​PREACHING AND THE
HOLY SPIRIT’S ANOINTING

I have offered my understanding of the anointing and how I see its relationship to new possibilities in the power of the pulpit. I have found others who have made similar connections. I remember finding in my early research a book by Clovis Chappell called Anointed to Preach. Although there is not so much an analysis of the anointing process, I did pick up supporting evidence from this great Methodist evangelist that without the anointing, one dare not go forth for the preaching of the word. I also remembered the first book I read that took very seriously the anointing of the Holy Spirit for preaching effectiveness. Though I had seen many books that discussed this subject, I was excited when I learned that James Earl Massey’s book, The Sermon in Perspective: A Study of Communication and Charisma, was virtually devoted to developing ideas about the anointing.

As Massey suggests in his book, there is first a sense of assertiveness by which to act; second, a sense of being identified with divine will. Next there is a perceived intensity, because what is done relates to the highest frame of reference. Fourth, there is a sense of self-transcendence. Fifth, the kind of instinct for what is done. And sixth, a knowledge that the deed is avowedly moral and religious, in nature and reason; which is to say that the deed is traceable to God’s prompting and power, and that it happens for God’s own reasons. “The anointed preaching ​carries the hearers beyond the limited benefit of the preacher’s personality and rhetorical abilities” (page 105). It is more than mere enthusiasm. Massey says, “It has to do with mediated meaning and a mediated presence with both affective and intellectual levels of life being addressed” (page 106). Itismorethancommunalism. It is a contagion between preacher and people.

Massey’s treatment of the topic gives a solid theological base for the further explanation of the role of the anointing in preaching. He distinguishes between a secular understanding of charisma and the biblical/theological meaning of the term. The practical implications that flow from his work are valuable insights into the type of preaching so urgently needed in our time.

But there is yet another definition of the anointing that seems to be in resonance with the approach suggested here. In 1977, Professor Jesse K. Moon, Dean of Southwestern Assemblies of God College, wrote an article (“The Holy Spirit in Preaching”) in a denominational publication called Paraclete(Fall, 1977, page 27). In his article Moon offers the following definition of anointing. (There is one major difference in the way he views the anointing and the way I try to speak of it.) He says, “The anointing is the special presence of the Holy Spirit in the life and ministry of God’s servant, which produces an inspiring awareness of the divine presence. His [and I add her] entire faculties are enhanced” and he enumerates: “heightened illumination, courage, wisdom, discernment, faith, guidance, memory, vocation, emotions, intellect, and physical performance.” What a list! He says that in the anointing our faculties are enhanced beyond natural abilities. The word of God is quickened to accomplish its regenerating, healing, edifying, and sanctifying objectives. And those ministered to are invested with a God-consciousness, a spiritual enlivening, and an interest in acceptance of the response to the life and ministry of the Anointed One. What a comprehensive listing!

How would you like to have an experience, a series of dimensions of development that made this definition operative in your life? Wouldn’t that be something? ​Wouldn’t the church be on the verge of an extraordinary breakthrough? Well, brothers and sisters, whether it is with respect to Clovis Chappell’s understanding, Dean Moon’s understanding, or my friend Massey’s understanding, I believe firmly that we could be on the threshold of a new way of working together for the appropriation of the power of God for our time if indeed we could find our way nigh unto the pattern of formation that was present in Jesus the Christ.

In workshops, I often ask people to look at the list of the dimensions of the anointing. I ask them to think through which ones they already have experienced and whether there is a desire for these additional dimensions. Quite often, I will stop at this point and have a little prayer meeting, and have the people to ask each other, “What dimensions of the anointing do you find most significantly lacking in your life and which ones do you find already achieved or experienced in your life?” I have them exchange conversations with one another, and then I ask them to pray for one another. The prayers become an extraordinary leveling, for no one is able to say honestly that he or she is more spirit-filled than another. No, each of us prays for the other, because Jesus’ standard is exceedingly high, and the grade point average for most of us is not usually all that impressive by comparison.

WHAT DO WE MEAN BY PREACHING?

Let me say something about the concept of preaching which, I think, gets broadened by the anointing.

In the introductory classes I have taught at Union Seminary, we have followed this little tradition: Rather than defining what preaching is, I try to achieve a corporate sense of what preaching is supposed to be. I ask my students to read the major books listed on the course bibliography and then we break up into small groups and each group decides which definition it considers most important. All of the groups report their decisions and we try to prepare a comprehensive definition that the class will ​agree to adhere to throughout the semester. It has been my delight over the years to preside over a lengthening committee definition of what preaching is.

Here is an example of a working definition:

Preaching is an event in which the living word of God is proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is done by a member or members of the covenant community. It is by that process that the preacher serves to focus the dialogue between God and the people in the context of worship. And in that context of preaching, the transforming power of the truth of the gospel is addressed to the concrete realities of day-to-day existence, as well as the issues of eternal significance. It offers an invitation to enter the family of faith, and also calls to maturity and faithfulness those who have committed their lives to the lordship of Jesus the Christ. In addition, preaching is a dynamic, divine-human interaction in which the people of God are nourished for the journey of life, and are challenged and empowered to serve and to celebrate the present and coming kingdom of God.

While this would seem to be an adequate definition, there is something more to say about preaching under the anointing. In my next class, I’ll offer this amendment: “Preaching is bearing witness to the resurrecting power of God, which extends itself into the regions of death, so that the new life in Christ breaks forth in all dimensions of the created order.” Now that is a strong enough definition to contain what anointed preachers want to be about. This definition means that we are able to have a concept of preaching that demands that the anointing take place.

There are certain understandings of preaching that do not require much of a sense of the anointing. But I am interested in developing a comprehensive concept so that it is understood that in order truly to preach we have to have a full anointing. And not just the first anointing, but a continuing jubilee of reinvestiture, reaffirmation, and covenanting is needed to accomplish Spirit-filled preaching on a continuing basis.

It is critical for us to discuss anointing because there is a necessity for people to have a broader concept of preaching ​than they have held traditionally. I am convinced that the nature of our culture cries out for more than mere discourse on religious subjects. Preaching about living a Christian existence in our time requires more than a literary gem, which causes people to say, “Ah, she certainly keeps up with the bestseller list.” It requires more than a masterful rhetorical style or even a bombastic Pentecostal preaching style.

When I talk about anointed preaching, I am reminded of Ezekiel 37. This text certainly offers a good understanding of what anointed preaching is like.

The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord, and set me down in the midst of the valley; it was full of bones.

And he led me round among them; and behold, there were very many upon the valley; and lo, they were very dry.

And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, thou knowest.”

Again he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live; and you shall know that I am the Lord.”

So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone.

And as I looked, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them.

Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the ​breath came into them, and they lived, and stood upon their feet, an exceedingly great host.

This passage became real for me as a model of ministry many years ago when Nathan Dell, a Presbyterian minister from Richmond, Virginia, shared with me an exegesis on Ezekiel in Walter Eichrodt’s commentary on Ezekiel. When I saw it, I said, “Reverend Dell, the Lord has given you this book in order that you might pass it on to me.”

From my own exegesis of the text, I came to a new understanding of my ministry. It made it necessary for me to include in my definition of preaching the concept of the anointing. I call this special ministry the “ministry of raising the dead.” It is impossible to operate in this special ministry without the anointing. Here is how I came to that understanding.

As a young Pentecostal minister in Richmond, Virginia, one of my parishioners called me and said, “Pastor, hurry up. My husband is dying, I think.”

I rushed over to her apartment, went upstairs where her husband was lying and touched his cold extremities. His eyes were set. There was no sign of breathing. I felt for a pulse, but there was none.

Immediately, I stepped away from the bed and said to the woman, “Yes, I think he’s dead.”

She looked at me with fixed eyes and said, “Don’t just stand there, Pastor, do something.”

I was under judgment. I felt my training had not prepared me for this. But in a way, my training did help, for I had done an exegesis on a Matthean passage in which Jesus had sent the disciples out with these instructions: “And preach as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons’” (Matt. 10:7-8a). The Interpreter’s Bible said the part about raising the dead was possibly, though not probably, a gloss. So that relieved me somewhat.

But her eyes were fastened on me and would not let me go. That day, I reached a point of reckoning. Even today, when I recall that event, I realize as a minister of the gospel, part of my work is not to flee from the midst of death, no ​matter what form it may take. For there is death also in separation from God. “Dead in trespasses and sin,” is the language that Paul uses. This kind of death often has to do with conditions where there is no longer vitality and therefore there is death. Let me tell you about a time when I got a better understanding of what death ought to mean - a time when I remembered that parishioner in Richmond.

It was at Medical College of Virginia, where I was doing my pastoral clinical education in 1968. I remember they were doing heart transplants at Richmond Medical College. And as pastors, those of us who were in clinical education talked with the surgeons about the ethics of heart transplant operations. We asked the doctor, “How can you know when a person is ready to be a donor?” (Or to put it plainly, we were asking if the one who donates the heart is actually dead.) Whereupon, the surgeon replied, “I leave it up to you theologians to answer questions of the metaphysical meaning of death. In this context, most of what we do is based upon clinical definitions.” “Well, then”, we asked, “clinically, what do you mean?” He then offered a definition that made me think back on my experience in Virginia. He said, “When there is an examination of the vital signs and we come to the point with a particular patient where there is no longer any prospect for meaningful, purposeful, human existence, based on certain clinical tests, then we are able to declare that patient clinically dead. There may still be life in some sense, but the clinical definition we employ allows us to make use of that patient’s heart.”

Later, I went back to that parishioner in Richmond and told her the story. I said if that’s what death is, a situation where there is no longer any prospect for meaningful, purposeful human existence, well, I’ve been involved in ministry to the dead for a good while. For every child with leukemia and a bleak prognosis, there is a question about the prospects for meaningful, purposeful, human experience.

In marital relationships where couples have tried and tried, and the desire to try has gone, there is a low prospect for life. In communities where minorities have sought to ​affirm their own self-interest, their own self-image and self-determination; and secular powers have successfully drained the strength of minorities to be about self-determination - situations of death exist. In my own nation, where, for my protection, I consent to my nation’s policy to engage in the death of other people in order to protect me and my ideology: there is a situation of death. Indeed, I had been involved in ministry to the dead for a long time.

As ministers, we must face death with our parishioners and, through the power of the anointing, be a catalyst for the One who conquers all death. To do otherwise ignores the major problems of our time. As I noted earlier, Pannenberg has said the “death of God” is about the nature of the culture; the death of our capacity to experience the sacred; the death of our capacity to have vivid and living experiences of the transcendent. Something has died in our country. Something has died in our western civilization. Something has died which, if it is not recovered, resuscitated, and revitalized, will bring to an end all that our religious traditions have been built upon. We suffer the responsibility of maintaining moral and ethical systems, and definitions of humanizing relationships and patterns of social, economic, and political equality, without the implied sense of the God to whom we are accountable. Something has died, and we keep trying to ask, “Why is our nation becoming mean-spirited, and why are we in the time of bad habits of the heart?”

Why is it we don’t seem to understand that we cannot build our country’s future on exploitation, discrimination, and imperialistic intrusions in the lives of others? Is it the result of utilitarian or expressionistic individualism? We must calculate and understand how our national programs are intricately linked to the humanizing possibilities of freedom and democracy and hope for all humankind.

Preachers who have not been anointed cannot cope with the death of these times - and there are different kinds of death. We all have a job, a job that cannot be done with just a cute homily, with three points and a poem. Our task is going to take more than that!

I call Ezekiel’s ministry an early indication of what ​anointed ministry is like. He was called to a ministry of helping those who were in exile experience a sense of the land. Anointed and called to preach to people who had been broken and made dead, separated from their cultic center - anointed and called to give them hope in the midst of their hopelessness. And then after being called, Ezekiel was led through the valley of dry bones. And after being guided, he saw visions and heard the voice of the Lord.

Sons and daughters of the Most High, the Spirit asks, “Can these bones live?” And the immediate answer is, “Oh Lord God, thou knowest.” When I look at the reality of our time, the tragic acknowledgment is that anyone who does serious social, economic, political, and spiritual critique in our churches, as well as in our nation, and asks the question, “Can these bones live?”; no matter how great our intellect, how much we think we know, the only honest answer is, “Lord, we do not know what it will take to humanize our cities again. Lord, we do not know what it will take to put back the upward looking and the light and the music back in the hearts of our people. We do not know what it will take to extricate this country from the grips of racism and oppression. We do not know what it will take to influence other countries to live out justice and equality and embrace the vision of human possibilities. We do not know what it will take to awaken in Christianity prophetic judgment against dehumanizing systems, and restore the vision of justice and righteousness in the culture in which we live.”

Acknowledging that we know not is one step toward achieving an anointed ministry. If you think you truly understand the situation, you aren’t dealing with the real problem. The problem is deeper than immediate knowing. It is deeper than some formula plucked from tradition. Anointed ministry acknowledges we do not know, but nevertheless goes on to take instructions and is reliant on a higher source.

To preach under the anointing of the Holy Spirit is to preach, recognizing, “Lord, I don’t know what to say unless you tell me what to say. If you don’t tell me, I can do a little exegesis, and I can say some words. But if you don’t ​speak to me, I will not know.” Then God says, “Since you don’t know, perhaps you are willing to do something that may seem unusual to you.”

“Like what, Lord?”

“Prophesy to the bones.”

“To the bones? Well, since I don’t know, and since you say to do so: O-o-h, dry bones! Hear the word of the Lord.”

Then I hear the Spirit say, “If you don’t know, just say what I tell you to say. Prophesy deliverance, if you don’t know. If you don’t know, prophesy hope. You will not have to concoct my message yourself. It will not be like the thesis you struggled so hard to put together. Just say what I tell you to say. There will be those who think you are foolish. There will be times when an examination by the medical profession might conclude you have gone off the deep end … for prophesying to dead bones could be problematic in a psychological evaluation, but prophesy anyway. Prophesy to the bones.”

Consider Ezekiel, who had wisdom born of ignorance acknowledged before God, and who said what the Lord told him to say. This speaks to the content of what we preach. The content, then, is to say what the Lord tells us to say. But more than “content” and words happen when you are going about the ministry of raising the dead, when you are anointed. Because God did use Ezekiel to make things move. There was a noise and a shaking, and the bones came together - sinew, flesh, skin - but no breath in them. And then came this audacious invitation: “Next time, prophesy - prophesy - and if you thought it was foolish for you to prophesy to bones, what I am about to tell you to do is even worse. For at least there is a concreteness within your culture that you can deal with if you see the bones. But now, I want you to prophesy to the wind - the wind - the ruah - the breath - to the Spirit - prophesy.”

“But Lord, I can’t see it, and I can’t touch it, and I cannot quantify it according to laboratory requirements. I have no way of demonstrating it’s out there.”

That’s all right. Prophesy to the wind. The four winds - east and west, north and south. Call to the Spirit that was at work at the dawn of creation, the Spirit that hovered over ​the mighty deep. Call that same Spirit. The Spirit that was there when there was neither a “then,” nor a “there” nor a “when” nor a “where.” That same Spirit that God had moving out of God’s being on the mighty deep. Call that same Spirit to prevail in the midst of this death. And the preacher called that Spirit.

“O-o-h, four winds. Breathe on our cities (and communities), decaying. Breathe on Harlem. Breathe on New Haven, breathe on our country, breathe on Nicaragua, Soweto, Johannesburg, and Pretoria. Breathe on Afghanistan, Poland, and the Philippines. Breathe on Haiti. Breathe. Four winds, blow upon these slain.”

And according to the text, there was a movement because the Spirit had put into the mouth of the anointed preacher the invitation to call the Spirit. It is almost as if part of what lets the Spirit come is someone in the midst of the dead who dares to cry out. It is as if the Spirit cannot stand to remain in its invisibility and its hiding, but must be manifested. When the anointed preacher, invited to stand, therefore cries out, the Spirit hastens to work on his or her behalf.

This yielding process typifies anointed preaching. One has the audacity to respond to the invitation. But if we are afraid of the Spirit; scared because we don’t like somebody else’s definition; afraid because we are in a culture where spiritual realities are not tangible enough to make sense to talk about; fearful that talking about the Spirit will require some growth in discipline, growth in dedication, growth in yieldedness; afraid that talking about the Spirit will take the organization out of our hands; afraid that the wind of the Spirit will blow in directions we have not considered; afraid to talk; afraid to be open; afraid to preach; afraid to let the Spirit be at the heart of our ministry: then we cannot participate in the ministry of raising the dead, for we are scared of the power by which it shall come. While it is natural at first to experience some degree of fear, we should remind ourselves that love casts out fear - and then remind ourselves that even beyond our fear, is the mysterium tre-mendum, that holy other that we cannot grasp for ourselves, yet stands with us. When we understand that the ​fear is reasonable, but that faith is given by grace, we can speak out anyway.

​It is time for preachers to seize this moment, which is pregnant with possibilities. We must preach and not be afraid of the Spirit. It is time to move with the fear and acknowledge it, and time to move forward even with the fear that maybe there is no Spirit. Or maybe worse, afraid that there is a Spirit that will bind us to our calling. Until we move beyond our fear of the Spirit’s engagement of the centers of our lives and communities, we will not be about the ministry of raising the dead.

With respect to content, we speak what God says. In Ezekiel’s case, God is very specific. If we read further than the description of the vision, we will discover that God has more to say. Before God gives a theological statement about the good news of hope, God gives the prophet the sense of the despair of the people. God’s Spirit says, “Behold, these bones, the whole house of Israel, says, ‘Our bones are dry, our hope is lost, we are clean cut off.’” To be anointed preachers is to understand and for us to listen to the people in our culture and in our world. We must listen to the black folk, the white folk, the poor folk, the rich folk. We need to know what marginal folk are saying, what corporate rulers are saying. To preach requires divine discernment of what all of these people are saying. You can’t preach if you don’t know what the folks are saying, not only with their mouths, but with the conditions of their lives.

Sometimes the power of the people to deceive themselves is great. And certain cultures have the capacity to mystify, so that the people don’t even know what they are saying with their lives; or they learn to say certain things with their mouths to cover up or justify what their lives are saying.

Part of the sermon preparation process is that you have to know what the Lord is saying to YOU about what the people are saying. Then you can hear what God has to say, and that always is a word of hope as well as judgment. The power of the anointed preacher is to be able to hear the word of God, and to know that that word is the word that ​brings life in the midst of death. My prayer in this discussion is that somebody will decide, “Lord, if that’s the ministry to which you are calling me, I dare not go without your anointing.”

Let us pray: “Thank you, Lord, for a context in which we can talk about the ministry to which we are called. Thank you for a situation in which we can be open to the possibility that ministry requires a dedication hard to come by. Transform the words we say and the thoughts we share into energy for transformation. And grant that whoever among us has reached the point of vocational readiness will find our time together to be a time of divine confirmation, a time of divine empowerment for the work to which you call us.

“Anoint us afresh and we will serve you aright.

“Through Jesus Christ our Anointed Lord we pray. Amen.”​