere operato (through the performance of the work) expresses the belief that sacraments are the acts of God not of human beings, and that grace is conferred as the sacrament is performed in the church. The contrasting term ex opere operantis implies that the efficacy of the sacrament depends on the minister or the recipient. 17 This analogy is used to describe how the spark of imagination functions in Paul Scott Wilson, Imagination of the Heart: New Understandings in Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1988), 33-48. 18 A phrase used in R.E.C. Browne, The Ministry of the Word (London: SCM Press, 1958), 116. 19 Recent Homiletical Thought: A Bibliography 1935-1965, ed. W. Toohey and W. D. Thompson (Nashville: Abingdon, 1967) and Recent Homiletical Thought: An Annotated Bibliography 1936-1979, ed. A.D. Litfin and H.W. Robinson (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1983). 20 John A. Broadus, A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons, ed. Charles Edwin, Hodder Dargan (New York: Stoughton, 1898), 2. 21 Ibid., 3. 22 Ibid., 511, 512. 23 Ibid., 529. emphasis mine. 24 Ibid., 511. Although Christians of all stripes have done it, idealizing New Testament or early church worship has seldom been helpful to the church. 25H. Grady Davis, Design For Preaching (Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958), 15. 26 Ibid., 1. quoting Socrates in Plato Phaedrus. 27 Ibid. p. v. Davis was the first to articulate the ideas in a textbook, but this living relationship type-of-thinking had been brewing for a while. Flowing from the work of Karl Barth, C. H. Dodd, and especially Martin Buber, Herbert H. Farmer published his Warrack lectures in 1942 as The Servant of the Word. This publication precedes our time frame, but it may be counted as an eloquent and influential assessment of preaching as sacrament, and the personal (I-Thou) encounter that is an essential mediation of Gods encounter with humanity. Herbert H. Farmer, The Servant of the Word (London: Nisbet & Co., 1942), 27-31, 35-92. 28 Davis, Design For Preaching, v. 29 Ibid., vi. 30 Davis does not suggest breaking all homiletical rules. If it is a good sermon, it does not break good rules; it breaks only the unnecessary and artificial rules. ibid., 9. He also speaks against following the rule without knowing why ibid., 46. 31 Ibid., vi. 32 Davis strongly argues for a form-follows-function approach in order to better accomplish the purpose of preaching. Yet on the question of purpose, he writes that he cannot undertake a comprehensive discussion of that question. ibid., 99. In his chapters on functional forms and organic forms, elements of his underlying theology of preachingthe nature, aims and purposes of preachingconstantly bubble to the surface. Ibid.,. 98-162. 33 Davis refers to baptism and the communion loaf and cup in the early church as visible manifestations of the new existence, itself the tremendous mystery, manifestations through which new creation and new life took recognizable form. ibid., 123, 124. This new existence did not come about by means of the sacraments, but by the action of God when one heard and believed the gospel. ibid., 124. This is related to preaching only in the sense that Davis is

discussing how teaching, didache, is relevant only to believers, and one enters faith by hearing and believing. This is prior to any recognizable manifestation in the form of sacraments. Davis seems to be saying that sacraments are revelatory of a prior re-birth, and in themselves are not operative. 34 W.E. Sangster, The Craft of the Sermon (London: The Epworth Press, 1954), 11. 35 Ibid., 3. 36 Ibid., 3. 37 Ibid., 4. 38 Ibid., 20. 39 Ibid., 6. 40 It may be of interest to note that many of the publications that follow come from lecture-events on Preaching. It may be that most of our contemporary theologies of preaching are developed by these necessarily shorter, public utterances that rise out of the concerns of the day, rather than in long, systematic dissertations designed to be used as text. 41 Macleod, Donald, Word and Sacrament: A Preface to Preaching and Worship (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1960), vii. See also Reginald H. Fuller, What is Liturgical Preaching? (London: SCM Press, 1957), 16. who quotes an Irish journalist reporting on a church service in the following terms: The Curate having finished the preliminaries, the Rector delivered himself of an eloquent discourse. (!) 42 Ibid., vii. 43 Henry Sloane Coffin, Communion Through Preaching: The Monstrance of the Gospel (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1952). 44 Ibid., vii. 45 Ibid., vii. 46 Coffins use of the term monstrance (a vessel in which the consecrated bread or the Host is exposed for adoration) in his title as a metaphor for preaching is an example. This reinforces his efforts to restore sacramental preaching by imagining the preacher setting forth Christ in the monstrance of the preached Gospel. He attributes the use of monstrance in this way to Carnegie Simpson, ibid., 5. Sangster would also use this term for preaching, referring to it as the monstrance of the evangel it is the showing forth of the Reigning Christ. in Sangster, The Craft of the Sermon, 4. This term is provocative in the sense that many members of Reformed churches would view the liturgical use of the monstrance as a shocking error. See Keir, The Word in Worship, 136, 137. 47 Coffin, Communion Through Preaching: The Monstrance of the Gospel, vii. 48 Ibid., 2. 49 Ibid., 1. 50 Ibid., 3. Within this appeal to Reformation and Enlightenment ideals, there are also signs of what we might now call a post-modern homiletic which moves beyond the obsessions of Modernity. Coffin speaks clearly of the optimism in which he was reared which believed so strongly in progress. The deity of the western world, that on which it relied confidently, was progress. Loss of this deity puts us in a much better position to understand the hope of the Gospel. ibid.., 47 ff. It is this concern for a living gospel of hope that seems to underlie these 1951 lectures. 51 Ibid., 28. 52 Ibid., 124. 53 David E. Babin, Week In - Week Out: A New Look at Liturgical Preaching (New York: Seabury Press, 1976), 55, 56. 54 Fuller, What is Liturgical Preaching? 55 William H. Nes, Liturgical Preaching in Anglican Theological Review Vol. 28, no. 3 (1956) : 201.
Notes 187
Out of the many sources one could cite on this point Fuller chose to quote Karl Barth, The Knowledge of God and the Service of God (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938), 211, quoted in Fuller, What is Liturgical Preaching?, 13, where Barth writes, What we know today as the church service in Roman Catholicism and in Protestantism is a torso. The Roman Catholic Church has a sacramental service without preaching. But I wish to speak at the moment not for or against her, but about our own Protestant Church. We have a service with a sermon but without sacraments. Both types of service are impossible. 57 This may be considered part of the growing consensus (among those in favour of liturgical renewal!) that celebration of the Eucharist be restored to its place as the specifically Christian worship on the Lords Day. 58 Fuller, What is Liturgical Preaching?, 53, 54. 59 Ibid., 22. 60 Ibid., 55. 61 Ibid., 22. Fuller uses a third heading, didache to name the instruction of the new converts and of the already baptized in Christian ethics and doctrine. These three headings are types of ministry of the Word discernable in the New Testament. ibid., 22 see also C.H. Dodd The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936). For a definition of paraklesis as summoning a helper, the helper being the Holy Spirit, parakletos, see H.G. Davis, Design for Preaching, 127-130. 62 Ibid., 51. 63 Fuller does not suggest however, that the action of the ordained is paramount. A response of faith is the true action of the sermon. The sermon must lead to a responsive action on the part of the congregation and the immediate aim of the sermon is proclamation and the response of faith. ibid. 52, 53. This intended response is in contrast to teaching in the sermon whose aim is to secure understanding of the doctrinal, ethical and devotional implications involved in that response of faith. ibid., 53. 64 Ibid., 21. 65 Ibid., 21. The Godward act referred to here is the prayerful thanksgiving and praise addressed to God the Father. 66 Ibid., 50. 67 Ibid., 10. 68 Ibid., 11. 69 Ibid., 11. See also H.G. Davis, Design for Preaching, 130-137, for a discussion of this form of preaching. Davis affirms that the substance - the gospel, kerygma - remains the same within each form. Davis, Design for Preaching, 108. 70 Ibid., 12. 71 Ibid., 22. 72 Fuller, What is Liturgical Preaching?, 23. 73 Ibid., 9. 74 Donald Macleod, Word and Sacrament. 75 Ibid., 8. 76 Ibid., 7. 77 Ibid., 9. 78 Ibid., 12. 79 Paul, Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951; reprint, London: James Nisbet & Co Ltd., 1968), 67-73. 80 Macleod, Word and Sacrament, viii. 81 Ibid., 13. 82 Ibid., 95, 96.
56

83 Ibid., 84 Ibid.,
13. 15. 85 Ibid., 97. 86 Ibid., 98, quoting General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Gods Will in Our Time, (:SCM Press, 1942) 87 Keir, The Word in Worship. 88 Ibid., v. 89 Ibid., v. 90 Ibid., 1. 91 Ibid., vi. 92 Ibid., 3. 93 Ibid., 121. 94 Ibid., 121,122. 95 Ibid., 123. 96 Ibid., 123. 97 Ibid., 126. 98 Macleod had already written in a similar way In Reformed worship the saving Christ is proclaimed through the Word, both preached and acted visibly in the Sacraments in Word and Sacrament, viii. This modal perspective is analogous to other moves away from dualism, like the attempts to move away from the science/religion dichotomy. The conflict between two polarities is recast as a creative-tension-with-a-purpose. If we resist conceiving everything as a duel of dualism, we may see that word and sacrament, or science and religion, need one another in order to be true, and are only true when they are animated by a single life forcewhat the faithful may call the Eternal Word. Teilhard de Chardin writes, After close on two centuries of passionate struggle, neither science nor faith has succeeded in discrediting its adversary. On the contrary it is becoming obvious that neither can develop normally without the other. And the reason is simple: the same life animates both. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Let Me Explain, trans. Rene Hague (London: Collins, 1970), 87. 99 Keir, The Word in Worship, 127. 100 J.-J. von Allmen, Preaching and Congregation, trans. B.L. Nicholas (London: Lutterworth Press, 1962), 7. 101 Ibid., 8. 102 Ibid., 40. 103 Ibid., 40. 104 Ibid., 8, 12. 105 Ibid., 15. 106 This critique is informed by Louis-Marie Chauvets critique of common (mis)understandings in the field of sacramental theology. It stems from his asking the following question when attempting to comprehend grace, Why did the Scholastics single out for privileged consideration the category cause? Louis-Marie Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, Collegeville MN: Pueblo Publishing, The Liturgical Press, 1995. [1987 Fr.]. p. 7. Using the category of cause-effect (or instrumental causality in Aquinas) for the means of grace has many limitations. Not the least is that it puts the means of grace in a position of producing grace, or as Chauvet puts it, this image has the disadvantage of suggesting the idea of quasi automatic production, as long as the instrument is properly utilized by the minister. Louis-Marie Chauvet, The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body (Collegeville MN.: The Liturgical Press, 1997), xiv. Chauvets project is largely an attempt to offer a more fitting analogy and structure. See especially Symbol and Sacrament, 1-154. 107 Macleod, Word and Sacrament, 29.
Notes 189
108 Ibid.,
16. 105. Macleod wants to save the sermon from being an emotional bath, on one hand, or an arid ministerial monologue on the other. 110 Macleod, in an attempt to illustrate the worshipful nature of preaching, has the preacher facing not only the congregation, but turning to God, saying this is my oblation. ibid., 15. Macleods preacher is an ambassador for Christ ibid., 13, without speaking of how he or she might also be an ambassador for Gods people. Through the activity of God, the words of the sermon might become the congregations offering of their lives. This would take us closer to an understanding of preaching as worship. 111 Broadly speaking, with various ups and downs, the Scholastic period lasted well into the twentieth century, we might even say to about 1960. It was the Second Vatican Council, from 1962 to 1965, that finally signaled its demise. Paul McPartlan, Sacrament of Salvation: An Introduction to Eucharistic Ecclesiology, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), 31. 112 With respect to current Roman Catholic/ Protestant dialogue, David Power notes that it is impossible to survey the extensive discussions He points to the need to set the mutual condemnations of the past in their historical setting, to note the mutual misunderstandings at work, and to note the developments that have taken place in all Churches since the sixteenth century. When this is done, a considerable degree of agreement can be found, and while important differences still exist they do not warrant the continued application of anathemas. David Power, Sacrament: The Language of Gods Giving (New York: Crossroad, 1999), 230. 113 Encyclical on the Sacred Liturgy, Mediator Dei, promulgated by Pope Pius XII on November 20, 1947. 114 It is helpful to remember that there is a hierarchy of truths in Roman Catholic doctrine. The three major categories are as follows: The most official teachings, extraordinary magisterium, are those which have been clearly and solemnly defined by church councils or by a pope, or are contained in the sacred Scriptures in such a way that Christian tradition has consistently held them to be true. Secondly, there are official teachings called ordinary magisterium, which reflect official positions of current church leadership. The documents of Vatican II are in this second category. The bishops consciously made no definitions of doctrine in it. What may be noted here, is the fact that the episcopal leadership which was current during Vatican II is largely gone, (or if there are any who remain, they may have changed or reversed the views they held at the time of the councilas in the case of Pope Benedict XVI who attended the council but was not a bishop at the time). Current leadership can always change old ordinary magisterium by creating new ordinary magisterium. Thirdly, is the group of teachings presented in a systematic way by theologians. These acceptable opinions are not official teaching, but as we will see, they can influence the first two categories dramatically. See Kenan B. Osborne, Sacramental Guidelines: A Companion to the New Catechism for Religious Educators (New York: Paulist Press, 1995), 1-17. 115 Mediator Dei, [n. 168] quoted in Aloysius Church, The Theology of the Word of God (Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers, 1970), 10. 116 Divino Afflante Spiritu, an encyclical of 1943, might have been the first signal for the type of change that was to come two decades later in Vatican II. It was the beginning of great change in Roman Catholic interpretation of Scripture. Gordon J. Hamilton identifies the five conditions set out by the Pope for a biblical exegesis that is at once intellectually critical and consistent with Catholic interpretation. In summary, the conditions call for (1) a return to the original languages of the texts, (2) the primacy of the literal sense, and the priority of the theological message, (3) the use of historical and literary criticism, (4) the enunciation of serious difficulties in interpretation, and (5) the promotion of Scripture among the faithful. It was a resounding call for the Bible to take its rightful place at the centre of Catholic life. Gordon J. Hamilton, Divino Afflante Spiritu: Catholic Interpretation of Scripture, Canadian Catholic Review (May 1988) : 171-176.
109 Ibid.,

Kenan B. Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World: A Theology for the Third Millennium (New York: Paulist Press, 1999), 5 ff. Obsorne also refers to these five key issues in his entry for Sacrament in The New Westminster Dictionary of Liturgy and Worship, ed. Paul Bradshaw (Louisville/London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 414, 415. 118 Some would argue that this historical approach gained too much influence and contributed the development to post-Tradition, or Tradition-less, church. 119 See Daniel L. Migliore, Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology (Grand Rapids MI.: Wm B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1991), 212, 213. Migliore characterizes the growing convergence among Roman Catholic and Protestant theologians in four ways: (1) An emphasis on the inseparability of Word and sacraments, (2) a trinitarian and christocentric interpretation of both the proclamation of the Word and the celebration of the sacraments, (3) an effort to interpret the sacraments in relation to a new understanding of the whole creation as a sacramental universe, and (4) a concern to make as explicit as possible the connection between the sacraments, Christian life, and Christian ethics.ibid., 214. 120 Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, 12. 121 L. Charlier, Essai sur le probleme theologiques (Thuilles, 1938), 69. Quoted in Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, 13. italics mine. 122 Ibid., 14. All five points are directly from Osborne. Some of the names identified with this movement are: M. Tuyaerts, R. Schulte, F. Marin-Sola, L. Charlier. Also Henri de Lubac, Jean Danielou, H. Bouillard, Yves Congar, and M.D. Chenu, see T.M School, A Survey of Catholic Theology 1800-1970 (New York: Paulist Press, 1970), 201-9. See also Adrian Hastings, Alistair Mason and Hugh Pyper, eds., Oxford Companion to Christian Thought (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 725 ff. 123 Hastings, et al, eds., The Oxford Companion of Christian Thought, 725. 124 Otto Semmelroth, Church and Sacrament, trans., Emily Schossberger (Notre Dame/ Indiana: Fides Publishers, 1965), 41, and Otto Semmelroth, The Preaching Word: On the Theology of Proclamation, trans. John Jay Hughes (New York: Herder and Herder, 1965), 232ff.. Original edition: Wirkendes Wort, 1962. 125 Semmelroth, The Preaching Word: On the Theology of Proclamation, 203,204. 126 Ibid., 204. Mutual in the sense that one cannot effect grace in the absence of the other. Ibid., 204, 209-210. 127 Ibid., 234. 128 Ibid., 222. 129 Ibid., 233. 130 Ibid., 213-214. Here he is referring to a great inaccuracy in the interpretation of the First Vatican Council. Semmelroth notes Denz. 1821. 131 Ibid., 216. 132 Ibid., 241. The translator of this book, John Jay Hughes, points out that in German, every noun is capitalized and the noun Wort is grammatically neuter. Therefore it is difficult to determine when an author is referring to the word of God in Holy Scripture or the Word that became flesh and dwelt among us. The German language gives the option of an ambiguity which might be used intentionally to refer to both at the same time. Ibid., 7. 133 Karl Rahner, Theological Investigations, trans. Kevin Smyth (London: Longman & Todd, 1966), 4: 254. This section first appeared in The Word and the Eucharist, Aktuelle Fragen zur Eucharistie, ed. Michael Schmaus, Max Hueber Verlag, 1960. 134 Ibid.,4: 255, see also 4: 261. 135 Ibid.,4: 255. 136 Ibid. 137 Ibid.,4: 256.
117
Notes 191
Karl Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, trans. W.J. OHara (New York: Herder and Herder, 1964), 21. Osborne asks the obvious question; which church is the fundamental sacrament? All churches, Roman Catholic, Eastern, Anglican, and Protestant believe that the Church subsists in their church. Whatever the church essentially is, or whatever the church essentially means is found in our church, since the Word of God is truly proclaimed and the Sacraments (especially Baptism and Eucharist) are truly celebrated. Osborne concludes that Rahner and others (even the bishops of Vatican II) do not imply that the fundamental sacrament of God is only the Roman Catholic church. However, he suggests that, until the ecumenical question is resolved, there will be an inherent and essential incoherence in the phrase, the church as foundational sacrament. Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, 118, 112-136. 139 Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, 18. 140 Schillebeeckx uses the language of event for sacraments as well, but prefers the term encounter. He usually contrasts encounters with things and adds that the encounter is with the glorified Jesus by way of visible form. See Edward Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of Encounter with God (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1963), 53. 141 Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God, 244-268. 142 Mary Catherine Hilkert, Towards a Theology of Proclamation: Edward Schillebeeckxs Hermeneutics of Tradition as a Foundation for a Theology of Proclamation (Ph.D diss., Catholic University of America, 1984), 315. 143 Ibid. 144 Ibid., 316. Schillebeeckx understands Tradition to be far more than simply the official teaching the church. This is not just dogma, but the entire history of Gods redemptive encounter with humankind and the communal interpretation of that history. See also Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination (New York: Continuum, 1997). 145 Schillebeeckx, Introduction: The Roman Catholic View of the Sacraments, Christianity Divided: Protestant and Roman Catholic Theological Issues, ed. Daniel J. Callahan, Heiko A Oberman and Daniel OHanlon, (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1961). 146 For example see Rahner, Theological Investigations, 4: 261. 147 See Edward Schillebeeckx, Revelation and Theology, trans. N.D. Smith, 2 vols. (New York: Sheed and Ward, 1967). Especially Volume 1, Part 1. 148 Schillebeeckx, Christ the Sacrament of the Encounter With God, 216. 149 Robert Waznak is among the many authors who use the term startling when referring to statements made by the Council. Robert P. Waznak, An Introduction to the Homily (Collegeville, MN.: The Liturgical Press, 1998), vii. 150 Janowiak, The Holy Preaching, 63, 64. 151 Lischer, A Theology of Preaching, 76-92. 152 Ibid., 88-92. 153 My use of the term horizon is loosely based on the concept fusion of horizons found in Hans-Georg Gadamers highly dialogical approach to hermeneutics. For Gadamer, horizon is the larger context of meaning within which any particular presentation of meaning is set. The horizon is determined by historical situation and the effect of our own history or background of involvement. The fusion of horizons is the effect of conversation, engagement, negotiation with an other in an ongoing process toward agreement and shared meaning. Two key elements for my use of the term are: first, that we do not come to meaning primarily by gaining access to some inner realm, but through linguistic mediation in relation to an other, and second, that we need not be imprisoned in our own horizon. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. and ed. Garrett Barden and John Cumming (New York: Seabury Press, 1975). 154 Kevin W. Irwin, A Sacramental WorldSacramentality as the Primary Language for Sacraments, Worship 76 no. 3 (May 2002) : 200. Irwin is referring to significant voices who give
138

the work of Semmelroth, Rahner, Schillebeeckx and others more precision, nuance and fuller meaning. He names Louis-Marie Chauvet, Edward Kilmartin and Kenan Osborne. p. 200, 203204. 155 This is to say that the use of theological/liturgical language for preaching is preferable to the language of sociology, psychology, philosophy, or any other a-theological mode of study. Communication theory, for example, will be very useful to homiletics, but it will not necessarily speak of communication with God. We drink deeply of these disciplines for both good and illthe ill tends to come when God is left out. 156 Stephen W. Sykes, Proclamation, in The Encyclopedia of Christianity, Vol. 4, ed. and tans. G. W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 371. 157 In what follows I find it necessary to generalize according to the current liturgical practice of mainline denominations in North America. There are huge differences in the specifics of practice even in this narrow context. 158 There are significant voices that would not agree with this statement or would state it differently. H. Grady Davis, for example understands proclamation as an offer of lifenot merely the messengers offer in Gods name, but Gods offer made directly and personally to the hearer, an offer of life from the Source of life Davis, Design for Preaching, 110. I am referring to the way proclamation tends to be commonly understood. Another voice is heard in Theology is for Proclamation where Gerhard O. Forde uses the common definition of proclamation (proclamation ... is explicit declaration of the good news, the gospel, the kerygma) in order to distinguish it from systematic theology. In doing so he casts proclamation as primary discourse (from God) and systematic theology as secondary discourse (about God). Gerhard O. Forde, Theology Is for Proclamation.( Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1990), 2. I have made the distinction differently and within the preaching event. I am suggesting that declarations of any kind, even declaration of the kerygma, tends to lean toward speech about God and Gods intentionswhich is the necessary pole of proclamation. Declaration is always one-way even when it reveals or manifests a significant intention. However, speech that not only declares something, but says something that potentially creates something new between the speaker and hearer, may function according to the other necessary pole sacramentality because it calls for a response, or a relationship. It is necessarily two-or-more-way. Recognizing that they overlap with one another, I am using the two as principles for discerning when preacher and congregation are in the midst of relations with God and should move from thinking to singing, from I agree to I believe, from prose to prayer, and so on. 159 Or in the pouring of water in baptism etc. 160 Paul Gibson helpfully distinguishes between the twin rites of the book and the table by asserting that the two are not only independent in origin, but also have an integrity of their own. The sermon is not a hinge between two halves of a liturgy; it is integral to the liturgy of the Word. The relationship of Word and Table does not depend on the sequence in which they happen, but on the dynamics of their own structures. The rhythms of the two rites are not only similar but parallel. Paul Gibson, Both Word and Table, PMC vol. 4, no.5, January 1988. p. 18. I have tried to show that while the two primary activities of worship have their own structure and integrity, they are not strictly parallel in the sense that the two dynamics can overlap, they can both occur in the same moment, they converse with one another, and that they finally meet in the encounter with Christand in his purposes. 161 Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, 70. To be clear, for Osborne the action of God is the blessing it is a blessing/actionbut the God who blesses cannot be understood apart from the ones God is blessing. p. 69, 70 162 Ibid., 73. 163 Ibid., 70. 164 Ibid., 58. 165 Ibid., 70.
Notes 193
Ibid., 59. Understanding the implications for preaching in that unique unrepeatable moment requires a sense of homiletical Haecceitas. This will contribute to the sacramentality of preaching. 167 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 551. 168 Osborne, Sacramental Guidelines, 75. 169 In Chapter Three I will present Chauvets more specific conception of this dynamic using his analogical category of gift/reception/return-gift (in gift exchange language). With respect to this dual-dimension and creation, we note here Chauvets discussion of what is symbolized in the offering of gifts for Eucharist. When offering the bread we may say, Blessed are you, Lord, God of all creation / Through your goodness we have this bread to offer, / which earth has given and human hands have made. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 551. Chauvet shows the sacramentality of this form of speech when he says, this is the way faith confesses in action that God is creator. This gesture of disappropriation is the concrete mediation of the appropriation of the world as given, as offered as a present and in the present to the responsible freedom of humans. Sacramentality arises only at the intersection of these two dimensions, cosmic and historic, evoked by the oblation of the bread as fruit both of the earth and of human work. Without the earth, there is not work; but without the work, the earth is not matter. The bread is Eucharistic matter only as a link between the cosmos and history. Ibid. 551-552. Here the profane world is recognized as the possible sacramental place, ibid. 554, but only in its ambiguity and only as a response to the goodness (action) of God. 170 Donald Coggan struggled for a word that would indicate the intensity and richness of the Holy Spirit at work in preaching. He eventually settled on the French word animateur. I have been using the term in a similar way while attempting to keep the theological language trinitarian. Donald Coggan, A New Day for Preaching, (London: S.P.C.K., 1996), 15, 16. 171 Joyce Ann Zimmerman points out that we have one life (Christs life) which is celebrated in liturgy. She is arguing that it is another dualism to say we bring our life to liturgy, or that liturgy tells us how to live. She writes, a truly liturgical spirituality shatters this dualism by rooting up its potentially disintegrating ground. Liturgical spirituality blossoms in the realization that everyday Christian living and liturgical celebration are but two expressions of the one gift of Gods paschal Presence to us ... the meaning of Christian liturgy is synonymous with the meaning of Christian liturgy. Joyce Ann Zimmerman, Liturgy as Living Faith: a Liturgical Spirituality (London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1993), viii.
166
Chapter Two Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order

1 Chauvet, 2 Ibid. 3
The Sarcaments, 155.
Chauvets fine exposition of the relation between sacramental discourse and both christological and pneumatological discourse provides a further avenue for homiletical reflection, but due to limitations of space, it cannot be included here. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 161-169 and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 492-527. 4 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 156. 5 Ibid., n. 2. 6 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 20, adapting from Aquinas, Summa Theologica III, q. 62, a. 5. An unadapted translation of this reads, a sacrament in causing grace works after the manner of an instrument. Now an instrument is twofold. The one, separate, as a stick, for instance; the other, united, as a hand. Moreover, the separate instrument is moved by means of the united instrument, as a stick by the hand. Now the principal efficient cause of grace is God Himself, in

comparison with Whom Christs humanity is as a united instrument, whereas the sacrament is as a separate instrument. Consequently, the saving power must needs be derived by the sacraments from Christs Godhead through His humanity. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/aquinas/ summa.TP_Q62_A5.html 7 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 156. 8 Or worse, we may focus solely on our own activity in preaching. 9 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 156. 10 Ibid., 156, 157. And Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 476-489. 11 Chauvet saves this discussion for the last part of Symbol and Sacrament and The Sacraments. I have organized his material so that the starting point is announced near the start. Like other contemporary writers, Chauvets argument is not primarily linear. Perspectives are drawn into a complex theory which, taken as a whole, is rigorously consistent. It makes reading difficult at times because no single stage of his argument is definitive; the whole conveys the substance. It seemed helpful to rearrange his work at this point, however. 12 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 487. 13 We eagerly await the time when preaching and sacraments are no longer necessary. 14 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 160. 15 Chauvets diagram does not include, but presumes Creation as a gift from God the Father, through the Word and in the Spirit, and the life of a people (Israel) who are called by God, and who respond to God, and who become the community into which Jesus is born. Space did not permit him, but Chauvet intended to have a lengthy section in Symbol and Sacrament devoted to Creation. Instead he treats it in the conclusion p. 548-555 esp. 548-551 on creation. 16 The box around Death-Resur. and the arrow down, indicates the connection of this key to unlocking the whole mystery to both the Incarnation, the Parousia and everything in between. Thomas G. Long provides a useful phrase, the resurrection is ... the sun around which the solar system of Christian preaching moves. Long, Theology of Preaching, 463. 17 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 160. 18 For more about what Chauvet means by expression and its efficacy, see (n.193 p. 85). Here we note that preaching is an integral part of a body which is an expression of the Trinitarian God in the world. 19 Chauvet, The Sacraments, subtitle. 20 And as we will see this is in relationship with scripture and ethics. 21 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 161. 22 The words mediation and expression and symbol are intertwined in Chauvets theory, especially in Symbol and Sacrament, 82-104. The term expression is used in a particular way by Chauvet, and it may be helpful to have an idea of his meaning. The closest he comes to a definition is found on p. 90. An expression produces nothing beyond its own manifestation. It is a walkingin-place from the interior to the exterior, and from the exterior to the interior. The expression effects what it signifies: love invents its expression and the expression creates the love p. 91. There is no love apart from the expression which we give of itto one anotherthrough a gamut of smiles, kisses and words. In short (quasi) linguistic expression is the necessary mediation of all human reality. p. 91, 92, emphasis added. As we will see, Chauvet insists that language is never just an instrument which bestows a name on things already there, language also creates, p. 89. The expression of love, permits the coming into presence of love, the appearance of love. 23 Chauvet concludes that, sacramental grace is the expression of the eschatological advent, through the Spirit, of God into history, or a God in whose divinity there is humanness. Through the Spirit, God becomes inscribed somewhere in humanity. But God is inscribed without being circumscribed, without ever being assigned to any one place Chauvet, The Sacraments, 169. God cannot be grasped. God cannot be enclosed. The Spirit knows no bounda-
Notes 195
ries, but acts in particular ways. Thus, in the sacraments we have the interaction of the christological polethe particularity of the church-institutionand the pneumatological polethe universality of the reign of God which knows no boundaries. Consequently, from another perspective, we see the interaction of the pole of God and the pole of humanity 169. 24 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 155. 25 Chauvets contribution is theological, but he thinks that introducing it directly into a theological discourse might meet resistence, or what one might call the baggage of old polemics, bogging the discussion down at the level of presuppositions based on the caricature of an opponent. In the supposedly theologically-neutral terrain of anthropology, his argument may gain the level of assent necessary to imagine it in theological terms. The debate may also come to the same conclusion, but with a different starting point, it may not. Part of Chauvets project is to critique the underlying philosophical and socio-linguistic presuppositions which invisibly undergird contending theological views. He critiques the arrogance of all those who claim that their theology is purely theo-logical. As we will see however, human sciences are not the dominant partner in Chauvets theory - theology is. Human beings are not the dominant partner, God is. 26 The linguistic turn is a movement whose general aim is to reverse the priority of thought over language. Language has a world-disclosing dimension, and the communicative function of language is emphasized over its cognitive function. Initiated in the eighteenth century, the influence came mostly from the structural linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and the philosophy of Heidegger and Gadamer in the twentieth century. This model of language has implications for almost every discipline. The Linguistic Turn: Essays in Philosophical Method, ed. Richard Rorty (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992 [1967]). 27 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 3. 28 Ibid. 29 Note that reality here could be the universe, other people, or even oneself. It concerns not only ones relationship to the world and to others, but also ones relationship to oneself. 30 Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Emile Benveniste and others. 31 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 55, 426. 32 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 4. 33 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 3, 77, 78 and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 55, 56. Chauvet is careful in several places to nuance this assertion with the observation that language certainly has an instrumental pole. Language is secondarily instrumental in naming and labeling, but this is not languages primary function. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 77 and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 56 This is will become clear in the discussion of symbol. This second pole of language must be joined to the first pole, which belongs to a different level. 34 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 4, 38, and esp. 39. Also throughout Symbol and Sacrament. 35 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 56. Chauvet compares this to the poetic language. Quoting G. Bachelard who says, Poetry casts language into a state of emergence p. 57. 36 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 4. This is an example of Chauvets distinctive understanding of sensible matter. Matter is not limited to physical materiality (substance). Sound waves from a vocalization are sensiblethey can be heard. Speech is a concrete mediation. Language has material properties. See also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 144-146. 37 This desirerelated to speechis traced back to Platos preference for a phonocentric culture in the critique by Jacques Derrida and others. Chauvet is contending with this critique without giving priority to either speech or writing. Fortunately for most readers, Chauvet leaves this out of The Sacraments, but it can be found in the larger, earlier work. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 141-145 esp. note 41.

38 Chauvet,
The Sacraments, 7. Chauvet quotes contemporary linguist Emile Benveniste, Problemes du Linguistique Generale, Vol. 1 (Paris: Gallimard, 1966) 259, we never see human beings separate from language and we never see them inventing it. 39 This contrast between language as instrument and language as mediation is similar to the Postliberal theories associated with the Yale School, especially in George Lindbeck and Hans Frei. In order to move beyond cognitivist, propositional theories of religion and doctrine, Lindbeck draws a contrast between experiential-expressive models and a cultural-linguistic alternative. With respect to language and experience, Lindbecks term experiential-expressive describes the understanding of language and experience in a way similar to the way Chauvet describes language as instrument. Lindbeck, like Chauvet, does not consider this an adequate understanding. Human beings do not experience reality in a pure, direct manner and then use language to express the experience. Rather, language enables us to have the experiences in the first place, and then language participates in the expression (as the term is used by Chauvet). George A. Lindbeck, The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age,(Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1984) 30-41. Chauvet gives a full treatment of the role of language and the concept of expression in Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 84-98. Further use of Lindbecks terms here, however, may confuse the issue. 40 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 7, 8. 41 The movement referred to as Radical Orthodoxy asserts that this milieu of mediation and participation is nothing less than the pathway to God, saying, Christianity has never sufficiently valued the mediating participatory sphere which alone can lead us to God. Radical Orthodoxy, ed. J. Milbank, C. Pickstock, G. Ward (London: Routledge, 1999), 3. An introduction to the homiletical value of Radical Orthodoxy can be found in Lucy Lind Hogan, Alpha, Omega, and Everything in Between in The Purposes of Preaching, ed. Jana Childers (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), 67-82. 42 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 8. 43 Ibid. 44 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 9. As noted above, there is still an instrumental dimension to the understanding of language as a mediation. The mediation itself is a means, a tool of sorts. The difference is that this instrument, like the womb, is an organ within which the subject exists, or comes-to-be. The organ is never in the hand of or under the control of the subject, as a tool might be. If one were to assert that the mediation is still an instrument, then it is an instrument outside of which the subject can never exist. Once born from one form of mediation (womb), we are plunged into another (world). 45 Ibid., 9. Chauvet uses several good examples of this. In the film The Gods Must be Crazy, the bottle that dropped from the heavens (an airplane) was a real object, but for the people of his tribe there was no word for bottle, therefore its origin, substance, and purpose are unknown and eventually the unknown object sows discord among the people. It did not fit into the meaningful mapping of the world which their language, their culture, their social organization of the world provide p. 9. Chauvet also describes the difference between the way us Westerners and the Inuit posses language to describe snow. This example also used elsewhere, for example in Stephen Bonnycastle, In Search of Authority: an Introductory Guide to Literary Theory 2nd Ed. (Broadview Press: Peterborough, 1996) 86. This mapping pertains to the role of language in every human domain, everything from sexuality to cooking. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 85. 46 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 10, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacraments, 86. 47 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 10. 48 Many theories illustrate that this is THE law. Levi-Strauss, incest taboo; Freud, Oedipus complex; Girard, mimesis, all indicate that to become human is to live by the law which renounces immediate gratification. The separation between desire and immediate satisfaction is effected by language. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 11,and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 97.
Notes 197
49 Chauvet, 50 Ibid.,
The Sacraments, 11. 12. 51 Ibid., xi. 52 Chauvet, The Sacraments, xi. 53 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 38. This notion is also reflected in H. H. Farmer, Servant of the Word (London: Nisbet & Co, 1942.), 96-100. 54 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 2. 55 There is a vast literature on symbol but I will restrict focus to Chauvets understanding of symbol. Paul Ricoeur notes that the study of symbol can run into trouble. He writes, The study of symbols runs into two difficulties symbols belong to too many and too diverse fields of research (and) the concept symbol brings together two dimensions, we might even say, two universes, of discourse, one linguistic and the other of a non-linguistic order. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth TX.: Christian University Press, 1976), 53, 54. This second difficulty however, is precisely the reason why Chauvet chooses symbol. 56 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 112. Chauvet notes that if one construed it transitively, one would translate it according to the context as gather together, hold in common, exchange, (symballein logousto exchange words; intransitively, as meet or converse. 57 This is adapted from Chauvet, The Sacraments, 69, 70. 58 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 69. 59 I have adapted this here, and in teaching, from Chauvets Kyrie eleison example. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 69. This is in favour of more commonly recognized dialogue of exchange from the Eucharistic liturgy. The advantage is that while it remains an example of symbolic utterance inviting response, it also is in English, it is a greeting, and recognition is more likely. 60 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 70. 61 Ibid., and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 120. 62 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 83, 84 and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 128ff. 63 All of the following points are from Chauvet, The Sacraments, 84, 85, also in Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 128-135. 64 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 85. 65 Ibid. 66 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 111. 67 Ibid. See also David Powers use of Susanne Langer in David N. Power, Unsearchable Riches:The Symbolic Nature of Liturgy (New York: Pueblo, 1984), 61-79. 68 Edmond Ortigues, Le discours et le symbole (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1962), 43, 65. 69 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 75. 70 Ibid. 71 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 120. 72 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 76. 73 Ibid. Here Chauvet is using the term symbol in a way comparable to some uses of metaphor, especially in Paul Ricoeurs insight the symbol only gives rise to thought if it first gives rise to speech. Metaphor is the appropriate re-agent to bring to light this aspect of symbols that has an affinity for language. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory, 55, 45-69. The difference between symbol and metaphor, for Ricoeur, is that the latter is a free invention of discourse; the former is bound to the cosmos.61. Similar discussions can also be found in, Sallie McFague, Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), esp. 15, 16; Stephen Bonnycastle, In Search of Authority, 105ff and 134ff; and in relation to liturgy, David Power, Unsearchable Riches. Chauvets concern is to say that the primary function of language is not to label things instrumentally, it is not to designate things in a univocal way, but to place them at a distance by naming them, and thus representing them,

thereby giving them speech Chauvet, The Sacraments, 77. This understanding is vital for Chauvets theory of the efficacy of speech, which in turn is the basis for the efficacy of sacraments. For example Chauvet, The Sacraments, 76. Chauvet says things like, symbol (and in the literary order, metaphor) Chauvet, The Sacraments, 77 and the symbol (or in a discourse, the metaphor) Here he refers to Paul Ricoeur, Parole et symbole, Revue des Sciences Religieuses (1975), 142-161 where Ricoeur says language has a fundamental metaphoric function. The two concepts are in some way the original language of human beings Chauvet, The Sacraments, 77. With respect to naming and its use in homiletics, Chauvet offers a helpful perspective, to name things is not just to attach a label to them for ease of communication. To name is to call things to come and be present so that they can speak to us Chauvet, The Sacraments, 78. 74 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 76. 75 Ibid., 79. 76 Ibid., 79, 80. 77 Ibid., 79, 80. 78 Chauvet refers to the speech-act theory of John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), where Austin shows that every language act has three dimensions mixed in various proportions: the locutionary designates the content of what is said; the illocutionary, the relation between the positions established between subjects as such by the simple fact of the communication; as to the perlocutionary, it indicates the effect produced by the language act at the level of feelings, ideas, and action of the person addressed Chauvet, The Sacraments, 80 n.11. See also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 130-135, 427, 429. John Searle extended Austins work in John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and John Rottman applied these ideas to homiletics. John Michael Rottman, Doing Things with Words in the Sermon : Preaching as a Performative Activity (Th.D diss., University of Toronto, 1996). Rottman relates this to Nicholas Wolterstorffs idea of possible worlds and world projection.p. 3, and p. 70ff. We find these ideas in Chauvet when he speaks of the world as the possible place of sacramentality. See Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 554. 79 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 80. 80 Chauvet further describes the illocutionary dimension of language with this example. If someone says, I command you to close the door, Chauvet contends (with Austin) that, behind the transmission of information (there is a door here which should be closed), that is, the locutionary dimension of language, there is ... an illocutionary dimension of relation between places (relation of superior to subordinate), a relation that is either changed or reinforced by the language act itself. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 80. 81 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 80, 81. 82 Ibid. 83 Ibid., 81. 84 Chauvet notes that here that he is following the superb passages Heidegger has written on the work of art with Van Goghs painting as his example. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 116-117. 85 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 81. Also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 117. 86 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 83. 87 Chavet, Symbol and Sacrament, 110. 88 Emphasis on this illocutionary dimension takes priority off the content of the language (the locutionary dimension) and the effect of the language (the perlocutionary dimension.) This is a significant shift for most preachers - to emphasize the relationship established by language as strongly as the information it contains or the feelings, ideas, actions it produces in the hearers. 89 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 92ff. 90 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 110,111.
Notes 199
91 Chauvet, 92 Ibid.,
The Sacraments, 91. 92. 93 Ibid., 94. 94 Ibid. 95 Ibid. 96 Ibid. 97 Ibid. 98 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 74. 99 Ibid., 36. This same description of the criteria for belonging to the church is shared by Miroslav Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 162 and Gerhard Sauter, Gateways to Dogmatics: Reasoning Theologically for the Life of the Church (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), 127. 100 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 32,33, 34. 101 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 186. 102 Chauvet is careful in his description of the church. The question is always, which church? Chauvet makes no explicit claim, however it is clear that he bases church membership on baptism and the local gathering for worship, and he critiques the overvaluation of both hierarchical and grassroots (my term) models. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 37 and xiii - xxv. Once a celebrating assembly has gathered, there are many appropriate and effective ecclesiological models to choose from for order and structure. One can find several ecclesial models in the New Testament, and subsequently in any age. Therefore, as suggested by Miroslav Volf, the criteria for determining church structure can be unified at a primary level and diverse at a secondary level. Volf, After Our Likeness, 21. Like Chauvet, Volf simply bases his primary definition on Mt. 18:20 For where two of three are gathered together in my name, I am there among them. p. 136-158, 162. 103 Chauvet does not want to say that baptism is repeatable, but rather that the passage to faith is a continuing conversion even after baptism. It is the process of being drawn more deeply into the meaning of the reality that one has taken on the Christian identity, and lives now in Christ. 104 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 161. 105 Or in the case of infant baptism, parents and sponsors make this confession on behalf of the child and commit to the development of the childs faith within the language of the church. In Chauvets view infant baptism cannot be understood as the norm because while it stresses in an unsurpassed manner the gratuitousness of God it is not an exemplary model of a gratuitous justification by faith which elicits the free gracious responseChauvet, The Sacraments, 126. See also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 109. He is saying that the practice is not to be held up as the best model for demonstrating the sacramentality of baptism. 106 As Chauvet says, Christian identity is not self-administered; to obtain it one must receive baptism, Chauvet, The Sacraments, 20. At the same time, baptism is not imposed on someone. It is a personal commitment and a gesture of reception. 107 In the case of the Emmaus story, the events occur before the Ascension, and therefore they do not occur between Ascension and Parousia, which is how Chauvet tends to speak of the time of the church. Chauvet does not account for this, except to show that the absence of Christ that the Ascension represents is accounted for in the narrative itself when Jesus vanishes. It would be clearer to speak of the time of the church only in reference to events occurring after Ascension/Pentecost. 108 Gerhard Sauter speaks of this work of prevenient grace as both a confronting presence and a leading promise. God is present with us before we are aware of it. He acts in relation to us even before we are believers, even before we can speak meaningfully about belief and unbelief, even before we know what these terms signify. He has confronted us for a long time. Were we

aware of it? Could we be, before his message reached us? He is at work among us, but are we where he is? His promise leads us beyond ourselves into faith, hope, and love. Sauter, Gateways to Dogmatics, 129. 109 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 21. 110 Ibid. 111 From Pauls account of his conversion in Acts. 112 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 21. 113 Ananias involvement straddles the two levels because in addition to the gesture he speaks a word of interpretation. (Acts 8:17) The levels are distinct but they overlap. 114 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 21. 115 It is important to note the difference between mediator (God) and mediation (the language of the church). 116 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 21. 117 The Ethiopian went on his way rejoicing which is a witness of sorts. 118 Referring to the Emmaus text, Jean-Luc Marion makes the observation that this is a selfreferential hermeneutic of the texts by the Word. Jean-Luc Marion, God Without Being: HorsTexte, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 149. He says this implies that the Word interprets in person but that this interpretation leaves us blind without our gesture of reception. This allows us to see that the self-referential hermeneutic and the breaking of the bread are one hermeneutic. The one assures the other its condition of possibility. 150. Marion also puts an emphasis on the observation that at the very moment of his recognition by the disciples, the Word in flesh disappears: for it is to your advantage that I go away (John 16:7). 151. For what? The disciples who have seen him now must show him; they now occupy the eucharistic site of the Word, but their hermeneutic, in return, passes through every text and all speech, toward, again, the absolute referent (I am, Luke 24:38-39 = John 8:24 and 58 = Exodus 3;14) 152. On this and the difficulty of believing, Jean-Luc Marion, They Recognized Him; and He Became Invisible to Them, Modern Theology Vol. 18 no. 2 (April 2002) : 145-152. 119 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 22. See also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 161,162. 120 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 24. Theological reflection from the viewpoint of Easter Saturday (Christ dead in the tomb) can bear much fruit as witnessed in Alan E. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001). However, it bears fruit only because it illuminates all that Christ frees us from. 121 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 22. The Scriptures here includes the words of Jesus in their memory, since he spoke to them directly before his death. 122 Following, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 167-171. A student of homiletics cannot help but wonder if the section from the second paragraph on p. 167 to 170 is a homily, albeit a homily with great density. Chauvet at times breaks away from scholarly language into an almost doxological discourserather than objective commentary. This is one characteristic of Chauvets work which I find very appealingat times his confessional approach is stirring. 123 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 23. 124 Ibid. 125 Ibid., 26. 126 Ibid., 23. 127 Ibid., 28. 128 This is not easy. Chauvet writes, Faith requires an act of dispossession, a reversal of initiative; instead of holding forth with self-assured pronouncements on God, one must begin by listening to a word as the word of God, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 168. This dispossession brings into play the possibility that scriptures could disclose a reality about God which was never before thought possible - even according to the doctrines of the day. He observes that
Notes 201
those on the road to Emmaus had to accept something monstrous for any good Jew, Chauvet, The Sacraments, 28, that God could still be the God of our ancestors even if he raised up someone who had been justly condemned to death for having blasphemed against the Law of God given to Moses, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 168. The depth of this conversion cannot be underestimated. In several places Chauvet speaks strongly of how this consent to the mediation of the church (the disclosure of God through scriptures included) is a true trial. Ibid., 171. 129 In Symbol and Sacrament, Chauvet puts it this way, Luke in effect asks his audience, So you wish to know if Jesus is really living, he who is no longer visible before your eyes? Then give up the desire to see him, to touch him, to find his physical body, for now he allows himself to be encountered only through the body of his word, in the constant reappropriation that the church makes of his message, his deeds, and his own way of living. Live in the church! It is there that you will recognize him. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 166. 130 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 28. 131 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 172. Chauvet notes that this diagram depicts Christian identity, not salvation. It does not say outside the circle there is no salvation One can be saved without being a Christian, that is without belonging to the visible church; but one cannot be a Christian without belonging to the church Only within the church is one recognized as Christian. Since recognition is so important to him, Chauvet cannot affirm a notion of anonymous Christians, probably referring to Karl Rahner. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 29. Chauvet also makes it clear that as the theology found in Luke is not the only theology in the New Testament, this model is one model among others for the structure of Christian identity. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 170. 132 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 28. 133 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 177. A too serene compliance with the Church is no less questionable than a resentment toward it, Ibid., 186. 134 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 29. The circle is open to the reign which always exceeds the church; open to the World, in the middle of which it is charged with being the sacrament of this reign. While open, the church still has borders that distinguish it from other religions; these are the reference points for her identity which the broken line also represents Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 180. 135 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 172. 136 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 40. 137 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 176. 138 Chauvet, The Sarcaments, 29. 139 Ibid., 29, and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 178. 140 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 29. 141 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 178. 142 This sentence is made from two sources, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 179 and Chauvet, The Sacraments, 30. In Symbol and Sacrament , Chauvet says, Prayer is partially included in ritual activities, but only partially because the line between prayer and ritual is always a moving one. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 179, note 10, (where he describes the complexities of this movement). This is important because I will be arguing that liturgical preaching also moves between poles, much the way that prayer does. 143 Chauvet, The Sacrament, 31. 144 Chauvet stresses that the element ethics includes every kind of action Christians perform in the world insofar as this is a testimony given to the gospel of the Crucified-Risen One and this conduct concerns not only interpersonal moral praxis but also the collective social praxis. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 179. 145 I will discuss Chauvets understanding of this in Chapter Three.

It is important to remember that these umbrella terms or poles are not objects. They are spiritual places, approaches, moments, perspectives. 147 Elsewhere Chauvet extends this last line of thinking to include its endkerygma, liturgy and diakonia build up koinonia. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Liturgy and the Body, ed. Louis-Marie Chauvet and Francois Kabasele Lumbala (London : SCM Press ,1995), 133. 148 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 40. 149 In his commentary about this desire, this fixation, (the temptation of immediacy), Chauvet helpfully shows the results of overemphasis in each of the three poles. An overvaluation of the Scriptures can entail such a veneration of the letter of the Bible that one falls prey to fundamentalism Open your Bible and God will surely show you the answer. Another form is this type of approach to theological knowledge; the model Christian would be the critical Christian.An overvaluation of the category of sacrament can result in obsession with the objects or the elements as means of salvation. So much so that they occupy the whole sphere of a Christians life. In this perspective, which verges on magic, the model Christian is a practicing Christian. To overvalue the category Ethics can result in the political activist for whom orthodoxy is measured by orthopraxis or the charismatic whose personal testimony proves the presence of Christ and the action of the Spirit. (All of these quotations from Chauvet, The Sacraments, 40.) These extremes are more easily avoided when there is a balance between the three poles. 150 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 41. 151 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 163. 152 Ibid. 153 Ibid. 154 Ibid. 155 Ibid., 187. 156 Ibid., 188. 157 Ibid., 189. 158 Ibid., 2. 159 Ibid. 160 Found on p. 82 161 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 555. 162 Even prayer, as the Sons gift to us, cannot be considered direct contact with Jesus because it is partially constructed by us. Like other mediations, prayer is a material/milieu in which God can come to us. 163 Found on pp. 122, 123. 164 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 85. 165 Arthur Van Seters, The Problematic of Preaching in the Third Millennium, Interpretation 45 (1991) : 271. 166 P.T. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and Modern Mind (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1907), 80. 167 Darrell L. Guder, The Continuing Conversion of the Church (Grand Rapids, MI.: Eerdmans, 2000). This helpful phrase is used throughout Guders book, and will appear often in what follows. 168 Williams, On Christian Theology, 146.
146
Notes 203
Chapter Three The Dynamic within the Structure: Sacramentality as SymbolicExchange and a Hermeneutical Lens for Preaching Grace
1 Chapter 2 Lischer, 3 Ibid. 4
Two A Theology of Preaching, 88.
Again, Chauvet persistently and carefully shows that while the passage to faith requires acceptance of the church as mediation, that acceptance is a true trial and a task never fully achieved. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 171, 177. Affirming that the church is a gift of grace even while its members are imprisoned in the chains of their habits is positively scandalous. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 186, 187. One places ones faith only in God; the church does not believe in itself. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 183. The church, he says, radicalizes the vacancy of the place of God but it is precisely in the act of respecting his radical absence or otherness that the risen One can be recognized symbolically. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 178. Reminding us that the Time of the Church is between Ascension and Parousia, Chauvet stresses that the church is Christs body symbolically. Living in God, the Lord Jesus has left his place on earth, as the story of the ascension shows (Acts 1:6-11). From now on, this place is occupied by the church. Of course, the church occupies this place symbolically, that is, by maintaining the radical difference, for the church is not Christ, but his symbolic witness, which means that its constant raison detre is to direct everything back to him. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 28. See also Douglas B. Farrow, Ascension and Ecclesia: On the Significance of the Doctrine of the Ascension for Ecclesiology and Christian Cosmology, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans), 1999. 5 The passage to faith is continually necessary as the result of sin. Conversion requires both a turn away from sin and a turn toward God. Chauvets place for sin in his theology is implicit. It is not always clear that sin is an element within the theological dynamics of his writing, but occasionally sin is referred to directly. For example, Chauvet refers to Jesus kenotic sacrifice of his life as his refusal to use God to his own advantage. This is in contrast to Adam whose sin, compassing the sins of all humanity, is to wish to be like a god. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 299. Jesus life and death reverses the fundamental sin by letting God be God. Even though he was in the form of God, (he) did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited. (Phil. 2:6-11) Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 297-302. 6 Mary Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace. While it is certainly the core, it is just one aspect of Hilkerts book. Other chapters contain related issues and they are insightful and important: the hermeneutical challenges of preaching difficult texts (Chapter 5), how the human story may be used in preaching (Chapter 6), how we preach the cross (Chapter 7), how doctrine can function as a foundation for preaching while clarifying its boundaries (Chapter 8), how important it is to hear the word preached through the experience of women and the marginalized (Chapters 9 and 10). 7 Mary Catherine Hilkert, Parables of Grace in Preaching Grace in the Human Condition, ed. Judith M. McDaniel, Societas Homiletica 3 (1999), 19. 8 Hilkert, Naming Grace, 15, and Chapters 1 and 2. Hilkert is careful to point out that these are two distinct spiritualities that cannot be identified simply as Protestant and Catholic, (p. 15) yet, she proceeds to use terms like Catholic sacramental heritage and dialectical Protestant emphasis (p.27). In the Anglican tradition, periods of gravitation toward one or other of these poles of imagination has provided an interesting history, but always at the expense of a balanced approach to God, and pleasing only to polemicists. We seem, now, to be in a period of searching for balance between the two.

For Chauvets purposes, this stems from his desire for ecumenical applications, but it probably comes more directly from his efforts to steer away from complete reliance on the metaphysical conceptions underlying Scholastic and neo-Scholastic sacramental theology in his own tradition. 10 As we saw in the previous chapter, this is the internal element of the structure of Christian identity and it is a move that leaves a space for faith. 11 Hilkert, Naming Grace, 28. She is quoting Tillich from Is There Any Word from the Lord? in The New Being (New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1955), 121. Hilkert notes, Tillich argued that Christianity requires both Catholic substance (the concrete embodiment of Spiritual Presence) and the Protestant principle (critique of the demonic and profane within all such embodiments). Naming Grace, n. 33, p. 199. 12 Hilkert, Parables of Grace, 24. 13 Ibid., 20. 14 Ibid., 20, 21. 15 Ibid., 20. 16 Ibid., 21. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., referring to the language of Paul in his letters. 19 Ibid., with reference to John 14:23. 20 Ibid., with reference to 2 Peter 1:4. 21 Ibid. 22 Ibid., 22. 23 Ibid., 23. 24 This is my term for it. I would use the term to describe what Hilkert is doing and suggesting in her work. As far as I can see, Hilkert does not use this term in this way, but an emphasis on naming and narrating grace would be helpful. It would fit with my proposal for balance between the two poles of activity in worship (proclamation/ sacramentality), and the two poles of language ( language as instrument/ language as mediation). The preacher might walk on naming and narrating as the two legs of preaching (as Chauvet has described sign and symbol). Over the past forty years, the use of narrative in homiletics has been extensive. It has been appreciated and critiqued most helpfully by Richard Lischer who describes the narrative mode in much the same way as Hilkert describes the Sacramental Imagination. Lischer writes, the word does not knife downward through history toward its target as much as it rises out of the shared humanity and Christian identity of its hearers. Homileticians who work in this narrative mode such as Charles Rice, Fred Craddock, Barbara Brown Taylor, Charles Campbell and many others, do not attempt to explicitly rivet the hearer with Gods judgement in preparation for the gracious news of the promise. Instead they envision the sermon as a means of enrolling the listener into a larger consciousness or group. The preacher intends to use the sermon as a narrative process resulting in self-recognition, repentance, and participation in the church. Richard Lischer, The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present, xv. However, there are other homileticians who make use of the narrative mode while still making room for elements of the Dialectical Imagination. The homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson comes to mind, when he casts the primary language of the sermon as narrative (movie making) but hangs the narrative language on a deeper theological grammara lawgospel or trouble-grace structure. Paul Scott Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon: a Guide to Biblical Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1999). In the same way that both the Dialectical Imagination and Sacramental Imagination are accounted for in the theology of Chauvet, both narrative and proposition, both induction and deduction, both cognition and recognition etc., are accounted for in the praxis model of Wilsons homiletic. This is one of the reasons why
9
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Wilsons homiletic is most akin to Chauvets theory. This connection will be pursued further in Chapter Five. 25 Paul Janowiak, The Holy Preaching, 177, n. 34. 26 Hilkert, Naming Grace, 49. 27 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 56. Chauvet compares this to the poetic language. Quoting G. Bachelard who says, Poetry casts language into a state of emergence. p.57 28 Chapter Two 29 This idea will be presented later in the chapter. 30 Charles Bartow helpfully cautions and stresses that it is God who names Godself. The name of Godwho God will be, what God will be, with us, for us, against uscomes not from our experience but into it. Gods self-performance is not determined by the purposes to which we put language, experience, and conceptualization. Instead, Gods self-performance is determined by Gods own purposes. Charles L. Bartow, Gods Human Speech: a Practical Theology of Proclamation (Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1997), 32, see also 30, 31, 33. By selfperformance, actio divina, Bartow refers to the action of the Word of God in face-to-face, oralaural, suasory discourseGods human speech. It is Gods self disclosure as a performative event. p. 3. However, the point here is that we freely witness to Gods revelation by naming and narrating Gods action, our response to Gods identity and purpose, and the identity-inChrist that we claim and share. 31 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 439. 32 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Ian Cunnicon, World Economic History (1924; reprint, New York: Norton, 1967). Mauss is used by Chauvet in The Sacraments, 118ff and in Symbol and Sacrament, 100 ff. Mauss research examined the processes of exchange in archaic societies from the potlach and kula in Native North America, Oceana, and Australia to the law systems of ancient Hindu, Roman, Germanic and Indo-European societies. Again, I would like to emphasize that the use of these theories is not intended to be an exercise in philosophy or linguistics, and still less an exercise in sociology or cultural anthropology. Nor do I want to suggest that the following description of gift-giving in archaic societies is the only possible one. The intent here is to follow Chauvets thinking with an eye for homiletical implications. Chauvet is developing a theology of grace. I intend to show that his insights are helpful in understanding and carrying out the preachers task. 33 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 103. Here Chauvet highlights the condition for this statement: that the gift is not reduced to an object of utilitarian value, as sometimes happens in current wedding registries, for example. 103. 34 Ibid., 100. 35 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 100-102. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 117-120. 36 Exchange of women may be more astonishing to some. 37 Daniel Pilaro makes two good critical points here. First, he points out that the generous gift is really an interested gift. In other words, the gift is often given in order to keep someone under ones gentle dominion Second, he objects to how Chauvets model creates too firm a boundary between the economic and the non-economic. In practice these lines are quite blurred. Daniel Franklin Pilaro, Gift-Exchange in Sacramentology: A Critical Assessment from the Perspective of Pierre Bourdieu in Contemporary Sacramental Contours of a God Incarnate, eds. Lieven Boeve and Lambert Leijssen (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), 85-101, 92, 93. Chauvet accounts for these objections repeatedly, and acknowledges the concern in a general disclaimer, models tend to harden thought. Chauvet, The Sacrament, xiv. and Symbol and Sacrament, 182. Chauvet finds great value in these structures however, because they both free and constrain. They are simultaneously liberating and binding. 38 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 118.

Symbolic exchange and its opposite pole, market exchange are present in every human society, but in variable proportions, with the traditional societies and our current consumer society being the extreme cases. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 106. 40 John Milbank, Can Gift be Given? Prolegomena to a Future Trinitarian Metaphysic in Modern Theology 11:1 (January 1995), 119. See also Emile Benveniste, Gift and Exchange in the IndoEuropean Vocabulary in The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrift (New York: Routledge, 1997), 33-42. 41 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 102. 42 The obligation in gift-exchange will be discussed below, but for now Chauvet makes an important distinction between the return-gift as a word of thanks, and the return-gift of goods. He notes, The difference between our gift and the obligatory generosity of traditional systems is that the only obligation which we assume in accepting an object as gift is, at the minimum, the return-gift of a word of thanks (without which the object is acquired as a value-object, but not received as a gift), while in traditional societies the receiver is obliged to give in return other goods, and to a third party. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 107 n.46. 43 Benveniste, Gift and Exchange in the Indo-European Vocabulary, 34. 44 Ibid. 45 Ibid. 46 The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd Ed., s.v. ambivalence. 47 The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd Ed., s.v. ambiguous. 48 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 103. 49 Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign, trans. Charles Levin (St. Louis: Telos Press, 1981). Chauvet writes, The entire work of Baudrillard tends to show that our contemporary consumer society snatches away the right to a return-gift. In theological terms this means that by giving everything value according to usefulness, equivalence, or a code of difference, we deny the realm of grace. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 104-105. 50 It might be argued that the gift-giver gains a certain status by giving generously, and the value of this would be considered under the differential logic of sign value. If the primary motivation of the gift-giver is an increase in social position, then the nature of the exchange is within the realm of value, and theologically speaking, is a deflated form of grace. It may not be gracious at all. 51 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 103,104. 52 Baudrillard puts it this way, precisely speaking, there is no symbolic value, there is only symbolic exchange, which defines itself precisely as something distinct from, and beyond value and code. Later he says this beyond implies certain perspectives of transcendence: a beyond of the signification process also a beyond of semiology. Here he is attempting a deconstruction of structuralism. Jean Baudrillard, For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 59 and 90. This notion is an indication that both Baudrillard and Chauvet part company with many postmodern writers who assume no referent outside of the structure and law of language. For Chauvet the linguistic transcendent is ultimately religious, or theological. As we have seen, Chauvet is keen to assert that language is a mediationa body in which Transcendence is found active in the beyond of this wonderful exchange. 53 Chauvet , The Sacraments, 118. 54 Christine Firer Hinze speaks of this realm of human relationship as nonmarket relations. Writing about the moral and religious dangers inherent in contemporary market economies, she contends that advanced market economies generate an intemperate culture of work and play that siphons attention and energy primarily into the labor-consumption cycle, with several pernicious results: Nonmarket relations, values, and practices are dangerously weakened. Chris39
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tine Firer Hinze, What is Enough? In Having: Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 2004), 186-187. 55 For a biblical example of the opposition between the order of value (usefulness, equivalence, and code of difference) and the order of grace, see Jesus depiction a God rich in grace in the parables of the workers of the first hour, the elder son, the wise bridesmaids. For an example in our current culture, see MasterCards priceless campaign. Even advertisers for a credit card understand that some things are priceless, for everything else there is MasterCard. One cannot use MasterCard for symbolic exchange - the elements are beyond value because they consist of the subjects themselves. 56 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 106. 57 Ibid. 58 Ibid. 59 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 145. 60 As depicted in this diagram from Chauvet, The Sacraments, 121. 61 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 108. 62 Ibid. 63 With respect to the title of this book, when preaching is part of this grace-filled communication, it is sacramental preaching. I have distinguished between Liturgical Preaching (in the liturgy), and Sacramental Preaching (preaching that functions as part of grace-communication), and thus, the sacramentality of preaching occurs as participation in the grace-communication described above. 64 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 123. 65 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 123. 66 The question might arise, Can the gift be refused? Yes, and the one who refuses thereby removes himself/herself from the system. The gift may also be refused as gift (or spoiled as gift) by an attempt to make payment to the gift-giver, forcing the exchange into the realm of value, which is not akin to grace. 67 Kathryn Tanner, Economies of Grace in Having: Property and Possession in Religious and Social Life, eds. W. Schweiker and C. Mathewes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 355. 68 Ibid., 353. 69 Ibid., 354. 70 Ibid., 355. 71 Ibid., 356. 72 Ibid. 73 Ibid., 364, 365. Tanner refers to John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1 (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960 [1559]), 822, 837. 74 Ibid., 365. Calvin, Institutes, 790. 75 Ibid., Calvin, Institutes, 791. 76 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 840. 77 Ibid, 365 78 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 840. 79 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 723, 695, 720. 80 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 791, 790. 81 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 801-2, 796. 82 Ibid., Calvin Institutes, 805. 83 Ibid., 365. 84 Ibid. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid., 366.

87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid., 91 Ibid. 92 Milbank,
367. 368.
Can a Gift be Given? 119. Symbol and Sacrament, 69. 94 The path is always found in the way of the Cross. 95 Tanner, Economies of Grace, 372. 96 One of the major characteristics of Gods self-giving that Chauvet, Tanner, and many other theologians refer to cannot be forgotten here. That is the hidden character of Gods gifts as gifts. What follows does not intend to erase this important element. 97 David N. Power, Sacrament, 76, 77. 98 Ibid., 80. 99 Kenan Obsornes defintion of sacramentality, from Chapter One here, is originally from Osborne, Christian Sacraments in a Postmodern World, 70. 100 Ibid., 69, 70. 101 Theological Dictionary of the New Testament: Abridged in One Volume by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, eds. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1985), 1304. 102 Ibid., 275. This includes the related words, eulogia [blessing] and eneulogeo [to bless]. 103 This is clearly shown in the practice of table blessings(berekah /berakah) where at the beginning of a meal there is the recognition that all things come from God (Ps. 24:1), and at the end of the meal there is another thanksgiving that makes an eulogia of the whole meal. These practices are related to Passover (and for Christians, the Passover meal in the Upper Room with Jesus and his disciples) and Eucharistthe blessing of bread and the cup of blessing. Ibid., 276. 104 Ibid., 548. 105 Ibid., 1300. 106 Where the whole of (2 Cor. 9) consists of Paul urging the church in Corinth to offer gifts for the sake of the saints in Jerusalem in response to Gods blessing in abundance. Reference to this passage for eulogia comes from Ibid., 276. 107 As we have seen, Chauvet considers these prayers language acts. They set something to work. Each language act consists of both narrative (historical, third person, past tense) and discourse (first person in relation to the second person and in the present tense). Each language act also has a declarative function and a performative function. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 130, 131. 108 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 129. 109 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 314-315. Grace is given as a task, but the task must not be turned into a condition for Gods continued graciousness. The task is only a condition for the fruitfulness of the gift of graceour becoming eucharistic people. 110 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 129. 111 Ibid., 133. 112 Ibid., 130. 113 There are variations in different Eucharistic Prayers. For example, in The Book of Alternative Services (BAS) Eucharistic Prayer #1 (p. 194), and in the Roman Missals Prayer #4, NP1 is extended beyond the Sanctus, where we find Jesus proclaimed. Some Eucharistic Prayers also have prefaces that change with the liturgical season, for example (BAS) #3. 114 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 270. 115 Ibid. 116 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 131.
93 Chauvet,
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An addition to the anaphora of the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus, Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 270. 118 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 131-132. 119 Ibid., 132. 120 Chauvet maintains that these two petitions, add nothing essential. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 272. 121 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 271. 122 Ibid., 272. 123 Beyond finding coherence in the activities surrounding pulpit and table, it is also important to ask, How are the prayers at the table to be distinguished from proclamation? Do their presence or absence affect the nature of what is preached? and What is lost when preaching is unaccompanied by holy communion? Paul Scott Wilson, Preaching and the Sacrament of Holy Communionin Preaching in the Context of Worship, eds. David M. Greenhaw and Ronald J. Allen (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2000), 44, 61. My responses to these questions will continue though Chapter Four. 124 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 143. 125 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 443. 126 Ibid., 444. 127 Ibid., 446. 128 James Earl Massey, The Burdensome Joy of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998).
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Chapter Four Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory: A Conception

1 P.T.
Forsyth, Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, 80. Following on what was developed in Chapter Two, I would make a small distinction with respect to Forsyths use of the word mediates. I want to emphasize again that the preacher is not the mediator (the one who works to effect the result) as Forsyth has it, but part of the mediation (part of the act or process) which is the language and culture of the church, including the person and work of the preacher. The preacher (in the midst of the church) is a significant subject/catalyst within an event of God, but the triune God is the agent; Christ is the mediator, and it is the Spirit who acts to makes preaching revelatory and operative. 2 This language is meant to emphasize the movement of God towards us in the manifestation of the Word. With respect to the presence of Christ in preaching, I want to be clear that if preaching is ever the materialization of Gods Word and presence, it is always a falling in with what God is already doing. Thomas G. Long puts it succinctly, Christ is not present because we preach; we preach because Christ is present. Long, The Witness of Preaching. 2nd ed.,(Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005), 17. 3 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press) 1995), 37-46, where he describes the ways in which our words can be either a barrier or an aid to an encounter with God in an oral event. 4 This diagram is found in Chapter Two, but it is also reproduced in what follows. 5 An example of the practical might be that, knowing what is proclaimed and celebrated in other parts of the liturgy, we may not try to say everything in the sermon. Knowing what the rest of the action requires of the sermon, we strive to let preaching take its place fully. Pragmatic considerations such as these will nuance our theology of preaching and visa versa. 6 David Power suggests this distinction which I hope serves to clarify my use of the diagram as both a paradigm and a heuristic. A paradigm, according to Power, serves as some kind of model within which to situate different elements. Thus when I speak of faith at the cen-

tre of the diagram, I am using Chauvets diagram as a paradigm for the place of preaching. This provides a conceptual way to think about where preaching is situated in relation to the other elements: Christ, the church, and SCR, SAC, ETH. A heuristic on the other hand Power says, means attending to a set of operations. Like Chauvet, Power addresses the nature of sacramental action as language event, specifically in his case, the language of Gods giving. His intention with this approach is to take it as a heuristic rather than as a paradigm. Thus, I am also using the diagram as a heuristic in order to study the event of preaching, the set of operations, that which occurs or takes place in our preparation and in our preaching. David N. Power, Sacrament: The Language of Gods Giving, 59. 7 This emphasis on doing can be found throughout homiletics. Preachers have learned to ask questions like, what is the biblical text doing, what is the sermon doing, what are we to do? Nancy Lammers Gross suggests that the preacher become a practical theologian; that the preacher have a function or behavioural purpose in mind. The work of a practical theologian, she writes, is praxis, theory-informed doing. Nancy Lammers Gross, If You Cannot Preach Like Paul (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2002), 56, 57. What is helpful for homiletics in this respect, is that the language of sacramentality requires that this doing must be in response to what God is doing. 8 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 431-438. 9 Gerrit Immink describes the heart of preaching as the act of creating perspective. This was the theme of the 2001 conference of the Societas Homiletica. Gerrit Immink, Preaching: Creating Perspective, in Societas Homiletica 4, ed. Gerrit Immink and Ciska Stark, (Utrecht: Societas Homiletica, 2002), 17. Based primarily on an analogy to the event of creation, Wilfred Engemann writes, A sermon with creative character should take account of the leeway that people need in order to be able to make something of the gift and task of their creaturely existence. This depends on whether the structure of the sermon really guides one into a space that can be entered into. Wilfried Engemann, On Mans Re-Entry into his Future: The Sermon as Creative Act, in Societas Homiletica 4, trans. Marget Pater (Utrecht: Societas Homiletica, 2002), 41. The goal is that the hearer becomes aware of the leeway, receives the future, and reappears in the present opened up for him by the sermon. Ibid., 49. 10 C. Colt Anderson, Christian Eloquence: Contemporary Doctrinal Preaching (Chicago: Liturgy Training Publications, 2005), 221. 11 Richard Eslinger identifies doing space as a pitfall in preaching. He contrasts this with doing time as proposed by Eugene Lowry. Richard L. Elsinger, Pitfalls in Preaching. (Grand Rapids MI: Eerdmans, 1996), 73-76. Eslinger refers to Eugene Lowry, Doing Time in the Pulpit: The Relationship between Narrative and Preaching, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 27. With their emphasis on time both Eslinger and Lowry may be trying to separate two things that belong together. Eslingers work is often helpful, but he seems to have visceral distaste for ideas and structure in a sermon. Good sermons, however, do not choose between organization and shape, structure and process, theme and events, logic and ambiguity, clarity and suspense; good sermons incorporate these things in creative tension at the level of deep structure. I am attempting to draw out a static spatial conception and a dynamic temporal operation from a single diagram. The elements of this diagram represent the various dimensions (including space and time) of the church at worship. 12 Long, The Witness of Preaching, 1-10. With the image of the preacher moving from the pew to the pulpit, (p. 3) Long reminds preachers that we come from the congregation and that preaching is rooted in baptism. 13 An advantage of having the preacher and congregation move together in the diagram is that it helps avoid two distortions noticed by Gordon Lathrop. The first is the hierarchical distortion which risks authoritarianism and the sense that some are above and others below. The second is the closed circle distortion which can lead to the church as a closed shelter against the world or a closed shelter against others. This distortion can lead to the sense that
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some are inside and others are outside. Such distinctions are grave distortions since baptismal identity is given freely, and the mission of the baptized is to offer Gods hospitality to all especially those below and those outside. Chauvets dotted line for the boundary of the church addresses this concern. In addition to this, placing preacher and congregation together encourages a participatory laity, engaged in mission. Gordon W. Lathrop, Holy Ground : A Liturgical Cosmology (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 182- 188. 14 Luke 15:11-32 demonstrates the theological significance of movement and spatial arrangement. The forgiving father goes out to meet both sons and attempts to bring them home, closing a separation that had to be recognized by both parties, and once recognized, invites a response. See Stephen Farris, Preaching That Matters (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 108-115, for how these are transformations of status and identity. Barbara Brown Taylor suggests that the preacher appears in the space of separation as a matchmaker helping lovers get together, and once they find one another we get out of the way. Barbara Brown Taylor, When God Is Silent (Cambridge, Mass: Cowley Publications, 1998), 100-101. 15 The notion of speaking into the space of separation is not meant to locate God (God permeates the entire space and exists beyond it), but to create an image where we pull the preacher out of a linear relation between God and the hearers, creating a space and a distance that can allow for recognition /response, and provide a pastoral vantage point for preaching. David Lose is among those who speak of creating critical distance in order to open space for encounter. David J. Lose, Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a Postmodern World (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003), 141, 142. (also all of his Chapter 4, and some examples of kenotic rhetoric that preserves a space for encounter and appropriation in his Chapter 6.) In addition to recommending the use of creative distance, I am also trying to avoid a negative form of this relation that can occur when the distance between God and the preacher collapses and the preacher seems to be standing in Gods place unleashing judgement and bestowing grace. This is the type of distortion that the conduit/instrument model for ministry has supported. Unless the preacher can be seen to lean toward the hearer, saying God has something to say to us rather than God and I have something to say to you, the telling of truth will ring hollow and the person of the preacher can get in the way of encounter with God. Even when legitimately preaching Gods judgement, preachers must clearly portray themselves as being under that judgement. Exceptions to this perspective may be appropriate when the circumstances of the sermon call for the preacher to speak in Gods voice in order to create immediacy, but it must always be done tenderly and/or with empathy for those who hear it, and it must be clear to the hearer that the preacher does not consider himself or herself divine. 16 Buechner presents Jesus response of silence to Pilates question what is truth? as a terrible gift (p. 16)a gift that does not allow particular truths to encroach on the gospel as Truth. In a sense, Jesus presence before Pilate, in a spatial relationship, in the middle of the procurators busy day, standing there with cauliflower ear, split lip, swollen eyes and ruptured spleen, (p. 21) is the answer to Pilates question. Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977), 8-24. 17 Buechner, Telling the Truth, 26. 18 Like Phillip (Acts 8:26-40) who guided the Ethiopian court official while travelling with him in his chariot. 19 Buechner uses the image of tourist guide, trying to describe some of the principle sights to be seen as his preferred mode of approach to fairy taleas opposed to archeologist, trying to excavate and analyze. Buechner, Telling the Truth, 76. An image that accentuates a modest but more performative role for preaching in supporting the encounter between God and the church (while reversing the usual conception roles) can be found in Donald Coggans adaptation of Kierkegaard; the preacher as prompter. Donald Coggan,God is the audience; the listeners are the actors; the preacher is the prompter, in A New Day for Preaching: The Sacrament of the Word (London: S.P.C.K., 1996), 19. This image helpfully interprets how a preacher does at

times guide God on a tour through our needs and asks God to hear our cries and our praises. Even though God knows our needs before we ask, we open ourselves in this way to God and welcome Gods searching judgement and grace. 20 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 25. 21 William H. Willimon, The Intrusive Word: Preaching to the Unbaptized (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1994), 65, 66. The whole of Willimons chapter Making Room for God is addressing the need to create a space for evangelistic moments, or as he puts it, to open rather than bridge the gaps. As an evangelistic preacher, I am to bring people before the living God, not to protect people from God. I am to leave them free to wander, to explore the space between us and the throne. I am to frustrate their desires to relax the tension between our ways and Gods ways. Ibid., 68. While I very much appreciate Willimons books about preaching to the unbaptized and preaching to the baptized [William H. Willimon, Peculiar Speech: Preaching to the Baptized (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1992.)], I think the difference between the two types of preaching and the two audiences can be overworked. For liturgical preaching I much prefer the notion that the preacher aims to preach among the baptized (who need constant evangelization and sacramentalization) in a way that the unbaptized can overhear. Fred. B. Craddock, Overhearing the Gospel. Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1978 (Nashville: Abingdon, 1978). 22 Taylor, When God is Silent, 86. 23 Again, this refers to the centre of the task in my conception of preaching, it is not to displace God from the centre of the preaching event. We must acknowledge the constant battle to avoid human-centeredness. Alan Lewis speaks of human-centeredness before and after the Enlightenment by referring to Eberhard Jngel who observes that the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo, which ejected human beings from the centre of the universe, induced us ironically to reestablish our place at that very centre all the more securely. Lewis, Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday, 236, referring to Eberhard Jngel, God as the Mystery of the World : on the foundation of the theology of the crucified one in the dispute between theism and atheism, trans Darrell L. Guder (Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark, 1983), 14ff. 24 For clarification, I have discerned a difference (in Chauvet) between faith (centre of the diagram) and belief (pole SCR) and Im using the terms according to faith as a basic orientation and attitude (primal and often non-conceptual) and belief as a thematic explication of a particular historical, moral, or cognitive claim involved in a particular faith stance. David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order: The New Pluralism in Theology, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), [(New York: Seabury Press) 1975] ,16 note 13. 25 Faith in Jesus is always dependent on Gods prior action in Christ, and therefore it is essentially the faithfulness of Jesus that inspires and enables human faith. A.J. McKelway, Christ Outside the Walls in Loving God With Our Minds: The Pastor as Theologian, ed. Michael Welker and Cynthia A Jarvis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 322-333. It is also the case that this faith is passed on (traditioned)from one person of faith to another in the church. 26 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 140. 27 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 165, see also Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 515. 28 Forde, Theology is for Proclamation, 138.Forde defines faith as the state of being grasped and captivated in the Spirit by the proclamation of what God has done in Jesus. Ibid., 137 Forde is suggesting that a description of faith is necessary but the preacher especially must bear in mind the difference between the description and the proclamation that actually intends to deliver and foster what is being described. The point is to speak in the Spirit. Forde is trying to rehabilitate the term proclamation by moving it away from the secondary discourses of description, explanation, and apologetics in preaching whereas I am suggesting the use of a different term (sacramentality) for that same movement and moment: when preaching becomes a word from God. While he refers to these utterances as primary discourse, present tense, first-second person declarations or announcements, (p. 2) they might better be cate-
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gorized with illocutionary language, I baptize you.(Ibid., 2) or I love you. (Ibid., 3) Whether we call this self-disclosing language proclamation or sacramentality, he helpfully points to the response to this type of utterance in preachingit must be confession, praise, prayer, and worship. (Ibid., 2- or the refusal, I believe or I dont believe. Ibid., 2-3) He insists, We are not dealing with opinion here, but with the Word of God. (Ibid., 2) 29 With the loss of the scientific paradigm as dominant approach to religious texts and phenomena, and in response to our pluralistic, postmodern context, David J. Lose proposes that preaching is best understood as the public practice of confessing faith in Jesus Christ. Lose, Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a Postmodern World, 3. This reclaims preaching as a Christian practice that rests not on empirical proof but on a living confession of faith, leads not to certainty but to conviction, and lives not in the domain of knowledge and proof but rather in the realm of faithful assertion. 30 Can it be said too often?God at the centre means that God is at the centre of preaching and at the centre of Christian identity always in relation to us, the church. God is inscribed, but never circumscribed in our diagrams, our schemes, or even in our lives. 31 In order to stay in the same time-frame as Chauvets developments in sacramentology, I will restrict the focus to theologies of preaching in publications since about 1979. 32 I will be using this awkward designation trans/formation to indicate that our continuing conversion to the fullness of the gospel is on a continuum between transformation and formation. At times our repentance is a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, other times it is a slight change in course, but always it is a renunciation of sin and a turning to Christ so that we might be shaped by our communal identity in Christ. 33 John Claypool captures the fascination and difficulty of the question when he writes, No question in all the religious realm has intrigued me more than this: In the drama of everyday events, what does God do and what do we humans do? I have found it impossible to arrive at any exact formula in answer to such a question. John Claypool, The Preaching Event, Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1978 (Waco, Tx: Word Books, 1980), 9,10. For his preaching and these lectures, he arrives at the description of a duet or dance with Another, (ibid., 13) a mystery of creative collaboration when the two become one and yet remain two at the same time. (Ibid., 15) 34 Paul Wilson sees this as an academic deficiency in homiletical literature. By academic he means critically responsible for what has been written in homiletical literature. Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 2004), 20. 35 It is not the case, however, that Barth invented the following ideas. In part, Barths voice was the bomb dropped on the theological playgrounds of Europe because of the timing of the tragic events of war there. P.T. Forsyth is an example of someone from the previous century who, rather absurdly, has been called a Bartian before Barth. In his 1907 Beecher Lectures, published as Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, Forsyth consistently proposes (and with a humanity and compassion sometimes lacking in Barth) many of the same theological insights found in Barth. Barth himself is said to have heard quotations from Forsyth and replied, If Forsyth had not said what he said when he said it, I would have said he was quoting me. Harry Escott, P.T. Forsyth and the Cure of Souls: An Appraisement and Anthology of his Practical Writings (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970), 22-23. 36 Barth structures this thesis in CD I/I section 4 in the following way: The Word of God in its Threefold Form: (1) The Word of God Preached, (2) The Word of God Written, (3) The Word of God Revealed, (4) The Unity of the Word of God.. Karl Barth,The Doctrine of the Word of God, Church Dogmatics, Volume 1, trans. G.W. Bromiley and ed. T.F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 88 - 124. All of Church Dogmatics has had an immeasurable impact on theology and preaching. 37 Thomas Long has written about how the theology of preaching suffered a Barth Attack. After Barth preachers didnt know what their human role was. If preachers are heralds (con-

duits) of the Word - what role has homiletics? It has no role. Thomas G. Long, And How Shall They Hear? The Listener in Contemporary Preaching, in Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock, ed. Gail R. ODay and Thomas G. Long (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993), 167-188. 38 Sacramentality is a way to understand the communication between God and humans, while at the same time preserving their radical difference. Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 92. 39 Farris, Preaching That Matters, 11. 40 Ibid. p. 12. Revelation as personal encounter is a hallmark of most preaching-as-event theologies and is part of what I have tried to show in the theology of grace adapted from Chauvet. H.H. Farmers writing on the I-Thou relationship (or encounter) is the closest homiletical description to what I have proposed from Chauvet in Chapter Three. Like Chauvet, using Bubers schema, Farmer portrays the personal relationship with three terms; Gods I-Thou relationship with me is never apart from, is always in a measure carried by, my I-Thou relationship with my fellows. Herbert Henry Farmer, The Servant of the Word, 56. 41 Farris, Preaching That Matters, 12. 42 Ibid., 14. 43 Lischer maintains that preaching-as-event is finally untenable because of its inattention to the church. It says little about the kind of people we shall be. Lischer, A Theology of Preaching, 85. Instead, he suggests an alternative image, formation. p. 88 44 Davis, Design for Preaching, 162-164. 45 Nicholas Lash, Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM Press, 1986), 40. 46 Ibid., 41. 47 Jana Childers, Performing the Word: Preaching As Theatre (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1998), 34. 48 Ibid., 35. 49 Austin, How to Do Things With Words, 6. As noted in Chapter Two, (notes), others who have extended Austins theories include John Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, and in homiletics, John M. Rottman in his Th.D thesis. Rottman, Doing Things with Words in the Sermon, 5-8 and 171-215. Rottman stresses that the sermon is like a speech-act. 50 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 94. 51 Ibid., 165. 52 See pp. 234-236. 53 Charles L. Bartow, Gods Human Speech, 111. 54 Charles Rice, Interpretation and Imagination (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1970). 55 Paul Scott Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 251. 56 Paul Scott Wilson, Broken Words: Reflections on the Craft of Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2004), 4. 57 Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 27, 28. Theological use of the tensive quality of language is also found in Stephen Farris writing on the strictly theological use of dynamic analogy. Farris, Preaching That Matters, 18-24. 58 This can be limiting in at least two ways. First, preaching is never at its best when addressing individuals only. Second, the desire to convert others can assume too much (too little!) about the spiritual state of the hearers. It is good to remember that when preaching in the midst of the church, there is usually someone listening who has stronger faith and deeper wisdom than the preacher. Often this person is sitting next to the one who needs complete transformation and has already initiated the companionship that will a crucial part of the churchs preaching guidance through that transformation. 59 Part of the effort (and success) of the academy of homiletics as a whole has been to rehabilitate the word preaching from its common definition and use (in liberal society) as a tedious, moralizing discoursea judgmental scolding, lecturing, castigating utterance. Preaching, in its
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general usage, is something that people do not want done to them. Therefore, preachers do not want to sound preachy. 60 Book of Common Prayer (Canadian revision of 1918 altered in 1959) (Toronto: Anglican Book Centre), 1959. p. 4. This is from the absolution in Morning Prayer the primary Sunday liturgy of my youth. These comments stem from my own experience in worship and from hundreds of pastoral conversations in the years that followed, especially during the debates over authorized prayer books. The Morning Prayer rite begins with an invitation to confession (exhortation), followed by a general confession, and the absolution. 61 This recommendation to clean up is not out of place, but it is best embedded in a context where the person has the opportunity and help to do so that very moment. In John-theBaptist-type-preaching, the preacher must be (symbolically) already standing with Jesus in the Jordan, in the waters of baptism, where the barriers to response are taken away, and a model of response is provided. 62 This affirmation of God-given identity is meant to edify believers and build up the church for its vocation of witness. It is not a mere coddling of the Saints, to use a phrase from P.T. Forsyth, it is a process of coming to maturity in faith as church. Forsyth, Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, 75. This affirmation should not, however, cultivate the snugness of pious comfort instead of the humble confidence of evangelical faith. Forsyth captures the individual and communal aspects of trans/formation by saying, Many people are like Peter. They need several conversions (Luke xxii. 32) and our souls mature only in a living Christian community. 77-78. 63 These terms come from Jurgen Moltmann when distinguishing between himself and Paul F.M Zahl. In Paul F. M. Zahls column From the Dean and President in Seed & Harvest Vol. XXIX no. 1, (Ambridge PA: Trinity School for Ministry, 2006), 2. 64 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 107. Here Wilson presents the equation hope = judgement + grace. His Chapter Five is entitled Preaching as an Event of Hope. 98-124. 65 Paul Scott Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory. 66 Ibid., 74-100. 67 Buechner, Telling the Truth, 40. 68 Farris, Preaching That Matters, 10. 69 Ibid. 70 Ibid., 11. Chauvet provides just such a doctrine through two analogies: (a) Gods self-giving is akin to a speech event. It is mediated through the language and culture of the church; and (b) Gods self giving and our response is akin to grace. This is articulated through the perspective of symbolic exchange beyond value. Farris notes something very similar to this, and stresses that this God or, more properly, the relationship between this God and ourselves, can only be represented analogically and the human interaction that bears a particularly striking similarity to the God-human relationship is speech. Speech and hearing, word and response, these are like what happens between God and humanity., 2. (Farris adds in a note, persons, including God, are more like words than they are like things. n.3, p. 152) 71 Fidelity does not rule out the need for constructive critique in the attempt to be creative and faithful. David Lose uses the term critical fideism to indicate an approach that understands critique as discernment. The goal of this approach is not to prove the truth of its ultimate claims but rather it seeks to make a case in the public arena for their utility and soundness. Lose, Confessing Jesus Christ, 40, 34-44 72 I am indebted to my colleague in teaching, Darren C. Marks, for these two phrases. 73 William Willimon contends that evangelistic preaching is necessarily about an intrusive God who operates in preaching and brings about trans/formation. Evangelism, unlike apologetics, seeks transformation on the part of the speaker and hearer. Evangelism expects and promises transformation. Willimon, The Intrusive Word: Preaching to the Unbaptized. 16. This however is

not primarily an individual/personal transformation but the conversion of the church, the transformation of Gods people from an enclave of the culturally content into a beachhead for divine invasion. Easter. p. 6 Keeping the focus on Gods initiative in this transformation and its disruptive nature, Willimon writes, Evangelism is not about helping more nice, buttoneddown, middle class people like me to find deeper meaning for their lives. Evangelism is a gracious, unmanageable, messy by-product of the Intrusions of God. p.4 Evangelism is revelatory of God and operative in God, and the transformation is manifest in the churchs confession, Jesus is Lord. 74 This is probably the aspect of preaching that is ignored when people are crying out for relevant preaching. This combined with theological relevance that speaks one specific aspect of the whole gospel into that unique situation. Obviously however, this is a difficult cry to heed because what is relevant for one persons circumstances may not be directly related to the situation of another, and the distressingly particular nature of revelation may be the last thing that people who seek relevance actually want. 75 The focus is on what happens in the ones who hear and how it leads to relationship with God it is a subjective efficacy. Somewhat like the effect prayer has on us as we pray - we are not operating on ourselves, but through the whole act of prayer God changes us, leads us to see, speak, and act in new ways. Or it is like La Fontaines fable (Chapter Two) where the field itself is the treasure that God has given and our work of turning it (our lives) allows God to bear fruit in it. Or it is like the belief expressed by someone who says, I believe in transubstantiation if it is the people who are transformed into the body of Christ. God initiates and animates the exchange, but in our recognition of God and in our response to God, we find that the effect happens in us. 76 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 146, 147 and Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 281-282. 77 This breaking away is the opposite of a digression - which is to turn aside, especially from the main subject in writing or speaking. At the properly sacramental moment, preachers often stray, or sometimes even swerve, away from speaking directly into this new level of encounter and exchange with God. Propositional-instruction-discursive preaching has this tendency to digress built in. We step back to reflect on the matter at hand from an objective perspective when the requirement of a passage to faith is to step into assent to open oneself to the beyond of a transforming relation with God. So we watch ourselves for this desire to digress and in that moment we say to God, stay. (Luke 24:29, Stay with us.) 78 An ordinary and neutral object like a cup for example, when used for drinking the wine of the Eucharist breaks free from everyday usage and meaning. It is still used for drinking, but now it also opens a world of meaning for the Christian believer. The word cup, said in a sermon, will always refer to a vessel for drinking, but it may also be used symbolically to open a world of meaning in relation to God. The same can be said for other words related to the objects and the gestures/postures of worship and Christian existence. In effect, they are always in a liminal position, negotiating between the thresholds of proclamation and sacramentality. 79 David Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987), 225-234. Buttrick writes, In-church preaching speaks to the question, who are we who break bread? a question that can only be answered by recourse to story (scripture) and which, answered, calls the people of God to be a new-age community for the world Out-church preaching draws the world by faith into eucharistic community, a proleptic sign of the kingdom. p.233. Outchurch preaching, the responsibility of the whole church, leads to Baptism. In-church preaching addresses the question of identity and leads to Eucharist. 80 Janowiak, The Holy Preaching, 183 81 Forsyth, Positive Preaching and Modern Mind, 79. 82 Karl Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel in Lischer, The Company of Preachers, 429. 83 Lischer, A Theology of Preaching, chapter VI, 76-92. 84 Willimon Peculiar Speech : Preaching to the Baptized, 2-23, 31-66, 100-115.
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Charles L. Campbell, Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Freis Postliberal Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1997), 221-25, 228-34. 86 Parts of the full diagram have been stripped away for the sake of simplicity and clarity. This triangle represents only part of the Christian identity, it still exists within the dotted circle of the church and in relation to Christ. 87 This term, the New Homiletic, is being used to refer to the general trends and achievements in the field of Homiletics over the past thirty five or forty years. Specifically, I am referring to a movement that is primarily liberal-Protestant, North American and related to the Academy of Homiletics. There is a level of consensus on these matters within that movement. Usually the genesis of this movement is attributed to Fred. B. Craddocks, As One Without Authority, (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979), first published in 1971, but as we have seen, there were many significant contributions before Craddock. John McClure claims that the term itself was coined by David James Randolph at the founding meeting of the North American Academy of Homiletics (1965) and that Randolph subsequently used the term in his book The Renewal of Preaching, (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, 1969) in McClure, Other-wise Preaching. (Chalice Press, St. Louis, 2001), n.32, 77. 88 Paul Scott Wilson, Broken Words, 4. 89 David Buttrick notes that this tension and the excitement of discovering meaning through homiletical preparation is seldom experienced anymore because many preachers have turned to Lectionary aids, and downloaded sermons. It is a loss for the preacher and the church. David Buttrick, A Fearful Pulpit, a Wayward Land in Whats the Matter With Preaching Today?, ed Mike Graves (Louisville: Westminster John Know Press, 2004), 40. 90 Chauvet always links evangelization and sacramentalization, saying, every sacramentalization requires a prior evangelization and every evangelization must be structured sacramentally. Chauvet, The Sacraments, 51,53. 91 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 164. 92 This is the Lukan pattern as interpreted by Chauvet, The Sacraments, 23-28, and as presented in Chapter Two. 93 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 26. 94 It is important to remember that these umbrella terms or poles are not objects. They are spiritual places, approaches, moments, perspectives. 147 Elsewhere Chauvet extends this last line of thinking to include its endkerygma, liturgy and diakonia build up koinonia. Louis-Marie Chauvet, Liturgy and the Body, ed. Louis-Marie Chauvet and Francois Kabasele Lumbala (London : SCM Press ,1995), 133. 95 This refers to the second part of Jesus summary of the law when he likens (some would say equates) love of God to love of neighbour. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbour as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets. Mt. 22:37-40. I am also referring to the liturgical formula derived from it, often used in the gathering rite of Eucharistic liturgies. 96 Douglas John Hall, Thinking the Faith: Christian Theology in a North American Context (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 21. 97 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 324. 98 Ibid., 328. 99 Gross, If You Cannot Preach Like Paul, 102. 100 Chauvet makes use of the distinction between idol and icon in Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 216-219. Kevin Vanhoozer similarly provides an excellent analysis for use as a hermeneutic of the Cross and I have based these brief comments on his work. Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Is There a Meaning in This Text?: the Bible, the Reader, and the Morality of Literary Knowledge (Leicester : Apollos,
85

1998), 455 ff. Paul Ricoeur discusses this in Interpretation Theory, 40-42, as does Rowan Williams in Lost Icons : Reflections on Cultural Bereavement, (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 2000), 1-10. 101 John Webster, Holy Scripture: A Dogmatic Sketch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 52. 102 Paul Scott Wilson, God Sense: Reading the Bible for Preaching (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 2001), 68. 103 Bartow, Gods Human Speech, 9-24, esp. p. 16 note. 29. 104 Hall, Thinking the Faith, 237. 105 Ibid. 106 Ellen F. Davis, Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition (Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1995), 251. Davis suggests that learning to listen to the Bible on its own terms leads to fresh thinking that leads to repentance. Ibid., 251, 261. 107 Bartow, Gods Human Speech, 24. 108 Davis, Imagination Shaped, 251. 109 Lillian Daniel, Bourne in Perplexity in Journal for Preachers (Advent 2005) 26-27. 110 This use of the word resolves is intended to express some combination of the musical and chemical meanings: to cause a tone or chord to progress from dissonance to consonance, and/or to separate an optically inactive compound or mixture into its optically active constituentsto render parts of an image visible and distinct. This is a function of God, not a function of the language by itself. Stories, anecdotes, illustrations, and other forms of language are the mediation for this resolution, but they can also impose a false resolution on the ambiguity and disorder of life. Resolution in God however, is the gift and response of faith in the midst of that disorder as a promised and assured reconciliation. See Richard Lischer, The Limits of Story, Interpretation 38 (January 1984) : 30. 111 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 554. 112 This is especially true of Baptismal and/or Eucharistic liturgies, and the various responses to the Word that might be categorized as altar calls. 113 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 2. 114 John Webster, Holy Scripture, 16. Webster leads up to this by saying, Revelation is purposive. Its end is not simply divine self-display, but the overcoming of human opposition, alienation and pride p. 15. 115 Of course, preceding, or in the moment of recognition there is still freedom. We can either recognize and refuse, or recognize and receive. In homiletics, Fred Craddock led the way with regard to the preacher providing a space or room for recognition and response with his theory and with memorable phrases like, listeners do not need an argument, they need air, and Unless there is room to say no, there is no room for a genuine yes. Fred B. Craddock, As One Without Authority, 71, 14. Further, the moment of recognition can have different tones associated with it. Craddocks approach to preaching relies heavily on recognition for its effectiveness. He writes, Most of us have extremely poor recall, but superb powers of recognition. Fred. B Craddock, Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985), 15. Sometimes the listeners experience a nod of recognition when they are enabled to see how much they already know about a subject and the response is a nod of agreement or acknowledgment. Other times the listeners experience a shock of recognition when there is a sudden realization that I am the one called, the one addressed, the one guilty, the one responsible, the one commissioned ibid., p. 160. These two forms work best when they occur in relation to one another, as they so often do in Scripture. Ibid., p. 160-162. 116 Janowiak, The Holy Preaching, 38. 117 Richard B. Hays, First Corinthians in Interpretation: a Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: John Knox Press, 1997) , 233. (from 1 Cor 13:8-13)
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118 Stephen
Farris, Psalm 119: Preaching Law as Gospel in Grace: A Preaching Commentary (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003), 119-129. 119 Arthur Van Seters, Preaching and Ethics (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 2004), 16. 120 John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 2.7.12., trans. Henry Beveridge (Edinburgh : Calvin Translation Society), 1845-1846. To summarize Calvin, there are three uses of the Law; (1) To convict the sinner (to convince you that you have sinnedfunctions as a mirror), (2) To restrain the sinner (to curb and train the unrepentant sinner towards Christfunctions as a bridle), (3) To guide the redeemed (functions as a gift). Stephen Farris refers to this third use of the law when speaking of Torah understood as welcome instruction. The response to this instruction is, what a gift! Farris, Preaching That Matters, 94. Paul Scott Wilson refers to this gift as both yoke and joy. Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 100. Elsewhere, Wilson notes Barths conception of law as an ethical response to the gospel and the churchs need to be willing to sacrifice for the unjustly persecuted. emphasis original. Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory. 79. 121 The three moments for Buttrick are immediacy, reflection, and praxis. The first two do not correspond to my SCR and SAC. If anything, SCR is most like reflection, a standing back to consider a field of meaning, and SAC is most like immediacy, a step into a structured field of meaning. I would hesitate to use Buttricks first two terms at all. However, Buttricks third term, praxis, is useful and it closely resembles my ETH. Buttrick, Homiletic, 320329. 122 Ibid., 326. 123 Chauvet, The Sacraments, 58. 124 Ibid., 55. 125 This is the heresy that infects the mission of preaching by denying sin and affirming the ability of humans to be righteous by the exercise of free will. It infects the mission of the church by affirming that the conversion of the world will be our achievement. 126 David L. Bartlett, Showing Mercy in Whats the Matter With Preaching Today?, ed. Mike Graves (Louisville KY: Westminster John Know Press, 2004), 25. 127 Richard Lischer clearly articulates two of the different kinds of speech available to the church, both of which are necessary in preaching. Decisive speech is language that claims your attention and with it your will. It invades your space, takes your face in its hands, and demands to be heard. (p. 95-96) Narrative modes, narration, and the stories of the faith, do not entertain they sustain. They do not inform, they form those who hear and share them for a life of faithfulness (p. 107). Richard Lischer, The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2005), 96-95, 107. In 1984 Lischer offered a most useful caution against the over-valuation of story in The Limits of Story, Interpretation 38 (January 1984). 128 Lesslie Newbigin, The Gospel in a Pluralist Society (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), 227. Newbigin adds children as he continues with the use of this phrase, saying for example, that the gospel community becomes the place where men, women, and children find that the gospel gives them the framework of understanding, the lenses through which they are able to understand and cope with the world. p. 227.
Chapter Five The Sacramentality of Preaching and the Homiletic of Paul Scott Wilson: A Practice
1
The details of this example were related to me by a colleague in ministry from his recent experience. The example also serves to symbolize many similar situations that pastors encounter and

the value of theory in practice. The image of the preacher standing between font and table is suggested by Charles L. Rice as an actual place to stand that is appropriate for liturgical preaching, but also as a symbolic perspective for the place of the word as it is embodied in the preacher and priest. The place is both spiritual and spatial. Charles L. Rice, The Embodied Word: Preaching as Art and Liturgy. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 15-17, 25. Rice suggests that this perspective can open more avenues toward becoming intentionally sacramental communities. 61. 2 Chauvet, Symbol and Sacrament, 220-221. For example, evangelization must lead to baptism in order to be recognizably Christian, just as this sacramental expression must be preceded by a confession of faitha response to the evangel of Christ. 3 I would also like to acknowledge that part of pastoral discernment is to know when the speech-act ought to be silence. We do not fill every moment with chatter, even theological chatter, but we also do not remain silent when a word uttered can be the catalyst and medium for the Spirits work. 4 In what follows, I will refer to the theological structure-of-relations in Wilsons theory as the Four Pages. This, necessarily, is a reference to the book, The Four Pages of the Sermon, but it also refers to the underlying homiletical grammar of the theory. I will discuss the various levels and ways to use Wilsons theory in the next section. 5 Farris, Preaching that Matters, 1. This concern for Gods activity flows into his homiletical theory, especially in the analogical exercises and homiletical questions he has the preacher assess in preparation. For example, What is God doing in the text? Is God doing anything similar in our world? Farris writes, The Bible bears testimony primarily to what God has done, is doing, and will do. The chief task of biblical preaching is to do precisely the same. 121, 122. 6 Stephen Farris, Grace: A Preaching Commentary, 7. 7 This is not a gospel that we have constructed or a gospel that suits our purposes. The gospel we believe is revealed in Jesus Christ. Often we resist it even though we believe it. 8 For example, narrative (especially inductive, story, and plot) preaching models, can improve imagination and hearing in preaching without making it theological imagination and a hearing of God. Linguistic and interpretive issues are addressed creating a preferred experience of the sermon, without an assurance that the sermon aims for God-language or interpreted God-experience. The theorist may use the model theologically in their own preaching, but there is little assurance that a student will. This is a risk with the excellent and important preaching models of Fred Craddock, Charles Rice and Eugene Lowry, for example, as these models are discussed in Richard L. Eslinger, A New Hearing: Living Options in Homiletic Methods. (Nashville: Abingdon Press), 1987. 9 Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 17, 151. 10 From the introduction to Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B.Craddock, 11. Fred Craddock is rightly given much of the credit for breaking homiletical ground in these directions, while the directions themselves had been suggested by others years before Craddock. David Lose has offered a helpful critique of this dynamic, especially in the form of the postliberal cultural linguistic model (Lindbeck). Lose notes that when preachers move hearers into a linguistic world, they are moving in a direction opposite to the direction of Gods incarnation, and they may be negating critical conversation. David J. Lose, Confessing Jesus Christ, 44-49. It is important to note that we can overestimate the integrity of language-systems. 11 Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon, 9-15. This is not a knock against rigorous academic justification for this device. It is simply appreciated that at an introductory level, some theoretical material is best left for study after the approach has been tried and practised. Indeed, Wilsons earlier work, especially The Practice of Preaching, offers plenty of background theory to support an assertion that movie-making is a better analogy for preaching than telling stories.
Notes 221
12
Ronald J. Allen, Interpreting the Gospel: An Introduction to Preaching. (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 1998), 187. Allen was one of the pre-publication readers of Wilsons The Four Pages of the Sermon and he references Wilsons work as forthcoming. Ibid., n. 11, 303. This is also true for Allens companion volume Patterns of Preaching, where Wilsons Four Pages is offered in summary and with a sample sermon from Wilson. Ronald J. Allen, Patterns of Preaching a Sermon Sampler, (St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 1998), 80-86. It is difficult to keep up with current publications in this expanding field, so one has to admire Allens ability to stay ahead by publishing an analysis of material that had not yet been published! 13 Allen, Interpreting the Gospel, 177-205. This refers to Allens Chapter 11, and its title, A Smorgasbord of Patterns of Movement for the Sermon. 14 Further complicating the issue, we find ourselves in the middle of a debate on the best way to teach introductory homiletics. Both Allen and Long have stressed the value of a comprehensive tool belt approach to homiletics that may include a master image for the preacher, such as witness in Long, or interpreter in Allen, but both emphasize forms and they encourage the mastery of homiletical options for application in their instruction. Wilson, by contrast, emphasizes that learning one theological grammar well, especially an integrated, structural approach with an explicit focus on God throughout, is a better starting point for learning to preach. I follow Wilson in this regard by using Four Pages as the sole theory in introductory homiletics, but go on to teach the advanced courses with the principles of the Four Pages as part of the structure for preparation, together with a broad reading and discussion of homiletical theory, including varieties of methodology for biblical interpretation and sermon composition. 15 Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching. Second Edition. (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005), 128. 16 Ibid., 124. 17 Long also says that the theory is rich, but not as all-encompassing and unifying as it seems to be because, finally, the categories of law and gospel are not comprehensive enough to serve as the master organizers of sermon structure. Long, The Witness of Preaching, (2nd ed.), 130. To begin with, in the Bible, writes Long, the terms law and gospel are not polar opposites. This is a strangely dismissive line of thinking to take on a major historical theological structure for preaching. Long does not point out how Wilson values the polarity as something that creates and generates. I think Long is reacting to a simplistic, dualistic application of Wilsons theory that does not emphasize the fact that the trouble-grace structure of the Four Pages is an intentional, artificial separation of law and gospel for the sake of theological recognition. It is the momentary pulling-apart of two sides of the same coin that provides the distance necessary for appropriation. Perhaps Long fears that a mis-application of the Four Pages, based on an intolerance for ambiguity or ambivalence, would erase the tension and provide law and gospel as opposites in the sense that one erases the other. Longs resistence may also be based on that visceral (negative) reaction to propositions, arguments and syllogisms characterizing most of the early work in the New Homiletic. Long lineseems to forget that Wilsons metaphor for sermon form, the surface form for the actual words of the sermon, is filmmaking, and it is only beneath the surface that doctrines and conceptual theological structures provide, among other things, the framework for division and organization. 18 Ibid., 130. 19 Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, 98, and Wilson, Broken Words, 3-7, 135-138. 20 Allen, Interpreting the Gospel, 189. 21 Long, The Witness of Preaching, (2nd ed.), 129. 22 Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon, 157 23 Ibid., 163,164.

24
Academic homileticians are sometimes guilty of writing critiques and summaries of proposals in the field that are too brief and overly dismissive. Critique is essential, but when it is cursory, or when one small objection is given as much attention as an appreciative summary, it can undermine confidence in the theory as a whole in the eyes of the non-specialist. The result is that preaching pastors who seek good help, are not sure what to try. Pointing out the strengths of a theory at length, together with appropriate cautions may be more helpful. This is what Richard Eslinger has done well in his two books, A New Hearing and The Web of Preaching. However, it must be said that while Eslinger has probably done the best job of describing Wilsons ordo homiletica as he calls it, he too undervalues the deep structure of the Four Pages by casting the critique along the same literary-critical form lines as Long, calling it a homiletical method. Indeed it is a model, and a method, but is it also more. Richard L. Eslinger, The Web of Preaching: New Options in Homiletic Method. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002), 234-238. The New Homiletic has at times put too much emphasis on methodology, and new paradigms for preaching. Methodology alone cannot do justice to the richness of our theological calling. Richard Lischer, Why I Am Not Persuasive in Homiletic vol. XXIV, no. 2 p. 15. A concentration on method alone, while achieving great things, has drawn us too far into exclusive paradigms for preaching, each battling for superiority. 25 This preparatory process must be supplemented with material that is not contained in the book, Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon. Wilsons other publications (primarily Wilson, The Practice of Preaching) and/or the work of other theorist and practitioners can serve this purpose well. I will demonstrate this later in this chapter. 26 Wilson, Broken Words, 137. Wilson, like most people in the field, uses method and model interchangeably. For example, on the same page Wilson writes, Perhaps the best question for preachers to ask is not, Does four pages work as a model? Rather it is, Does four pages work as a grammar? I have made a distinction above between sermon model as form and method of preparation. This may be a false distinction, but it serves to distinguish between the two closely related activities of sermon composition (the actual words to be used in the sermon, how to organize it and say it) and sermon preparation (the process of coming to a decision about what to say). These two activities are best ruled by the same grammar. 27 Ibid. 28 Christine Firer Hinze What is Enough? in Having: Property and Possession, 178, 179. 29 Charles R. Foster, Lisa E. Dahill, Lawrence A. Golemon, Barbara W. Tolentino, Educating Clergy: Teaching Practices and Pastoral Imagination. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2006), note. 4, 27 and regarding practice, 29. 30 MacIntyre writes, By a practice I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellences, and human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended. Tic-tac-toe is not an example of a practice in this sense, nor is throwing a football with skill; but the game of football is, and so is chess. Bricklaying is not a practice; architecture is. Planting turnips is not a practice; farming is. So are the enquiries of physics, chemistry and biology, and so is the work of the historian, and so are painting and music. In the ancient and medieval worlds the creation and sustaining of human communities - of households, cities, nations - is generally taken to be a practice in the sense which I have defined it. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), 187, 188. 31 These are distinguished by MacIntyre in the following way, It is characteristic of what I have called external goods that when achieved they are always some individuals property and possession. Moreover characteristically they are such that the more someone has of them, the less
Notes 223
there is for other people. This is sometimes necessarily the case, as with power and fame, and sometimes by reason of contingent circumstance as with money. External goods are therefore characteristically objects of competition in which there must be losers as well as winners. Internal goods are indeed the outcome of competition to excel, but it is characteristic of them that their achievement is a good for the whole community who participate in the practice. Ibid., 190, 191. 32 It is a common miracle however, that churches remain vibrant without good preaching. It is likely that these churches have found other ways to hear the gospel. 33 Wilson does not use the word correlation for it. 34 Richard Lischer, A Theology of Preaching, 33. Wilson makes note of Lischers listing of the divine dialectic at least twice. Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 104, and Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, 90. 35 Lischer, A Theology of Preaching, 39. In reference to the hearing of Eph. 2:1-10, Lischer beautifully describes Gods turn from judgement to grace, God interrupts his own wrath with his own love. 32. 36 Ibid., 30. 37 Charles R. Foster [et. al.], Educating Clergy, 33. 38 The class usually numbers between twelve and twenty students. On average, about three quarters of the class would be students seeking ordination in the Anglican Church of Canada or the Episcopal Church U.S.A. The remaining students are from a variety of other denominations, most often the United Church of Canada. Occasionally students not seeking ordination take the course. Students seeking ordination usually enrol in the Master of Divinity program, and all others are in the Master of Theological Studies program. 39 I am careful to point out that the experience of preparation is not always as linear as these stages would suggest. At times it is wise to go back and forth between the stages, but generally, these stages can be followed in order, and in each stage, there must be a homiletical purpose for the hermeneutical process. I will also note here that each stage or mode is cast as a verb for clarity in definition. 40 Nancy Lammers Gross uses similar names for the two steps of her hermeneutical swing between understanding and explanation. Gross, If You Cannot Preach Like Paul , 115. She calls the first step Listening, Asking Questions, and Making a Guess, and the second step, Engaging Other Dialogue Partners, 106-127. 41 Fleming Rutledge, A New Liberalism of the Word in Loving God With Our Minds: The Pastor as Theologian, Michael Welker and Cynthia A Jarvis eds., (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004), 252. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid., 253 44 Ibid., 252-253 45 As presented in Chapter Two, as DIAGRAM 1. (The Paschal Mystery of Christ) 46 Following the line of thinking found in Sandra M. Schneiders, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture, (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991). I quickly re-read this book before this session every year as I find that when these ideas are fresh in my mind, they guide my thinking in the class discussion of Biblical Interpretation. Another article that has proved helpful in this regard is, Richard Lischer, How Do You Read?, The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol. XXII, no. 2, 2001, 172-184. This has been adapted and is now more accessible as the chapter entitled The Final Edition in Richard Lischer, The End of Words, 49-87. 47 Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hayes, The Art of Reading Scripture, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003) 1-5.

48
The HarperCollins Book of Prayers: A Treasury of Prayers through the Ages, compiled by Robert Van de Weyer (Edison, N.J.: Castle Books, 1997), 177. 49 Ibid. p. 363-4. These prayers are found being used this way at http://cep.calvinseminary.edu/ encounterText/prayersForEncounteringText.php 50 Chauvet is always careful to say that God is inscribed, but never circumscribed, in the church. 51 Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, 55. Emphasis mine. 52 Wilson, God Sense, 11 53 Wilson, Preaching and Homiletical Theory, 55. 54 Ibid. 55 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 132-139. For teaching, I have adapted exercises 6:1, 6:2 into one-page charts with a box for each question and response. I also use a memory test to ensure thorough learning of the theological exercise 6:2. The reason for this is simple, these questions need to be inwardly digested so that they come from our minds and our hearts while reading scripture, not from reference to a textbook. These questions contribute to a habitus of homiletics. 56 Farris, Preaching That Matters, 51-74. The summary of these questions (p. 72-74) is copied and given to the students for use with Wilsons exercises 6:1 and 6:2, for use in the homiletical exegesis assignment. Students find that the one set of questions tends to reinforce and expand the understanding of the other. Eventually, students tend to gravitate to one set of questions or the other, before using their own version for ongoing exegesis. 57 Ellen F. Davis, Imagination Shaped, p. 251 58 Barbara Brown Taylor, The Preaching Life, (Cambridge, Mass: Cowley Publications, 1993), 81-83. 59 John McClure and Lucy Rose both use the image of roundtable with the notion of conversation in preaching and church. John S. McClure, The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership and Preaching Meet. (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), and Lucy A. Rose, Sharing the Word Preaching in the Roundtable Church. (Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox, 1997). There is a lot to learn from these two homileticians about hierarchical distortions in preaching and about valuing the wisdom of the assembly. However, the actual homiletical approach is less appealing than it sounds at first, primarily because the conversation they encourage shapes sermon composition and form (McClure), or it is actually carried out as conversation with the congregation in the actual sermon (Rose). In my experience, this has only functioned well in settings where there are fewer than twenty worshipers and then only if those who engage in the sermon are genuinely interested in dialogue and dialectical engagement, the preacher included. Many people seem only able to produce monologues. Further, it takes a very gifted preacher to absorb the complexities of such a liturgical action, and to preside over the conversation in a meaningful, worshipful way. Finally, it is very difficult to prepare for this type of preaching, and it can lead to a level of comfort with winging it. 60 This is a central element in Wilsons homiletic from his earliest theory. He has written, Imagination of the heart we have defined as imagination leavened by both scripture and experience Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 50. 61 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 147. 62 Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 32-37. 63 More detailed guidance for the concerns exercises can be found in Wilson, Imagination of the Heart, 70-77, 85-90, and Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 146-156 , 165-175. 64 These exercises are all copied and distributed in an adapted form, (even though the students own the book!), and they are followed using a class text to demonstrate the experience of a sparking homiletical imagination. All of the exercises are found in Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, (ex. 7.1, 7.2), 148-150, 152-154 , (ex. 7.3), 154-155, (ex. 8:1), 166-171. My experience
Notes 225
is a confirmation of Wilsons sense that in my own teaching no exercise or assignment has done more to help introductory students discover the connections they are proposing to make between the Bible and the present day, to correct and strengthen them, and to show the range of possibilities of intersection between the biblical text and experience than transposing concerns of the text. Ibid., 165. The other primary resource I use here is Stephen Farris description of analogy that is creative, dynamic, and above all theological. Farris, Preaching That Matters, 7-10, 18 65 Wilson, The Practice of Preaching, 164-171. T for trouble is adapted from j for judgement according to the change in terminology in Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon. 66 This often does occur with the use of the theological inversion exercise (7.3), or with reference to missing links in the test for sermon unity, TTDNIM, one text, theme, doctrine, need, image, and mission. 67 Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon, 73-79, 108-117, 155-164, 188-195. 68 Ibid., 162-164 69 This diagram also appears in Chapter Two and in Chapter Four. 70 Wilson, The Four Pages of the Sermon, 33-57. This memory device represents the desire to have unity and focus in a single sermon but restricting ourselves to one text, one theme, one doctrine, one need, one dominant image, and one mission. 71 Sometimes the Doctrine is very clear, and Page Three is established in preparation before Page Two. In this case, as the preacher prepares Page Two, he or she keeps an eye on the doctrine in Page Three and Four. 72 R.E.C. Browne, The Ministry of the Word, 39. 73 David L. Bartlett, Showing Mercy in Whats the Matter With Preaching Today?, 33. 74 For example, the preacher may use this script for several different sermons that day as they are preached to different congregations, often in different buildings, using slightly different liturgical rites. 75 I am grateful to Art Van Seters for writing something very similar to this in the margins of a class assignment I had submitted to him. 76 In this way the listeners may be looking at the preacher, but they are seeing what he or she is talking about. They are hearing and seeing Gods activity for them and with them. 77 The students are often pleased to know that workshops on speech communication are offered as part of the second course, and individual attention is given to any student in the first course who has demonstrated a significant problem in this regard. 78 Frederick Buechner, Telling the Truth, 71. 79 Again, each pole has the following characteristics. Scripture (SCR) involves understanding faith, the gift of knowledge, cognition, thinking-the-world, kerygma (believing). Sacrament (SAC) involves, celebrating faith, gratitude, recognition, singing-the-world, leitourgia (celebrating). Ethics (ETH) involves living in faith, the return gift to others, praxis, acting-in-theworld, diakonia (loving).
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Bibliographies Recent Homiletical Thought: A Bibliography 1935-1965. W. Toohey and W. D. Thompson eds. Nashville: Abingdon, 1967. Recent Homiletical Thought: An Annotated Bibliography 1936-1979. A.D. Litfin and H.W. Robinson eds. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1983 Vanderbilt Divinity Library Homiletics Bibliography. B. Howard and H.-D. Lee eds., Fall 2002. Online, available from http://divinity.library.vanderbilt.edu/lib/bibliographies/homileticsfall2002.pdf Books and Articles Allen, Ronald J. Interpreting the Gospel: An Introduction to Preaching. St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 1998. . Patterns of Preaching: a Sermon Sampler. St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 1998. Allmen, Jean-Jacques von. Preaching and Congregation. trans. B.L. Nicholas, London: Lutterworth Press, 1962. Anderson, C. Colt. Christian Eloquence: Contemporary Doctrinal Preaching. Chicago: Liturgy TrainingPublictions, 2005. Augustine, and D. W Robertson. On Christian Doctrine. Library of Liberal Arts, 80. New York: Liberal Arts Press, 1958. Austin, John L. How to Do Things with Words. Oxford: Clarendon, 1962. Babin, David E. Week In - Week Out: A New Look at Liturgical Preaching. New York: Seabury Press, 1976. Barth, Karl. Church Dogmatics. Volume 1, The Doctrine of the Word of God, G.W. Bromiley trans. and ed., T.F. Torrance ed., Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975. . Homiletics. Louisville, Ky: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991. . The Knowledge of God and the Service of God. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1938. Barth, Karl, and B. E Hooke. The Preaching of the Gospel. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1963. Bartlett, David L. Showing Mercy in Whats the Matter With Preaching Today? Mike Graves ed., (Louisville KY: Westminster John Know Press), 2004. Bartow, Charles L. Gods Human Speech: a Practical Theology of Proclamation. Grand Rapids: W. B. Eerdmans, 1997. Baudrillard, Jean. For a Critique of the Political Economy of the Sign in Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings, ed. Mark Poster, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. Benveniste, Emile. Gift and Exchange in the Indo-European Vocabulary in The Logic of the Gift: Toward an Ethic of Generosity, ed. Alan D. Schrift, New York: Routledge, 1997. Bonnycastle, Stephen. In Search of Authority: an Introductory Guide to Literary Theory 2nd Ed. Peterborough: Broadview Press: 1996 Broadus, John A. A Treatise on the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons. Edwin Charles Dargan ed., New York: Hodder and Stoughton, 1898, originally published in 1870. Browne, R.E.C. The Ministry of the Word. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1958.

Buechner, Frederick. Telling the Truth: the Gospel As Tragedy, Comedy, and Fairy Tale. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1977. Buttrick, David. Homiletic: Moves and Structures. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987. . A Fearful Pulpit, a Wayward Land in Whats the Matter With Preaching Today? Mike Graves ed., (Louisville KY: Westminster John Know Press), 2004. Calvin, J. Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960 [1559]. Campbell, Charles L. Preaching Jesus: New Directions for Homiletics in Hans Freis Postliberal Theology. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 1997. Chauvet, Louis-Marie. Du symbolique au symbole: Essai sur les sacraments, Paris: Edition du Cerf, 1979. . Symbol and Sacrament: A Sacramental Reinterpretation of Christian Existence, Collegeville MN: Pueblo Publishing, The Liturgical Press, 1995. [1987 Fr.]. . The Sacraments: The Word of God at the Mercy of the Body. Collegeville MN: A Pueblo Book, The Liturgical Press, 2001. . Liturgy and the Body. Louis Chauvet and Francois Kabasele Lumbala, eds.,London : SCM Press, 1995. Childers, Jana. Performing the Word: Preaching As Theater. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1998. Church, Aloysius. The Theology of the Word of God. Notre Dame, IN: Fides Publishers, 1970. Claypool, John. The Preaching Event. Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1978. Waco, Tx: Word Books, 1980. Coffin, Henry Sloane. Communion Through Preaching: The Monstrance of the Gospel. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1952. Coggan, Donald. Preaching the Sacrament of the Word. New York: Crossroad, 1988. Also in a second edition, A New Day for Preaching: the Sacrament of the Word, London: S.P.C.K., 1996. Craddock, Fred. B. As One Without Authority. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1979. First published in 1971. . Overhearing the Gospel. Lyman Beecher Lectures, 1978. Nashville: Abingdon, 1978. . Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. Craddock, Fred B., Thomas G Long, and Gail R ODay. Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B.Craddock. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993. Daniel, Lillian. Bourne in Perplexity in Journal for Preachers, Advent 2005. Davis, Ellen F. Imagination Shaped: Old Testament Preaching in the Anglican Tradition. Valley Forge, Pa: Trinity Press International, 1995. Davis, Ellen F. and Hays, Richard B., The Art of Reading Scripture, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003. Davis, H. Grady. Design For Preaching. Philadelphia: Muhlenberg Press, 1958. Dodd, C.H. The Apostolic Preaching and its Developments. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1936. Engemann, Wilfried. On Mans Re-Entry into his Future: The Sermon as Creative Act, in Societas Homiletica 4, trans. Marget Pater, Utrecht: Societas Homiletica, 2002. Escott, Harry. P.T. Forsyth and the Cure of Souls: An Appraisement and Anthology of his Practical Writings, London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1970. Eslinger, Richard L. A New Hearing: Living Options in Homiletic Methods. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1987. . Pitfalls in Preaching. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co, 1996. . The Web of Preaching: New Options in Homiletic Method. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2002. Farmer, Herbert Henry. The Servant of the Word. London: Nisbet & Co, 1942.
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Lash, Nicholas. Theology on the Way to Emmaus, London: SCM Press, 1986. Lathrop, Gordon W. Holy Ground : A Liturgical Cosmology. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003 Lewis, Alan E. Between Cross and Resurrection: A Theology of Holy Saturday. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001. Lindbeck, George A. The Nature of Doctrine: Religion and Theology in a Postliberal Age. Philadelphia: Westminster, 1984. Lischer, Richard. The Company of Preachers: Wisdom on Preaching, Augustine to the Present. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2002. . The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence, Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005. . A Theology of Preaching: The Dynamics of the Gospel, Revised Edition, Durham, N.C: Labyrinth Press, 1992. . The Limits of Story, in Interpretation, 38 January 1984. . How Do You Read? in The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol. XXII, no. 2, 2001. . Why I Am Not Persuasive in Homiletic vol. XXIV, no. 2. Long, Thomas G. The Witness of Preaching. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989. . The Witness of Preaching. Second Edition. Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2005. . And How Shall They Hear? The Listener in Contemporary Preaching, in Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock, ed. Gail R. ODay and Thomas G. Long (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1993) . Theology of Preaching, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Modern Christian Thought, ed. Alister E. McGrath, Oxford: Blackwell, 1993. Lose, David J. Confessing Jesus Christ: Preaching in a Postmodern World. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans, 2003. Lowry, Eugene L. Doing Time in the Pulpit: the Relationship Between Narrative and Preaching. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1985. . The Homiletical Plot: the Sermon As Narrative Art Form. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1980. MacIntyre, Alasdair C. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984. Macleod, Donald. Word and Sacrament: A Preface to Preaching and Worship. Englewood Cliffs, NJ.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1960. Marion, Jean-Luc. God Without Being: Hors-Texte, Thomas A. Carlson (trans.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. [1982 Fr.] . They Recognized Him; and He Became Invisible to Them. In Modern Theology Vol. 18 no. 2, April 2002, Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Massey, James Earl. The Burdensome Joy of Preaching, Nashville, TN : Abingdon Press, 1998. Mauss, Marcel. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, Ian Cunnicon, (trans.) World Economic History (1924; reprint, New York: Norton, 1967). McClure, John S. Other-Wise Preaching: a Postmodern Ethic for Homiletics. St. Louis, Mo: Chalice Press, 2001. . The Roundtable Pulpit: Where Leadership and Preaching Meet. Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995. McDaniel, Judith M. ed. Preaching Grace in the Human Condition, Studia Homiletica 3, Societas Homiletica, February 27 - March 4, 1999. McFague, Sallie. Metaphorical Theology: Models of God in Religious Language. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982
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INDEX
A
Allen, Ronald, J., 160-161 Ambivalence, 74, 90-92, 99-100, 143, 145 Anderson, C. Colt, 116 Aquinas, Thomas, 26, 44, 169 Austin, John L., 58, 126 Continuing conversion, 78, 116-117, 153 Craddock, Fred B., 137 Creative tension, 4, 6, 35, 41, 76, 84, 95, 111, 113, 127, 132-137, 144, 161, 172173
D
Daniel, Lilian, 145 Davis, Ellen, 170 Davis, H. Grady, 8-9, 14, 35, 126 Deep grammar/structure, 21, 23, 81-82, 103, 160-162, 166, 170 Dominic, 135
B
Baptism, 5, 8, 13, 25, 28, 39, 61, 63-64, 70, 128, 137, 147, 156 Barth, Karl, 5, 26, 124-125, 135 Bartlett, David, 152 Bartow, Charles, L., 127, 144 Baudrillard, Jean, 92 Benveniste, Emile, 91 Beyond value, 87, 92-94, 98, 100, 102, 135 Blessing prayer, 88, 101-108 Body, 4, 19, 25, 31-32, 41, 45-49, 51, 53, 60-62, 64-72, 75-76, 81, 109, 128, 138, 146, 150-151, 162, 165 Bourdieu, Pierre, 163-164 Broadus, John, 7-9, 14 Buechner, Frederick, 119, 177 Buttrick, David, 137, 151
E
Empty space, 84, 119, 151 Eucharist, 8, 12-13, 20, 28, 34-38, 61, 70, 101-108, 147-148 Evangelization/sacramentalization, 132, 137, 156 Ex opere operato, 6 Expression, 13, 30, 34, 41, 46-48, 56, 58, 60, 67, 70, 74, 81, 103, 122, 143, 147, 156, 163, 194n.22
C
Calvin, John, 26, 97-98 Campbell, Charles, 135 Childers, Jana, 126 Coffin, H.S., 10-12, 14-15, 20, 23 Cognition, 2, 57, 69-71, 78, 143-145, 148, 157 Communion, 10-13, 38, 66, 101, 103, 124, 141, 153 Congregation, 3, 13, 15, 16, 24, 37, 112, 117-119, 121, 123, 125-126, 131, 133134, 137-138, 141, 143, 144, 146-153, 160, 164-165, 174, 176, 179-180
F
Faith, 1-2, 5, 8, 15, 24, 27-28, 31-33, 36-37, 40-41, 47-48, 53, 61-71, 74, 77, 79, 8182, 95, 99-100, 103, 109, 111-114, 133153, 156-165, 176-179, 181 Farris, Stephen, 125, 133, 158, 168, 170 Flahault, Francois, 52 Forde, Gerhard O., 123 Forsyth, P.T., 77, 110, 135 From non-faith to faith, 5, 41, 62-64, 66, 74, 109, 114, 118, 138, 157, 179 Fuller, R.H., 12-15, 20
236 The Sacramentality of Preaching G

Gift, return-gift, gift-exchange 6, 14, 18, 27, 34, 40, 59, 61-62, 70, 75, 88-109, 115, 127, 134-135, 141, 143, 145, 147-148, 150-152, 156-158, 167, 170, 179
M
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 164, 180, 222 n.30, n.31 Macleod, Donald, 10, 15-17, 23 Mauss, Marcel, 88-90 Mediation, 11, 40, 43, 48-54, 40, 63-76, 81, 94, 114, 153, 158, 164-165, 170, 178-179 Meeks, Douglas, 98 Milbank, John, 98-99 Missio Dei, 153
H
Habitus, 155, 162-164, 180 Haecceitas / particularity, 39-40, 108, 118, 120, 125, 134-135, 137-138, 143, 151, 156 Hays, Richard B., 149 Hermeneutical ease, 14, 22, 82 Hermeneutical key, 2, 101-103 Hilkert, Mary Catherine, 82-86, 179 Hinze, Christine Firer, 163
N
New Homiletic, 35, 131, 136-137, 159, 178
O
Ortiques, Edmond, 56
I
Icon, 142 Idol, 71, 142 Instrumental view, 22-24, 29, 38, 43-45, 4953, 132, 164, 178
P
Pedagogy, 155-156, 160, 166-177 Pickstock, Catherine, 98 Pilaro, Daniel, 205 n.37 Power, David, 101-102 Practice, 1-2, 5-9, 11-13, 22, 26-28, 96, 114, 121, 123, 140, 146, 150, 155-168, 180181 Proclamation, 3-5, 14, 20, 24, 28-42, 43, 6465, 77, 85-86, 96, 102, 112-114, 143-146, 157, 174
J
Janowiak, Paul, 33, 148
K
Keir, Thomas, 6, 17-19, 22
L
La Fontaine, 61, 216n.75 La nouvelle Theology, 27 Lacan, Jacques, 51 Lash, Nicholas, 126 Lischer, Richard, 5, 34, 81, 135, 166 Liturgical Preaching, 2, 7-15, 22, 24, 38, 41, 94, 116, 131-132, 137, 179 Liturgical/theological environment, 78, 8182, 111, 115, 140, 155, 177 Long, Thomas G., 1, 160-161 Lowry, Eugene, 137 Luther, Martin, 26
R
Rahner, Karl, 26, 28, 30-32 Recognition, 37-38, 40-41, 51-55, 57, 59, 66-67, 70-71, 78, 87, 89-90, 101, 113, 126, 134, 138-140, 144-150, 152-153, 157, 163, 174 Revelation and empowerment, 41, 73, 115, 138 Revelatory and operative, 124, 133, 179 Rice, Charles, 127 Rutledge, Fleming, 167
Index 237 S
Sacramental Preaching, 2, 4, 11, 22, 24, 78, 81, 111, 117, 155, 180 Sacramentality, 3, 37-40, 86-87, 112-114, 134 Sangster, W.E., 9 Schillebeeckx, Edward, 26, 28, 32-33 Semmelroth, Otto, 26, 28-30, 33 Sola Scriptura, 6 Speech, 58, 60-65, 73-78, 88, 95, 102, 112116, 125-127, 137, 142-157, 178
T
Tanner, Kathryn, 88, 96-101 Taylor, Barbara Brown, 120, 170 The temptation of immediacy, 50, 52, 65, 67, 139, 149 Trouble-Grace, 129-131, 161, 166
V
Van Gogh, V., 59 Von Allmen, Jean-Jacques, 10, 19-20, 22
W
Webb, Stephen, 98 Willimon, William, 135 Wilson, Paul Scott, 127, 130, 155-177, 180

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The Sacramentality of Preaching

SERIES VII THEOLOGY AND RELIGION VOL. 286

The Sacramentality of Preaching

Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics

The Sacramentality of Preaching

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics

The Sacramentality of Preaching

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics

The Sacramentality of Preaching

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics

Liturgical Preaching 1950 to 1963 (the Commencement of Vatican II)

The Sacramentality of Preaching

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 11

Liturgical Preaching Before, During, and After Vatican II

Sacramental Way of Thinking about Homiletics 31

34 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Summary and Direction

Sacramental Ways of Thinking about Homiletics

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order

A Trinitarian Approach to the Whole Mystery of Christ3

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 45

Diagram 1. The Paschal Mystery of Christ14

The Linguistic Turn

Diagram 2. Language as Instrument28

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 51

Diagram 3. Language as Mediation42

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 53

However, the word flower can also function as a symbol.

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 59

62 The Sacramentality of Preaching

The Ecclesial Turn

Chauvets Structure: The Symbolic Order 67

68 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Diagram 5. The Structure of Christian Identity (revised)132

Summary of Chapter and Implications for Homiletics

78 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Diagram 6. The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching

Introduction and Transition from Structure to Dynamics

88 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Grace as Symbolic Exchange

Diagram 7. Gift-Reception-Return Gift

The Blessing Prayer as a Hermeneutical Key for Preaching

108 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Diagram 8. Gift-Reception-Return Gift (Expanded)124

Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory: A Conception

Sacramentality and Homiletics

Chauvets Structure and Homiletical Theory 117

Diagram 6: The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching

The Sacramentality of Preaching in Dialogue with Homiletics

136 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Diagram 9. Three Poles of Preaching

The Teaching and Learning of Homiletics

158 The Sacramentality of Preaching

The Practice of Preaching Within the Mediation of the Church

164 The Sacramentality of Preaching

Incorporating the Sacramentality of Preaching into the Four Pages

Diagram 6. The Place of Liturgical/Sacramental Preaching69

Chapter One Sacramental Ways of Thinking About Homiletics

184 The Sacramentality of Preaching

186 The Sacramentality of Preaching

188 The Sacramentality of Preaching

190 The Sacramentality of Preaching