Preaching The Mysteries

One of the first times the apostle Paul talked about preaching (1 Corinthians 1:21), he referred to its foolishness. The English cognate of the Greek term Paul used for "foolishness" is moronic. Hence, when we go strolling down the street of the early church and Preaching comes up to greet us, it is walking arm-in-arm with Stupid.

That, Paul Duke reminds us, is a fact all preachers would do well to remember. Creatures of dust and clay, prone ever to wander, to leave the God we love, preachers have nonetheless been called to speak on behalf of the Infinite, to communicate the love of a God we poorly understand and even more poorly follow. Yet, unworthy or not, speaking that infinite love is the vocation God has laid upon preachers. We can ignore it, we can reduce it to platitudes, we can psycholotize it out of significance--or we can grapple with it, we can try week by week to give it voice, we can strive to be faithful to this difficult calling.

This is a book for those who choose the latter path. Preaching about a transcendent God in an age that is enamored of the transcendent but suspicious of God-talk is no easy job. Throughout the book the author offers examples of what it is about Christian faith that is so hard to put into words, and examples of strategies for how the preacher begins to do so. Included will be sample sermons demonstrating what "the mysteries" are, and how the preacher can speak of them with language that is at once relevant to the congregation, yet reverent of the matter at hand.