Preaching as memory work
Saint Aidan. Holy Island of Lindisfarne.
In a social environment where discordance is all too apparent the preacher struggles to be heard as a voice of eternal verities. So much conspires towards a forgetfulness of the memory from which that voice speaks, and to which that voice gives enabling testimony. Yet the preacher still speaks: turning this way and that, between text, memory and world; striving, in a largely amnesic society to create something out of whatever materials come to hand; trying to shape in words that generative drive that is tradition’s gift; and exemplifying in that trying what is the calling of every believer—to live in the memory of Christ. In the words of Augustine, the preacher prays:
[Lord,] you have honoured my memory by making it your dwelling-place.
Augustine, Confessions, 10.25
The sermons on the pages that follow attempt to address both that forgetfulness and that remembrance.
[Lord,] you have honoured my memory by making it your dwelling-place.
Augustine, Confessions, 10.25
The sermons on the pages that follow attempt to address both that forgetfulness and that remembrance.
