Preaching Lessons: Otis Moss III

Otis Moss III brought it. His lecture, "Preaching Prophetic Blues in a Post-Modern World," was inspirational, challenging, and a prophetic call for preachers. For Moss, the blues represent a worldview--a way of understanding the visible world from the underside. He understands blues to be a statement of existential existence that is incomplete without eschatalogical hope, and vice versa. In short, "The gospel is not the gospel without the blues."

Moss argues that a preacher cannot preach the Good News without confronting tragedy in three forms: existential blues (What is the tragedy before us?), theological blues (Calvary is nothing BUT the blues.), and biblical blues (Scripture is literature of an oppressed people. Period.). Only by preaching the blues are we able to face tragedy head on without falling into despair. Only by being open to what makes us weep do we understand what makes God weep, and then can we find the eschatological hope that God's grace makes apparent. 

It struck me that what Moss was saying was what Barbara Brown Taylor was saying which was what Anna Carter Florence was saying: do not ignore the shadows. Do not ignore the darkness. Do not ignore the sadness and tragedy. To do so is to fail to preach the fullness of the gospel message. Blues without gospel is despair. And gospel without blues is just happy clappy.

It seems that if this is a major undercurrent of the preaching and lectures at the Festival, that it is an undercurrent in Christian life in American today. We have an incredible ability to hide our blues, to ignore them, to pretend them away for the sake of appearances. Moss says we preachers avoid the blues because we hide in the daily tasks of 'pastoral concerns,' because lament may not be in our tradition, because we fear conflict and rejection. These are more reflections of our culture than they are of our faith.

To preach with integrity is to give space for the blues and to allow them to be understood in light of the gospel, and vice versa. And incredibly, freedom is the result. Freedom to talk about our pain, our fear, our uncertainty, our darkness. And freedom to work communally toward solutions. Moss certainly struck home with many of us when he said, "If you never preach the blues, you may be a part of the structure that creates the blues for others." Ouch.

Though his message is intensely relevant for today, I imagine it's always been intensely relevant for preachers. Praise and lament are deeply related--just look to the Psalms for a quick education there--but is it inherent in our humanity to cover our brokenness and try to sing only praise? And if so, living into the image God created us in means to expose that brokenness to allow for creative healing.