Preaching that turns the world upside down: An interview with William H. Willimon

Derek J. Morris: I would like to be gin with the glorious accusation in the book of Acts, brought against Paul and Silas, which says that these Christian preachers had "turned the world upside down" (Acts 17:6). What can we learn about preaching, from this experience?

William H. Willimon: The book of Acts has a paradigm for our work. In Acts, Christian missionaries are moving into the world, telling the story of Christ. Each time it's told, it has a little different emphasis, but it's still the same story. And sometimes the world responds positively, as in Acts 2. But many times, the response is nothing but a beating and a trip to jail. When you say "Jesus Christ is Lord," it tends to throw other lords into disarray. It did with Herod when Jesus was born, and it does with Caesar in Acts. The result is opposition and rejection. The thing I love in the Acts drama is that the Christian missionaries don't care. They'd love to have their preaching accepted, but they tell their story regardless. For every story of evangelistic success, Luke usually fol lows with stories of failure.

DJM: So preaching that turns the world upside down doesn't inevitably lead to success as people count success. There may be baptisms in one setting and beatings in the other.

WHW: That's right. In Acts, they seem more worried about getting the story right than anything else. You don't know whether Luke is more excited about being rejected or being accepted. He loves to tell a story of success: Peter came out, said just a few words to them, they were pricked to the heart, and asked "What can we do to be saved?" Luke loves to tell of the thousands who were saved. But he also tells that these preachers were willing to suffer rejection. In fact, I think it's a discredit to my preaching that I don't preach the gospel well enough to get more rejection.

DJM: We don't hear that honest warning very often. But the record is clear: Preaching that turned the world upside down has some rather unpredictable results. In the book Preaching to Strangers, which you co-authored with Stanley Hauerwas, you warned that "Christian conversation with strangers can be dangerous." ¹ What other dangers does the preacher face, besides rejection?

WHW: In attempting to speak to the world as Christ commands us to, sometimes we fall into the world, face down. The world gets us. Jesus tells us to go out and get the world. Then He tells us, "You be careful; they're out to get you!" One danger I face when preaching to strangers is that in my ear nest efforts to spread the gospel, I end up offering less than the gospel. Or I try to crank the gospel down to something that anybody staggering off the street can get in five minutes. Or I try to say, "Let's see, are you interested in self-es teem? Well, salvation is something like that." Or, "Would you like to feel better about yourself? Well, Jesus can help you." I think we need to keep being re minded of how odd it is that we preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The world has lots of ways of reminding us: "Hey, you people are kind of on the fringe of what success looks like." That's a good thing.

DJM: I hear you saying that preaching that turns the world upside down is not simply a restatement of the popular gospel of the culture. We need to boldly proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, even when it may seem odd or strange to others.² Can you give us an example?

WHW: Yes, there's one in Acts 17. This passage is sometimes used as a great example of Paul getting "down and dirty" with the Athenians. He quotes from some of their poets. He talks about this altar to an unknown God. Then, as he ends his sermon, he says, "This god that you grope for, I pro claim to you as the One whom God has raised from the dead and the One who shall come and judge everybody." This gets the Athenians scoffing. There may be a lot of evidence out there that nature is beautiful and orderly, like the snowflake and all that but there isn't any evidence out there for the resurrection. And at the end of that sermon in Athens, some of Paul's hearers say, "That's the stupidest thing we've ever heard!" Only a few are converted, including Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman named Damaris. Pretty small pickings for one of the greatest speeches in the New Testament.

DJM: In your book, The Intrusive Word, you suggest that, when preaching to the unconverted, "our preaching ought to be so confrontational... that it requires no less than a miracle to be heard."³ How can preachers be confrontational without being offensive?

WHW: When we confront people, we're doing so in the name of the Prince of Peace, the Slain Lamb. As Christians, we don't have any means of working other than with words. We're not allowed to pull the sword on somebody and tell them to be converted. The only thing we've got is the foolishness of preaching. Words can be powerful, even if they present a different kind of power. I remember someone telling me that she was offended by my sermon. And I said, "I was too." She said, "Really? I thought you liked it." And I said, "We don't preach this stuff because we like it. We preach it because we've been told to preach it." Christianity confronts every culture, including the first culture in which it found itself. We should not be surprised when our Christian description of what's going on in the world clashes with the culture's understanding of what's happening. The world doesn't know it's terminal. The world thinks it's invulnerable and eternal. The world thinks we can keep going upward and onward.

Years ago, I was in a campus discussion on nuclear arms. One group said, "We're going to blow ourselves to bits. We're sitting on a nuclear keg, and the fuse is lit. We're going to blow away life as we know it." The other group said, "No, the Russians have got the bomb; we need the bomb. We're defending life as we know it, and the best way to do that is to let them know that we're not going to use our bomb if they're not going to use their bomb." And I said, "You know, it's nice that both of you agree that the issue is surviving and that the mutual question is how best to survive. But as Christians, we don't think we're going to survive. We actually believe God is not linked to the American way or any particular way. God has no great investment in whether the world as we know it lasts for a thousand years, or not."

DJM: You suggest that "preaching becomes invigorated when... Jesus gets loose again, and people come out of the service stunned."⁴ What does that look like?

WHW: Once I did a retreat for students who had heard of Jesus but were not yet ready to follow Him. About a dozen people attended. I did all kinds of things. The first night I just showed them the Gospel of Mark, done by an actor who just recited it straight. When we were through, this guy with long hair and tears in his eyes said, "Boy, Jesus is cool. I knew right from the beginning that they were going to kill Him. I mean, I just knew it." And I said, "Really?" He replied, "You know, I understand why they killed Him, because you just can't go around saying stuff like that with out people wanting to kill you." There, in a certain wonderful moment, Jesus broke loose. When someone says he can't sleep at night and he feels guilty over his behavior, I just sit there in awe. It's amazing that God can get through, because we've got such wonderful defenses against God. I just give God the glory when those defenses crumble.

DJM: That's powerful! Where do you find the courage to keep delivering God's outrageous truths to people? You mentioned that you haven't been beaten recently, but people may beat you verbally or respond with scoffing or patronizing disinterest. Where do you find the courage to continue to preach in a way that turns people upside down?

WHW: I have to admit, I'm very well protected. I'm in a bishop appointed system, you know. I was talking to a group of Southern Baptist pastors about courage in the pulpit. Three hundred Southern Baptist pastors get fired every month. It takes courage to speak up. Walter Brueggemann suggests that if you're a coward by nature, that's OK. God can still use you because what you can still do is get down behind the text! Just get down behind it and push it out there in front of the people. You can still say something like this: "Can you believe that God said that to us? What does God want out of us now? You're the ones who showed up here in church today and said you wanted to hear God's Word, so here it is!" Then the preacher can make a bold application and say, "This is not necessarily what I'm saying, but I believe this is what the text is saying." I love that! But courage is also found in the text itself. A lot of times when people come and criticize something I've said, I sit there and say, "Lord, I can't believe You've done that to me. I mean, I'm the most compromised, cowardly person in the world, but You've actually made me courageous for 20 minutes. That is a miracle! Thank You. I can't believe You did that! "When God turns the world upside down through preaching, it's not a disaster; it is an act of grace.