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The End of Words: The Language of Reconciliation in a Culture of Violence
After the horrors and violence of the twentieth century, words can seem futile. In this reflection on the place of preaching today, Richard Lischer recognizes that our mass-communication culture is exhausted by words. Facing up to language's disappointments and dead ends, he opens a path to its true end.
With chapters on vocation, interpretation, narration, and reconciliation, The End of Words shows how faithful reading of Scripture rather than flashy performance paves the way for effective preaching; Lischer challenges conventional storytelling with a deeper and more biblical view of narrative preaching. The ultimate purpose of preaching, he argues, is to speak God's peace, the message of reconciliation.
While Lischer's End of Words will surely be invaluable to pastors and preachers, his honest, readable style will appeal to anyone concerned with speaking Christianly.
With chapters on vocation, interpretation, narration, and reconciliation, The End of Words shows how faithful reading of Scripture rather than flashy performance paves the way for effective preaching; Lischer challenges conventional storytelling with a deeper and more biblical view of narrative preaching. The ultimate purpose of preaching, he argues, is to speak God's peace, the message of reconciliation.
While Lischer's End of Words will surely be invaluable to pastors and preachers, his honest, readable style will appeal to anyone concerned with speaking Christianly.
192 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2005
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
December 9, 2016
Need to re-read parts of this one to understand what he's getting at.
Some quotes:
The point of preaching is not to go back but to meet the Lord out ahead. Training in preaching begins with training for ministry. “When did we see you naked or hungry or in prison?” the naïve sheep ask the Judge. Preachers have ransacked nature, history, and their own emotions for illustrations of the divine. They have scratched into every conceivable experience in search of divinity or its analogues. They have explored every possible site except the very places Jesus promises to be – among those who suffer and seek restoration.
Preachers have looked for him virtually everywhere save among the ordinary practices of the people of God, who yearn more deeply than they are willing to admit for sermons that credibly portray their lives of faith – not Mother Teresa’s, Gandhi’s, or Gandolf’s, but theirs. “If one wishes to promote the life of language,” writes the poet Wendell Berry in Standing by Words, “one must promote the life of the community” in which the language flourishes. (39-40).
“Where grammar cracks, grace erupts.” – Joseph Sittler (qt. 42)
“A professional, after all, can live one way in town and quite another at home. Indeed, it is the mark of the professional the professional that he or she can get the job done even in the midst of marital crises, financial problems, or other forms of personal chaos. Ministers, too, tend to be performance-oriented in the way that they view their work. They understand they are the products of a long process of formation, but they also know their job has its big days and special moments when they are unavoidably on. Like other professionals, they can step in and out of a role as easily as entering and exiting the sanctuary. But in the last analysis, the pastoral character humbly offers itself as a paradigm for the service, worship and witness to God that belong to all believers. It’s not better performances that the church needs, but truer characters.” (43-44)
“If scripture is ever again to be a living source for theology, those who practice theology [and preach] must become less preoccupied with the world that produced scriptures and learn again how to live in a world scripture produces. This will be a matter of imagination, and perhaps of leaping.” – Luke Timothy Johnson (qt. 52)
“It is not [biblical] literacy for its own sake that we are after but the larger, Lindbeckian sense of the community, whose ordinary language shapes the lives and habits of its members. Reading the Bible is more like learning a language than translating a few phrases. When you really know a language, translation is unnecessary. The learner may proudly say, “I don’t when it happened, but I just noticed I am thinking in Spanish!” How do you read the Bible in such a way that you quit translating and begin to think and speak in its language?” (55)
“The consumerist guts the book the way one cleans a fish, as swiftly and efficiently as can be done. We have limited time for the weekly exegesis, so limited, in fact, that we convince ourselves that we do not have time for praying the text, meditating p its meaning for our own lives, or praying for our parishioners, unless of course, such activities will produce a more effective sermon.
The religious reader is a slow reader. If anything gets gutted in reading, it will be the interpreter, not the text. The consumerist shines a flashlight on the text and says “Tell me all you know.”: The religious reader allows the light of the text to illumine his or her own life and that of the congregation . “O Lord, thou has searched me and known me.” The religious reader already knows the ending, so he or she is free to enjoy the story.” (68)
“The preacher who is overly concerned with self-expression in the pulpit may be neglecting the rich array of styles available in the Bible. The text will tell you when to be angry, ironic, funny, or sad. It will tell you when to reason with your hearers and when to tease them with parabolic utterance, when to teach your parishioners in the synagogue and when to soar with them to the third heaven.” (79-80)
“The preacher performs texts much in the way an actor plays many parts or a musician renders different types of musical scores. If the only role Meryl Streep can play is Meryl Streep, she does not deserve accolades as an actor. But if she defers to the script and loses herself in the personality of her character, she is not only a great actor but a faithful performer, for she has discovered something of the script, winkled it out, and brought it alive. If we believe the Bible is performative, that it not only describes things but changes them, then preaching the Bible should do the same. P.T. Forsyth may have has the notion of performance on his mind (in 1907) when he claimed that the nearest analogue to the preacher is not the orator but the dramatist.” (82-83).
Some quotes:
The point of preaching is not to go back but to meet the Lord out ahead. Training in preaching begins with training for ministry. “When did we see you naked or hungry or in prison?” the naïve sheep ask the Judge. Preachers have ransacked nature, history, and their own emotions for illustrations of the divine. They have scratched into every conceivable experience in search of divinity or its analogues. They have explored every possible site except the very places Jesus promises to be – among those who suffer and seek restoration.
Preachers have looked for him virtually everywhere save among the ordinary practices of the people of God, who yearn more deeply than they are willing to admit for sermons that credibly portray their lives of faith – not Mother Teresa’s, Gandhi’s, or Gandolf’s, but theirs. “If one wishes to promote the life of language,” writes the poet Wendell Berry in Standing by Words, “one must promote the life of the community” in which the language flourishes. (39-40).
“Where grammar cracks, grace erupts.” – Joseph Sittler (qt. 42)
“A professional, after all, can live one way in town and quite another at home. Indeed, it is the mark of the professional the professional that he or she can get the job done even in the midst of marital crises, financial problems, or other forms of personal chaos. Ministers, too, tend to be performance-oriented in the way that they view their work. They understand they are the products of a long process of formation, but they also know their job has its big days and special moments when they are unavoidably on. Like other professionals, they can step in and out of a role as easily as entering and exiting the sanctuary. But in the last analysis, the pastoral character humbly offers itself as a paradigm for the service, worship and witness to God that belong to all believers. It’s not better performances that the church needs, but truer characters.” (43-44)
“If scripture is ever again to be a living source for theology, those who practice theology [and preach] must become less preoccupied with the world that produced scriptures and learn again how to live in a world scripture produces. This will be a matter of imagination, and perhaps of leaping.” – Luke Timothy Johnson (qt. 52)
“It is not [biblical] literacy for its own sake that we are after but the larger, Lindbeckian sense of the community, whose ordinary language shapes the lives and habits of its members. Reading the Bible is more like learning a language than translating a few phrases. When you really know a language, translation is unnecessary. The learner may proudly say, “I don’t when it happened, but I just noticed I am thinking in Spanish!” How do you read the Bible in such a way that you quit translating and begin to think and speak in its language?” (55)
“The consumerist guts the book the way one cleans a fish, as swiftly and efficiently as can be done. We have limited time for the weekly exegesis, so limited, in fact, that we convince ourselves that we do not have time for praying the text, meditating p its meaning for our own lives, or praying for our parishioners, unless of course, such activities will produce a more effective sermon.
The religious reader is a slow reader. If anything gets gutted in reading, it will be the interpreter, not the text. The consumerist shines a flashlight on the text and says “Tell me all you know.”: The religious reader allows the light of the text to illumine his or her own life and that of the congregation . “O Lord, thou has searched me and known me.” The religious reader already knows the ending, so he or she is free to enjoy the story.” (68)
“The preacher who is overly concerned with self-expression in the pulpit may be neglecting the rich array of styles available in the Bible. The text will tell you when to be angry, ironic, funny, or sad. It will tell you when to reason with your hearers and when to tease them with parabolic utterance, when to teach your parishioners in the synagogue and when to soar with them to the third heaven.” (79-80)
“The preacher performs texts much in the way an actor plays many parts or a musician renders different types of musical scores. If the only role Meryl Streep can play is Meryl Streep, she does not deserve accolades as an actor. But if she defers to the script and loses herself in the personality of her character, she is not only a great actor but a faithful performer, for she has discovered something of the script, winkled it out, and brought it alive. If we believe the Bible is performative, that it not only describes things but changes them, then preaching the Bible should do the same. P.T. Forsyth may have has the notion of performance on his mind (in 1907) when he claimed that the nearest analogue to the preacher is not the orator but the dramatist.” (82-83).
December 15, 2021
These lectures are a consideration of preaching that goes beyond questions of method and form in order to explore questions of function. I found them thought provoking and enjoyable. Lischer brings church history, theology, and contemporary questions to bear in ways that alternate between the punchy and the profound. The play on words with the title involved both the situation we preach into and why we do it which invited me into deeper reflection about preaching and the life of the church.
So thankful for both a book and an author which breaks the mold of so much material I've read about homiletics. This one will be held closely along with Forde's "Theology is For Proclamation" as I think about the preaching task.
Oh - and here's good longer form review:
https://crossings.org/a-review-of-ric...
So thankful for both a book and an author which breaks the mold of so much material I've read about homiletics. This one will be held closely along with Forde's "Theology is For Proclamation" as I think about the preaching task.
Oh - and here's good longer form review:
https://crossings.org/a-review-of-ric...
July 11, 2024
No better instruction or inspiration for those of us who preach, and those who listen, specially in our time. ". . . forgiveness always costs someone something. It cost God his son. It costs those who practice it the risk of further injury. We dare to use such language only because these words have been paid for. . . . What if every sermon exposed its listeners to this danger, that of being fundamentally changed by the message of reconciliation?" What indeed?
April 12, 2021
This is a book that I found phenomenal at the beginning of my ministry and there is still a lot to appreciate after many readings. Richard Lischer brings together a wide variety of preaching voices: from Augustine to Martin Luther King, Jr. to point to the impossible and essential end of preaching as a voice of reconciliation in an argumentative and fractured world.
November 14, 2018
An excellent short read on preaching, its eternal significance, and its end of reconciliation, the actualizing of all the good gospel stuff we usually preach but sometimes only view from a distance.
October 12, 2025
This is a thoughtful book on preaching as an act of reconciliation. Well worth the read for all preachers.
October 17, 2016
Interaction with The End of Words (by Richard Lischer)
The End of Words is the best book on preaching I have read in years. I put it right up there with the works of Fred Craddock and Tom Long. I have learned about preaching because of reading Lischer’s book.
I will be interacting with this book for the foreseeable future as I plan to re-read it in 2017. For me, 2017 will be a year of re-reading books on theology, homiletics, and race relations. The re-reading, I hope, will drive me to deeper engagement with these fine works. In The End of Words there is much I could write about here, but for now I opt to comment on one idea from his essay ‘One Last Story,’ (p.89-128).
Lischer says, “The Stories of Jesus haunt our world not because they correspond perfectly to history but because they correspond perfectly to his real presence among us” (p.125). The distinction he draws is important. People don’t come to faith because we Christians convince them, in their skepticism, of the historicity of events in the Christian story. Some Christian apologists are so determined to win the argument and then proclaim their victory, they lose sight of the real goal: helping people meet and come to know Jesus.
People are not won to faith by convincing arguments. They come to faith in God when they meet God in Jesus Christ. Hence Lischer’s use of the verb ‘haunt.’ Skeptics and believers alike are haunted by a ghost – the Holy Ghost. Apologetics has its place. Our preaching can be defeated if it fails to hold up to scientific and historic scrutiny. However, strong proofs do not win any victory for the preacher. We don’t help people find their way to Jesus unless we have the Holy Spirit with us.
Our sermons will successfully tell those stories that haunt the world, when the Holy Spirit haunts our sermons and our souls. Near the conclusions of the section, Lischer says, “We have the high and dangerous calling of telling one last story in a world filled with lies: the story must be true” (emphasis mine) (p. 127). That we can show the historicity of the resurrection of the scientific veracity of the world as something created does not make our story true. Those types of proofs make the message verifiable to some degree. What makes it true is if Jesus is in it and in us as we preach it. When people hear the message and find themselves staring into the eyes of Jesus, we have told the true story, the one the world desperately needs.
Thank you, Dr. Lischer, for this amazing book. Five stars!
The End of Words is the best book on preaching I have read in years. I put it right up there with the works of Fred Craddock and Tom Long. I have learned about preaching because of reading Lischer’s book.
I will be interacting with this book for the foreseeable future as I plan to re-read it in 2017. For me, 2017 will be a year of re-reading books on theology, homiletics, and race relations. The re-reading, I hope, will drive me to deeper engagement with these fine works. In The End of Words there is much I could write about here, but for now I opt to comment on one idea from his essay ‘One Last Story,’ (p.89-128).
Lischer says, “The Stories of Jesus haunt our world not because they correspond perfectly to history but because they correspond perfectly to his real presence among us” (p.125). The distinction he draws is important. People don’t come to faith because we Christians convince them, in their skepticism, of the historicity of events in the Christian story. Some Christian apologists are so determined to win the argument and then proclaim their victory, they lose sight of the real goal: helping people meet and come to know Jesus.
People are not won to faith by convincing arguments. They come to faith in God when they meet God in Jesus Christ. Hence Lischer’s use of the verb ‘haunt.’ Skeptics and believers alike are haunted by a ghost – the Holy Ghost. Apologetics has its place. Our preaching can be defeated if it fails to hold up to scientific and historic scrutiny. However, strong proofs do not win any victory for the preacher. We don’t help people find their way to Jesus unless we have the Holy Spirit with us.
Our sermons will successfully tell those stories that haunt the world, when the Holy Spirit haunts our sermons and our souls. Near the conclusions of the section, Lischer says, “We have the high and dangerous calling of telling one last story in a world filled with lies: the story must be true” (emphasis mine) (p. 127). That we can show the historicity of the resurrection of the scientific veracity of the world as something created does not make our story true. Those types of proofs make the message verifiable to some degree. What makes it true is if Jesus is in it and in us as we preach it. When people hear the message and find themselves staring into the eyes of Jesus, we have told the true story, the one the world desperately needs.
Thank you, Dr. Lischer, for this amazing book. Five stars!
February 24, 2014
Sometimes I come close to forgetting why I preach. Week in and week out, the frequency, the repetition, can dull my awareness of what is at stake and what is being attempted. Lischer writes as a preacher who understands the agony of the vocation and the subtle lull of ambivalence that can be brought about by the drone of busyness.
Whether he writes of Vocation, Interpretation, Narration or Reconciliation, his words are challenging, encouraging and stretching. His chapter on Reconciliation alone is worth the price of admission. He has reminded me most of all of why we do what we do. A reminder that is helpful and necessary when we enter our second, third or fourth decade of finding something meaningful to say to audiences who either think they have heard it all before or haven't heard it at all and are unconvinced that it matters.
Thank you Professor Lischer.
Whether he writes of Vocation, Interpretation, Narration or Reconciliation, his words are challenging, encouraging and stretching. His chapter on Reconciliation alone is worth the price of admission. He has reminded me most of all of why we do what we do. A reminder that is helpful and necessary when we enter our second, third or fourth decade of finding something meaningful to say to audiences who either think they have heard it all before or haven't heard it at all and are unconvinced that it matters.
Thank you Professor Lischer.
June 3, 2012
Lischer's book is commendably readable - enjoyable and interesting from start to finish and he does a good job of critiquing the culture and examining and defining the role of preaching and the church within it. His title carries a double meaning - he explores first the futility of words in a culture of violence, but then deals with the purpose of words - to proclaim and encourage reconciliation. Beautifully written, this may not be the most practical book on preaching that I've ever read, but it holds up a goal and an ideal to strive for.
May 30, 2008
Deep, philosophical -- even sometimes a little too abstract -- but lovely to read. He articulates so wonderfully.
February 8, 2013
A classic text on preaching--a total must read. This one will stay on my shelf for future re-reads, not something I would say about many of the books I've been assigned in seminary.
May 7, 2015
One of the best and most encouraging books I've read in a long while. It has revitalized my thoughts about Christian ministry and given me a sense of groundedness out of which to work.
January 4, 2016
So fantastic. It has aged really well in the ten years since I first read it, too.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews