BCP- Mark 2:1-12

he was speaking the word to them
he said to the paralytic, "Son, your sins are forgiven."
"Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy!
to say/to say
he said to the paralytic-- "I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home."
they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, "We have never seen anything like this!"

Like gunshot it rang out. "He was speaking the word to them." There they all were enraptured and as Peter so aptly described earlier in the week, scrambling to get in. To catch any readers up, I am in a homiletics class. This is a seminarian type of thing to do. We go to class to learn how to become a homilitician. This is a fancy way of saying we become preachers. As part of class, there was a claim that was presented. The claim was "preaching constitutes church". Constitute can mean a few things but the meaning that stuck with me was that to "constitute" is to "create". Does then preaching "create" church (church being understood to be the people) ? I said yes and when I read Mark again (this is the third time this week) I saw (for the first time)the references to speaking. Jesus was speaking the word to them. He says to paralytic "stand up". He asks which is it easier "to say" your sins are forgiven or take up your mat and walk? (As I reflect on this I wonder if this question is a challenge to the doubting scribes? It seems as if they are getting all caught up in the words he is using. Maybe Jesus is toying with them a little bit. Maybe the words themselves mean very little. It is his speaking itself which heals the paralytic.)

The reason this is resonating within me was that the case I presented for preaching constituting or creating church is that preaching creates much like God Creates. I argued that the biblical model of preaching was in God's "speaking" creation into being. Here in this Gospel passage Jesus reflects and even duplicates Genesis. His speaking heals the man. His speaking gathers people. His speaking amazes. Preaching then becomes....Sacrament. As Jesus "spoke" the word to people, we preach, which can open persons to experience the kingdom.It is a physical act done by finite beings that "effect what it signifies". (This of course makes me glad that the articles of religion contains article xxvi because it takes the pressure off)