A talk given at the Festival of Preaching

                                  Southwark Cathedral, 2025.

                      https://festivalofpreaching.hymnsam.co.uk

Thank you for your welcome.

I am very honoured to be sharing in this Festival.

The title I have been given is ‘Preaching across the divide’.

We have already been exploring significant divides in our world today.

I wonder what divides come to mind when it comes to preaching?

I was reminded of preaching some months ago in a village church, built to seat over 300, from a pulpit the size of a castle tower, to a faithful congregation of 6. It may have been 7 – I did not have my binoculars with me.

When it came to the peace, I texted my greetings from the distant realms of the sanctuary, to save on travel expenses.

There is one particular divide I wish to explore –  a divide preachers are always seeking ways to bridge.

It is how to speak of a God who says to us

“my thoughts are not your thoughts,
 neither are your ways my ways,
they are higher than the heavens are higher than the earth’ … (Is 55.8-9)

The sheer otherness of God.

And therefore the necessary strangeness of the texts through which the character and ways of God are revealed.

The gift of the Scriptures we preach from is that they are other than us.

This does not mean we cannot say anything meaningful.

It means we preachers do our work in the midst of a revelation that is always beyond all our attempts to grasp or explain it.

So where to start ….?

Here are some suggestions …

We are preaching from texts at play

The Jewish theologian, Robert Alter, complains that English Bible translations (that is, Christian ones) too often fail to faithfully express what the original text is saying.

The reason for this is what he calls the ‘heresy of explanation’.

It happens when translators are distracted by the need to make the bible more accessible and relevant to us when the first and primary task is to represent it faithfully in another language [1]. The very aim of making the bible easier to understand to modern ears can work against hearing what the bible is actually saying and how it is saying it.

That is what led him to produce his own interpretation of the Hebrew bible.

Alter notes how the Bible texts make sophisticated use of word play, punning, alliteration, and complex poetic and literary structures. It is hard to convey these in other languages and across different time and cultures. But a teasing, playful element is often there. ‘The storyteller delights in leaving the audience guessing about motives, and connections, and, above all, loves to set ambiguities of word, choice and image against one another in an endless interplay, resisting neat resolution’.

We are being teased.

We are left wondering.

And that is the whole intention, of course.

The mashal wisdom story tradition that we call parables is part of this too.

As the Roman Catholic theologian Raymond Brown put it so memorably – ‘In the Scriptures we are in our Father’s house where the children are permitted to play.’ [2]

Preachers face the same temptation.

When we are preoccupied with the relevance and the meaning of the texts for us

we are starting from our own agenda, concerns and questions and requiring the text to provide an answer, to respond to our needs.

We are in danger of not listening to the story as originally told.

We will be forcing it to be something it is not, to speak in a way it has not chosen to, to answer questions it is not addressing – or has not even thought of.

When that happens we are turning it into literature it is not.

The very strangeness of the text is part of its gift.

It is not our job as preachers to smooth it out to make it ‘relevant’.

When we do this we are dividing ourselves from the original voices and communities that are speaking to us – and above all, from the character of the revelation itself.

Preaching requires a willingness to engage with truth and meaning through the playful, often teasing imagination of the scripture revelation.

We are preaching from texts at play.

Preaching from texts in conversation

We are also preaching from texts that are in conversation with each other.

It is hard to let go of the expectation that on the important matters, God speaks straightforwardly through bible texts, with one clear message for us to hear and obey.

But more often this doesn’t happen.

Scripture is not univocal.

This is often missed.

There are conversations and even arguments across going on across the scriptures.

The texts themselves are always crossing divides.

Think, for example, of the way the wisdom tradition challenges the confident certainties of the dominant Deuteronomic voices who claim – ‘Do good and you will be blessed, do bad and it will go badly for you’.

“Excuse me”, says Job and others, “life is not that simple! Bad things happen to good people while many evil people seem to live for a long time with their health and wealth intact”.  

• the divide of expectations.

Another example would be the way the great sagas of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles offer contrasting and sometimes contradictory assessments of the same people and events. Or the Book of Ruth, named after an outsider, a migrant, whose presence and faith transformed the community that welcomed her – while elsewhere the texts are demanding expulsion. 

Critically discerning conversations – and even arguments – are going on between the biblical texts themselves. This is wisdom literature at work actually – not history lessons in the sense we understand it.

So that was never a world where God’s people all believed the same thing from the same texts. Nor is ours.

• the divide of interpretation.

And whenever the New Testament quotes from or alludes to Old Testament texts, it changes them, whether conceptually or literally, in nearly every case. Luke’s account of Jesus reading and preaching from Isaiah at Nazareth is a striking example of this (Luke 4.14-30).

• the divide of proclamation.

Old Testament Theologian Ellen Davis uses the word ‘polyphony’ to describe scripture. This is a musical term meaning ‘many sounds’. Polyphony consists of two or more lines of independent melody playing simultaneously, as opposed to music harmonised around one tune. In literature, polyphony describes narrative which includes a diversity of points of view and voices, simultaneously. This is a technique that is popular among modern novelists. Importantly – in music and literature – the individual lines carry no meaning or tune of their own. They only make any sense as part of the whole. For Davis, polyphony is a good description of the Bible where ‘most of the books were composed and shaped by multiple writers and editors, and so have no single voice or point of view’. [3]

So the task of interpreting the scriptures requires listening to a variety of voices in a variety of modes of expression.

The wisdom we seek will be found as we join in the polyphony.

That means preaching is part of a conversation, a journey of exploration – even of experimenting.

How does this sound to you?

The late medieval theologian Erasmus translated the Bible from Greek to Latin. He came to John 1.1 – ‘in the beginning was the Word’. To express the Christian message in terms a Greek audience might relate to, John used the word ‘Logos’. This means much more than a verbal word or statement. It expresses something more like the whole creative principle of life in God. Erasmus, like other Latin translators, struggled with the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the meaning of Logos and express the truth of Christ. He did not translate Logos with the usual ‘verbum’ – the Latin meaning ‘word’. He avoided it because he wanted to express something less directive. Apart from anything else he was clear that people do not learn by simply being told what to believe. Something more dynamic, interactive and alive was needed. He chose ‘sermo’ – from which we get sermon.

It means discourse. So his translation of John’s Gospel starts, ‘In the beginning was the conversation.’ Meanwhile the main Reformation translators, like Tyndale – opted for verbum – ‘word’. They missed something there. As, all too easily, so do we.

In fact, a dialogical approach has always been the way the church has sought a faithful and discerning reading of scripture. With Bibles open, understanding and meaning is never exhausted as the theological conversation continues, engaging the questions and insights surfacing in the life and faith of each new generation.

In the beginning was the conversation – and it continues today.

This all requires a certain freedom and confidence.

It is not something we find easy in times of anxiety and uncertainty.

And society and church today contains a great deal of both.

Preaching in an age of Anxiety

We are preaching in an age of anxiety – and nothing makes managing divides and differences more difficult. You only have to follow the tone of online and social media discussions to see this at work.

We need the wisdom of the scriptures more than ever – but we are never more tempted to the ‘heresy of explanation’, as we reach after the securities and answers we feel we need.

Anxiety divides.

Whenever we open our Bibles and declare the Word of the Lord, we are bringing our own words and worlds with us – for good or ill. We are always reading at a particular time, in a particular place in history and in the context of our personal stories and circumstances.

How we listen and respond to what we read will be influenced by all these factors. We will come predisposed to read, hear and respond in certain ways and we may not be conscious when this is happening. That means that the process of faithful, receptive Bible reading and preaching requires a searching self-understanding.

Anxiety is never far from the surface in the church facing immense challenges to its life and existence. There is the struggle to be an effective presence in a society largely adrift from our beliefs and values. There is search for ways to grow and to reverse long-term decline. And there is the painful facing up to the demoralising scandals of safeguarding and abuse.

This is of particular relevance in our current anguished debates about human sexuality.

We are reading our Bibles and debating faith in the midst of great anxiety.

Anxiety shapes our responses in a variety of ways.

• To start with, we do not listen well when we are fearful or anxious.

I am hearing impaired and I can always tell when I am tense or preoccupied – I just get deafer. Ask my family.

And have you noticed that what a preacher says and what is actually heard are not always the same things are they?

I was thanked by someone in tears for something I said in a sermon. It had been clearly transformative. On another occasion I was only just into the sermon when someone near the front began to angrily shake their head in despair. At the end of the service he rebuked me for what I said. Apparently, I had abandoned the entire Christian doctrine of scripture.

The thing is that on neither occasion had I actually said what they heard me say.

• When we are anxious we become defensive.

Our responses tend to become inflexible and narrow. We are closed to the new.

In our search for security we will tend to look back. Back to beliefs or ways of doing things we have supposedly departed from. Back to when bishops were real leaders. When we believed in the parishes. When clergy visited. The list is endless. ‘Back to the bible’ can be an expression this – and the bible becomes used as a barricade.

Tribal and group allegiances become important in anxious times – where membership is policed. We can feel safe. For a time.

They all matter – but in anxious times they so easily become weaponised.

• When we are anxious we do not cope well with unresolved questions and

uncertainties. Engagement becomes shallow. We will tend to label rather than name the ‘others’ (liberal, fundamentalist, homophobic, woke etc) rather than actually engage across the divides with each other. We struggle with difference.

• When we are anxious we will be inhibited from pursuing the trusting,

exploratory, open reflection scripture needs for any subject. Anxiety is a very poor guide to recognising what is true.

• When we are anxious we need to be in control. We cannot afford to concede

any ground to those we disagree with or leave open any possibility their views may have some substance. We will need to have the last word.

One of the greatest gifts preaching across the divides can offer at such a time is not by providing definite answers – but by offering a non-anxious space, with the non-anxious W222ord, where difference is possible, and we can reflect and explore together without fear, and seek together the wisdom we need to move forward in faith and hope.  

Preaching when the questions are new

Then there is preaching when the questions are new.

Every age of the church has faced the challenge of re-visiting previously unquestioned biblical convictions in the light of new questions and insights. The list is long and includes creation/evolution, cosmology, science, medicine, race, biology, slavery, women in ministry and leadership, divorce and re-marriage.

This challenges more than the texts – what ‘the bible says’. It challenges our understanding of scripture itself … asking not simply ‘is this God’s revelation or not?’ but what kind of revelation it actually is, not ‘is the bible authoritative?’ but the nature of its authority, and how it speaks and guides us into the challenges and experiences we are encountering.

Honouring the authority and inspiration of scripture always means engaging in careful dialogue with the text, with God and with each other .

– preaching is part of a work of continuing, communal discernment.

Taking one of our current divisions as an example – human sexuality and the possibility of faithful committed same-sex relationships. It is true, as traditional voices remind us, that the church has never taught this before. But it is also true the church has never faced these questions, in these communities, in this particular way before, either.

Our preaching and debates on this are not a failure to be faithful to old truths and certainties.

This is the work of faithful, careful, continuing interpretation that every age is called to. 

It is revealing that the first bible stories in Genesis actually found their expression in the exile at the other end of history. So they have been memorably described as ‘a past for a people in search of a future’. [4]

Christian faith is forward looking.

So are the scriptures.

Preaching in the character of God

Preaching is more than exploring and expounding texts. We are seeking to express  the character of God. Nothing less. We no pressure then.

The theologian Karen Keen makes a helpful distinction between two hermeneutical approaches to interpreting the bible.  She calls these the direct subject centred approach and divine character centred approach to the texts.[5] The former is a very familiar exegetical method in the evangelical tradition. It is based on word and subject studies. Put simply, to find out what the Bible says about an issue, you gather up every place in the bible where the word or subject occurs and there is the common meaning.

Though a valid approach, this method is always in danger of oversimplifying the biblical revelation. For a start words do not mean exactly the same everywhere in history, wherever they occur and whoever is using them.

We might also note it is not the method Jesus himself used when he taught from scripture.

The text must be interpreted within and through the divine character centred approach. The hermeneutical key for interpreting Scripture is the awareness of character of the God who is speaking to us.

This is not novel approach. Augustine employed it, among others.

This helps guard us from overly narrow, prescriptive interpretations that distort the divine intention, and at worst, can all too easily turn the revelation into texts of oppression.

Read through the lens of divine character the texts have the potential to open out across divides – enabling meeting in new, creative and including ways.

We are to listen through the texts to the kind of God who is speaking to us and why and how … Karen Keen called her wonderful book on the origins and inspiration of the scriptures, ‘The Word of a Humble God’ [6].

If we search the texts with our concerns about power and truth or any other issue, without finding ourselves before the face of a humble God, we have missed the character of divine revelation.

Preaching a future and a hope

Finally – we are preachers of a future and a hope.

Walter Brueggeman died just a few months ago and now walks by sight and not by faith. We will always be indebted to him. He was an immense resource to preachers and teachers of the Bible – no doubt to many here. He made preaching a festival.

He once described the text of scripture as opening us to: “an alternative world of well-being, freedom, and responsibility, alternative to the world of dominant secular culture or to the conventional world of church teaching that too often has become thin and arid. . . [an] ‘alternative world that invites faithful imagination” [7]. 

That is the gift of preaching – with faithful imagination, to open doors to that world.

So thank you for being preachers.

It is a calling both costly and glorious, joyful and tearful.

You are probably not thanked enough.

We are preaching across the divides

 from anxiety to adventure,

     from perplexity to play

       from entrenchment to transformation,

          from regression to renewal

             from hostility to hospitality

Into the embrace of a God who has reached across all that divides and is reconciling all things to himself.

David Runcorn

Sources 

1 Robert Alter, The art of biblical narrative           Basic Press 2011. pp141-153.

2 R. Brown 1955, 28. The Sensus Plenior of Sacred Scripture. Baltimore: St. Mary’s University Press

3. Opening Israel’s Scriptures, OUP 2019 p5 &17.

4. Meg Warner, Genesis: An Introduction and Study Guide: A Past for   a People in Need of a Future, Edinburgh: T&T Clark. 2024.    

5. https://uncommonsaints.substack.com/p/preston-sprinkle-vs-richard-hays
6. The Word of a Humble God: The Origins, Inspiration, and Interpretation of Scripture. Eerdmans, 2022
7. An Introduction to the Old Testament: The Canon and Christian Imagination. Westminster John Knox Press, 2021. Preface xii.