“Joy of Befuddlement”
My Dear
People,
He spoke of the "joy of befuddlement" and told how an ordained
friend of his recommended preaching at least one sermon a year where no one
could figure out what on earth you were
talking about.
And, finally, he said, "I can't explain
it...," and he turned and stepped down from the podium, walking toward his
seat. And the whole church broke into applause, the whole church full of
several hundred preachers.
It was the Festival of Homiletics
("homiletics" being a fancy word for preaching) in Atlanta this last week, where
some 1,600 preachers from across denominations gathered. Will Willimon was the Dean of Duke
Chapel for years and is now serving as a Methodist bishop in Alabama. He is one
of the most celebrated preachers in the English-speaking world. And he was
celebrating, to give the full title of his lecture, "The Homiletical Joy of
Befuddlement." The irony was delicious.
Willimon spoke of modernism's
reductionist compulsion, always wanting to get to "the essence, the core, the
nub" of whatever, or whomever.
Modernism would have us, he said, try "to clear up the fog of confusion that is
Christ."
But, of course, Christ refuses to be boiled down, simplified,
stream-lined, dissected into submission. After all, Willimon suggested, isn't
that quest for utter, simple clarity and definition a quest for control? When,
in truth, "we are in control [only] until God speaks." Adding, almost
off-handedly, "Mary... when did your life spin out of control?"
When the
angel of God spoke.
Where we would
settle for a paltry and illusory control, God would bring order. A new order
that, yes, brings with it befuddlement. A joyful befuddlement.
Thanks
be to God.
