From Brueggemann’s book Finally Comes the Poet, on how preaching functions in transformation:
"I have found myself discovering that mostly I do not need more advice, but strength. I do not need new information, but the courage, freedom, and authorization to act on what I already have been given in the gospel."
"…obedience follows imagination. Our obedience will not venture far beyond or run risks beyond our imagined world. If we wish to have transformed obedience, then we must be summoned to an alternative imagination, in order that we may imagine the world and ourselves differently."
"The sermon is not normally the place for concrete moral admonition… The sermon is the place where the church is freed to imagine what it would be like to be intentional about mission and to embrace in our imagination acts of discipleship that we are not yet ready to accept in practice… Reflection about obedience in the sermon is more effective and compelling when it is bold and imaginative, well beyond our present capacity for action."
Preaching is "world-making", in other words; creating a world through words that evokes the possibilities of the kingdom of God, telling The Story as an alternative to the stories we’ve been sold. Preaching should awaken in people the belief that another reality is possible, the courage to imagine it, and the resolve to act on it.
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