Transcript

Thank you Dean for the introduction. I would have told the Dean that I am also a ding -dong daddy from Dumas, Texas, but I didn't think he could handle that so I didn't tell him. I am grateful for the introduction and for the association with Dean Waits through these years, my eleven years here. And I join him and the others who have spoken in the sense of the difficulty of preparing something to say about preaching with such dark clouds on the horizon. And I know what it is for ministers to have to prepare sermons on Sunday when the phone is wrong or the mail has come or clouds have gathered and it just seems so difficult to do. Jesus said, according to Mark, that it will be like a man who goes on a journey and he leaves his affairs with the servants, and each servant has work to do, but watch, he said. And it's easy to preach on that text until the time comes when you find yourself in a position of having both to work and to watch. And I have been so watching, it's hard to work. I hope that the continuation of our work will be taken in the sight of the Holy One, blessed be He, as faithful service. Just a casual glance at the program for these few days, promise expressions from many of you, such as a full plate or what a banquet, just let your mind roll over the names. Many of the persons already here to give full time and attention to us. Gardner Taylor, how can we wait till Wednesday night? Martin Marty, Maurice Boyd, Barbara Brown Taylor, Bill Henson, Gail O'Day, Jim Forbes, Bishop Bill Oten, Brooks Holifield. I will say to you that in my years of being associated with seminaries here in elsewhere and ministers weeks, I have never been privileged to share in a program with that many leaders of such significance. Any one of these names would be welcomed by a program committee anywhere in the country as making the program. And we have nine of them. Just think of what they're going to do, not only speak to us, lecture about preaching or to preach, but to share in talkbacks about how I go about it and why I did it this way and not this way, and then to sit in conversation places and talk about preaching, not just come and speak and catch a plane, but to talk and share how it is done. The word that comes to my mind when I think about it is opulence, opulence. In fact, it is the quality in nature and wealth of this program that prompted me toward the topic I wish to share, preaching and the rhetoric of excess, the rhetoric of excess. The expression, the rhetoric of excess, is given to me, I don't know where he got it, maybe it is his own, Frank Kermode in the book Literary Guide to the Bible, edited by Frank Kermode in Robert Alter. Frank Kermode in his commentary or discussion or literary introduction to the Gospel of Matthew talks about the way Matthew presents Jesus, a Jesus who's always saying, except you exceed this, your righteousness must exceed this, you've heard it said, but you must do this. What are you doing more than others, more than others, more than others in forgiveness, in love, in faith, in generosity, more, more, more. And Mr. Kermode says it is the rhetoric of excess and then he goes on to talk about what I want to talk about and that is he says frequently this kind of speech from Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew is found in hyperbole, hyperbolic language, the language of excess, the language of exaggeration. Now we're familiar with this language from Jesus. First take the log out of your own eye, surely hyperbole, then you can take the splinter out of your side. You strain that and you swallow camels. It's easier for a camel to go through the avanedal than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Shall I forgive my brother seven times? No, seventy times seven. Jesus used hyperbole in his teaching. I want to talk to you about the role of exaggerated speech, the rhetoric of excess, hyperbole in the preaching of the Gospel. Now this is not an obscure topic. Don't look at me as though, well I never thought about that before, because I've heard you do it yourselves. I've heard some of you preach and you do it. One of you said, oh she cried buckets, but it didn't do her any good. Now come on, buckets. Well when he got up to the plate he hit that ball a country mile. Now I'm in a small church, most of the members are old. Average age in my church is 117. My flight is in an hour, my plane leaves in an hour, and I still have a million things to do. I've heard you talk like that. I don't know when I'll get a raise in salary. My salary is so low. Last year I got a sympathy card from the RAS, he said. Come on now. It's not an obscure, it's not a new topic. We do it all the time. You've heard it in some of my sermons. I have a fondness for this. Some of you heard me preach on the parable of the talents about the man who buried the one talent in the ground and offered his only justification, but I was afraid. I was afraid. And you heard me tell about the time I was looking out the window of my house and saw a sparrow, a nine pound sparrow walking down the street. And so I went out and spoke to the sparrow. How are you? And he spoke again and I said, aren't you a bit heavy for a sparrow? And he said, well, why do you think I'm out here jogging? I'm trying to get this on. And I said, well, Mr. Sparrow, why don't you fly? And he said, you mean leave the ground? My students hear me talk about how important words are and how you are appointed and ordained for the care of words as well as the care of souls. And what you say is so extremely important in how many times I have repeated for you my experience going to visit my sister. And I was put in her home. I was put in the upstairs bedroom, front bedroom. And next morning the sun was coming through and I went out, opened the French doors of the upstairs and walked out on the balcony and was enjoying the morning. And my brother-in-law was downstairs going to the front lawn to get the morning paper. And he looked up and saw me standing there. And he said, what are you doing? And I said, oh, just enjoying the view here from the balcony. And he said, but we don't have a balcony. And if I hadn't grabbed a downspout, I would have been killed. And I told him, you have to be careful what you say to people. I've heard it from you. You've heard it from me. And we both heard it from Scripture. Jonah said, Jonah said, all the cows repented and put on sackcloth and cried out to God and all the beasts of the field repented and wore sackcloth. In the New Testament, John says, Jesus did a lot of other things that are not written in this book, which if they were written, every one of them, I suppose the world wouldn't hold the books. We hear it all the time. So what is exaggerated or hyperbolic speech? It's not, of course, the much speaking in Matthew 6, people who think they will be heard for their much speaking. That's not what it is. It is not in my judgment what Roger Abraham, the folklorist says, the permissible lie. I don't like that because that gives the impression that the normative and central way of using language is simply to convey information. And I don't believe that's true. And therefore to use this kind of exaggerated speech is a lie, but it's permitted. No, no. It is not, in my judgment, a cultural lag, a kind of speaking that you find among marginal people, poor people, uneducated people, people in the backwaters of society speak this way but not among those who've learned through education precision of speech. I don't buy that either. Now it is true. It is true that there are some people in this world who have absolutely nothing but a handful of ashes and therefore they have to create an alternative world out of their imaginations. True. But that isn't essentially true. And hyperbolic speaking, exaggerated speaking is not simply my participating in what has been popular for over 25 years, and that is take everything about your life and the most intimate and personal and private things and placard them before the world, widescreen technicolor and call it somehow therapeutic as though the function of the mouth is an exhaust. No, no, no, no. I do not believe in the violation of matters that belong to the reticence of intimacy. That's not what I'm talking about. In fact, I think her hyperbole is more at home in art. You know, Vincent Van Gogh said in talking about art, he said, the essential, you exaggerate. The obvious. Just leave it vague. John Keats, John Keats. Poetry should surprise with a fine excess. But especially is it true of theology? I want you to think about it. How in the subject matter of theology, how can we express the size of it? How do we express the otherness, the beyond, the above, the more than the transcendence of our subject matter? How do we express that? There are all kinds of ways. We do them and they all have a certain health to them using abstractions. This is just so extraordinary. We just, we talk very God of very man and very God and ground of being and distanced. Well, yes, that's a way of saying, I can't even talk about it. Silence reaches a certain point in the conversation in which you just are silent in the early church, which was a very, very important thing. The silence of the leader, like the silence of God. It's just beyond. Some handle it by just using broken sentences, fragmented sentences, just get up to a certain point like Paul in his letters and just stop. You can't say anymore? Who can say it? Some do it with ambiguity. There's something about clarity on subjects that are extremely large. The clarity is reductionistic. So you just leave it ambiguous and go. Others handle it by glossolalia. Whatever else speaking in tongues may be, it is a way of admitting. It is a way of saying, there's a presence here, there's a power here that just shatters the bonds of ordinary speech and has to be said with other sounds. In some parts of the world, it is handled by the speaker, the preacher, changing the tone of the voice. It's called a stained glass voice or holy tones, and everybody in this room has joked about that and lamented that and cringed at that when the person gets in the pulpit and starts giving us a red-letter version of his own voice, and we say, oh, come on now, speak just plain. But I want to remind you, as much as I dislike that, I want to remind you that it is an almost unconscious tribute to the subject matter. When I get to the subject of Jesus Christ and God and God's reign in the world, I can't just talk like I've been talking, and so if I change and say, God, do you understand why I do that? Dislike it as you will. It is one way the mechanism says, shift gears here. The subject is too big for your pitiful vocabulary, and so the tone changes. I would recommend the use of hyperbole. Robert Funk, New Testament scholar in Missoula, Montana, has called the parable parabolē, linguistic incarnation, that in the most common ordinary story, linguistic incarnation, the parable is the linguistic incarnation of the gospel. In that simple ordinary story is the incarnation of the Word of God. I would like to suggest that if the parabolē is linguistic incarnation, hyperbolē is linguistic transcendence. There is something about the subject matter with which we're dealing that calls for a shattering of the limits of ordinary reasonable speech. If Elizabeth Barrett Browning, when reflecting upon her love for Robert, could say, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the length and breadth and height, ends of being when feeling out of sight for the ends of being an ideal grace. What's she doing? I can't even say what I want to say. If her love for Robert pushed her beyond the limits of her own marvelous phrasing, is it not true that with our subject something like that will occur? How will it be in the John and John on the Isle of Patmos said? I saw the New Jerusalem coming down out of heaven, like a broad coming down the Isle adorned for the ceremony. And I saw streets of gold, and I saw gates of pearl, and I saw crystal seas, and I saw a stream flowing under the throne, and all who drank of it were made glad, and they laughed and sang. What else can you say? When the apostle Paul was trying to weave that delicate argument of Romans 9 through 11, he reached a point, it just seemed like he painted himself into a corner, I don't know, just so hard to follow him, and then all of a sudden he just breaks it off and says, all the depths of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God, how unsearchable and untraceable are the ways of God, from God through God to God are all things, to God be the glory. Amen. Then he goes on. What else can he say? Joel, Joel, how will it be in the last days? Oh, there will be portents in heaven, and there will be portents on earth. The sun and the stars will get dark, and the moon will turn to blood. Well, what else are you going to say? Isaiah, what will it be like? Oh, let me tell you what it'd be like. You will see a lion and a lamb lying down, sleeping side by side. You will see a bear and a cow grazing together. You will see a little child playing over the whole of a poisonous snake. No harm. Really? Yeah. And in the desert, in the desert, there will be a highway for God, and the valleys will be lifted up, and the mountains will be cut down, and the rough places will be made smooth. A highway for God in the desert. What else are they going to say? I know when Jesus was born, Luke says, the sky was full of angels, scattered the dust from their wings over all the sheep and shepherds, and sang. And Matthew says, and yes, and the wise men came, and there was a star in the sky, but oh, it was nothing like when he died. When he died, the sky was dark for three hours, and when he died, the temple veil tore from top to bottom, and when he died, the earth convulsed, and the rock split. The dead came out of the tombs and walked the streets when he died. What else are they going to say? We're talking about a big subject. How can you keep from using exaggerated speech? Now, we don't use this kind of speech because we're preaching in a generation in which people have become jaded and cynical, and sort of like Joseph Conrad described, people who are swallowed up in the immense indifference of things. Looking for something a little more exciting? Last week, a rabbit out of the hat. This week a bear, next week an elephant, and then what? Because they're so jaded. I don't mean we do it for that reason. The reason is deeper than that. We use hyperbole in preaching. We use exaggerated speech in preaching for a number of reasons. One of them is that sometimes in trying to be exact, and we must be careful. We must be as precise as possible, but sometimes in talking about God in the quest for precision of language, we can get a little arrogant and forget. Forget in the precision of our theological speech that we don't know what we're talking about. You see, there is not a person here. There is not a person here who has walked all the way around God and taken pictures. No, we don't know, really. Therefore, hyperbole, exaggerated speech makes us laugh and smile a bit. It puts in us a kind of playfulness, which in my judgment is the surest guard against arrogance, just a kind of playfulness. Do you remember when Solomon was the king in Israel? So wealthy, so well-known, so powerful, so extraordinary, and he began to feel it. So one morning in his prayers, Solomon said to God, I have a lot now. I'd like to feed the fish one morning, and God said, you're not able to feed the fish. I think I can feed the fish. God said, no, you can't feed the fish, you're not. You don't have that much? Next morning, please, can I feed the fish? On and on and on. Finally, God said, okay, on such and such a day, you can feed the fish. Oh boy, Solomon got all the slaves. They hauled the stuff down to the shore of the Mediterranean tons and tons and tons and tons, and then at the appointed day and hour, Solomon said, into the water. And all this was into the water, into the water, into the water. Hours and hours and tons and tons. And when it was all completed and Solomon was feeling so great, a little perch stuck its head up and said, when do we eat? That's important. That's important to cut against what is the most, most, most unbecoming quality you can find in a minister of the gospel, and that is arrogance. Why did we use hyperbole to emphasize things? It's a way of underscoring, to enlarge, is to underscore and speak of the importance of it. Ministers used to do it, I think, more than they do now. You remember that marvelous sermon that has that line in it? Oh, it was dark there. It was darker than a hundred midnight's in a Louisiana swamp. Now that is dark. I remember as a boy listening to preachers of Angeles come to our little church and talk about heaven and hell and answered the question. Only preachers I ever heard who answered the question, how long is eternity? And they all told the same story. Just suppose there is a granite mountain, a mile high, and a swallow flies by the granite mountain once every 500 years and touches the tip of its wing to the mountain once every 500 years.