How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him of whom they have not heard? And how shall they hear without a preacher? (Romans 1:14)

One of the strange mysteries of the Christian faith is that God calls weak, sinful, erring, sometimes boastful and vain, vacillating and vulnerable, often pompous, pretencious and even mendacious humans -- like you and me -- to be the principal carriers of so precious a cargo as that incalculable love which God has incarnated in Jesus Christ: Stewards of A Divine Mystery.

The fact that the Apostle Paul shared these misgivings is a part of why he cries out to the Corinthians: "It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe." And yet it is that same Apostle Paul who suggests in the text from Romans that the people shall not hear and believe without a preacher. For the Apostle is convinced that preaching "is the power of God unto salvation."

It is just a downright mystery, a puzzling proposition. For preaching is a "presumptuous business" at best; and, yet, God entrusts the treasure of the gospel in pots of earthenware that crack so easily, that amount to so little. Cheap clay trying to carry the costly. The frail and fragile containing the steady and sturdy and steadfast. Vessels that leak and crack and sometimes break. It is a mystery that God intends to accomplish a divine purpose through mortals like us preaching the eternal verities of a holy and loving God: to tell of the divine transaction which was finished where the last drop of blood needed to be spilled was shed at Calvary's mountain. The last tear that was needed to express divine pity and pathos ploughed the pleading face of a crucified Christ.

We wonder: where is the wisdom in this foolishness? We wonder why a wise and knowing God chooses and calls creatures like you and me, men and women whose talents are adequate but not brilliant, whose persons are steady but not scintillating, whose egos reach out to Christ, and yet so often veer off on self-serving errands to be the proclaimers of such unsearchable riches? Where is the wisdom in the choice to make us stewards of the divine mystery, to make us custodians of the chronicles of Calvary. To try to declare the mystery of the eternal Word taking residence in human flesh so full of grace and truth that it saves to the uttermost.

My own black forebears in the ministry rose to loftiness of speech and soared to magnificent heights as they pondered this puzzling question. And I think they may have touched on the heart of the matter. In their own way, and with picturesque language and flights of consecrated imagination they declared: "God might have found so many other ways to spread the Gospel of the love of God. He might have written his love on the leaves of the trees and blowing winds would have sent out the news of deliverance and redemption far and wide. God might have written his love in the skies and in the rising sun so that people looking upward could have read the message: 'God so loved the world that he gave!' He might have made the ocean sing his love and nightingales chant his praise. But none of these, not even angels could ever preach, however and say: 'I've been redeemed.'" [Quoted in Gardner C. Taylor, How Shall They Preach? (Elgin, Illinois: Progressive Baptist Publishing House, 1977), p. 45.]