at a practical level, however, it is no doubt true. People come to the preaching moment with texts already in hand that describe the world. The preacher who interprets the text, who “appropriates here and now the intention of the text,” does not act in a vacuum. There are always rival and competing texts, in the face of which the biblical text may be a countertext that does not primarily describe but subversively redescribes reality. (6) The dominant scripting of reality in our culture is rooted