How I Do That, pt. 2

As I think about preaching, a few things come to mind.

Walter Brueggemann (and you should get used to reading that name often around here) counsels preachers to "stick close to the text."

I am sure that means different things to different preachers and readers of the Bible. For me it means following internal references in the stories to other Biblical stories, letting the stories speak for themselves, not assuming everything in the Old Testament is simply there as a pedestal on which to place the New Testament, and trying to find how to connect with what the story meant to those who heard it first (an impossible, but necessary, task).

This leads me in often opposite and sometimes conflicting directions. Letting the story speak for itself can mean drawing in other stories. Letting an Old Testament story have its say about the way of God without making it only a pre-frigurement of Christ, but also always having the lens of the Gospel as the means of understanding what is going on.

So staying close to the text for me means working and breathing and living in the paradoxes of scripture. Sometimes they are dissonant chords, sometimes minor or major, sometimes they resolve, and sometimes they do not.