Third Voice

Preaching Resurrection

Michael P. Knowles

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781725265790, 9781725265806
• eBook ISBN: 9781725265813
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

What makes for powerful preaching? Careful exegesis, logical structure, interesting illustrations, and clear speech can all help. But truly transformative preaching depends on divine power, not human skill alone. Those who would reduce preaching to simple systems or sure-fire strategies for success will find little of interest here. Instead, this book appeals to those (pastors and academics alike) who find themselves confounded by the occasional futility of their best preaching and the unexpected success of their worst. It invites readers to enter more deeply into the uncontrollable mystery that attends all efforts to speak in the name of Christ, above all on the topic of resurrection. Although the gospel always turns our attention to the crucified and risen Lord, preaching about resurrection calls us to trust that the same God who raised Jesus from death will likewise grant life to us as preachers, to our sermons, and to our hearers alike. Drawing on resources as diverse as Luther's understanding of the Christian gospel, Speech Act theory, and Bhabha's concept of "Third Space," Third Voice: Preaching Resurrection argues that the true key to effective preaching is not rhetoric, but spirituality.

5

Third Space; Third Voice

But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

—Hebrews 11:16

The Spirit descends. Out they go to preach the resurrection—and in the process their preaching is resurrected.

—David Schlafer287

Contesting Christian Space

In chapter 16 of Acts, Luke recounts how, compelled by his dream of a man from Macedonia who pleads for assistance, Paul travels to Philippi, “a leading city of the district of Macedonia and a Roman colony” (Acts 16:12). This last detail is especially significant for our understanding of his ministry, and of Christian identity in principle. Philippi (now a UNESCO World Heritage site)288 had been the location in 42 bce of the last two battles of the Roman Civil War, pitting as many as 200,000 combatants against each other. By defeating Marcus Brutus and Gaius Cassius, the forces of Marcus Antonius and Gaius Octavius avenged the assassination of Octavius’s adoptive father, Julius Caesar, and brought the revolt of the Eastern provinces to an end. Their triumph set in motion the events that would establish the Roman Empire and inaugurate a long period of relative calm known as the Pax Romana. Little more than a decade after the battle, Octavius himself would be given the title Caesar Divi Filius Augustus: “Caesar Augustus, Divine Son.” In honor of this pivotal victory, the adjacent settlement was refounded as a prosperous Roman colony—Colonia Victrix Philippensium (“Colony of the Conquering Philippians”), later Colonia Augusta Iulia Philippensis (“Colony of the Philippian Julius Augustus”)—with retired soldiers forming the core of its society and civic structure. A wealth of surviving inscriptions and archaeological remains provide ample evidence of the city’s thoroughly Roman character.289

Entering Philippi from the east along the Via Egnatia, Paul and his companions would have passed through the Neapolis Gate, a propylaea or monumental portico bristling with imperial imagery and statues of Roman deities.290 Given the commemorative character of the colony as a whole and the conventions of Augustan civic architecture in particular, there can be little doubt that this would have been a triumphal arch, intended to symbolize the theological as well as military supremacy of Rome.291 Stephen Johnson notes that “city walls and gates were always res sacrae, under public ownership and the tutelage of the gods. They were thus, particularly in the earlier periods, as much civic monuments as functional passageways and might be expected therefore to have been highly ornamented.”292 In this case, ornamentation intentionally signaled ideology. As Sze-kar Wan observes, “This was Rome’s favorite colonial strategy: inscribing an imperial discourse on the colonized space.”293

For any Roman city, the encircling walls were not merely defensive, but liminal: they marked the boundaries of consecration and colonial domain. Accordingly, to enter Philippi, passing through an arched gateway guarded by the figures of tutelary deities, was to cross a threshold into sacred space—into the realm and dominion of the Roman pantheon. That Paul would have been fully alert to the theological challenge that this implied cannot be in doubt (cf. Acts 17:16). Indeed, it helps to explain his bold assertion in Phil 3:20 that for the followers of Jesus, “our place of citizenship is in heaven.”294 The apostle’s choice of vocabulary is telling, although the word he uses (πολίτευμα, appearing only here in the New Testament) can have a range of meanings. It can refer to a government department, a constitution or state, to citizenship, or (as with the large Jewish population of Alexandria) to a “colony” of foreigners accorded “specific political rights.”295 First Peter 2:9 describes believers as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [ἔθνος], God’s own people,” on the one hand, yet as “foreigners and exiles” (2:11–12 NIV; cf. 1:1) among the Gentiles, on the other. Conversely, in Ephesians, those who were formerly “foreigners and strangers” (2:19 NIV) are now said to be “fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God” (2:20 RSV; cf. 2:12). But where Ephesians and 1 Peter (which also counsels submission to Rome) each describe the church in language denoting citizenship and political affiliation, Paul’s claim in Phil 3:20 is more precise.

Notwithstanding overlapping theological identities and the incorporation of non-Roman deities under the broader aegis of Roman religion, to walk through Philippi’s Neapolis Gate would be to pass from the primary domain of Thracian or Macedonian gods into the overarching dominion of Roma, the personification and protectress of Rome.296 To be baptized into Christ, by contrast, and to be made mystically one with him, was to become a citizen of the “kingdom of God” (1 Thess 2:12, etc.). This is a directly contrary claim, not an overlapping one. It is all the more remarkable since Paul himself is clearly in custody (and thus under the tangible jurisdiction of Rome) at the time of writing, perhaps detained by the elite Praetorian Guard (Phil 1:13). That he is not alone in having to negotiate the competing claims of Christ and Empire is evident from the fact that he sends greetings from fellow believers in the “household of Caesar” (Phil 4:22). Indeed, in this regard Paul’s situation is similar to that of the congregants whom he addresses. To join the tiny fellowship of Philippian believers, likely in a private house or villa, would have involved not one but two sets of competing theological claims: where Roman deities had initially conquered or absorbed the native gods of Macedonia, Christ now supplanted them all. The place where these converts meet for worship is therefore sacred space within sacred space, a sanctuary consecrat...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• I. Introduction
• II. Listening
• Speaking for God?
• Reaching into Silence
• III. Speaking
• “He Being Dead Yet Speaketh
• Turning Back from Emmaus
• Third Space; Third Voice
• IV Waiting
• God the Last Word
• Bibliography