The Provocation

The word of God always enters the world as a provocation. Some demon is always being confronted, uprooted, unsettled, or exorcised. A demon of shame, or a demon of hate. Since the word of God is liberating and emancipatory, some power of slavery is being challenged and overcome. And since we actively and idolatrously participate in this enslavement, even cling to it, the word of God is experienced as scandal and contradiction. The word of God gains its first hearing as a stone of stumbling, as prophetic interruption, where the old world is crucified to give birth to the new.