Sermon Sources and Content: The World

Early in the twentieth century Karl Barth drew a line between church and world that deepened into a canyon. Preaching actively proclaims the unique revelation of God through Jesus Christ attested to most completely in scripture. For Barth, preachers need not concern themselves with the revelation of God in the world; rather, they should simply preach from the scripture and rely upon the Word of God contained therein. At one point, Barth wrote that "the sermon will be like the involuntary lip movement of one who is reading with great care."⁵

Countering Barth, theologians and preachers have claimed that God’s revelation is also experienced within culture. While we surely attune our ears to scripture for the sound of Jesus Christ, we dare not ignore the sound of revelation in the world.

This basic tension continues in preaching today. Many say that homiletics has abandoned the Barthian project and opted for liberalism’s emphasis upon human experience and the life of the preacher as the basis for the sermon. John McClure summarizes that for this generation of preachers "there is far more emphasis on the humanity of the preacher and the existential and numinous qualities in preaching."⁶

From within postliberalism, Charles Campbell objects strongly to this direction in contemporary homiletics. Campbell argues in Preaching Jesus that the modern pulpit’s turn to human experience has written Jesus Christ out of the sermon. Preaching has become captive to world and culture. Sermons have substituted self and cultural narratives for the real narrative of Jesus Christ revealed in scripture. He calls preachers to turn to scripture, the primary language of the church, in order to be formed into the Christ-shaped body that God intends for the Christian community.

Preachers may be taken with the postliberal homiletic and its call for countercultural Christianity. But the position raises serious questions. A postliberal approach to preaching can overlook the activity of God outside of the church. Revelation seems to be completely contained within scripture, church, and proclamation. This is problematic because God creates and redeems both inside and outside of Israel and the official church. Jesus, though concerned for the salvation of Israel, clearly does not limit his own proclamation to the synagogue, and he readily names kingdom analogies gleaned from the created order.

Postliberal homiletics does raise important cautions for a pulpit that has grown too cozy with culture, but it would be foolish for the church to assume that it is now time to renounce our commitment to the world.

Preachers today will continue to point toward the grace-filled action of God within church and world. Mary Catherine Hilkert makes a strong theological claim for just such preaching in Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination. This is an especially significant work for Protestant preachers who wish to understand the sacramental orientation within Catholic preaching that sees the world through the lens of the sacred.

The "world," part of God’s good creation, can’t be shut out of the church any more than the church can be removed from the world. When you get right down to it, the church is in the world because that’s where God wants the church to be. Preaching today will continue to be responsive to church and world, scripture and human experience.

5. Karl Barth, Homiletics, trans. G.W. Bromily and D. E. Daniels (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1991), 76.


6. John S. McClure, ed., Best Advice for Preaching (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), xv.