Every Sunday of the year 2017, preachers have wished for a way to cry out against the foul news of the week, the difficulty being that most of that foul news was coming from the political sphere. How to preach without being political? How do we honestly decry what seems to us evil in our politics, without ourselves turning freedom of the pulpit into a political act?
Cry out, we must, lest the preacher ignore the outside world entirely.
But let us make a distinction–there is partisan politics, on the one hand, and the life of the polis (city), on the other. When party plays a part in our speaking, it is partisan and disqualified from the pulpit. But if we speak as a citizen about the city, that is public discourse and is permitted in the pulpit.
Much care is needed here, because we seldom sufficiently scrub our partisan feelings out of us, or know if we have really done so. When we claim to be speaking the truth, it needs to be qualified as “our truth,” “a truth,” “the truth as we see it.” But with that proviso, perhaps then we may claim the attention of the public and enter the field.
Except preachers are not speaking to a public. Our congregations are not the public but a particular audience that calls us to address them under an implied covenant. In that ritual setting, the captive audience has a right not to be regaled from on high with opinions they cannot escape or rebut. Given the sacrosanct status of the minister/priest, we must take special care not to abuse the privilege of the pulpit.
But then what of the evil we see all around us? Do we not name it? Is not our role the role of the prophet?
Yes, and we must claim it boldly, or betray our calling. However, let us pronounce not judgments (fallible) but feelings (infallible). We have a right to express our feelings, indeed we have an obligation to do so. But they are only relevant when offered as a symptom of the moment’s mania, and offered as the prelude of an approach to scripture, to Christ, to God.
It is an unseemly and grandiose ambition to be a prophet. Instead, strive to make the moment’s feelings plain–artists seek nothing more–altogether a difficult enough goal.