Picturing God in a fragmented world. There is a specific world view connected to the title of this conference: The world is incomplete. It is "fragmented." In my speech today, I would like to discuss this world view because there is already an approach in German Homiletics which focuses on Fragmentation. At the  end of the nineteen-eighties Henning Luther described what it  means to understand a sermon as a fragment. I would like to  introduce you to the basics of this approach and illustrate it with a sermon excerpt.

I can think of few more dangerous ideas in the history of  humanity than the assertion that God calls people to preach.  How many preachers have there been who felt called by God to  preach bigotry, violence, and the denial of scientific discovery?  The bloody record left behind by the preaching of ignorance and  hatred is enough to make any thinking person question whether  the world might not be better off if we dispensed all together  with the idea that God calls human creatures to preach. And yet... and yet I think of preachers who have rallied people to act  for justice, to embody compassion, and to give witness to  the love and grace of Christ.

This is my mosaic of thought created in this moment in time. I have struggled with it because my words seem unimportant and  empty, but I have also enjoyed writing it, because writing is a way of seeing. I have not yet come to the point I hoped to  come, and I now very much would like you to help me tear it all  apart, so that we can create a new mosaic, with other and more parts, collected by whoever wants to share. What I’m trying to  address in this paper is the question of the sermon as a  fragment in a context of fragmented communication. Before I do this, though, I want to look at the word “fragment” for a  moment, because I find it both fascinating and problematic. After  that I want to describe my context somewhat. Then I will turn to preaching.

At this conference, we are invited to “picture” God. The noun picture evokes paintings, drawings, portraits and photographs. We may think of television and movies. The verb picture means to represent someone or something—in this case, God—in a  picture or photograph, to form a mental image of God, and to describe God in a certain way. As a preacher, teacher of preaching, and, for that matter, child of God who is legally blind, I am increasingly concerned that, in our time, our “certain way” of describing God is almost exclusively visual, and that this  emphasis on physically seeing God, or having physical sight as the frame of reference by which we experience God, contributes to the “fragmentation” of people who are blind and, by  implication, all people who live with disabilities, from the church, the faith, and from God, since they are not able to “picture” God  as the church does when it gathers to worship.

Human perception and judgement are largely the reflection of who we are. Picturing God, then, is a human activity in which we try to understand the realities of life. It is a hermeneutical activity. This article looks at the picturing of God in a fragmented South Africa. Particular attention is given to the preaching of Desmond Tutu during the apartheid years, and the pictures he constructed of God in his preaching. It also draws on the opinions of various political analysts as they see the situation in contemporary South Africa. An attempt is also made to suggest a way forward.

How might we conceive of giving a sermon in a fragmented, postmodern world? By postmodern I only point to this context of fragmentation, to a fragmentation that recognizes itself as such, that is sentient (and I choose my word carefully here) with regard to its as such. Despite the problems associated with such an equivocal word as postmodern, I employ it in this essay because of its prevalence in homiletical and ecclesial discourse. This essay is about no thing, not nothing (who would want to  read about that?). It hovers atop the aporetic abyss, which is no thing, nothing that might be empirically accessed. Aporia means without passage. This essay focuses on the aporia, on the  differences and diversity in our ecclesial contexts: the gaps between the fragments of our postmodern fragmentation, the aporias haunting our discourse (homilia).

This paper discusses two questions: are sermons capable of offering glimpses of God? And: How does that happen from the point of view of the listener? After a brief introduction in sermon reception theory (section 2), I explore some visual metaphors that are used by hearers when they talk about their listening
experiences (section 3). Next, I put the empirical findings in a larger theological framework of the ‘vision of God’ (section 4). Finally, I relate this eschatological idea with an homiletic epistemology and I discuss how sermons may generate knowledge in various degrees (section 5).

Coming from Latin America, I do not find necessary the attitude of distrust to the Bible or to the communication process. It is s not that Latinos are philosophically naïve. We are a younger civilization that has a different history, and we are not  necessarily captured or fascinated by the illustration, rationalism or postmodernism. I am perfectly aware that for a civilization that has tried everything, it is more difficult to receive the kingdom of God as children. In order not to speak only of   ourselves, lest we might offend somebody, maybe, it is a good idea, at the onset, to speak of Europe. After all, our culture, the outline of our knowledge, and our theology are European in more ways
than one.

In this paper we reflect on the speech proceeding from a heart shattered by the image God reveals to us about his purposeful presence in our fragmented world; speech broken open by the aesthetic vision of faith that -through painful perception of the  reality of brokenness- leads to acts embracing God`s   unimaginable grace in restoring the seemingly unrestorable:
*  We reflect on the theological aesthetics involved in picturing God through the eyes and acts of faith;

*  We explore the painful manifestation of fragmentation in our South- African societ

*    We attempt to homiletically speak the language of faith by picturing God in our fragmented world through the lens of the parable of the good Samaritan

For this essay‘s particular purposes, the tribe of 19th century immigrant Chinese have been chosen because I am a  Chinese American born of immigrants.11 Chinese English language preaching serves as our discussion‘s focus homiletic practice. Focus upon the practice of English preaching amongst American  Chinese proclaims is vital for exploring several theologically rich avenues such as social acceptance, assimilation, inculturation, cultural transformation, and identity and belonging, not only  within a new land, but in relation to the body of Christ. We may or may not be able to fully attend to these concerns here.  Nevertheless, it is paradoxically crucial and redundant to assert that despite or rather, because of its imprecise nature, language helps to create the ―illusion and ―reality of historical  moments  like Chin Toy‘s missionary address, especially for ones for whom  invisibility is not conceptual within a gaze, but actual

Sermons on special occasions like wedding and funeral have always been placed in a tension
field of the actual and concrete lives of humanbeings and of christian preaching. Different
periods and theological tendencies have chosen to approach this tension in different ways with
different priorities as a result. How can this tension be understood in the modernity of today?
And what kind of homiletic consequenses follow?