326 - Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock

Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock
By Gail R. O'Day and Thomas G. Long
Nashville, Abingdon, 1993. 268 pp. $15.95.

Fred B. Craddock is an excellent biblical scholar, the finest homiletician of our time, and a simply wonderful preacher. Others may stretch toward one of those accolades, but only Craddock brings them all together in a way that makes him unique. He is a gift, and we are the recipients. We have been and continue to be blessed by his life and work. Short of stature (as he claims Jesus must have been in his tongue-in-cheek exegesis of the Zacchaeus story) and with a voice that he himself has described as like the wind whistling through a splinter on the post, Craddock has performed the additional important service of helping all of us who do not fit the classical image of the orator-tall, wavy-haired, silver-tongued-believe that we, too, can preach. Of course, it would help if we also had his talent, wit, dignity, and grace.

Since we owe him a lot, it is not surprising that twelve of his colleagues, all major players in the discipline themselves, have chosen to honor him with Listening to the Word. That the book is good may be a surprise. Festschriften often founder in the shallow waters of good intentions and poor, disconnected material. Much of the credit for Listening to the Word's success must therefore go to its editors, Gail O'Day and Thomas Long. Rather than gather whatever the contributors might have had on hand and unpublished, the editors mapped out a book that would reflect Craddock's own interests in text, sermon, and listener.

This gives the book a kind of coherence, but it is a tenuous coherence as we will see. The twelve essays, four to a section, vary as might be expected. Some summarize and tighten previously-made arguments, while others plow unbroken soil. Some are written in a light, breezy style, while others are more technical and dense.

327 - Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock

In the section on the text, Gail O'Day urges that Scripture be used not just as a source for content but also as a source for language. Her special and helpful focus is the salvation oracle of Second Isaiah. Eugene Boring and Gene Tucker make similar arguments for structure and genre. Using the Sermon on the Mount, Boring makes the importance of structure for meaning clear, compelling, and interesting. Tucker discusses problems and possibilities in biblical interpretation. His delightful discussion of Nehemiah is one from which many sermons will be cribbed. Leander Keck's close reading of Romans 5:1-11 shows how closely rhetoric and theological content are related. For instance, that 5:1-11 is a transitional paragraph in the letter has important implications for meaning. A sidebar here: It would be helpful for preachers to consider transitions in their own sermons in light of Keck's argument. Keck's summary suggestions about preaching from Romans tend to be abstract and would be more useful with examples.

Moving to the sermon itself, Eugene Lowry helpfully defines and organizes many of the terms floating around in homiletical discussion these days, and Paul Scott Wilson continues his work of helping us understand the meaning and function of imagination in preaching. David Bartlett makes good suggestions about preaching different genres of texts (parable, psalm, epistle, gospel). At once the most challenging and frustrating essay is Richard Lischer's on preaching as the church's language. Lischer stands against the contemporary emphasis upon preaching as event, translation, and illustration, opting for different categories that he calls formation, narrative, and performance. The point of preaching is not to tell stories but to tell the story. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done, and Lischer does not tell us how to do that.

The final section on listeners brings us Long's interesting account of preaching's attention to the listener. He traces the Barth/Brunner debate, surveys various contemporary approaches, and argues for closer attention to ecclesiology. David Buttrick examines the shared world of those who listen to preaching. Preachers seek to help people form or transform faith in a world marked by secularity, transience, and relativity. Barbara Brown Taylor's is a charming essay on what she calls "body language," preaching that is long on pictures and short on content. And Henry Mitchell recounts his own growth as a homiletician, grounded in his ethnic heritage, reinforced by compatible spirits like Craddock. His naming of the essentials for experiencing the gospel and preaching vehicles for that encounter is spiced with moving stories.

None of these little sentence-surveys does the essays justice, but that is all space allows. Perhaps the single most important thing the book does, apart from honoring Craddock, is to show the flux in which preaching and homiletics find themselves these days. While focused, this book is not monocular. The writers frequently disagree with one another. For example, Brown and Wilson have much in common with each other but not with Lischer. Long and Buttrick do not agree on how people hear the word, and Mitchell and Lowry disagree about just what narrative is. If one

328 - Listening to the Word: Studies in Honor of Fred B. Craddock

is searching for a book with a harmonized view of where preaching is or should be, this is not the one. But if one wants an honest look at many of the currents and eddies that make up the broad, surging stream of contemporary homiletics, this is an excellent place to get your feet wet and your eyes opened.

Finally, as good as all these essays are, not one of them is as good as a sermon by Fred Craddock. Which, after all, was the rationale for the book in the first place.

Joseph R. Jeter, Jr.
Brite Divinity School
Fort Worth, TX