Living Wittily

Finally Comes the Poet: We have only the Word, but the Word will do

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Along with my conviction that important conversations must take place between theology and poetry, is another conviction, just as central to my understanding of the preacher's vocation. In a world awash with spin, half-truth, exaggerated sales language, verbal violence and other features of a culture suffering linguistic deflation, the voice of preacher and poet, and preacher as poet, has become crucial for the life of the church and the healing of the world.

Walter Brueggemann's thought has shaped my own thinking and guided my approach to Scripture for years now. No I don't always feel comfortable with either his starting points or conclusions; but he is far too good and honest a scholar to want his readers to be that unthinking anyway! But no one else cuts it for me. I'm not using colloquial slang here. I mean, no one else cuts the diamond of the text with more instinctive precision, at that optimum point where it's inner light is released to glint with the beauty of a truth I would otherwise have missed.

So when he comes to the end of these lectures on preaching, Finally Comes the Poet, I am moved more deeply, more reaffirmed vocationally, than by any amount of advice, theory, or instruction on homiletic technique, hermeneutical frameworks, or hortatory manuals on what preaching is or is not. Here's the conclusion to a book I've read several times now, and which does what only the very best books on preaching do – rekindles the passion and hopefulness of the preacher. Passion to ensure that words are rightly used, and hopefulness that when words are indeed rightly used, then the transformative, disruptive Word of grace is spoken – in the poetic speech of the preacher.

"Despite the seeming odds against the poem, however, despite the awesome challenge of the task, perhaps better, because of the odds and the challenge, the preacher must speak. Our lives wait in the balance, hoping, yearning for the promissory, transforming word of the gospel. In the end, all we have is the word of the gospel. There are evidences and signs all around us, however, in the great brutal confrontations of public power and in the weeping hiddenness of hurt in persons, that this odd speech of the gospel matters decisively. We have only the word, but the word will do. It will do because it is true that the poem heals and transforms and rescues, that the poem enters like a thief in the night and gives new life, fresh from the word and from nowhere else.

There are many pressures to quiet the text, to silence this deposit of dangerous speech, to halt this outrageous practice of speaking alternative possibility. The poems, however, refuse such silence. They will sound. They sound through preachers who risk beyond prose. In the act of such risk, power is released, newness is evoked, God is praised. People are "speeched" to begin again. Such new possibility is offered in daring speech. Each time that happens – "finally comes the poet" – finally."
                                                    (Walter Brueggemann, Finally Comes the Poet, 142)

Comments

4 responses to “Finally Comes the Poet: We have only the Word, but the Word will do”

  1. craig gardiner avatar
    craig gardiner

    I’ve been working no, enjoying my way through Brueggemann’s recent book of poetry and I’ve been thinking, ‘How do we best encourage the preacher who may have no first love of poetry) to nurture a love of our rich language without them loosing to the touch of the common tongue?’
    Is it possible to preach with the heart and voice of the poet
    (at least in the early years oif ministry) without a full text?
    What would our congregations do if after 8 hours of study, prayer and reflection we presented a haiku for their nourishment rather than the standard 20 mins+ of prose?
    Should poetry appreciation be a core topic of college preaching classses?

    Reply
  2. craig gardiner avatar
    craig gardiner

    I’ve been working no, enjoying my way through Brueggemann’s recent book of poetry and I’ve been thinking, ‘How do we best encourage the preacher who may have no first love of poetry) to nurture a love of our rich language without them loosing to the touch of the common tongue?’
    Is it possible to preach with the heart and voice of the poet
    (at least in the early years oif ministry) without a full text?
    What would our congregations do if after 8 hours of study, prayer and reflection we presented a haiku for their nourishment rather than the standard 20 mins+ of prose?
    Should poetry appreciation be a core topic of college preaching classses?

    Reply
  3. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hi craig. Good to hear from you again. It is odd isn’t it, that those who aspire to preach, should need to be encouraged to appreciate and respect the power and value of words, imagination and rhetorical skill. As if preaching was anything less than the best we can offer of language, personality, gift and passion, surrendered in the service of a Gospel redolent with promise, blessing and possibility. Who wouldn’t want to listen and learn and love the gift of words, those mosaic pieces out of which we construct images and stories, pictures and poems, sermons and prayers – and offer these as ways of saying and telling of love, faith and hope in Jesus Christ.
    Yes, I do think that not only in ealry years, but throughout a ministry, sometimes preparing a full text helps to balance those equally valid occasions when with our thinking done we allow the occasion of worship and the context of the community of God to draw from us the words that touch hearts and speak of unspeakable grace. A carefully crafted text is surely a more acceptable sacrifice than assuming that without such discipline we won;t at times be guilty of those ad hoc conversational meanderings that are neither poetry nor preaching.
    And yes – as a matter of fact in different modules our students encounter poetry – and not all immediately appreciate it – but we try to show why such creative use of language is important. But Brueggemann isn’t primarily saying preachers should read or write poetry, but that they should use language that is open to newness, to possibility – that is subversive, imagines other and better alternatives to the status quo, and so much more. Prosaic, didactic, expository control of the text is exactly that – control of the text rather than the text being set free to exert its own benign subversions.
    And no – I don’t think a well wrought haiku is sufficient for a worshipping congregation – but it might be a very useful reminder to do one that encapsulates the theme, and have it available at the end of the service for people to take away and ponder.
    The preacher poet,
    gives wings to fly, fins to swim,
    to those who gather.

    Reply
  4. Jim Gordon avatar
    Jim Gordon

    Hi craig. Good to hear from you again. It is odd isn’t it, that those who aspire to preach, should need to be encouraged to appreciate and respect the power and value of words, imagination and rhetorical skill. As if preaching was anything less than the best we can offer of language, personality, gift and passion, surrendered in the service of a Gospel redolent with promise, blessing and possibility. Who wouldn’t want to listen and learn and love the gift of words, those mosaic pieces out of which we construct images and stories, pictures and poems, sermons and prayers – and offer these as ways of saying and telling of love, faith and hope in Jesus Christ.
    Yes, I do think that not only in ealry years, but throughout a ministry, sometimes preparing a full text helps to balance those equally valid occasions when with our thinking done we allow the occasion of worship and the context of the community of God to draw from us the words that touch hearts and speak of unspeakable grace. A carefully crafted text is surely a more acceptable sacrifice than assuming that without such discipline we won;t at times be guilty of those ad hoc conversational meanderings that are neither poetry nor preaching.
    And yes – as a matter of fact in different modules our students encounter poetry – and not all immediately appreciate it – but we try to show why such creative use of language is important. But Brueggemann isn’t primarily saying preachers should read or write poetry, but that they should use language that is open to newness, to possibility – that is subversive, imagines other and better alternatives to the status quo, and so much more. Prosaic, didactic, expository control of the text is exactly that – control of the text rather than the text being set free to exert its own benign subversions.
    And no – I don’t think a well wrought haiku is sufficient for a worshipping congregation – but it might be a very useful reminder to do one that encapsulates the theme, and have it available at the end of the service for people to take away and ponder.
    The preacher poet,
    gives wings to fly, fins to swim,
    to those who gather.

    Reply

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