Preaching and Obama

Heather's Uncle, John Beukema, is a pastor who used to work for Preaching Today. He is an associate editor (meaning he did lots of work but gets little credit!) of The Art and Craft of Biblical Preaching. It is a tremendous book on preaching with almost two hundred articles by about over a hundred contributors ranging from Bill Hybels to Andy Stanley to Rob Bell to Rick Warren to Will Willimon. I love using it for short preaching ideas throughout my week.

I just finished three chapters on preaching to Latin-, African-, and Asian-Americans. What stood out from all of these chapters is the feeling of marginalization from which these groups suffer. Preaching to them, then, is often done by focusing on Scripture's stories of marginalization. Simply acknowledging the marginalization begins to have healing effects.

Which leads to Obama. Many Conservative critics (prophets?!) have perfectly good critiques of Obama, but these critiques have to be couched in acknowledging the marginalization over which Obama's presidency is a symbolic victory. This is nothing new; it's just hitting me--most of all as a preacher--with specific people in my congregation in mind who have suffered and continue to suffer marginalization.