Naming the Impossible and the Impossibility of Naming: Preaching as the Church’s Act of Prayer Par Excellence

Within the bounds of what Charles Taylor calls the “immanent frame,” preachers face the “impossible possibility” of naming divine reality into subjective human sight. On the one hand, preachers are those who have heard a call to name God’s presence in the world; and yet, on the other, any preacher who attempts to fulfill this calling soon discovers that such presence is impossible to name. Consequently, many contemporary preachers settle for reified understandings of what preaching does, grounded in purely anthropological terms. But this paper argues that, if God’s presence in the world is most clearly disclosed by the cross of Christ, then what at first seems a challenge to contemporary preachers may in fact be preaching’s greatest gift. For, in the “aesthetics of impossibility” surrounding the preaching act, the sermon is revealed as a form of eucharistic prayer, by which the “impossible possibility” of God reveals itself in the world.