Richard John Neuhaus, warning of the dangers of preaching about controversial social issues (what he terms “the lust for contemporaneity”):

We should not ordinarily address them too directly or prescriptively, because that does not lead the hearer to the deeper controversy with the will of God. The preacher who presumes to declare from the pulpit what should be done about disarmament, or capital punishment, or teenage crime can be readily dismissed as “too conservative” or “too liberal,” depending on the taste of his hearers. In any case, his views on the subject are frequently not as interesting or as informed as what people might receive through magazines, or television, or books. Again, our goal in preaching is not relevance but engagement.

The connections with the contemporary emerge obliquely, suggestively, and troublingly from immersion in the text. The hearer is not so much challenged to come to terms with the preacher’s viewpoint as with the one who is rightly acknowledged as Christ our Contemporary. We are the more persuasive the more we make it clear that we have not confused our opinion with the Word of God. With respect to the particular answers to all problems, ancient and contemporary, we invite the hearer to join in the search for a divine will that always eludes our certain apprehension. This does not mean we end on a note of uncertainty; rather, we begin and end with the assurance of a hope that transcends our differing perceptions of what ought to be done.