Preaching as Eucharistic Dialogue: Mutuality as the Pathway to Mystery in the Sacramental Theology of Schmemann

Abstract

One of the outstanding challenges for homiletics in the contemporary West is how to articulate the mystery of preaching within a disenchanted culture. Contending with what Charles Taylor terms “the immanent frame,” the ever-present temptation for homileticians is to resort to reified theories of preaching which hide the Church from the presence of God. But, by examining preaching through the lens of resonance theory and sacramental theology, this article proposes that an alternative theology of preaching is possible. By exploring Alexander Schmemann’s vocational definition of eucharist as a relationship of mutuality, the author proposes that preaching functions within the liturgy as “eucharistic dialogue”: an act of mutual blessing between God and the Church which enables the divine life of the world to become visible in the present. Consequently, it argues that the dialogical nature of the sermon actualizes the world as dangerously real, even in a Secular Age.