Barth and Preaching

Parishioners come expectantly, waiting to hear a word, the Word. Is it true, pastor? Please tell me it is true, Preacher! Please. What is the pastor to do? What is the proclamation that he or she is to make? Who are they to tell others? Barth seems to highlight this question quite well. He forthrightly offers up two big ideas (not only two, but for this reflection, I will offer up two) when approaching the text: the manner in which ministers are to treat their congregations and in-approachability of the “practice” of preaching.

Congregants come wanting to hear from God, to hear something big, something transformative. “They want to find out and thoroughly understand: they do not want to hear mere assertions and asseverations, however fervent and enthusiastic they may be” (108). What should be the pastor’s response to her congregation? Seriousness must be of utmost importance in the pastor’s posture. Barth writes: “They expect us [pastors] to understand them better than they understand themselves, and to take them more seriously than they take themselves” (109). While the task of “understanding” parishioners seems daunting, the preacher is given the Word in the word to the end that all who might come might be known, not simply by the reverend, but by the God of the universe.

What elevates the pastoral role? What should drive one who stands up in front of a group and speaks for or from God? Barth talks of his desire to “speak to the people in the infinite contradiction of their life, but to speak the no less infinite message of the Bible, which was much a riddle of life” (100). Indeed, what should drive he who preaches is paradox of life. We are alive yet dead, blessed yet sinful. But the good news of the Gospel is that “this No is really Yes. This judgment is grace” (120). The No of our existence is overcome by the Yes of God’s grace.

Preaching should not be done. Those with the weightiest task of telling of the God who judges all. James tells us that those who teach will be judged with greater harshness, more scrutiny. How dare one sermonize? Proclaim? The question before the minister is not how does one do it, but How can one do it” (103)? Who am I, o Lord, that I should stand before the assembly? To take the words, the Word, on my lips, to stake my life on it? It is evident that preaching is intensely eschatological. It proclaims that which is to come, and tells of that which is now as it ought or should be. The words are of ultimate significance.

The Biblical word of God is a weight that a human or even a community cannot bear. It is far too heavy, too much to stand. “The preaching of the Biblical word of God is laid upon us with the whole dead weight of a historical reality and cannot be shaken off” (115). All of history is culminated, recapitulated, summed up in the person and work of Jesus Christ, a Jew for the salvation of the world. The weight is not the job of the minister to carry. The minister speaks the promise, the hope. “Speaking the word of God is the promise of Christian preaching. Promise is not fulfillment. Promise means that fulfillment is guaranteed us…Promise is man’s part, fulfillment is God’s” (124). What is proclaimed is of ultimate importance, but the word is God’s and not any individual’s. Barth speaks of the inaccuracy of labeling something “my theology,” we are merely in a line of those who have come before, seeking to faithfully testify and proclaim the Word in the fragmented and broken words of humanity, the groanings of the Spirit. All that to say, we must take people more seriously than they take themselves and to humble ourselves, lying prostrate before the eternal Word as we open the Good Book and ask for God’s blessing.

*all page numbers come from the essay, "The Need and Promise of Christian Preaching"