The Problem/Mystery of Preaching: Part 2—Embracing Mystery

The following excerpts from the introduction of David’s new book, mind Preaching at the Crossroads: How the World—and Our Preaching—Is Changing (December 2013), physician are used by permission of Augsburg Fortress.

The basic practice and patterns of preaching we’ve employed in recent decades—and, truth be told, for centuries—are essentially sound. They don’t need to be redefined, only revised?

A problem, according to this point of view, is a challenge or need that has a recognized context, involves set limits and variables, and presents itself for solution. Typically, the key task in solving problems is amassing more information and, based on careful analysis of that information, making changes at the level of technique or practice.

We are, I believe, by evolutionary disposition and professional training born problem solvers. This is regularly an immensely helpful trait, as there are all kinds of important problems in desperate need of solution. But because we are best equipped to solve problems, we often reduce everything to a problem to be solved, and then we proceed in appropriate fashion.¹

Confusing Problems with Mysteries

Sometimes, however, the context is no longer recognizable, so we don’t know the limits and variables involved. In short, sometimes the rules of the very game we are playing change, and in this situation, more information not only doesn’t help us but may actually confuse us by inducing us to operate by the rules of the old context rather than take seriously the foreign terrain in which we find ourselves. These types of challenges are better termed mysteries. And as much as we theological types love the idea of mystery, we—like just about everyone else—find the actual condition of living in mystery to be challenging.

Why? Because mysteries, other than the whodunit type, can’t be solved. Rather, mysteries can only be embraced. They don’t require more information, but rather a curious mind and a willingness to suspend past assumptions and judgments in order to be surprised by what manifests itself in this new context and world. That is what makes mysteries so vexing: to the degree that we are wed to past practices that succeeded in a different context, a mystery makes us feel either frustrated or incompetent—and all too often a bit of both.

That’s why I’m suspicious of the pattern of homiletical research that treats preaching as a problem to be fixed. I increasingly think what confronts us is not a problem but a mystery. The context in which we live, move, and have our being in ministry has changed so significantly that I suspect we don’t really know what will work to promote a lively engagement with the Christian faith today. That doesn’t rule out having our hunches and trying out some new practices. But these efforts are, we should admit, experiments, for we don’t yet know what kind of preaching will best serve us in equipping Christians to live in a post-Christian world. Why? Because Christians haven’t operated in a world like this for more than fifteen hundred years!

Embracing Mystery

For this reason, I firmly believe that our call at this juncture is not to solve the problems of our church but instead to embrace the mystery of the world in which we find ourselves, trusting that if we do so with open and courageous hearts, appropriate ways of being and acting—including the act of preaching—will present themselves.

So if the task of fashioning a homiletic appropriate to our age eludes us at present, perhaps that’s because we haven’t yet sufficiently embraced the mysterious new world in which we live and to which we are called to preach. Our dreams of continuing on the high road and navigating familiar if also challenging green pastures is no longer available to us. Instead, we need to slide down the muddy banks of this curious world and clamber back into the cold water to see where the brisk cultural currents will take us.

Risky Choices

Actually, that’s not quite right. It’s not that treading the familiar path is unavailable, but rather that it also entails significant risk. For if we continue to embrace patterns of preaching designed and suited for a bygone age, then we probably shouldn’t be surprised if the new age in which we live continues to pass us by. The choice is before us.

We are at a crossroads—one where not only the outcome is unclear, but also the primary challenge and perhaps even the alternatives. We can either continue adapting and refining established techniques or be willing to call into question our fundamental practices by leaning into and listening carefully to the world in front of us.

1. See, for instance, Malcom Gladwell’s essay, “Enron, Intelligence, and the Perils of Too Much Information,” in What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures (New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2009), esp. 153–55.

Photo Credit: “mystery machine sighting“ by waferboard – CC by 2.0

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