Word moves people beyond mere words into these events, these realities. Because preaching does this, it is itself more than a set of words. It is an event. Something is happening. Heaven is opening.
History is made present.
God is taking action. The preacher is like the person in a Star Trek episode who sets the transporter coordinates. By his preaching people are taken apart and put back together again in another place, the ark, the altar, the cross, the throne. The sermon is there so that during the week the believers come to see all of life anew. The bathtub now points to the font that points both to the Flood and to the River of Life.