Preaching from the voice within

LOUISVILLE — This week the Rev. Dr. Derrick McQueen led participants in the Synod of the Covenant’s Equipping Preachers series in a master class on preaching from the perspective of a biblical character.

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McQueen is well qualified: his undergraduate degree is in theater, and he’s preached from the perspective of any number of biblical characters, including the donkey that carried Jesus into Jerusalem.

Watch McQueen’s 88-minute presentation here. Synod Executive the Rev. Dr. Chip Hardwick introduces him at the eight-minute mark.

McQueen is pastor of St. James Presbyterian Church in Harlem, which was founded in 1822 as Shiloh Presbyterian Church, an abolitionist faith community. “We are still in the work of liberation — not just in Harlem, but around the world,” said McQueen, who also teaches at Union Theological Seminary.

McQueen reminded webinar participants, most of them preachers, that:

• We do not preach about the Bible; we preach from within it
• The pulpit is not performance — it is presence
• Through exegesis, embodiment and imagination, we listen to the heartbeat of the text
• Preaching is persuasive speech
• The Word becomes flesh again when we dare to enter the story — not as observers, but as participants.

In theater training, “I learned that truth is discovered in the body before it is spoken by the tongue,” McQueen said. “Preaching is an act of radical empathy, a rehearsal for justice.”

Much of McQueen’s preaching style comes from listening to people like his Aunt Dot tell stories, or his grandparents recount their fishing trips to Jacksonville, Florida. “You all have those stories in your histories, those embodied memories,” he said. “It’s about resurrecting that feeling you had.”

McQueen suggested this approach:

• Choose a biblical companion. “Find solidarity in voices like Esther, Moses, or the woman with the alabaster jar” and others, he said. “Freedom begins when silenced voices find resonance. The pulpit can be that resonant chamber.”
• Research and contextualize the character. Study their world. What empire surrounds them? What theology sustains or constrains them? What power dynamics define their courage? McQueen recommended drawing on critical tools, including feminist and womanist interpretations and post-colonial readings.
• Journal the journey. “Write as if the companion is speaking directly to you,” McQueen suggested. “What fear do they ask you to face?” When McQueen was journaling with the prophet Hosea, “I heard him whisper, ‘love even when it hurts your dignity. That’s how God loves you.’”
• Construct the sermon from their world to ours. “The preacher stands with one foot on the world of the Bible and one foot in the world of today,” said McQueen, quoting Dr. Tom Long. “The Word lands among us. The preacher’s task is to carry that voice across time without losing its accent of compassion or its rhythm of protest.”
• Preach with embodiment and celebration. “Trust your voice as an instrument and your body as a vessel to make sure you are not acting — you are incarnating,” McQueen said.

To give participants a sample of this approach, McQueen read Luke’s account of Jesus healing a blind beggar near Jericho, a man identified in another gospel as Bartimaeus.

“With our sacred imaginations, we imagine him seated at the city gate — close enough to hear life pass by, but far enough to remain unseen,” McQueen said. “Perhaps he has learned the rhythm of footsteps, the sound of a coin hitting a bowl or cup.”

“In his world, dependence is a burden and a teacher,” McQueen said. “The story invites us to listen to how exclusion sounds and feels.”

Then something in the air changes. Someone tells Bartimaeus that Jesus of Nazareth is passing by. “This could be his one big chance,” McQueen said. “Faith begins in his hearing before it reaches his eyes. For preachers, we wonder what it means to hear salvation before we see it.”

Bartimaeus cries out for the Son of David to have mercy on him, but the people in front of him try to silence him. “He might have hesitated, but instead his voice goes stronger. He refuses to accept invisibility,” McQueen said. “This is what faith sound like when it refuses silence.”

Jesus stops. The noise fades, and time slows. Jesus asks the man, “What do you want me to do for you?”

That question “honors dignity and agency,” McQueen said. “Perhaps this is the first time someone has asked him what he truly desires.” Bartimaeus’ answer “carries longing for sight and for restoration, a longing for purpose,” McQueen said. “We might wonder, what restores dignity today?”

Jesus tells Bartimaeus: “Receive your sight; your faith has saved you.”

“There is a semicolon here. The grammar matters,” McQueen said. “It is a dual blessing: he receives sight and his salvation has been secured.”

The gift of sight “becomes the beginning of discipleship,” McQueen said. “His praise becomes contagious. Maybe his vision is a reorientation toward joy and community, from which he has been distanced for so long. Healing becomes testimony. Seeing becomes serving.”

Rather than focusing on the miracle alone, “this story reveals how faith grows in dialogue and persistence,” McQueen said. “Bartimaeus’ cry transforms both him and the crowd.”

In our churches, this passage can raise questions, McQueen said: Where in our communities are voices silenced? How does Jesus still stop to listen?

“Faith speaks truth,” he said, “even when decorum resists it.”

“We are all blind when we lose that human-to-human connection,” one webinar participant pointed out. “We walk past people on the streets as if we don’t see them. How blind are we? In a way, every single one of us is Bartimaeus. We need to hear Jesus’ truth, that he is real and is alive.”

The Synod of the Covenant’s monthly preaching workshops will resume in January 2026. See previous editions here.