Preaching is in trouble. The classic models of the preacher as teacher of doctrine or as herald of the gospel are flawed, and don’t hit home in the postmodern world, which is oriented to images and mystery rather than to linear discourse and rationality.

Trygve Johnson suggests an alternative that might revive preaching: The Preacher as Liturgical Artist. Johnson thinks that postmodernism opens up some fresh ways to address issues of preaching. The postmodern emphasis on the imagination is a healthy antidote to the narrow propositionalism of some traditional preaching; the new appreciation of orality should be conducive to a revival of preaching.

To take advantage of the moment, preaching needs to have a fresh “homiletical identity,” formed by a fresh paradigm or metaphor of preaching. Drawing on Lakoff and Johnson’s Metaphors We Live By and other students of metaphor, Johnson argues that preachers’ preaching is shaped by the metaphors they use to identify themselves. Understanding the preacher as teacher (Augustine is his chief example) runs the risk of overstressing the human response to preaching; the preacher as herald (Barth) ignores the human contribution to preaching entirely. He also emphasizes that preachers help their hearers re-imagine their own lives in the light of the biblical paradigms and metaphors that they proclaim.

John is able to cut through the impasse by relying on TF Torrance’s notion of the vicarious humanity of Jesus. Preachers preach in Christ, in union with the ongoing priestly work of Christ in the Spirit, and it is in Christ that the preacher finds scope for his own imagination and creativity. When preaching is grounded “in the grammar of the Trinity  and, more specifically, within the vicarious work of Christ, preachers are freed to be creative agents” (144). In this paradigm, the human agent is not swallowed up nor is he autonomous: Christ’s own acts in His humanity are creative artistry (e.g., parables), and the preacher preaches in Christ’s own creativity by the Spirit.

This doesn’t lead to a let-go-let-Jesus vision of preaching. Art is hard work, Johnson stresses, and the preacher has the responsibility to immerse himself in the tradition of Christian liturgy in order to express the creative artistry of Christ in his preaching.

Johnson summarizes: “By grounding The Preacher as Liturgical Artist in the context of Christ’s vicarious humanity, and not in individual self-expression, rhetorical skill, or any particular human performance or cultural context, the preacher is freed to use all the gifts of humanity as gifts redeemed for artistic preaching within the context of the church. This creative freedom to preach as an artist is primarily experienced in Christ’s vicarious ministry offered to all humanity for all times and in all places. This experience of ministering with and for Jesus as an artist in action is nothing other than the call to live in the Spirit who is the power of God to create and redeem all things that are true, good, and beautiful” (182-3).

It’s an inspiring vision of preaching. It places the accent where it needs to be: Preaching, like all pastoral ministry, is only carried out rightly if carried out by faith in the risen, active Christ. And it opens up expansive horizons: Preaching is, on Johnson’s model, a participation in God’s renewal of creation by Word and Spirit.