By David Wm. Gibson
I have come to a Trinitarian understanding of the preaching event in the village and the affect of the word upon the villager, the psychiatric patient. First, the event is able to take place by the will of the Father who in the past created order out of chaos. In the present the chaos is the state of the scripture (the voice of God, as in 1 Kings 19) in relationship to the broken state of mind and the way it hears. God the Creator brings the word into a usable state for the hearer: a delicate whisper, a still small voice.
The Son is the second imperative. His life, death and resurrection bring forth relationship between scripture and hearer, as we seek the gospel/good news to proclaim. Jesus is the bridge and the message. He is the witness of transformation and the Transformer. Through Him we have eternal life. It is the word about Him that the villagers come to hear. The Holy Spirit, in a way unknown to us, bears the word to the villager, somehow offering the gospel from an external event to an internal event, and thus an eternal event for the individual villager.
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As for the lepers, who can understand their response? Even Jesus said to the one, "Were there not ten cleansed?" It is upon the return of the one that Jesus says, "Your faith has made you well." He does not say this to the other nine. No, I no longer expect to understand the response of the villager, but only the process from word to preacher to villager.
1Walter Breuggemann, The Prophetic Imagination. (USA: Fortress, 1978) 13.
2The Holy Bible, New King James Version, (Nashville, Tennessee: Thomas Nelson, Inc.) 1982.
3Catherine Hilkert, Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination, (Continuum: New York, 1997) 86.
4Thomas G. Long, The Witness of Preaching, (John Knox Press: Louisville, 1989) 78.
5Karl Barth, The Word of God and the Word of Man, trans. Douglas Horton (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1957) 43, 45.
6Karl Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel, trans. B.E. Hooke (Philadelphia: Westmin-ster, 1963) 22.
7Catherine Hilkert. Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination. (Continuum: New York, 1997) 85.
8Walter Breuggemann, The Prophetic Imagination, (USA: Fortress Press, 1978) 13.
9Karl Barth, The Preaching of the Gospel, trans. B. E. Hooke (Philadelphia: West-minster, 1963) 22.
10Ibid., 22.
11Henry Mitchell, Celebration and Experience in Preaching. (Nashville: Abingdon press, 1990) 150.
12Ibid., 146.
