Contemporary use of the word ‘preaching’ has two connotations which need rethinking. The first is negative, ‘He preached at me!’ implying an authoritative, one-sided, even hectoring quality to the speech. The second is more neutral, but equally mistaken: that preaching is something done by a special person, standing in a special place (lectern or pulpit), in a formal service within a church building.
The New Testament verb that we translate as ‘preach’ is kerysso from which we get the noun kerygma, meaning ‘the message’, and this term is used to refer to the gospel message that was preached in the first century world. But in the Greek Old Testament, kerysso translated the Hebrew term qarah, ‘to cry out’, and this takes us to the heart of what preaching is about.
The call of God
This term is often used in the ordinary sense of calling to someone, or crying out. But it is also used of God, as he ‘calls’ creation into being, forming and filling it so that it is ‘good’. And it becomes the term for God’s own proclamation: he ‘calls’ Moses from the burning bush in Exodus 3:4, and on Mt Sinai he ‘calls’ or proclaims the truth of his mercy and grace (Exodus 34:6). This proclamation becomes the means by which the leaders and priests tell the people of God’s pattern of life for them. They must ‘call out’ to the people the times of feasting (Leviticus 23:4), the times of sacrifices and offerings (Leviticus 23:27) and the times of Jubilee liberation (Leviticus 25:10). The ‘preaching’ of God becomes ‘preaching’ to the people, as the words of God are passed on.
