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The following examples, all taken from published sermons, show examples of ways that preachers help listeners identify with the humanity in the text. Certain texts (the Lowry text for instance) offer the story more easily than others. Still in every text, there is a story, because there are real people behind it. What is given below represents only a portion of the story more fully developed in the published sermons themselves.
Fred Craddock – Heb.12:1-2 – Enduring the Small Stuff
Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses is the writer’s way of glancing over the shoulder one last time at the list of people of faith that were in the background of that audience and this one. The recital is in chapter 11 beginning with Adam and Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Sarah, Jacob, Isaac, Moses, Rahab – on and on the list goes. All of them by faith living their lives before God.
I marvel personally at the writer’s restraint at not preaching a little sermon after each one of these names. I really don’t see how he did it, because it invites a little exhortation at every name. Now shouldn’t we be strong like Samson? Shouldn’t we be willing to give up everything like Abraham, and so on? I think I would probably have succumbed. But I learned a long time ago it’s not always inspiring to parade before an audience great superheroes of faith. Sometimes it’s depressing. Have you ever listened to a sermon in which the lineup of illustrations included Albert Schweitzer, Mother Teresa, missionaries who were martyred or had their feet frozen off in the tundras of the north? And as a young person sitting in chruch listening to those stories with a few Napoleon stories thrown in, I just sat there swinging my legs over the pew, as I still do, and said to myself, “It’s a shame you can’t be a Christian in this little town. Nobody is chasing or imprisoning or killing Christians.”
I went away to summer camp to Bethany Hills, an inspiring time and a night of consecration around the lake and candlelight and just everything moving, and we sang every time, “Are You Able?” And I’d go back to the dorm and lie on my bunk and say to God, “I’m able.” “Are you able to give your life?” “I’ll give my life.” And I pictured myself running in front of a train and rescuing a child, swimming out and saving someoone from drowning. I pictured myself against a gray wall and some soldier saying, “One last chance to deny Christ and live,” and I confessed my faith and they said, “Ready, aim, fire.” The body slumps, the flag is at half-mast, widows are weeping in the afternoon. And later a monument is built, and people come with their cameras. “Johnny, you stand over there where Fred gave his life. Let’s get your picture.”
I was sincere then, as I have been these forty-five years. I give my life, but nobody warned me that I could not write one big check. I’ve had to write forty-five years of little checks – eighty-sever cents, twenty-one cents, fifty-seven cents, nibbled away this giving of life. Are you able to drink the cup? I can drink the cup in one gian quaff and let my life be given. No, no, no. My life is one of drinking a sip here, a sip there, and soon you reach retirement and did anybody notice that you gave your life and drank the cup?
Notes on Craddock
Craddock’s text does not give him a lot of material to work with. To find the story, the humanity in his text, he turns to chapter eleven and it’s famous roll call of heroes of the faith.
Rather than detailing the familiar elements of these stories, however, Craddock personalizes the sermon by describing his personal interaction with these characters. In doing so, he is assuming a fair degree of biblical literacy among his audience. People who have been connected with church most of their lives would be able to relate very well to the summer camp story and to Craddock’s frustration with hero stories in sermons.
The “eighty-seven cents” concept is masterful. Craddock is able to take his interaction with the biblical characters, describe his struggle, and then put it into terms that are meaningful for every contemporary Christian listener. We are now drawn in and most respond.
Barbara Brown Taylor – Ephesians – God’s Palpable Paradox
Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a kingdom called Georgia – not the one I’m from – but one tucked into the Kachkar Mountains east of the Black Sea between modern-day Turkey and Russia, where wild geraniums carpet alpine meadows and the sound of waterfalls is everywhere. A thousand years ago it was Camelot, rich in everything that mattered, including the love of God. Under the patronage of benevolent kings and queens, artists were brought to Georgia from Constantinople to build huge churches out of local rock. Some of these artists must have come with the Hagia Sophia in mind because there was nothing modest about their work. Their Byzantine churches were monuments, full of exquisite arches, frescoes, and stonework, many of which survive today – but only as ruins or museums, because the age of Christianity is over in Turkey.
George was conquered by Mongols in the 1200s. Civilization moved west and east. The last baptisms in the Kachkar Mountains took place in the 1800s. Now the area is predominantly Muslim, as is the rest of Turkey. Meanwhile, the ancestors of those ancient artists have become farmers, who still pluck old roof tiles and gargoyle parts out of their fields as they plow.
If you go there today, you can still find the wrecks of those great churches deep in the countryside, what is left of their high walls poking up through the canopy of trees like the masts of stranded ships. All the good carvings have been carried away by now, along with many of the building stones, which local people have quarried for their own homes.
The chruches are multi-purpose buildings now, serving as soccer fields, sheep pens, garbage dumps. The roofs are gone. So are the doors, the floors, the altars. All that are left are the walls, the graceful arches, and here and there the trace of an old fresco that has somehow survived the years – half a face, with one wide eye looking right at you, one raised arm, the fingers curled in that distinct constellation. It is Christ the Lord still giving his blessing to a ruined church.
This, for me, is the hanging over Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, that triumphant letter in which he crowns Christ as the ruler of all creation and the church as Christ’s body – not two entities, but one – God’s chosen instrument for the reconciliation of the world. The church shall be a colony of heaven on earth, Paul says, the divine gene pool from which the world shall be recreated in God’s image. From the heart of Christ’s body shall flow all the transforming love of god, bestowing hope, Paul says, riches, immeasurable greatness. As God is to Christ, so shall the church be to the world – the means of filling the whole cosmos with the glory of God.
Notes on Brown
Brown begins in story-telling mode, complete with the “once upon a time.” The “land far away” however, is neither some fairy kingdom nor is it biblical Ephesus. Her description of the Georgian landscape, however, evokes the key aspects of both our postmodern terrain and that of Ephesus of old.
The “once upon a time” notwithstanding, Brown doesn’t so much tell a plotted story as she sets us in a place where we can better appreciate our own stories in the light of the text.
The use of imagery is striking. The “multipurpose” church buildings, offering grazing space for sheep and soccer space for children, all under the gaze of the ruined Christ “still giving his blessing to a ruined church.” That kind of imagery is hard to shake. It will linger as we dig more deeply into the truth offered in the book of Ephesians.
Eugene Lowry – Mt.18:22-24 – Down the Up Staircase
The man owed a whole lot of money. Surely he wasn’t surprised when he was summoned to the inner chambers of the king. He left his abode, went across the territory until he reached the palace, climbed the flight of stairs, and went through the double doors. If you were listening closely, you noticed that Jesus did not mention the stairs. That was an inadvertant omission. he meant to say it.
There had to be a flight of stairs. You never go to the seat of power without climbing a flight of stairs. I was raised in western Kansas where there are no hills. Back in the old days when they build a county courthouse, they’d bring in the bulldozers and create a hill so they could build a flight of stairs. Today they’d be more sensitive. They’d put a ramp. It’s still uphill all the way.
This man climed a flight of stairs, went through the double doors, was ushered into the inner chamber of the king, and stood there waiting until the king made his appearance. The man bowed dutifully. Just then an aide carries out a huge ledger and opens it to the page where this man’s name appears on the upper right hand corner.
The king looks at the bottom line on the ledger sheet, and says, “Servant, it says here you owe me a lot of money.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“You owe me ten thousand talents.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want my money.”
“Yes, Sir.”
“I want my money now.”
“Oh yes, Sir. Uh, no sir. I mean, I don’t have ten thousand talents.”
The king turns to the aides who brought in the book and they begin a discussion about selling this man, his wife and children into slavery, and disposing of their personal property to recoup what little they can of the huge debt. When the king turns around, he finds the servant down on the carpet on his knees.
The servant looks up at the king and says, “Sir, have mercy on me. Have mercy, and I will pay you everything. Give me a little time.” You know what the king did. He did better than just give him a little time. He reached into that ledger book, took hold of the page, and ripped it out. He ripped it into shreds, turned to the servant on his knees, and said, “I forgive you the debt. You are now free and clear. Go in peace.”
and the story continues…
Notes on Lowry
Lowry’s text is in itself a story and Lowry does a wonderful job of restating the parable in contemporary terms. In so doing, he does not violate the original intention of the text, but simply updates the story, creating an opportunity for the listener to think deeply about the nature of the forgiveness that Jesus Christ offers and expects.
As the story continues Lowry introduces the element of surprise to take the impact deeper. Ten thousand talents, he says, is roughly equivalent to ten million dollars. “But what I ddidn’t say was the sheer fact that nobody could owe ten million dollars in the days of Jesus. Jesus is telling a joke here. “I’m told that the entire annual revenue into the Roman coffers all over the globe was approximately 850 thousand dollars. ... Herod the Great could owe that much…” Lowry shows the servant on his knees begging for a little more time. Do you know how much time he would need? Lowry asks? 125 thousand years (based on wages of the time)! No one could owe that much. It might as well have been “a million zillion” and yet God forgives.
It is a riveting story and Lowry plays it for all it’s worth.