President Laney, uh, Dean Waits , Mr. And Ms. Bandy faculty, colleagues, students, guests. I am grateful for this occasion, which confirms the importance of preaching here at the Candler School of Theology. I'm grateful for this occasion, which expresses confidence in me as an instructor in that program. And I'm grateful for your presence, which I take as an indication of support and encouragement in what I do.

We all need encouragement and we all need support. As I thought about it, I remembered my Angelou's little poem, lying Thinking last night, how to Find my Soul, A Home where Water is not Thirsty. And bread loaf is not stone. I came up with one thing and I don't believe I'm wrong, that nobody, but nobody can make it all alone.

But this attention, this favorable attention has not always been on preaching and has not always been on me. I began teaching preaching 20 years ago. It was in what we now refer to with a cluster of association, the sixties, the unrest and the change eroding all the institutions and traditions. We'd known.

The tides of, uh, social unrest were eroding all the high places such as old pulpits. And in seminary you couldn't sell a course in preaching. Those seminaries that tried to make it required had petitions from the students signed by most of the faculty.

Many seminaries dropped preaching from the curriculum. Those where there was a good deal of church and student pressure kept it over in the back of the catalog listed under staff, which simply meant if you insist. We will call in one afternoon a week, some retired minister to treat you to some toothless reminiscences of how it used to be in the pulpit.

It was in that circumstance that I began. In fact, I would like to read to you a few words with which I opened a kind of inauguration, such as it was of the teaching of preaching in that seminary in the mid, late sixties. This is how I began as addressed to the faculty and to the students on that occasion.

We are all aware that in countless courts of opinion, the verdict on preaching has been rendered and the sentence passed. All I ask is a stay of execution until one other witness be heard. The tardiness of this witness is not to be construed as dramatic timing. It is rather due to a cowardice born of that familiar fear of rising to defend that which has been derided by close and learned friends.

And in addition, one is painfully hesitant to speak in behalf of a defendant who is not entirely innocent of the charges brought against him. The alarm felt by those of us still concerned about preaching is not a response solely to the noise outside in the street where public disfavor and ridicule have been heaped upon the pulpit.

On the contrary, most preachers are quite skilled at translating such criticism into crosses to be born. And appropriating for themselves the blessing lodged in some proper text, such as Beware when all speak well of you. These are not new sounds. To a large extent the pulpit has from the first century had poor press.

More disturbing has been the nature and character of those who have been witnesses for the prosecution. Increasingly, the brows that frown upon the pulpit. Are not only intelligent, but often theologically informed and quite often deeply concerned about the Christian mission. Their judgments about preaching cannot be regarded as reflections of a general disinterest in religion, nor dismissed as the usual criticisms hurled at the familiar caricature in the pulpit, drowning away with pretended convictions about matters, uninteresting, unimportant, and untrue.

It is the sobered opinion of many concerned Christians, some who give the sermon and some who hear it. That preaching is an anachronism. It would be granted, of course, by all these critics that the pulpit has in other generations forcefully and effectively witness to the gospel initiating personal and social change.

It would be regarded by them, therefore, as proper. Her for the church to celebrate the memory of preaching in ways appropriate to her gratitude and to affix plaques on old pulpits as an aid to those who tour the churches. But the church cannot live on the thin diet of fond memories. New forms of ministry are being forged and shaped overnight to meet the morning's need, and many of these ministries are without a pulpit.

19 66, 2 years later, my wife and kids and I went to Germany. Maybe a change of scenery would help or perhaps, uh, German scholarship would again rescue the American. One afternoon. Returning to our little place in the ALM str. I met on the Necca River, near the bridge, near the hurdle. In terms, some of you know, I met Professor Emeritus Herman, a little delightful man, stumbling around the streets as though he were in a foreign country.

Thinking of other things, I met him, interrupted his Ry or whatever it was on his face and. We talked and I shared with him my plight, my search for some historical, philosophical, or theological or or practical ground for rethinking preaching. And he was full of sympathy, but not much substance. And we parted.

And then as he turned to leave, he said over his shoulder, back to me.

Do you read. I said no, but I did. And I do, and I found a place to stand, but that was a long time ago. There is no need today to defend preaching. If it were necessary to defend preaching, I could do it. I have plenty of resources. Been reading an Asto Grass' book. Rhetoric as philosophy. Marvelous book. And I like the little description of sacred rhetoric, which I put in the margin preaching sacred rhetoric among the Greeks.

It characterizes it in a way that, uh, thrilled me. Sacred rhetoric reveals rather than proves. It is direct and it is immediate. It is metaphorical and imaginative. It's assertions are urgent and absolute. It's getting better. You see pronouncements of sacred rhetoric transcend time and place, and whatever opinion differs from it is regarded as ridiculous.

I read that every morning,

but there would be from the history of Christian thought, of course, ample. Resource for defending preaching. Now, as in any day, Paul defining his ministry, his preaching, the gospel, Jesus coming, preaching Augustine's marvelous discourse on preaching Aquinas reminder of the to the Roman Catholic Church that the primary duty of the priest is to preach the gospel.

Martin Luther, the gospel is not so much a word upon a page, it's a living voice. An oral presentation. The entire enterprise of Rudolph Ulman and Carl Bart, they said was in the service of the sermon. And of course, I would not omit as a conclusion. The famous sentence of Martin Tabius in beginning was the sermon,

but I have given these friends of the pulpit the day off. Because we don't need them here at Candler, we have a long and good and strong tradition in preaching and its urgent importance. And I share here colleagues who not only support me in my work, but who themselves welcome opportunities to preach and do it with a lot of skill and courage.

And of course, I don't need to talk about or try to defend the teaching of preaching. It is difficult to imagine a seminary not teaching, preaching. Any seminary without a program in preaching is a caricature of itself, and so there's no need to talk about that. But it may be important to talk about the role of the sermon in the seminary itself, not the teaching of preaching.

But what is the role of a pulpit in a seminary, preaching in a seminary perhaps that needs to be talked about preparing people to do it elsewhere. Of course, we understand getting the students ready to go out there and preach, of course. And to do it ourselves, of course, and on occasion when we have guests here.

To trot out our best students and say, give us a sermon. Because people want to know what's the product of a seminary anyway. And so we would, we display a sermon. But why preach here?

I mean, after all, we are all men. Most of the faculty ordained ministers, the students are going to be ministers. Why preach here? And besides that, we are a school. This is a critical community carved out of the larger faith community, and we have a single task to preserve and to read and to interpret the texts of the faith, to keep the faith of the church lean and chaste and trim so that the barnacles of the.

Senseless sentimentality and nostalgia won't just weight it down. It's the task of the seminary to make sure that the voice of the church is an informed voice. So why interrupt that important business to preach right there in the seminary? A sermon. Why erect among the books and the desks and the lecterns?

A pulpit perhaps that needs to be talked about. The location of a sermon. I know, and you know, some appropriate locations for a sermon. About 12, 15 years ago when the Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical was having an anniversary meeting in Los Angeles, big gathering perhaps 3000 scholars from around the world, thrilling occasion, people whose books should read.

There they were. Seminars and study groups and special meetings and special projects. And the papers were just extraordinary minute of course, but extraordinary, strange, and, uh, removed, but very, very good. And we ran from paper to paper and banquet to banquet in conversation to conversation. And in the course of one, one of those hasted journeys in the large hotel where we met, I was encountered by a woman.

Frantic fear on her face, high anxiety under her arm. She clutched a bible, a black bible zippered. And she said, are you attending this, uh, meeting of Bible teachers? And I said, yes. She says, is it open to anybody? And I said, well, there are open sessions. And she said, well, can I come in? I said, what's your interest?

And she said, I have wasted my life. I would like to be a Christian. Yeah, there wasn't anything on the program. Um,

I didn't dare send her into Wittgenstein and all that. What was I gonna do with this woman? I steered her off to one side, to a refreshment stand and for over an hour we talked, we talked about being a Christian. And before I left, I marked her Bible for her some places where she could read upon her return home.

I do not say that in criticism of that meeting, there are no a AP to be made for that meeting. There is no criticism of that meeting. That meeting was not designed for her, and it would be as stupid to criticize that meeting as it would be to criticize a medical researcher for not seeing patients.

But if nobody speaks to her, if nobody answers her questions, there's no reason for the American Academy of Religion. There is no reason for the society of biblical literature. Now I know, and you know the place of the sermon, but the question is in seminary.

Well, the obvious answer of course, is that we all need to hear the gospel, and that's not a bad answer. Hearing the gospel puts us in touch with those God callings, those promptings, those early stirrings, that some in this room began to feel and sense and identify as early as grade school or junior high school, some of us more swiftly and later.

But hearing the gospel puts us in touch again with that which brought us here. And that's important because if we ever get away from that, we don't want it to be by neglect or default. We want it to be by decision. We want to keep in touch with that which stirred us first and gave us our identity to study and to work in the gospel.

But sometimes between the idea and the reality, between the promise and the fulfillment falls a shadow. And we need to hear again. We need to hear the gospel because it gives to us those moments of revelation and we need those nothing out of the sky that gives us new information, but revelation in the Pauline sense that the information I already have suddenly hits me as the truth, the important central truth and all that I had been dealing with that you call explanations now become.

Understanding we need to hear the gospel. The gospel preaching holds over all my work and all my achievements. That nasty, unavoidable question. So what, so what? You read another book, so what? You wrote another book. So what You read a paper. So what. It is possible for me to become so consumed in my work that all that I do in a lifetime becomes nothing but the monument to my effort.

Do I really understand what I'm doing? I recall Augustine's words, whoever thinks that he understands the divine scriptures or any part of them so that it does not build the double love of God and of neighbor does not understand it at all. We need to hear the gospel. The gospel sets before me every time I hear it, the limits to my life, the limits of intellectual achievement, the limits of moral attainment, just to hear the gospel again and know myself to be crucified between the sky of my intention and the earth of my performance.

To be removed from dreaming of palaces and patios, to feel the roof leak and the rent come due and know that I need the grace of God. All of us here need that. There is not a one of us who can say, I look like my song. What is Your Life? The preacher asks me every time I hear, it's like a tale that's told.

It's like a vapor that appears for a little while. It's like a shock of green. In my younger days, in my camel's hair and leather girdle days, I didn't think so, but I now remember, well, it seems a long time from May to December, but the days grow short.

To hear the gospel, which all of us need is to be made to see the world. To see the world around us, not just the world here, but the world around us. Not a world painted by an impressionist artist. Who gives us a lot of color and dash and we stand around in the classroom being brilliant and having informed discussion.

I mean, the world as a photograph as it is, runny nose, sunken eyes, frightened children, empty faces moving in and out of the spas, retired and bored, people sitting on the porches. Competitive young people pushed children, no exit ghettos and the world's hungry, staring at the barren ground and threw it, all those constant gaudy advertisements for useless bubbles.

When I hear the gospel, I'm made to see the world because it is for most of us, absolutely incomprehensible the arrogance with which we decide. What we will see and what we will hear in the world until the sermon and then it's unshakeable. We need to hear the word of grace in classes we're graded and that is properly right.

That's properly right. In our jobs, we're evaluated and I guess that's all right. In our interviews we have are tested and quizzed. In court, we are tried. In applying for performance, we are auditioned, but before the pulpit and the gospel of God's grace, none of this occurs. We're accepted and loved. In other words, we need to hear the gospel because we need to experience the presence of God.

It is not wisdom only to be wise and on the inward vision. Close the eyes. It is wisdom also to believe the heart. But I surprised myself really in deciding that that really is not the primary role of the sermon in seminary, much as we need to hear it. In my judgment, the primary role in the seminary is that every faculty member and every student needs to prepare sermons,

needs to bring together the.