For the topic of Preaching last weekend at Bethany Bible School, I selected three texts: Genesis 1:1-5; Jeremiah 1:1-10; John 1:1-9.
These three texts have in common a focus on the Word of God or, in other words, that which human preachers dare to proclaim when they preach. That preaching is a big job is underscored by the call of Jeremiah, in which the prophet reacts to the coming of the “word of the LORD” to him with self-degradation—“Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy” (1:4-5). Yet proclaiming that word to others is something he must do, though something he can only do because the word is not his but God’s own put within his mouth (1:6, 9).
If it is thus true that the call of Jeremiah establishes for us the preaching imperative, the preacher still needs to know what and how he/she should preach. Genesis 1:1-5, the first words of the Bible, sheds light on the how of preaching. It is interesting to note, for example, that the spoken word is not the first thing in the story; before God speaks (1:3), “God”, “the Spirit of God”, and “formless” material of some kind (along with darkness and water) are in the story (1:1-2). In other words, before the word which is “light” (1:3) is spoken, the Spirit of God has been “hovering over the waters” (1:2). Though the waters are dark, though the earth is “formless and void”, though the creation is not yet really creation, though it is chaos, yet something is there—something over which God is pleased to hover.
The Xhosa translation uses -fukama for what the Spirit was doing over the waters; –fukama, what a mother hen does to her eggs and chicks, is what God was doing to formless matter: lovingly, jealously guarding-protecting-keeping it, considering what it will be until the day it is born. God the Mother was brooding over the waters.
It is from such brooding that the word finally speaks—and orders-creates a world. It is from the hovering of the Spirit of God (1:2), from perhaps the Mind of God (1:1), that the Word of God creates.
This is all to say that the preacher—the one called to speak the Word of God—must hover over the things of creation that will be before his word can begin to order them. Herein lies a “how” of preaching, a method for preaching. Before the proclaimer can speak, he must brood over material as a hen over unborn offspring. She must consider all things—people’s lives and stories, culture, news, proverbs, wisdom and—of course, especially—the text itself. Somehow, out of that consideration, by the Spirit of God, the creative Word speaks (or the spoken Word creates). This is a call for preparation—not of a rigid, inflexible kind but of a prayerful “brooding” over stories and the Story until the preacher has virtually taken them into herself. In short, a preparation of the Spirit.
The hovering of the Spirit of God has a second, equally important, implication for preachers and their preaching. Just as the Spirit hovered before the Word was spoken (not before the Word was), so the Spirit of God hovers over the things of creation before the preacher speaks or fashions them into a world. For the preacher this means that, no matter how chaotic the world to which he comes might be, how much unlike an ordered world it seems, that world—its inhabitants, its stories, its wisdom—is lovingly kept by its loving God. The Mother Hen is guarding her children and watching the preacher, keen to see whether his words will conform to the spirit of care with which God broods over them. Though, as God attested to Jeremiah, the Word can have a rough edge—“to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow” (1:10)—its ultimate purpose is “to build and to plant” (1:10). Tough love must be God’s and not the preacher’s own—it must come from the Word or not at all. God will judge the preacher if his words do not convey God’s love for the people.
Third, on this point, the brooding of the Spirit before the spoken Word contains an obvious connection to the missio Dei, or that common concept in mission theology that Christian mission is God’s and not our own. The implication of the missio Dei, of course, is that—in spite of certain historical mission rhetoric—the missionary does not “bring God” to people who do not know God; rather, the missionary, like Paul, proclaims “the unknown God” from within known cultural categories (Acts 17:22ff.) and toward the revelation of God through God’s Word. The presence of God before/ahead of us with others is essential for missionary patience and trust—virtues through which love is expressed to others.
Finally, a God-focused rather than a preacher-focused approach to preaching resonates with John 1:1-9, the third text here considered. For just as the “man sent from God, whose name was John” was “not himself the light” but only a “witness” to the light, so is any preacher in relation to the Word (1:6-8). For Christian preaching, that “Word” which “was in the beginning with God and was God” is Jesus himself (1:1-2); “for we do not proclaim ourselves; we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and ourselves as your slaves for Jesus’ sake” (2 Cor 4:5). He is, in the end, both “what”—who—we proclaim and “how” we must proclaim what we proclaim. For it was his Spirit that lovingly hovered over the waters at creation as “a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Lk 13:34).
-Joe
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