Nielsen’s Nook

One of the greatest privileges and overwhelming responsibilities I have is to preach, to feed Christ’s sheep by proclamation of His word and in calling us to repentance in faithfulness, extending the blessing of repentance to those outside the sheep gate. I cannot speak for other pastors and their approaches; however, I am increasingly burdened by two aspects of sermon delivery and preparation.

First, the sermon preached on Sunday (or whenever) must be one that I have allowed the Lord to preach to me, as it were.^[1] I must have it clear in my head that I am not the physician in the pulpit, but as Sinclair Ferguson encouraged us a few years ago, we are the nurse-aids, the physicians assistants (i.e., not the featured doctor!) looking to the Spirit to call for the tools and medicines that Christ’s sheep would require. If the medicine does not work on me, then I cannot in good conscience pedal it onto others.

Second, I am convinced that power in the pulpit is singular in its source. It is true that the prophets of God have used all kinds of visible effects which are more or less theatric or dramatic. For example, Ezekiel is told to prophesy and to clap his hands in doing so (Ezekiel 21:14). However, behavior of prophets - strange or otherwise -”is secondary to the primary connotation of speaking in the name of the Lord.”^[2] That is to say, preaching in the tradition of God’s prophets involves far more than just accurate theological proposition; and yet, anything the preacher employs to communicate the Word of God must always serve to better “unfold the text”^[3] for the parishoners.

In conclusion, I believe that in allowing the Scripture to first unfold first into and onto and through me helps to ensure that the medicine I am giving is worth taking and helps me to consciously be under the Word as those who listen to my sermon are under the Word.

What a mess of conflated Greek words. Now, if you are reading this post after a title like that, I commend you. The idea of Theanthropos (the first word above) is that of the Historic Christian definition (Chalcedon 533 AD) that the person or hypostasis (’υποστάσις) of Jesus was fully God and fully man at the same time, unconfused, unconfounded, unmixed; yet, at the same time one person and a true mystery. Second the idea connoted in Theopneustographe (i.e., God-breathed + writing. also my made up word) is that idea that the Scriptures are also analogously fully divine and fully human.

The unity of the bible, its hypostasis as it were:

…should ultimately be sought in Christ himself, the living word. [This] is a broad and foundational theological commitment based on the analogy between Christ and Scripture. As Christians we must remember that we believe not only that the Bible is the word of God, but that Christ himself is the word….[It could be said that] the Bible is God’s word in written form; Christ is God’s word in human form….The written word bears witness to the incarnate word, Christ. And what gives the written word its unity is not simply the words on the page [(following St. Augustine, De Magistro)], but the incarnate word who is more than simply the sum of the biblical parts.[!]¹

^{May the Church, who is Christ’s, not fail to see the Bible’s subject, her Bride, the risen and exalted Christ. Amen.}

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¹ Enns, Peter. Inspiration and Incarnation. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005. p 110.

A quote from another book I am reading lately:

But consider what would emerge if the clergy accepted as their modest role the voicing of scripture material, without excessive accommodating — that is, without accommodation to political liberalism or political reactionism [conservatism?], without accommodation to religious orthodoxy or critical urbaneness, but only uttered the voice of the text boldly, as it seems to present itself, even through it does not seem to connect to anything….What is yearned for among us is not a new doctrine or new morality, but new world, new self, new future.¹

What I like about Brueggemann is that he makes me think and imagine, often because his books can make me as uncomfortable as they encourage me. On the one hand, he is really directing people, namely pastors and priests, back to scripture as it is, apart from our hopes for what we think it should be. Letting Scripture speak on its own terms is in my view the best way to learn about God’s imagination. On the other hand, he has set up for us dichotomies that I am not sure follow. In other words, it does not seem to me that “religious orthodoxy” or critical prowess (which I take to be a reference to proficiency in Textual Criticism) are necessarily opposed to letting the text speak for itself.

If the Scriptures are in fact the articulation of the imagination of God, as it were, then it would seem that they, on their own terms, are concerned about both orthodoxy and orthopraxy. In this way, Church Tradition would seem to be entailed in this articulation of the supreme imagination. Further, it would appear that if the Scriptures are in fact the articulation in textual form of God’s revealed imagination then, of course, critical prowess is significant because we need to know what was in fact articulated.

However, if I understand the spirit of what Brueggemann is after, it is that in confusing the energies or effects of the divine imagination with its essence, we make the minor the major, missing the forest for the trees. Though the texts may “not seem to connect to anything”, I believe that Brueggemann is directing us towards that, with which they do, as a matter of fact, connect. It is not primarily that the scriptures give us magnificent doctrines, but that the proclaim a new world order of which we may be a part in Christ. The scriptures point us in fact to the very essence of that for which we long. We behold Christ who is the essence of morality, the essence of beauty, the essence of what it is to be made new. We behold in the scriptures the articulation of the One who has made himself know to us existentially; the incarnate imagination of God, who has caused us in authentic angst to cry out to Him, “I am yours, save me!”

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¹ Brueggemann, Walter. Texts Under Negotiation: The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), pp 20-21, 25.

Special Revelation is God’s direct historical revealing of himself to His people. II Timothy 3:16 explains that all Scripture is God-breathed (θεόπνευστος ) and demonstrates that Scripture includes itself as part of this Special Revelation. Hebrews 1 teaches us that just as God spoke specifically and historically through the persons of the Prophets, he spoke finally and completely through the person of His Son, Jesus Christ.

I am taking a little break from Malachi this morning and spent my time reflecting on the 90th question in the Westminster Shorter Catechism. I have included it for your convenience below:

Q90: How is the Word to be read and heard, that it may become effectual to salvation?

Answer: That the word may become effectual to salvation, we must attend thereunto with diligence, preparation and prayer; receive it with faith and love, lay it up in our hearts, and practice it in our lives.