The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence
Richard Lischer
Eerdmans
When the sheer terror of genocide in Rwanda or Darfur confronts us, we are left speechless. Many have called the horrors of Auschwitz and Hiroshima unspeakable. Victims of violent acts often feel utterly unable to speak of what has happened to them. Words can lose their potency in the face of violence and conflict. Add to this the shameless and deceptive manipulation of language regarding many hostilities and we might well ask, how can we hear the message of Jesus Christ in such a world — particularly in the Sunday sermon?
In this remarkable volume Richard Lischer of Duke Divinity School invites us to grapple in a fundamental way, not just with the challenge of specific examples of violence, but with the very core of what it means to preach in today's conflicted world. One pastor, after reading this book, invited the whole congregation to explore its pages. Sermons, then, might never be the same!
Lischer begins with our common experience. Through technology we are deluged with a sea of words and subliminal images. The average person is subjected to as many as 6,000 messages per day and these are presented as though we also have an infinite number of choices. How do we respond, and will our technology outrun our theology?
Some preachers end up feeling ambivalent about their preaching. They believe in the power of God's Word, but they haven't seen it lately in their ministry. They may even be tempted to accommodate the sermon (in content and presentation) to the world around them. It may then sound or look relevant but it becomes an utterance without the authority or passion formed by the Gospel.
What is at stake in the calling of a preacher? Preachers are called to humble obedience. Christ, and our witness to him, empowers in an age when so many are stupefied and traumatized. Preparation for next Sunday's sermon begins "at the end of words," in silence before Jesus Christ, the Word Incarnate.
From this description of the vocation to preach, Lischer explores the question, "How does the preacher read the Bible in order to preach it?" Central to the process of interpreting is re-reading so that the congregation can hear it afresh and with authority for its own present situation as a living word. This enables the church to move beyond a fundamentalism that worships the book and a liberalism that marginalizes it. The social location of the Bible, Lischer reminds us, is the church in the first century. We need to learn how to live within the theological mindset of that church in order to see how the Bible is finally an account of God's empowerment through Christ. This is the sermon's "only wedge into contemporary consciousness."
Preaching, then, is a slow and careful reading of Scripture by the community of God's people to enter the world of the Bible where the reality of the church is central. Sermons need to get lost in that text in order to embody it — and in this way to point to Christ. Were congregations to see this clearly, they would no longer be inclined to compliment the preacher at the door as though the sermon is a matter of the preacher's own performance. Instead, their appreciation would be focused on the Gospel seen through the jagged perspective of the Cross.
In light of a clear understanding of calling and the process of interpreting Scripture, Lischer finally moves to the ultimate purpose of preaching. He finds this in the words of the Apostle Paul, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation." (II Cor. 5:19) While the people of God need to be reconciled, reconciliation also has the social dimension of embracing others.
Individual and group identity in our world has often led to unimaginable social conflict because such identity is based on differentiating ourselves from others. The Gospel roots our identity, not in differentiation, but in relation to God in whose image we are created. Through faith in Christ we find ourselves to be a new creation.
To help congregations discover the way of reconciliation, preaching begins with clarifying the way things are in the world and in our lives. It admits the blunt reality of our brokenness, moves to confession and the good news of reconciliation. It also addresses the need in reconciliation for both the Spirit and the community of God's people. Desmond Tutu could not have given such courageous leadership in the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission without the life of the church that journeyed with him.
In light of all this, Lischer urges the church to renounce the Western combative rhetorical tradition that is fundamentally marked by over-againstness. With the Apostle Paul (II Corinthians) we are called to reject debate and approach preaching "in weakness and in fear and in much trembling" to point to the power of God's Spirit. The reconciling sermon is not just rhetoric; it originates in the preacher's theological vision of reconciliation. We need to tell the truth but to do so with open arms. "We preach toward reconciliation but also from a reservoir of forgiveness that, had we not received it and shared it among ourselves, we could not speak it."
Violence puts an end to words, but the true end of words is the reconciliation that already indwells those who seek it. Here is a most compelling volume that invites the church to live out its calling in humble and courageous faith.
