The Novel as Church: Preaching to Readers in Contemporary Fiction

3. Amen: The Assumption of Authority

43 s TheAssumption ofAuthority ameN 3 no one has more authority over a text than its author, until the publisher’s editors make their marks. From then on the author lets it go. Once the text is published, the author’s authority over the text has diminished to the extent that it is no greater than that of its readers and its critics. readers can read it in any way they choose. similarly, preachers compose and write their sermons with an author’s authority over their text. Then, in the pulpit, they let them go, and, try as they might, they cannot control how their words are heard. The hearer is as entitled as the preacher to say what the sermon was about. One conventional way preachers claim their texts is to end sermons with “amen.” Liturgically, “amen” is a people-binding utterance,1 by which, as bishop Cyril of Jerusalem said circa 350 Ce, Christian congregations make a public act of prayer their own by sealing it with an amen. It functions as an audible indication of a congregation’s response by which its members give assent to assertions or associate themselves with sentiments expressed within the liturgy. In the culture of some congregations, those who listen to sermons encourage preachers and express their accord with what is being said with murmurs or acclamations of amen during the sermon. Thus, authority is recognized in, or ascribed to, the preaching. but when preachers themselves say amen at the close of their preaching, two problems are introduced. First, this effectively transposes the term from its original liturgical usage to little more than an audible punctuation mark to 44 The Novel as Church s indicate that the sermon is over, and, second, they are claiming authority for their own sermon, implying the absence of divine involvement in the creative process, even if they say amen with quizzical intonation as if inviting an affirming response from the congregation that these words have either divine origin or divine orientation. both the preacher’s amen at the end of the sermon and the congregation ’s interposed amens are expressions of an assumed authority of the pulpit which originates in Christianity’s foundation documents. The author of Matthew’s Gospel, for instance, concludes the sermon on the Mount by describing the crowd’s astonishment at the authority of Jesus’ teaching, which set him apart him from other teachers of the day. From this point forward in the Gospel, distinguishable from the other canonical Gospels by its presentation of Jesus as the new Moses, authority becomes a recurring theme. As a new lawgiver with new teaching, Jesus has authority to forgive sins, to heal disease, and to exorcise demons. Ultimately, Jesus claims that all authority in heaven and earth has been given to him. Many other newTestament books continue this concern for authority. For instance, when Paul uses his pastoral letters to Timothy and Titus to encourage them in their discipleship, he appeals to his own authority as an apostle of Christ, and, once he has reminded them of the themes of their teaching and preaching, he urges them to “argue them with an authority which no one can disregard.” In line with Paul’s general exhortation to Christ’s followers to let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, it has been assumed ever since that Christian teachers are to teach as Christ taught and that Christian preachers are to preach authoritatively as Christ preached.2 The trouble with this in the twenty-first century is that people are suspicious of authority. Already evident in the postmodernism of the late twentieth century, distrust of authority came to a head in the catastrophic events of the attacks on the World Trade Center in new York and the Pentagon in Washington by religious fundamentalists whose fanaticism was bolstered by perverse readings of the Qur’ān. When, on september 11, 2001, terrorists, some reciting, others carrying, proof texts from the Qur’ān, targeted their peopled weapons at buildings representative of Western culture, this, thereafter, destabilized discussion of religious authority and authoritative texts. now, “9/11” stands as an appalling symbol of conflict between religion and culture, where s Amen 45 religions are regarded as absolutist claims on truth and culture is seen as an artificial interpretation of human experience and environment constantly in a state of flux. such an impasse need not be...