The spirit of preaching

The distance between God and Man was breached by the words of the prophet and breached once and for all by the incarnation of the Word in the man Jesus.

If the Church is the body of Christ, alive and active in the world, we should expect that it could speak the Word of God by listening to the living Word through the lens of Scripture. That is what the preacher does.

This changes the argument with atheism. It is no longer an argument about whether God exists or not. It can only be an argument about the effectiveness of the Word faithfully preached.

Does hearing such a Word release us from being in thrall to the powers of this world? Does it, metaphorically, give hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind? Does it raise us from our graves to resurrection life?

This cannot be argued abstractly but only in the concrete. For, we are told that by their fruits we shall know the sons and daughters of God. This is why the saints of the Church are essential despite the strange goings on in the Vatican.

The lives of the saints stand as evidence that the Word has been heard and has produced a new creation. Such persons may surprise us by their characteristics.

Rather than being bound by religiously prescribed limits to behaviour, they will demonstrate radical freedom to act outside social or religious norms. This was the characteristic of Jesus that eventually led to his false trial and death.

It is by walking in the way of freedom that might mean speaking truth to power and placing ones own life at risk that we know that these belong to the communion of saints.

The one thing they have in common is that they have heard the Word that disposes of the powers that would keep us in bondage. The Christian saint is the one who takes lightly the claims of family, nation, tribe, profession, spouse or children and lives in a freedom that puts to shame the pathetic freedom promoted by our culture.

This is the real argument that the Church must have with the cultured despisers of our time.