In Finally Comes the Poet, Walter Brueggemann writes that the task of the preacher is to be "a voice that shatters settled reality and evokes new possibilities". I struggled with that because I am somewhat uncomfortable with the old adage of the preachers responsibility of "troubling the comfortable and comforting the troubled". It's the old idea that "I don't feel like I have been to church unless the preacher stepped on my toes".
Then I came across this old quote from Epictetus, a first century Stoic philosopher, "What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are". Or put this way, "we are disturbed not by events, but by the views which we take of them."
Jesus spent his life trying to help people see the reality of life all around them - that which they could see (human suffering and religious hyprocracy) but choose not to see. He also desired "eye that could see" even the Kingdom of God. What most did not undestand was that the Kingdom of god was not their version of an earthy rule but a way of faith living that truly fulfilled the Great Commandment in Luke 10:27, to love God and your neighbor as yourself.
Some days my "reality" is colored by my personal situation and circumstances. But in time of quiet reflection and prayer, I once again experience the reality of God's everlasting love through the sacrifice and enabling power of Jesus Christ.
How is your reality today?
Comments