Mind the Gap

Abstract

The field of homiletics is marked by a seemingly indelible gap between the Word of proclamation andthe bodies who occupyecclesial spaces. In spite of the profusion of homiletical wisdom, scant attention has been paid to human bodies in general and sexed/sexual bodies in particular. 1 There are many reasons for this omission: vestigial flickers of Victorian and Puritan mores; the classical Western bifurcation between minds and bodies; the classical Christian tension between the GrecoRoman emphasis on the spirit and the Hebraic stress on the body. Regardless, the contemporary episteme that suffuses Western contexts demands a rapprochement between preaching and human sexuality. 2 No longer can churches compartmentalize sex and sexuality to the private realm, removed from the province of public proclamation. As travelers on London’s underground transit system are infinitely aware — thanks to the pervasive mantra that echoes off the tiled corridors of the tube network — one must ‘‘mind the gap’’ between train and platform. Failure to do so can be deadly. So too must Christian preachers and teachers of preaching ‘‘mind the gap’’ that has prevailed between the preached Word and the human, sexed/ sexual body. A failure to do so can have — and has had — disastrous consequences. The purpose of this brief essay is twofold: 1) to introduce readers to the literature — meager though it is — on preaching and human sexuality, and 2) to show how the essays making up this issue of Theology and Sexuality are moving this conversation forward. 3 The essays that make up this issue of Theology and Sexuality are intended to supplement the existing literature, but also to forge new venues for generative conversation. It is essential that we allow this dialogue to take shape as broadly as possible, for only then can we obviate the tendency to