Preaching in the 'absence' of God

Thus the baptism of Jesus, far from being the removal of chaos, actually demonstrates its continual nearness. It is not so much that baptism is for him a removal from chaos, a cleansing as it were from the world; it is, rather, a willingness to be contaminated by the forces of chaos in an act of sheer grace. In truth, this is, at the very least, one dimension of Paul's surely shocking observation: "He was made sin – for our sake." P114

My delight in these sermons is that again and again conceptions that I thought I had got to the bottom of were further explicated to become richer. As a preacher myself I was surprised how little details of biblical texts were included in the sermons. There was little or no unpacking of the texts. Instead, the sermons deftly and in short order deal with the issue at hand.

There is a lovely playfulness in these sermons. For example in "The Serpent: the world's first theologian" it is explained that by asking the question of Eve "Did God say?" the serpent became the first to frame a theological question. This is an introduction to a sermon about what theologians do, not a promising beginning.

The first sermon in the collection was preached on Trinity Sunday 2008. Given the difficulty of this occasion this sermon is a masterpiece. We find the following:

Yet, contrary to what most people might imagine, today is the most important Sunday of the year, because it places before us the revolutionary claim at the heart of Christian faith. And what is that? It is that whoever or whatever God may be, it is now made plain that in Christian understanding God is not a lonely, solitary entity. Rather, today, God takes shape in essential being as the communal and transpersonal mystery of the world….

we…join with the atheists in claiming that God does not "exist", in that sense in which philosophical theists and atheists are forever locked in futile dispute. For "existence" is far too contentless and sterile a term. That is the "easy debate." Rather, today we want to say that God is the conclusion of "what happens" between Jesus and his Father in their Spirit

This is a sermon preached in the face of the modern program that had little time for the doctrine of the Trinity. For the god who kept the planets in their orbits could never be described as being one God; Father, Son and Spirit. Surely, it is the doctrine of the Trinity, almost abandoned by Protestantism and mystified by Catholicism that brings to a halt the "easy" argument about the existence of God.

This book is essential reading for preachers. It presents us with a theological genealogy that explains so much of our present situation and offers authentic understandings that will revive that most difficult task of the ordained. It is also a good book for the laity, those long suffering listeners to sermons. The complexity of thought and the sermons that illustrate that thought would be fodder for a group study.