Over the last several years I have come to understand preaching as an impossible task. No matter how well prepared, designed, and delivered, no sermon can fully proclaim the message of God’s love and grace. Yet, every week I set out to do that which I have understood as impossible.
However, in reading Barth, I now have hope. For Barth, preaching, like all aspects of God, begins with God. True proclamation does not begin with the preacher, the lectionary, or a sermon outline. It begins with God. Barth writes that proclamation is “no such work of man… It is the Word as the enacted divine event.”
If proclamation is a work of God’s grace, and not the preacher’s effort, than there is hope in the Word. Hope that the Good News can be proclaimed and that lives will be transformed. This hope is not placed in my limited ability, but in the limitless love of God.
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