3. Proclamation and Theology - William H. Willimon

Acts 8:4 "Now those who were scattered went from place to place, proclaiming the word." (the church, after Stephen's martyr)
-"Preaching is a theological act, our attempt to do business with a God who speaks... At the heart of preaching is... a God who speaks, and who speaks now" (p.2)
-"The gap that is the main concern of the evangelical preacher, ... is the theological space between us and the Trinity.... not style, rhetoric, or method when Theos ought to be our concern." "...biblical stories render a God true but strange." (p.4)
-God initiated the divine-human dialogue: the Incarnation, Word Made Flesh (p. 15)
-Preaching must be God's Word. Kant: preacher as the person standing at the street corner pointing to the sky and everyone looking there.
"Our faith in preaching is not based upon preaching's effectiveness but rather upon its truth, a truth that graciously reaches out to us and gives us what we need to hear as the way, the truth, and the life." (p.21) Eph 4:15-16 truth-telling->maturity

The Biblical Word
-"The word is read and interpreted in worship; the people weep and then celebrate and align their lives accordingly." Ezra 8:8-12 (p.35)
-"Most of Israel's Scripture was written by a community either in exile or coming out of exile, Scripture like that found in Nehemiah. Only exilic literature could adequately express the pain and the loss felt by disestablished, relinquished Israel in the catastrophe of exile. Yet some of Israel's most assertive, visionary, hopeful, pushy poetry and prose was also written in exile, testimony to Israel's great faith in the reign of a resourceful God who is determined to have a people. ...a God who tends toward the oppressed." (p.37-8)
-"biblical preaching is part of the church's tough theological task of taking the Bible as God's word more seriously and ourselves a little less so." (p.49)

The Incarnate Word
"The proclaimed word is the incarnate Christ himself..." (p.54)
-"The Word is meant to be heard, embodied, performed, and enfleshed. ...so that our congregations might embody the Word and the Word might dwell in them richly. That means that every sermon is meant to be a summons, a call, a vocation toward Incarnation." "We preachers seek to perform the Word in our sermons so that the congregation might perform the Word in the world." (p.60-61)

Cross and Resurrection in Preaching
-Cross: the foolish to shame the wise 1 Cor 2:1-5
-Resurrection: content of gospel preaching and its miraculous means; hope; "Resurrection carries with it a claim, a demand that we live in the light of this stunning new reality...Now we must acknowledge who sits upon the throne, who is in charge, how the story ends. Now we must either change, join in God's revolution, or else remain unchanged, in the grip of the old world and its rulers, sin and death." (p.86)

Dec 10-12, 2016
2005, Nashville: Abingdon Press

To read: Justin Martyr's Apology (c. 150)-one of the earliest detailed account of a Sunday service