Obscure preaching: Postmodern homiletical insights from Ezekiel the prophet

Preaching into crisis

In Ezek 3:1–11, which provides the theoretical and theological impetus for this article’s argument, we witness Ezekiel’s charge to prophetic ministry. Yahweh says to Ezekiel,

Mortal, go to the house of Israel and speak my very words to them. For you are not sent to a people of obscure speech and difficult language, but to the house of Israel—not to many peoples of obscure speech and difficult language, whose words you cannot understand. Surely, if I sent you to them, they would listen to you. But the house of Israel will not listen to you, for they are not willing to listen to me; because all the house of Israel have a hard forehead and a stubborn heart. (Ezek 3:4–7, NRSV)

At first glance, this seems like a reasonable request. Employing plain speech is a simple enough request for any preacher to honor. Unfortunately, this charge is equivocal at best, and deceptive at worst. When we attend closely to the many modes of signification Yahweh commands Ezekiel to initiate, we see that his speech is anything but plain. Indeed, Ezekiel presents the most obscure and difficult display of language in all of Scripture. Ezekiel is called upon to bear witness to the words of God in the most obscure ways, and this has led to the widespread neglect of the prophet’s words (with the exception of Ezekiel 37) in Christian preaching. What are preachers to learn from Ezekiel about preaching in the midst of a crisis, if anything? In response to this question, this article draws the prophet’s modes of prophetic signification to the fore, offering fresh insights for preaching in a postmodern contexts.

To be more specific, our problem, which is also Ezekiel’s problem vis-à-vis Yahweh’s commissioning, is the problem of signification. This is not a new problem; in fact, its complications are as old as recorded history. By signification I mean the intentional use of signals (verbal, written, gestured, etc.) linked to mental concepts in the service of communication. ¹ The shifting cultural tides on the shores of Western Christendom have exacerbated the challenges of proclamatory signification, and this shift has affected the preaching and liturgical patterns of many clergy in postmodern contexts. ² Ezekiel offers us much to think about in this regard.

Jacques Derrida points out that anxiety about language, which always arises within language itself, is not confined to a particular historical epoch. He writes, “Whatever the poverty of our knowledge in this respect, it is certain that the question of the sign is itself more or less, or in any event something other, than a sign of the times.” ³ Taking Derrida’s admonition seriously, this article focuses on the linguistic sign, indeed, proclamatory acts of signification, with regard to Ezekiel’s prophetic ministry in order to think of our times alongside the prophet’s times. To quote Derrida once more: “To grasp the operation of creative imagination at the greatest possible proximity to it, one must turn oneself toward the invisible interior of poetic freedom. One must be separated from oneself in order to be united with the blind origin of the work in its darkness.” ⁴ Such poetic modes of signification occur throughout the book of Ezekiel (e.g., 24:3–12; 27:3ff; 28:2–10, 12–19). By attending to the various modes of prophetic signification that Ezekiel employs, preachers will find fresh ways of thinking about proclamation vis-à-vis the contemporary challenges surrounding the preaching task.

The crisis of preaching

In itself, the assessment that preaching is in trouble is not novel; every generation of preachers faces the daunting task of homiletical reform. ⁵ Moreover, even if homileticians generally agree about the troubled state of preaching, their assessments differ as to what, exactly, troubles preaching. In the twentieth century alone, opinions vary widely.

For instance, in 1928, the famed Baptist preacher Harry Emerson Fosdick published an article poignantly titled, “What’s the Matter with Preaching?” Fosdick diagnosed the preaching of his day as being irrelevant, insofar as it missed the true concerns of congregants and parishioners. He writes, “Every sermon should have for its main business the solving of some problem … and any sermon which thus does tackle a real problem, throw even a little light on it, and help some individuals practically to find their way through it cannot be altogether uninteresting.” ⁶ In essence, the solution Fosdick proffered to solve the problem of preaching was to give the people what they need, or believe they need. ⁷

The backdrop before which Ezekiel preached, his homiletical Sitz im Leben, resembles that of contemporary preachers. The book of Ezekiel opens 5 years after many Judeans were carried off to Babylon in 597 BCE and forced into labor camps (Ezek 1:2). From Jeremiah 29 we know that many prophets emerged during the Babylonian exile and proclaimed a speedy return to their home. With Jeremiah, Ezekiel delivers a word that shatters these optimistic projections. The deportees are bearing the punishment of centuries of rebellion against Yahweh, and through this exile, Yahweh is establishing Yahweh’s “name” in history. ⁸ Like Ezekiel’s listeners, the vast majority of contemporary churchgoers listen to sermons that tell them exactly what they want, either through the Prosperity Gospel movement or the self-help styled preaching of those like Joel Osteen and Joyce Meyer.

In the wake of the turbulent societal upheavals of the 1960s, homiletician Fred B. Craddock would resurrect a version of Fosdick’s thesis. Craddock argued that the pulpit was in the “shadows” because preaching failed to connect with the existential situation of congregants and parishioners. ⁹ The problem Craddock found with the dominant mode of proclamation in his day was the lack of relevance, or connectivity, the hearer experienced in the sermon. Most sermons were preached deductively—that is, from a position of authority removed from the lived experiences of the listeners. Without a point of contact, without relevance, the sermon could never be a Word of the Lord for them. ¹⁰

Repeatedly, the Lord notes the lack of contact between God’s Word and the people’s various ways of being in the world. The Israelites are often referred to as a “rebellious house” (Ezek 2:5; 12:2, 9; 17:12; 24:3; 44:6); they are impudent and stubborn (Ezek 2:4; 3:7; 36:26). Moreover, nearly the entire book is devoted to prophecies of woe against one group or another for failing to live according to Yahweh’s statutes. The entire book riffs with poignant and colorful vivacity on this central theme of facing the consequences of rebellion. It is this condition of hearing the Word of the Lord, with a hard heart and a flinty forehead (Ezek 3:8), that shapes the mode of the prophet’s discourse. Perhaps contemporary preachers can learn from the prophet, for many North American preachers face a similar situation: week after week we speak to our own people, who understand our language, and yet, the decline of Christianity in the West signifies the challenges of preaching to a people who can understand the words and yet fail to receive the Lord’s Word (see Ezek 33:31–32).

In spite of Yahweh’s assurance to the contrary, preaching, both then and now, is obscure. It is ob-scure. In other words, the Word of the Lord emerges in the midst of or against the darkness (see Derrida’s quote regarding darkness and language earlier in this article). The Latin word obscurus means “dark”; it moves out of the darkness, the shadows, into the light. With post-structural philosophers, I would argue that this movement is not only a result of the condition of the heads and hearts of listeners (as in Ezek 3:7). Instead, this movement out of the darkness conditions preaching and signification in general. The crisis of contemporary preaching is epistemological as much as it is theological; understanding is always already as much a problem of our comprehension as it is a problem of God’s revelation.

Yes, preaching is in trouble today, but homiletician Clyde E. Fant argues that there never has been a golden age of preaching. He rightly observes that each generation of preachers tends to think they are the first to have been “chained to the rock of the pulpit and have their livers torn out by the giant birds of criticism, only to have them grow back before the next Sunday.” ¹¹ No generation of preachers is spared from certain challenges and associated criticism. It is our duty, Fant contends, to make sure preaching is in trouble for the right reasons. Ezekiel can help us think through the challenges of contemporary preaching and can help us imagine a mode of sermonic discourse that is obscure in its diction and conductive in its movement. Before I turn to these homiletical suggestions, Ezekiel’s manner of proclamation will illustrate modes of signification (e.g., poetic, performative, parabolic) that can inform postmodern preaching.

Preaching when exile comes to you

Ezekiel’s peculiar ways of preaching might cause contemporary preachers to balk. The history of interpretation in general and the history of preaching in particular have resisted both the prophet’s words and preaching style. It is, after all, “the most enigmatic, bizarre, and perplexing book among all of the prophetic literature.” ¹² In spite of its strangeness, neglecting Ezekiel is a mistake. Ezekiel has much to teach us today about preaching. As Joseph Blenkinsopp rightly observes, “The writer is speaking symbolically of the breakdown of communication and therefore of community.” ¹³ Blenkinsopp continues, “The prophet and his public share the same language, concepts, traditions, and history, but his words to them will be unable to surmount that barrier.” ¹⁴ This paradox is equally pertinent for many North American preachers.

How Ezekiel chooses to respond to this situation is to embody his message radically, and to perform the Word of Yahweh out of that embodiment (e.g., 3:22–27; 5:1–4; 17:1–10). Signification arises out of embodiment. No prophet articulates this better than Ezekiel. Through his preaching, the prophet becomes one with his message:

It is thus clear that Ezekiel is not a puppet, with Yahweh pulling the strings. He is called by Yahweh as a person, summoned to obedience by stern commands, warned openly not to be rebellious (2:8), and not to be afraid (2:6; 3:9). In this connection he is equipped by Yahweh for his service, the temptations of which he is not left in doubt from the start (2:6; 3:5–7), with the hardness necessary for the task. ¹⁵

Alternatively, as L. S. Tiemeyer puts it, “The prophetic persona plays a more significant role in the book of Ezekiel than what is normal in prophetic literature, with the exception of the book of Jeremiah. The prophet Ezekiel speaks and is spoken to by God, he acts and God causes him to act.” ¹⁶ In other words, the relationship between the prophet, his message, and his audience takes prominence in the book of Ezekiel.

We should note, however, that Ezekiel is preaching to a community living in exile. For many still attending churches in the West, we still occupy the same ground, but we feel like we are in a strange land. Exile has come to us. This exile has many facets, most of which transcend the scope of this article, but one feature that is of utmost importance for preaching in and among exiles is the semiotic structure of preaching. ¹⁷

Obscure speech and difficult language

Many contemporary homileticians write preaching books to address the perceived challenges facing contemporary preachers. The guiding assumptions driving these books tend to branch out according to two general categories. On the one hand are those texts that conceptualize the challenge of preaching theologically. ¹⁸ These books presume that closer attention to God, the Holy Spirit, the person of Jesus, the biblical text—to matters of theological import—is what is required to stem the flow of ecclesial attrition and enliven the ministry of the Word. If we can only improve our understanding of what God is doing in the sermonic event and better articulate this theological truth in what we say about God, preaching will improve.

An excellent example of this kind of preaching book is Luke Powery’s Dem Dry Bones: Preaching, Death, and Hope. In this book, Powery argues that the undertow of the so-called prosperity gospel has swept preaching away. Powery laments the reduction of Christian proclamation to Pollyannaish bromides gleaned from self-help books and positive thinking seminars, and the reduction of the good news of Jesus Christ to “candy theology” lacking in substance. ¹⁹ Preaching, theologically construed, occurs in the context of death for Powery. Taking Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37) as a metaphor for preaching, he commends a Spirit-led orientation to preaching that promises to breathe life and hope into congregations. It is clear from Powery’s account that culture has precipitated a crisis for preaching, but the solution is inherently theological.

On the other hand, homileticians conceptualize the crisis of preaching according to a failure of hearing—a much more anthropological concern. ²⁰ For these scholars, the challenge of preaching is less a matter of correct theological understanding than a failure to communicate the Word of God to contemporary churchgoers. The solution these thinkers put forward involves paying closer attention to the experiences of listeners to sermons in addition to the larger contexts in which sermons are heard. Once we understand the communication breakdown, we can remedy this problem by better connecting with our congregants.

Ronald Allen provides numerous examples of this approach to the contemporary crisis of preaching. Given the decline in worship attendance in mainline Protestant congregations and the rise of Americans who claim no religious affiliation, the troubled state of the church is beyond question. ²¹ Allen insists that his research is not intended merely to “give the people what they want,” and implicit in his book is the belief that all sermons ought to be measured against “theological norms to determine the relative faithfulness of the sermon.” ²² Nevertheless, Allen’s work displays an assessment that the crisis of contemporary preaching centers upon the listener’s experience. Thus, he writes to make preachers aware of this crisis of hearing and to provide them with practical wisdom for overcoming it.

Between God and the ecclesial participant stands the preacher, who is inextricably related to both. The preacher’s vocation originates from God (Ezek 2:1), but is confirmed and renewed by congregants (Ezek 33:31). The preacher goes to the biblical text seeking a Word from God, but this is always a Word of God for the people of God (Ezek 12:28, 28; 33:27; 37:12). The preacher delivers a sermon that she has cultivated through prayer and study; her sermon is guided by the Holy Spirit (see Ezek 2:2; 3:24) with the hope that others in the congregation might hear the Spirit’s groans (see Ezek 21:6) through her words. The terminus a quo of preaching is the light of God that emerges out of the darkness (ob-scurus) of contemporary contexts. The terminus ad quem of preaching is a congregational hearing of the Word in the words. Preaching is both/and; to conceive the task otherwise is to miss the mark.

Signs out of the darkness

In order better to understand the situation of obscure preaching and the difficulties inherent to language in general it is necessary to understand how meaning emerges out of the darkness. Words are signs (see Ezek 12:6, 11), says linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and this assessment is as true for the prophet Ezekiel as it is for contemporary preachers. Signs are constituted by both a signifier and a signified. ²³ Within the context of any spoken language, every word (sign) consists of a sound pattern (signifier) and a concept (signified). By this assessment, Saussure counters a mimetic (imitation) understanding of language seldom questioned since the days of Plato. Mimetically, a word is understood as a link between a thing and a name. Perhaps an example will illustrate the radical difference between Saussure’s theory and the mimetic theory. When I mouth (or write) the letters d, o, g in succession, that sound links with a concept in one’s mind of an animal with a tail who likes to gnaw on bones—at least, if Saussure is correct. The letters do not constitute a link between an actual dog and the word we use to “imitate” it. It is this subtle, but crucial, shift that I wish to flesh out as a single thread in the intricate fabric of post-structuralism, as it bears enormous significance for homiletical theory.

The basic contention of structuralism is that the sign is both arbitrary (there is no necessary connection between signifier and signified) and differential (a word functions as a sign through its difference to every other word in the language). ²⁴ So the word “d o g” only renders meaning as it functions within the language system (English) in which these letters conjure an idea in one’s head that is distinct from every other possible letter combination permitted by the language. The letters themselves are “arbitrary,” meaning they are unmotivated. No necessary correlation exists between these letters and an animal with floppy ears and a tail; the word “d o g” does not smell, look, or sound like a dog. This arbitrary character is true for all language systems. Perro, chien, and Hund likewise bear no necessary correspondence to the animal. The structure of any system of signs is comprised of a web of differences constituted from within the system itself. ²⁵ This structure is just as true for ancient Hebrew as it is for contemporary English; in other words, preachers today share Ezekiel’s difficulty with language.

From this, Jacques Derrida concludes, “the signified concept is never present in and of itself in a sufficient presence that would refer only to itself.” ²⁶ Saussure’s influence is key here. For Derrida, the systematic play of differences inscribes every concept in a chain or in a structure (as in structuralism), within which it refers to other concepts. From this observation, Derrida deduces the idea of the trace. The trace is the necessary supplement to every word that is present in its absence for the system to function. In keeping with our illustration, the word “d o g” bears the trace of every other animal, every other word in the English language, and, moreover, every other word in every possible language that I could have said. Contained within the very possibility of saying or writing “d o g” is the exclusion, or erasure, of all other words because, ultimately, the linguistic sign is arbitrary and constituted only by difference.

In the Platonic (mimetic) understanding of language, “the signatum [signified] always referred, as to its referent, to a res, to an entity created or at any rate first thought and spoken, thinkable and speakable, in the eternal present of the divine logos and specifically in its breath.” ²⁷ On the contrary, in post-Saussurian semiology, the connection between signifier and signified is not achieved through such metaphysical categories, but only through convention. ²⁸ By this way of thinking, (Absolute) Meaning is impossible. It could only be achieved by arresting the play of signification because a word has no necessary meaning, but only achieves a meaning through its difference. This arrest would result in a complete system crash; some have called this nihilism.

Derrida has a word for this myth of stability: “logocentrism.” Logocentrism aims to arrest the play of differences that constitute signs so as to emit the illusion of stable centers of meaning. It is a pattern of thought that reduces the trace (the difference necessary for language to function) and thus attempts to render difference as sameness.

Ezekiel: The postmodern prophet

Contemporary theologians and homileticians face their own cultural and philosophical challenges; in fact, such cultural and philosophical challenges are conjoined in the slippery concept of postmodernism. ³⁵ Before we genuflect theologically, we have always already done so epistemologically, in language. One of the miracles of preaching, and that which can only be professed by faith, is that God still speaks in spite of our epistemologically encumbered theologies. Ezekiel’s preaching to the exiles resists logocentrism by giving rise to an abundance of meaning. Ezekiel’s radical sign-acts (Ezek 4:1–8, 9–17; 5:1–17; 12:1–20; 21:9; 24:1ff.; 37:16–17), parables (Ezek 15:1–8; 17:1–10; 20:49; 23:1ff.), metaphoricity (Ezek 29:3–5; 31:2–9; 32:2), and circumlocutional preaching (Ezek 22:24; 35:2ff.; 36:1ff.; 37:4–8, 9ff.) can help contemporary preachers overcome the modern confines of logocentrism, for, as Derrida notes, “Meaning is neither before nor after the act.” ³⁶

Many scholars have speculated about Ezekiel’s sanity. His method of communication overflows with semiotic significance that continues to play on and with meaningfulness. Writing on Ezekiel’s performance of the siege of Jerusalem (Ezek 4:1–17), Corrine Carvalho notes, “Whether or not some prophet named Ezekiel performed these actions is less important than the cultural context within which this passage functioned. For the ancient audience, this text reports a sign-act: a public performance of the prophetic message.” ³⁷ She goes on to explain that prophetic sign-acts convey a message beyond the semiological capacity of words alone. Such modes of discourse are indicative of Ezekiel’s ministry.

I am not suggesting that contemporary preachers ought to eat food cooked over dung or shout to the mountains. What I am suggesting is that we attend to the semiological significance of Ezekiel’s sign-acts, and particularly the ways in which his mode of discourse enlivens the play of difference between articulation and meaningfulness. Meaning is forever deferred or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers and Ezekiel, following the Lord’s command, is okay with the undecidability of his message (see Ezek 3:11); indeed, Yahweh explicitly told him not to worry about the reception of his prophecies (Ezek 3:7; 33:5–6). His preaching is obscure and difficult by design. As such, it presses against the limits of discourse, moving those who hear (and see and, likely, smell) to abide in the differential and arbitrary nature of language. The crisis of hearing God is not only experienced by those with flinty foreheads (Ezek 3:9), but is shared by all who seek to hear a Word from the Lord. Perhaps contemporary preaching, following the work of post-structural philosophers, is ready to reimagine the proclamation of God’s Word with Ezekiel.