SermonStudio

"The Church of the Cryptic Cross" is one name that I have given to a contemporary building in another part of the world. That name comes from a cross in the chance! on which the "King of the Jews" placard is hanging by one nail, as though it were about to fall to the ground. I also call this "The Church of the Twin Pulpits" because it has two very large, matching ambos that seem to have been designed with dialogue preaching in mind. One preacher can stand in one, another in the other, and they can engage in a stationary form of dialogue preaching by speaking to each other with questions and answers, give and take, while the congregation listens in and, as Fred Craddock would put it, "overhears the gospel." Since the building is octagonal and not overly large, the congregation would be close enough to the speakers to become involved in the dialogue.

But it is the carvings on the wooden ambos that have intrigued me ever since I first saw them. Each of them contains a biblical scene in which the Good News is being proclaimed to a group of people. One scene depicts Peter preaching to the people in Jerusalem on the Day of Pentecost, as Luke reports that event (Acts 2:14ff):

But Peter, standing with the eleven, lifted up his voice and addressed them, "Men of Judea and all who dwell in Jerusalem, ... give ear to my words ... Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs which God did through him in your midst as you yourself know - this Jesus, delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed ... But God raised him up
... Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified."

And Luke continues: "Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, 'Brethren, what shall we do?' And Peter said to them, 'Repent, and be baptized everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins ...' " And, according to Luke, about three thousand people repented and were baptized on that occasion.
On the other ambo, Paul is pictured preaching to the intellectuals at Athens (Acts 17:22ff):

"Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: 'To an unknown god.' What therefore you worship as unknown, this Iproclaim to you."

In the discourse that followed, Paul spoke of the God who created the world, asserting that people are "God's offspring" whom he now calls upon to repent "because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all men by raising him from the dead." Luke says that there was a mixed reaction to this claim: "Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; but others said, 'We will hear you again about this ... But some men joined him and believed.' "

The two graphic carvings show two different kinds of preachers speaking to two radically different audiences with diverse kinds of sermons, but the focus of each sermon is on the very heart of the gospel, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and what this event means for all people living in God's world. Although Peter and Paul told the Story within different types of story sermons, listeners could not misinterpret what they were talking about. They did not speak to entertain their hearers but to get their attention, reach their minds and hearts so that the Word and the Spirit could bestow the gift of faith upon them and change their lives. Primitive Christian preaching, as reported in Acts, was more like the telling of a story than anything else; it was narrative preaching. "The Church of the Twin Pulpits" reminds us of this and suggests a shape for our sermons today.

The Shape of Contemporary Preaching

Worship, in almost every denomination, not only has a new book, but it also has a new look. The new look and new book are quite similar in most of the liturgical churches; some elements of liturgical worship and preaching have even found their way into the practices of so-called non-liturgical churches. The increased use of the lectionary, especially the "ecumenical lectionary," is one proof of this. But while worship has many "common characteristics" among the denominations in America, preaching patterns show more diversity and, perhaps, disagreement on the function and shape of the sermon in today's pulpit ministry.

Elizabeth Achtemeier writes: "In general, preaching in the United States today takes one of four forms. There is first of all the approach that sees preaching as primarily a setting forth of the truth of biblical propositions; we could in fact label such preaching 'propositional preaching.' This sort of preaching, in her opinion, considers the Bible to be a set of propositions - "the Bible says," as Billy Graham and others use the phrase - to be proclaimed from the pulpit as "a set of truths" to be believed. The content of the sermons really has to do with the authority of the Scriptures. She does not deny that this type of preaching is effective and has led to the conversion of thousands of people to the faith, but she comments:

Nevertheless, leaving all other questions aside, the thoughtful preacher must ask why, if the Scriptures are really a set of propositions, they have been given to us largely in the form of stories? Has God's salvation of his world not been acted out precisely in the form of events?2

An understanding of the narrative nature of the Bible needs to become a mark of propositional preaching, as in black preaching that "even at its most propositional, ... has preserved something of the narrative character of sacred history," if it is to remain a viable type of preaching.

Professor Achtemeier classifies the type of preaching "which is found in most mainline denominations ... as 'thematic preaching.' " Thematic preaching, as she describes it, is really one type of modern expository preaching that some have called "sermonizing" and others have labelled "biblical preaching." It produces a sermon shaped around, or by, a theme that dominates thought and development usually in the form of the three-point sermon. She analyzes:

The presupposition of such "thematic preaching" in relation to the Bible is that there is a major idea or message which can be distilled out of the text, and the function of biblical criticism for such preaching, then has been to recover that major theme. That is, biblical criticism has been seen as the necessary tool for uncovering what the text really meant when it was written, and for years it has been the aim of many homiletics teachers to instill in their pupils the necessity of uncovering that actual meaning.3

Achtemeier is convinced, apparently on the evidence of sermons she has read and heard, that "busy pastors have failed to do their exegetical homework" in the parish; it gets crowded out of the pastor's homiletical agenda by the myriad of other tasks that must be performed. And so, thematic preaching tends to be the proclamation of an idea discovered by the preacher in the text, and this is a major weakness with this kind of preaching. "The hermeneutical jump," Leander Keck's "priestly listening" (to the text), and a deficient theology of the Word, are among other problem areas in thematic preaching.

The message today of any biblical text is not simply its ancient meaning. Rather its message is the meaning which it has in relation to a congregation ... for no event or Word of God in the Bible happens only in the past.4

She is convinced that this is not what occurs in much thematic preaching.

It is her third type of preaching - "creative preaching" (which is the title of her book on story preaching - that Elizabeth Achtemeier believes "may hold the most promise for the future of preaching." By "the creative power of language and form, ... the congregation can be enabled to 'live' the biblical story so that it becomes their story, creating the same salvific effects in their lives that that first story created in Israel and in the primitive church."5 She contends that the "new hermeneutic" and the "new" literary criticism of scholars like C. H. Dodd, Amos Wilder, Robert Funk, Sally McFague, Robert Tannehill, and others, have - through their emphasis upon language and forms - taken the sermon beyond thematic preaching into various types of narrative preaching. She calls Frederick Buechner the "most widely known among such preachers," and included Fred Craddock, Edmund Steimle, Morris Niedenthal, Charles Rice, Richard Jensen, and James Sanders on her list of authors who are producing books about narrative preaching.

The fourth category which Achtemeier describes is "experimental preaching." It includes what she calls "a wide variety of substitutes for the traditional sermon," and she lists:

first-person sermons, dialogue and multilogue sermons, sermons formed from participation by the congregation, press conference sermons, dramatic monologues or multilogues, oral readings, mime, symbolic action; dance, verse sermons, imaginative parables or allegories, dialogues with newspapers or musical instruments, sermons formed from literature or hymns, use of various audiovisual aids in conjunction with the spoken word, folk-masses, religious musical dramas - the list is as endless as the human imagination.6

Her list offers evidence that the rubric in one experimental worship service - that "Exposition need not be confined to an address: other forms of proclamation - dialogue, drama, cantata, etc. - might also be employed" - was accepted by preachers. A text may, or may not, be read as the source of the sermon, and even if a text is the sermon's basis, too often the biblical story gets lost in the "experimental sermon." The people might be interested spectators or an involved audience in "something different" in Sunday worship, but do not participate - really - in the real Word-event that worship and biblical preaching make a present reality for the congregation. From the gospel's viewpoint, this may be a very unproductive way to preach, despite the fact that Elizabeth Achtemeier asserts, "There is room for experimental preaching in the church."

Any of the four types of preaching - propositional, thematic, creative or narrative, experimental - might be employed effectively in pastoral preaching, depending upon the kind of parish in which one preaches and how faithfully the preacher proclaims the living Word through the form that is employed for proclamation. But the "creative," or story sermon, when it is informed by biblical scholarship as well as communication theory and other contemporary concerns, is the most promising type of preaching for use within the liturgical worship of the church. The Story and the Song belong together in the liturgical life - gathered and separated - of the people of God.

The Evolution of the Story Sermon - the Beginning

In the past quarter of a century, the story sermon has had an evolutionary history of its own. Homileticians have always understood that the gospel is a story, and scholars like Paul Scherer, Richard Caemmerer, James S. Stewart, William Stidger, and a host of other writers and preachers have conceived of preaching as "telling the Story." But it was H. Grady Davis, in his Design for Preaching, who opened the way for the biblical story sermon to emerge as "the sermon shape for the future." Not only did Davis identify the functional forms - proclamation, teaching, and therapy - in his "1958 design," but he went on to change the categories of the biblical sermon from textual, thematic, expository - and their various combinations and variations - into what he named organic forms. He identified five such forms:

1. A subject discussed

2. A thesis supported

3. A question propounded

4. A message illumined

5. A story told

Davis explains the "a story told" type of sermon:

A sermon may take the form of a narrative of events, persons, actions and words. The distinguishing feature of this form is that the idea is embodied in the structure of verbal generalizations, whether assertions or questions.... But we preachers forget that the gospel is for the most part a simple narrative of persons, places, happenings, and conversation. Nine-tenths of our preaching is verbal exposition and argument, but not one-tenth of the gospel is exposition. Its ideas are mainly in the form of a story told.7

Davis was convinced that not more than 10% of the sermons that were being preached in the 1950s were narrative in nature, and he was also positive that, if his estimate was at all accurate, such story preaching received its impetus from the kinds of story sermons that the late Peter Marshall had delivered in the 1940s.

For some homileticians and preachers, Peter Marshall remains a controversial preacher three and a half decades after his death - a storyteller more than he was a teller of the Story. Study of his sermons reveals some of the obvious weaknesses of story preaching, as the variety of his sermon shapes suggests to anyone who has read Elizabeth Achtemeier's diagnosis of "creative" and "experimental" preaching. Marshall preached at least five different types of narrative sermons:

1. Biblical narratives - he retold, with little comment, the great stories of the Bible;

2. Life experience sermons - stories about people;

3. Autobiographical story sermons - as, for example, "The Tap on the Shoulder."

4. Sermons from stories, legends, literature - as "The Keeper of the Springs."

5. Some parabolic sermons.

That he was a great storyteller cannot be disputed. Many of his sermons have to be called "post-textual;" some question if they should be called biblical sermons with one exception (No. 1 above). Not only the Bible as story, but other narrative forms influenced him. Grady Davis, however, pulled these various strands of narrative together into his "a story told" version of the biblical sermon, and the modern story sermon began to evolve.

The Deep Roots of the Gospel as Story

We may be certain that Davis knew of the emphasis upon the use of story in preaching by homileticians like William Stidger and preachers like Clarence Macartney; he was familiar with their books and their sermons. He undoubtedly had read Macartney's talk on "The Recall to Gospel Preaching." It begins:

Very early in my ministry I chanced to read in the British Weekly, one of the most widely read religious journals, an article by the editor, Sir William Robertson Nicoll, in which he related his experiences in worshiping in churches in the south of England during a period of convalesence after a long illness. He spoke of the sober order and dignity of the services, and how the preachers were well-educated and sincere men who delivered thoughtful and carefully prepared sermons. But at the end of the article, he said: "Not one of them would have converted a titmouse." That sentence of indictment has often come back to me in the many years which have passed since I read that article - "Not one of them would have converted a titmouse." Across how many of our sermons, if the truth were told, would that indictment have to be written?8

Macartney tried to get out from under that indictment in his own preaching ministry by preaching "for the conversion of the sinner to the will of God in Christ." He turned to narrative methodology in his preaching, becoming a master illustrator and storyteller. He discovered the power of biographical material in the Bible and preached sermons on biblical personalities in the belief that "the Bible is the supreme book on human personality." Clarence E. Macartney, as his books attest, effectively preached the gospel through story.

With William Stidger, who also recognized that the gospel is a story, a combination of the advent of radio and some advice from a famous preacher, Dr. S. Parkes Cadman, turned him toward the use of story in his preaching and his teaching of homiletics. The radio altered his style of preaching when he realized - long before Marshall McCluhan - that classical oratory would not work on the radio and that the more conversational style required by radio in speaking might be more effective in the pulpit. Dr. Cadman also advised him: "The wise preacher is the man who puts an abstract truth into a story, an illustration, or a parable; for then he may be certain that all of his hearers will get it."9 The truth of that remark depends, of course, upon the impact of the story, its relevance to life, its qualities of imagination and involvement, and, of course, the skill of the preacher as a storyteller.

Stidger learned that lesson well, especially in developing the ability to turn ordinary incidents into stories, some of which became sermons. He wrote a series of books of sermon illustrations which were more like short stories than typical sermon illustrations; some were long enough to be called story sermons. One volume was titled Sermon Nuggets in Stories. In the introduction he wrote:

As I travel through the church world, friends are kind enough to ask me to autograph their copies of my earlier books (of stories), and I launch this new volume with several "autographs" in which I have tried to set forth the purpose of my brief stories ...

When a mother or Sunday School teacher tells me she likes to tell my stories to children or young people, I write: "Tell me a story!" is the world-old cry of child, youth, and adult. Here in these pages is the answer to that cry."10

Examination of sermons by the famous preachers of that day reveals that most of them had discovered the power of story - as sermon illustration, if nothing else - in the preaching of the gospel. And many of them, too, were master storytellers as well as biblical expositors. This gave their sermons a narrative quality not unlike one finds in at least one type of modern story sermon, the Steimle model - "a story told" - in Preaching the Story. But they were not story-preachers in the sense that Peter Marshall produced and preached narrative sermons, although their different - and more limited - use of story prepared the way for the evolution of the modern story sermon to begin.

Concentration Upon Thematic Preaching

Story preaching might have developed more rapidly after World War II were it not for the impact that form criticism made upon the study of the Scriptures in numerous theological seminaries in the United States. New interest in biblical exegesis was linked to preaching - as it should be - with the result that thematic preaching, as a development in expository preaching, became an increasingly popular shape for sermons. Preachers in liturgical churches as well as nonliturgical
churches felt the pressure to engage in thematic preaching, In 1949 Harry F. Baughman produced a volume, Preaching from the Propers, which became a handbook for thematic preaching in some of the liturgical churches. It was based on what might be called "comparative exegesis" of the liturgical propers - introit, collect, epistle, gradual, and the gospel - by which the central message of the day would emerge. It was a logical application of the new biblical methodology to the liturgical lessons in particular, but the theory could only be applied to those (few) sets of propers that had any thematic harmony. Baughman's thesis is a valid one for exegeting the "meaning of the day" in about thirty-five to forty percent of the lessons in the new lectionaries. It will not work during most of Epiphany and Pentecost when the second lessons are "out of sync" with the Old Testament and the Holy Gospel.

Printed sermons offer evidence that concern with the meaning of the text became such a dominant factor in thematic preaching that story was downgraded in favor of emphasis on the content of the sermon. One homiletician reached the conclusion that content really is all that matters in the sermon. "Get the content 'right' and you have a good sermon" is the way he phrased it. Less attention was given to the style and shape of the sermon, to the use of imagery in it, and to the way it was delivered in the pulpit. Clyde Reid's wellknown - and scathing - analysis of the sorry plight of the Protestant pulpit in his The Empty Pulpit was a necessary indictment of preaching - and preachers - out of touch with the gospel as story. The 1960s was the decade that saw the renewal of preaching gain momentum again.

The Era of "Experimental Preaching"

Reuel Howe's The Miracle of Dialogue (1963) touched off a renewed interest in communication theory and a flurry of homiletical activity that sought to reshape the sermon so that the gospel might be communicated more effectively. Partners in Preaching, by Reuel Howe, was published the same day that Clyde Reid's The Empty Pulpit reached the bookstores." When William D. Thompson and Gordon C. Bennett wrote Dialogue Preaching: The Shared Sermon (1969), experimental preaching was in high gear. John Killinger was among those who produced volumes of experimental sermons, some of which were his, but most of which were written by other preachers. He introduced one collection of experimental sermons this way:

The words "experimental preaching" suggest that it is a new kind of preaching. Actually it is and it isn't ... There has always been experimentalism at work among authentic preachers. The central problem which all speakers face [is] of having something significant to say and discovering forms of discourse to shape the communication of that something.12

The gospel is always a "given" in preaching, thus Killinger concentrated on the problem of sermon shape and effective communication of that gospel. Since I have already given Elizabeth Achtemeier's "endless list" of experimental sermon shapes and some of her warnings about built-in weaknesses, I will not attempt to reiterate or expand on what she has said. But it should be noted that "experimental preaching," almost in the face of "creative preaching" and story preaching, has spilled over into the 1980s, and some homileticians believe - with Achtemeier - that it should be encouraged.

Some of us took a more conservative approach to the renewal of the sermon. My own approach in The Renewal of Liturgical Preaching focused upon the content of the liturgical sermon from the perspective of church year and lectionary, but I included one chapter on "Preaching and the Shape of the Sermon" meant to be a call to alter the shape of the traditional (thematic) sermon through the use of story and parable. Many of the "guides," as I called them, are still useful and pertinent:

1. The preacher must ... master the art of sermon illustration. Illustration is a requirement for effective preaching; it is not optional.

2. He will use the narrative form of proclamation.

3. He will usually employ the indicative mood.

4. He must recognize the importance of the metaphor in the Bible, and be able to use it himself. Other types of imagery may be almost as effective.

5. A brief sermon may in itself be a parable.13

The development of "the narrative form of proclamation" as a contemporary form for the sermon was left to others.

The Emergence of the Story Sermon

Preaching began to turn "the narrative corner" at the beginning of the 1970s and just as the new lectionaries were beginning to be employed in the churches. Thor Hall's The Future Shape of Preaching was an effort to integrate communication theory, theology, and exegetical methodology within the worship life of the congregation; he did not attempt to work out any new shapes - story or otherwise - for the sermon. That was left to Charles Rice in his Interpretation and Imagination: The Preacher and Contemporary Literature, which was an introduction into the narrative form of the sermon. Rice investigated the relationship of culture, literature, theology, and the content of the sermon, stating that "by way of suggesting the sermon's form, the preacher ought not to be embarrassed by story." And Rice also contends that "contemporary literature and Christian theology agree in the forms they suggest for preaching: story, a proper sequence between grace and ethics, indirection and understatement, the man as message." He argues that the narrative form "makes a large place for literature in the content of the sermon and gives story a prime place in the sermon's format." Arndt Halvorson's Authentic Preaching, which is described as "The Creative Encounter Between the Person of the Preacher, the Biblical Text, and Contemporary Life and Literature in Gospel Proclamation," unites sermon content and form
- as Rice seeks to do - through story and literature.

But with the use of the new lectionaries in Protestant and Roman Catholic churches, story as a suitable shape for the contemporary sermon had to face increased pressure to concentrate on the content of the sermon. A veritable flood of exegetical helps for preachers using the three-year pericope system flowed from the publication houses, accompanied to a lesser degree by books of sermons on the new texts, but these, too, tended to be content centered. Little or no attention was given to the shape of the sermon even in excellent exegetical homiletical commentaries such as the Proclamation series of Fortress Press. Exegetically informed content is fundamental to the proclamation of the gospels, especially in the new lectionaries, but the content may be lost in the communication process if the shape of the sermon - and how it is preached - should be neglected.

Fortunately, preaching received an assist in finding forms for proclaiming the gospel to congregations through the insights and efforts of homileticians like Fred Craddock, Milton Crumm, Clement Welsh, Frederick Buechner, Foster McCurley,14 Clyde Fant, and others. These writers and their works helped to correct the homiletical excesses brought out in some attempts at experimental preaching by stressing the importance of the biblical content and the organic form of the sermon. Narrative - and the story sermon - began to emerge as a legitimate sermonic shape for gospel preaching.

The year 1980 saw the publication of three volumes about the story-shape of the sermon, all of considerable importance for preaching. Elizabeth Achtemeier's Creative Preaching: Finding the Words deals with language and creativity which are faithful to the biblical witness in preaching texts. She really pulls together the diverse strands of homiletical thought from the previous decade, and evaluates them from the perspective of biblical scholar, homiletician, and preacher. She insists on leaving the homiletical door open for experimentation in sermon language and form as long as the preacher is under the mandate to do careful exegesis in a biblically enlightened manner. She concludes:

Creative preaching finally happens only when God in Christ lays hold of our lives and works his transforming new creation in heart and mind and action. Then words catch fire, and love is born, and the Christian community becomes reality; and God presses forward toward the goal of his kingdom on earth. I only know that God does so act, if we are faithful to him.15

Richard Jensen, a systematician, produced the second volume, Telling the Story'6 reveals his homiletical intention in the subtitle, Variety and Imagination in Preaching. From an analysis of some of the weaknesses of contemporary preaching that is similar to that of Clyde Reid, Jensen suggests three types of sermons for "telling the Story" - didactic, proclamatory, and story sermons. But it is the story sermon that Jensen concentrates upon and really is interested in motivating pastors to imitate or develop on their own. Jensen combines Grady Davis' first two functional forms - proclamation and teaching - with his fifth organic form - a story told - but his treatment of the story sermon has more similarity to some of Charles Rice's story sermons than it does to the intentions of Davis when he writes about "a story told." The story must begin with the Bible: "Always begin with a text. Story preaching must be anchored firmly in a given text(s) of Scripture." Jensen opens the "evolutionary door" a bit farther with his Telling the Story.

Proclaiming the Story, the third book on story preaching to appear in 1980, takes up Grady Davis' "a story told" organic form for the sermon and gives it contemporary expression throught Edmund A. Steimle, Morris J. Niedenthal, Charles L. Rice, and five other preachers, all of whom were former students of Steimle while he taught at Union Theological Seminary, New York. Chapter 10, "The Fabric of the Sermon," delineates the story sermon - "a narrative in all its parts" - as a biblical sermon that faithfully tells the story - not the theme or even the message - of a
Scripture passage. It could be called a modern expository sermon, and specifically a modern method of doing a running commentary. As William J. Carl declared in response to Don M. Wardlaw's "Eventful Sermon Shapes," a multiverse text preached in story fashion "means returning to a kind of expository preaching."17

Has the sermon gone "full circle" in its evolutionary process so as to return - better informed biblically and theologically, perhaps? Has the shape of the sermon actually become more in touch with the gospel as story? Or does "a story told" represent a genuine evolutionary advancement in the shape of the sermon, and will it assist preachers to proclaim the gospel more effectively today? Does Preaching the Story, as the culmination of the evolution of the story sermon since Grady Davis in 1958, have a weakness built into it by limiting the "a story told" kind of sermon to a single narrative shape? And will the "a story told" story sermon inspire the people, who have come together to worship God and respond to his gift of grace in Jesus Christ, to sing their song of praise and thanksgiving in the liturgy? It is obvious that we must look at the story sermon - and its varieties - in more depth and detail.

An Example of "a Story Told" Biblical Sermon

When Edmund A. Steimle delivered two of the chapters (7 and 10, of Preaching the Story as lectures at the January, 1978, convocation of Luther Northwestern Seminary, St. Paul, Minnesota, he also preached a sermon to demonstrate his conception of the "a story told" type of biblical narrative. It was called "The Stranger," and it is printed in a collection of sermons entitled God the Stranger. The thirteen sermons in this book were also preached on the National Radio Pulpit (NBC) from April 2 to June 25, 1978. Except for the introduction and one illustration pertaining strictly to the clergy, "The Stranger" was preached to a radio audience in exactly the same form and language employed when it was delivered to some five hundred pastors and professors in St. Paul. It is worth studying over against Preaching the Story and, particularly, Chapter 10, "The Fabric of the Sermon." If the chapters, (seven and ten especially) are read after reading the sermon, the reader has approximately the same opportunity to react to Steimle's description of the "a story told" type of story sermon - as those who heard the lectures and the sermon in January of 1978.

"The Stranger" was the second sermon preached in the radio series (for the Second Sunday of Easter) and was developed from the familiar Luke 24:13-35 text. The Easter Sunday sermon - on Mark 16:1-8 - was called "Easter - Festival of Mystery," and introduced the theme of the thirteen sermon series, "Reflections about Resurrection." Steimle's goal was to help people "see more of the mystery and intrigue of Easter - and perhaps end up wanting to sing more carols." He contrasted the one day celebration of Easter, as most people seem to observe it, with the extended celebration of Christmas in which "the whole world is turned on its ear ... and for weeks at a time," declaring, "It's strange, really. For if there were no Easter, there'd be no Christmas ... no New Testament, no church, no Christianity." And then he asks the question which he tries to resolve in the sermon: "So why does Easter cut so little ice in the world today, compared with Christmas? Steimle asserts that the mystery can be faced only "out of the corner of the eye." Easter is embarrassing, for God works through death and the Cross; Easter brings judgment before it gives joy, and the word that precedes the gladness of Easter is, "Be not afraid." The resurrection makes us face death and suffering and sin, and "only then comes the joy (of Easter)." "The Stranger" picks up the mystery and examines it from Luke's perspective.

"The Stranger"
Edmund A. Steimle

That very day two of them were going to a village named Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing together, Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, "What is this conversation which you are holding with each other as you walk?" And they stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, named Cleopas, answered him, "Are you the only visitor to Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened in these days?" And he said to them, "What things?" And they said to him, "Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since this happened. Moreover, some women of our company amazed us. They were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body,' and they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb, and found it just as the women had said; but him they did not see. "And he said to them, "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Was it not
necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself.

So they drew near to the village to which they were going. He appeared to be going further, but they constrained him, saying, "Stay with us, for it is toward evening and the day is now far spent." So he went in to stay with them. When he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished out of their sight. Then they said to each other, "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road, while he opened to us the scriptures?" And they rose that same hour and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven gathered together and those who were with them, who said, "The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!" Then they told what happened on the road, and how he was known to them in the breaking of the bread. (Luke 24:13-35)

The story of the walk to Emmaus is one of the loveliest stories in the New Testament, certainly the most intriguing of the appearance stories following the Resurrection. But it has positively sinister implications for you and me some two thousand years later. If the risen Christ walking and talking with two of his disciples is unrecognizable, how are you and I ever to recognize God's presence with us today? If the risen Christ is a stranger to his own disciples, how much more of a stranger will God seem to us twenty centuries later?

That part of the story, that he was not recognized, is baffling. Presumably they have been in daily contact with him for the better part of three years. And now they do not even recognize him. What goes on here? Was he wearing a disguise? But what of his voice? His familiar clothing? His mannerisms, the way he walked? All those familiar characteristics of a close friend that lead us to recognition even after years of separation - but they had been separated for only three days. "But their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Why was this so?

Well, for one thing, we have to remember that it was the crucified Jesus who was raised from the dead and appeared to the disciples. And it was the crucified Jesus whom they were unprepared to recognize as the Christ, even before the death. Remember, "they all forsook him and fled." And if they were unprepared to recognize him for what he was in death, they were equally unprepared to recognize the crucified Christ in the appearances after the Resurrection. After all, if he was the Christ, God would not let him die, would he? And die in disgrace at the hands of the religious establishment in Jerusalem? It was all too much.

And after it was all over and they were making their lonely way to Emmaus, even if the tales of the women having seen him alive were true, he wouldn't appear as a stranger along the road with them, would he? Where was the blinding Resurrection light? The angels? The hallelujah chorus? It was all far too ordinary, too undramatic, calmly interpreting Scripture to them as if nothing had happened, like some hotshot Christian whipping out his pocket New Testament to tell us what the good old Book really has to say. So "their eyes were kept from recognizing him." Their eyes were kept because of their preconceived notions of how God would and would not act. They were blinded by their expectations of how God would and would not act.

But this was nothing new, really. This had been so before the events of the past three days. Jesus was different. He met no one's expectations. As Hans Kung writes:

He did not belong to the establishment nor to the revolutionary party, but neither did he want to opt out of ordinary life, to be an ascetic monk. Obviously he did not adopt the role which a saint or a seeker after holiness, or even a prophet, is frequently expected to play. For this he was too normal in his clothing, his eating habits, his general behavior ... [So he became a] skandalon, a small stone over which one might stumble ... He was attacked on all sides. He had not played any of the expected roles: for those who supported law and order he turned out to be a provocateur, dangerous to the system. He disappointed the activist revolutionaries by his nonviolent love of peace ... he offended the passive, world-forsaking ascetics by his uninhibited worldliness. And for the devout who adapted themselves to the world he was too uncompromising. For the silent majority he was too noisy and for the noisy minority he was too quiet, too gentle for the strict and too strict for the gentle. He was an obvious outsider.

He was different - a stranger.

And if all this was true then, why should it be any different now? If Christ is really the clue to who and what God is and how God acts, God will not fit into our notions of how God should and should not act either. Most of us tend to domesticate God, that is, make God fit into our notions of how God should act. So God becomes the patron saint of a democratic, capitalist system. God blesses America and hates the communists even more than we do. God becomes a gargantuan, blown-up version of me in my better moments. God should be comfortable and folksy; close, not far; forgiving, not judging; giving us comfort and peace of mind rather than asking us to deny ourselves and follow him.

A couple of years ago I was giving a series of sermons during a week at a summer assembly. At the end of the week an elderly gentleman came up and after some complimentary remarks about my preaching went on to say that he didn't agree at all with one of the sermons, in which I had attempted to point out that God in his nearness can be known only in contrast with God in his distance, based on Isaiah's startling vision of God in the temple filled with smoke and the song of the seraphim: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts." He said to me, "God is not far ... I've got him in my heart." Very cozy. There is a sense, of course, in which God can be known in our hearts, but the God of the Bible, the God revealed in the living Christ, also stands over against us in our "hearts." We do not take him captive in our hearts. Indeed he may take us captive in our hearts, and then perhaps we can know the peace of God which passes all understanding. But it is precisely beyond our understanding, because God, if Christ is the clue to his nature, is different. He is surprising, like appearing as a stranger along the dusty road to Emmaus.

Now there is a strange sort of comfort in all this. Perhaps when we are baffled by the way God apparently works in our world, he may be closer to us than we realize - as the disciples discovered when they arrived at Emmaus: "Did not our hearts burn within us while he talked to us along the road?" So even in our experience of the absence of God, there may be the experience of his presence - as Tillich points out - "in the empty space that cries out to be filled by him." So when prayer goes unanswered, or we are overwhelmed with tragedy - with cancer or a crippling stroke or the family falling apart - or there is senseless terrorism and grinding poverty and blatant racism, the fact that our experience or lack of experience of God points to a mystery, the mystery of no experience of God in the way in which we expect, precisely there may be the possibility of meeting the stranger along the road.

But before the story ended, the stranger did become recognizable in the breaking of bread. They had invited him in to stay with them. And "when he was at table with them, he took the bread and blessed and broke it and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened and they recognized him."

For the early church there is little question that this pointed to the experience of the living Christ in the Sacrament, the Eucharist. And that may also be true for us. As the community of believers gathers about the table set with bread and wine, and we hear the ancient words, "Take, eat; this is my body ... take, drink; this is the blood of the New Testament," and are reminded both of the death and at the same time of the hope of a great banquet in the future, our eyes may then be opened too, so that we recognize the stranger for what he really is.

But such recognition may not be limited solely to the cultic act of the Sacrament. No doubt it was the familiar words or gestures that did it. The familiar words of the blessing may come to us today in reassurance and hope on the lips of a familiar friend or a member of the family or even a preacher. Or the family words of the blessing may come to us in the expression of care and concern by someone familiar to us, and we are comforted and encouraged and given hope. Reminded of days and hours when God was familiar rather than strange, we are encouraged and given hope that Christ is indeed alive, and that God, for all his strangeness, is faithful to his promises to be with us always, even to the end of the age.

Or contrariwise, the stranger may be recognizable when you and I respond in love and concern and thoughtfulness to the needs of another. As John says in the Fourth Gospel, "He that wills to do shall know." I can remember in my last parish that when I was down in the dumps, discouraged, uncertain of the reality of God, I would go to the hospital and visit with patients from my parish, offering what I could of reassurance and comfort and hope in God's presence and care, and then the God who may have been a stranger to me earlier became recognizable in the breaking of bread.

But it may be that he becomes recognizable on the lips of unlikely people. It was many years ago, shortly after the end of World War II, and I was in the shop of a friendly neighborhood tailor whose name was Mr. Birnbaum. And he stopped me as I was leaving and said in his thick accent, "Mr. Steimle, I have a problem. As you know, I am a Jew and my wife, she is a Christian. Her brother was a violent Nazi when we were in Germany. He hated me and did nothing to help us. He was happy to get rid of us when we came over here. But now he is in a prison camp and he has written us asking us to send him some food. My wife, she says No, we send him nothing. But I say Yes, we should send him something. What do you think, Mr. Steimle?" I don't know how you would have felt, but I felt humble and ashamed. Ashamed of his Christian wife possibly, but even more ashamed of myself for being unprepared to find the stranger God recognizable on the lips of a pleasant Jewish neighborhood tailor.

And then the story ends abruptly: "And he vanished out of their sight." Which is to say, you can't nail God down to a dining room table and the breaking of bread any more than you can nail God down to a cross with real nails, for that matter. They wanted him to stay. They wanted to rehash this marvelous experience. But God would have no part in deadly-boring postmortems, as at a bridge table; "he vanished out of their sight."

"The stranger comes suddenly out of nowhere (as another puts it) like the first clear light of the sun after a thunderstorm, or maybe like the thunder itself, and maybe we recognize him and maybe we don't." But maybe we can reach the point where we can bless God not merely for his recognizable presence, but precisely because he is different, unpredictable, breaking away from our stultifying expectations, precisely because he does come as the stranger into our lives to give assurance and pardon and hope.* (* "The Stranger" by Edmund Steimle, from God the Stranger, Copyright 1979 by Fortress Press. Used by permission of Fortress Press.)