Rowan Williams and Greg Garrett by Rowan Williams

Author:Rowan Williams
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Church Publishing Inc.
Published: 2018-05-19T04:00:00+00:00

Conversation Five

In Which Rowan and Greg Discuss: The Preaching Event / Preaching Styles / Preparing to Preach / Theology of Preaching / Preaching Influences / The Sermon and the Short Story / Preaching and Healthy Self-Disclosure / The Sermon in the Context of Worship / Imagining the Lives of the Listeners / Theology and Popular Culture / Archetypal Myths in Pop Culture / Culture and Community / Embedding the Gospel in Culture / The Gospel According to Doctor Who / The Parables / Evangelism

GG: It strikes me that this talk about poetry and recognition offers us a place where we can make a connection with preaching, which is something we both take seriously. This past Sunday in Paris, the sermon I preached was essentially what you just said: “This is how it seems to me. Is this how it seems to you?” And of course, we’re also saying, “Here’s what the tradition has to offer us.” But I know that both of us think of preaching as a very particular moment for a particular audience, and a big part of it is that thing we were talking about in poetry: I see where you are. We think of that in terms of the needs of a particular congregation on a particular Sunday or whatever day the preaching experience takes place. And I think another thing that translates is language: the well-chosen word, the well-chosen sound. Other things might translate for us as well.

RW: It’s exactly as you describe, I think. You’re trying to propose something recognizable and offer something recognizable. And as you know, one of the most moving things you can ever hear at the church door is “You might have been speaking to me.” You can only think, I hope I was. But if I was, it’s not because I calculated it. And that is one of the differences between poetry and preaching. Preaching is an event in the body of Christ. I want to give a great deal of weight to that. In some mysterious way, what is there is given in the community’s life, especially but not exclusively in the sacramental gathering. I’m not expressing a set of ideas to be imposed on an audience, but in some very elusive way, connections are being made. The Spirit links up, if all’s going well, with what people need to hear. You can tell when it’s happening. And when it’s not happening. I don’t know if you’ve had the experience I occasionally have of preaching a sermon where you might as well have a glass shield around the pulpit, the sense the words are bouncing off and falling into a heap. How does that happen?

GG: I was talking with your wife, Jane [Williams, theologian and author]. Who you know well.

It seems that in this conversation we are often violating one of the most essential rules of dramatic writing. I always tell my students that their characters shouldn’t talk to each other about things they already know. So any line of dialogue that begins “As you well know” is a bad line of dialogue.

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