by Fleming Rutledge
Wm. B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Mich. 435 pages
reviewed by RONALD P. BYARS
Homileticians sometimes debate whether it is possible to teach preaching. Of course, one can teach exegesis, rhetorical strategies, speech and the procedural steps for crafting a sermon, but even accomplishing that successfully is no guarantee of the final product. But whether or not it’s possible to teach preaching, it is possible to learn how to preach. Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest, has surely learned it, and in this volume there are abundant clues to what it takes to do that. To be a preacher starts with having something to say, and a passion to find a way for people to hear it. The passion, at least, is a gift, and can’t be faked.
Should it go without saying that the preacher needs to believe the gospel? “If we do not believe that God does things, performs things, accomplishes things according to his purpose, then the whole story collapses.” (p. 223) “God is the subject of the verbs. That’s what’s missing in so much mainline preaching. The subject in so much of our preaching is ourselves — our faith, our ‘spirituality,’ our works, our journeys, our responsibilities, our needs, our ministries.” (p. 260) “Most of the talk about God that floats around in the American atmosphere is vague and shapeless, or, worse, wrapped in the American flag. The word God without a context can mean almost anything to anyone.” (p. 280) The only God about whom we dare say anything is the one whose voice we hear in Scripture.
Preaching requires the gift of imagination — spending enough time with the text to begin to overcome an imagination deficit and imagine the possibilities. Quoting Ellen Davis, Rutledge notes that “it is not reason that is against us, but imagination.” (p. 19) As Rutledge says in reference to apocalyptic, it is like seeing “two levels of reality at one and the same time — to see, as it were, both what is going on and what is really going on.” Rutledge’s sermons exhibit both an intimate knowledge of and respect for the text and for the context — i.e., what’s going on all around us.
How does one learn to visit a text with imagination? It is clear from the footnotes that Rutledge reads widely: newspapers, periodicals, novels, theology and biblical studies, classics, poetry, as well as paying attention to politics, the neighborhood and the congregation. Nota bene: no one who doesn’t read will preach effectively for very long.
The book is worth the price if only for the Introduction, which makes a persuasive case for preaching from the Old Testament. The author argues that “Old Testament” is a more accurate and more appropriate usage than “Hebrew Scriptures.” She hands on a description of the Old Testament as “the operating system for the New Testament” (p. 2), and proposes that “The challenge for Christian interpretation is to acknowledge and celebrate the unique power of the Old Testament in shaping the apostolic faith and the destiny of the church’s Lord.” (p. 3) The 55 sermons recorded here are profound evidence of that power. This reviewer heard Rutledge preach two of the sermons in this book, and was thrilled with both. Reading this volume is food for the soul.
RONALD P. BYARS is Professor Emeritus of Preaching and Worship at Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Va.
