| Gospel Proclamation (Part 2) | | Print | |
| Coordinator Blogs & Articles - Asia | |||
| Friday, 24 July 2009 18:28 | |||
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Let us begin with kerygma. St Paul writes to the Corinthians (I Cor. l:21) that it pleased God by the foolishness of kerygma to save them that believe. In the English Bible you have ‘the foolishness of preaching', but if you will take the trouble to look up the word ‘preach' in a good dictionary you will see that while the word ‘preach' derives from the Latin word praedicare, which means ‘to make known before someone' (that is: to proclaim), its present definition is ‘to deliver a sermon or to give serious advice, as for example, on morals'. In other words, the New Testament idea of proclamation has been lost in the word ‘preach'. According to Apostolic usage, our usual sermon is either exhortation or teaching; it has nothing to do with ‘preaching', that is, with kerygma. But the picture which comes to our mind when we think of preaching is probably entirely different from that which the Corinthians had when they read about the foolishness of preaching. In Greek the preacher was called a keryx. He was simply a herald of any message that came from the king or the civil or military authorities. Who, in the East, has not seen the town crier? He beats his drum to attract attention; he then proclaims his kerygma, his message, so all can hear and understand it. Having finished at one spot he goes farther on down the bazaar, repeating the procedure every so often until all have heard and understood. It is only when you replace the picture of the pastor in his church with this picture of the town crier, that you can understand how seriously St Paul means it when he speaks of the foolishness of proclamation. Any one can see that a pastor exhorting and teaching his congregation really makes good sense. There is no foolishness about that, nor did St Paul ever speak of that as foolishness. But kerygma-proclamation-both as to content and procedure, is something very unique in religion. It is the broadcasting to those outside the Church of a definite message, purporting to be from God. The adoption of kerygma to promulgate knowledge of revelation, with the conversion of the hearers as its aim and goal, indubitably originated in Christianity. The Jews, although very zealous missionaries at the time of Christ, were propagating a religion, the very contents of which could not be reconciled with heralding, for Jerusalem was the centre of all true religion and the purpose of the Jews was to draw men towards this centre. And the mystery-religions prevalent at the time received adherents only through initiation. But St Paul says it pleased God by the foolishness of kerygma to save them that believe. ...Kerygma however, the foolishness of preaching, although rejected by many builders as though it were man's foolishness and not the foolishness of God (which is wiser than the wisdom of man), has from the very beginning been the cornerstone in the living building of the ecclesia (Church). Take it out of any Church and you have removed the candlestick of that Church. Obviously kerygma, as a method of procedure, is what the Apostles both practiced and taught.
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