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I recently read Michael Pasquarello’s Sacred Rhetoric, an attempt to describe preaching as a theological and pastoral practice in the church (Sacred Rhetoric). In Pasquarello’s view, the practice of preaching has lost its connection with its roots in theology in favor of a newly cultivated fixation on practical concerns. In the attempt to redress this concern, the author takes us through a history of preaching, focusing on the pulpit ministries of preachers like Augustine, Gregory the Great, St. Benedict, Bernard of Clairvaux, Thomas Aquinas, Erasmus, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and others. Pasquarello hopes to help his readers join a conversation with the past in order to preach faithfully in the present.
“We are,” Pasquarello writes, “encouraged to imitate contemporary ‘masters’ in order to learn the latest ‘how-to’ ideas, to acquire a better ‘delivery system’ for packaging and transmitting information. But there is no mention of preaching as a Christian practice that requires lifelong immersion of one’s self in the narrative of Scripture and the story of the church; no counsel for constant, prayerful attention to God in order to learn the grammar of salvation; no acknowledgment of the need to learn the language and life fitting for human beings created and redeemed to share in the grandeur and glory of the Triune God (136).”
Reading through the histories, I was heartened to see how deeply rooted was a concern for the Word of God. While not all are expositors with a capital “E”, most of the historical examples in this book display a deep conviction around the communication of God’s Word. Augustine, for instance, “does not neglect the need for pastors to acquire a working knowledge of history and biblical languages, or literary and rhetorical skills for the tasks of exegesis and preaching. However, these are subordinated to the practice of indwelling the world of Scripture and cultivating a love of truth that enables one to acquire particular habits of believing, thinking, and speaking (24).”
All of this is great, of course, but I kept asking myself an irony. How does one not do how? Is there anything wrong or anti-theological about trying to help listeners with the pragmatic concerns about living in the Spirit and honoring God with our lives? Exactly where and how and how deeply are we in violation of this theological avocation? Pasquarello whets our appetite, but runs a little short in helping us understand exactly what our preaching ought to sound like and look like if we are to follow the direction he seems to be pointing.
Of course, this might be the very point. Perhaps preaching is a little less about the doings of preachers and listeners and more about their being – being in Christ and in the Word. The least that could be said is that Pasquarello helps redress some of the imbalance in contemporary preaching. In that regard, he does us service.