From Classroom to Pulpit: Interviews with Fred Craddock & Walter Brueggemann
The point of that is that the congregation has to do the hard work; we can't do the hard work for the congregation. I think we have a long history of the preacher trying to do all that work for the congregation, and it just leads to endless quarrels, because it turns out that a lot of people in the congregation do not want that worked out for them, and eventually they have to do it themselves.
I was saying in my lecture that it's analogous to psychotherapy in which one new decision by the person in therapy is worth a thousand suggestions by the therapist. We've known that for a long time, and I think the same thing is true.
Preaching: You made the comment tonight that preaching is inherently subversive and counter-cultural. Tell me what you mean by that.
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Brueggemann: Well I think it is, so far as preaching is about the God of the Bible, or more particularly about Jesus Christ. It insists that at the center of the world is this elusive, holy presence that cannot be captured in any of our slogans or ideologies or programs. That is endlessly subversive because it de-absolutizes the things that we want to make absolute. I think it's counter-culture because culture always wants to find things it can count on that are short of the holiness of God. When the holiness of God is preached, what it shows is that the things culture counts on cannot ultimately be relied upon. That's why I think good preaching endlessly undermines the seductions and pretenses of cultural certitude and cultural privilege and cultural entitlement.
Preaching: In light of this, what are some of the implications of preaching in an American context here in the 21st century.
Brueggemann: I think in recent years — with our economic, political, and military monopoly in the world — ordinary U.S. people who are not very reflective just assume that what we want in the United States is what we ought to have, and we are free to do anything that we want to get it. I think that in terms of the economy — with the force of our market controlling the world — I think in terms of a personal sense of entitlement, it is just that there isn't any reason that I shouldn't be comfortable or indulgent, no matter what damage it does to the neighborhood or to natural resources, or anything else. I think that's a wide cultural assumption in which Liberals and Conservatives participate together, and it is a way of death. Evangelical preaching, it seems to me, has to talk about that.
Preaching: Let's bring those ideas together: the idea of preaching as creating a world of image that allows people to move into that experience, while at the same time trying to be counter-cultural, to help people confront their biases. What would be some insights you would offer to pastors as they seek to struggle with that challenge?