Preaching: The Art and the Craft

by Walter J. Burghardt

Practical advice for preachers everywhere, written out of long experience and deep learning. Homilists will welcome its advice about language, the role of the imagination, preaching and prophecy, the liturgical setting of the preached word, and social justice. †

256 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 1987

Reviews

[Joseph · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little wonder that Heschel sees as the special characteristic of the prophet "not foreknowledge of the future, but insight into the present pathos of God."13 His fundamental experience is "a fellowship with the feelings of God, a sympathy with the divine pathos. . . . "14 He not only hears God's voice; he feels God's heart. How, then, can he ever speak dispassionately, serene and unruffled? How can his words be ever other than aflame, afire with a God whose living is caring?

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Let me respond speedily that in several ways the prophets from Isaiah to Malachi can be, must be, a pattern for our own prophetic speech. First, many of us have lost, or have never had, the neuralgic sensitivity to evil and injustice that should mark every prophet. Some surely share that sensitivity; but it is usually those who have experienced firsthand the sorry existence of the imthe downtrodden. More of us simply dethe poor and
prisoned, the hungry and
plore injustice; we are against collections sin; we take up for the homeless Lebanese.
In this connection, I remember vividly a remarkable sermon I heard several years ago at the annual Ohio Pastors Convocation. A black pastor from Texas preached to us on the Good Samaritan. Commenting on the priest and Levite who passed by the half-dead victim of robbers, he noted that these two gentlemen were perfectly at home in Jerusalem. They could handle anything that had to do with the temple: circumcision and the Torah, the altar of incense and the table for the showbread, the animals to be sacrificed and the ark of the covenant. What they could not handle was "the évent on the Jericho road." The phrase still haunts me: "the évent on the Jericho road." How often have I "passed by on the other side" (Lk 10:31, 32)? And how has it
ing? affected my prophetic word, my preachMoreover, there is so much evil and injustice over the globe that we grow used to it. We were shocked when
into our living rooms; now we can wolf TV first brought war our pizzas and slurp our Schlitz to the roar of rockets and the flow of blood. It's commonplace; we see too much of it; it's part of the human tragedy. It no longer grabs our gutsno more than broken bodies in the Bowl.

p. 34


But if I am to mediate the unique power of God's word to others, the Bible cannot remain a mere reference book, a handy volume of quotations for all occasions. Scripture must be the air I breathe. I must develop a love for God's word that reflects the vivid advice of St. Jerome: When your head droops at night, let a page of Scripture pillow it." Only so will my words too burn with Isaian fire; only so will the ancient symbols come alive on my lips; only so will the "good news" come across to the faithful as news indeed, and as very, very good.

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