Tag Archives: sermon illustration

Humor and Preaching

04 Thursday Jul 2013

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Many preachers are excellent humorists. Not only are their sermons entertaining, but these preachers seemed to love getting a laugh – and they don’t feel that their sermons “work” unless they get a laugh or two.

There is good biblical precedent for humor. Sarah laughed when she discovered she was to have a child at an old age. God laughs in Psalm 2:4. Some of Jesus’ parables seem to want to get a chuckle. Both Henry Ward Beecher and Charles Finney were humorists in the pulpit. William Willimon, in the Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching, argues that humor can assist the preacher in “taking God a little more seriously and ourselves a little less so.” Charles Campbell and Johann Cilliers, in their wonderful new book Preaching Fools: The Gospel as a Rhetoric of Folly, argue that laughter can be, in fact, a socially and politically subversive activity in the pulpit.

It seems to me that humor has several homiletical advantages:

1) it connects the preacher and the audience. There’s nothing like sharing a good laugh to put us all in the same boat.

2) it “breaks the ice” and puts the audience at ease.

3) it can promote authenticity – taking ourselves with a grain of salt, in order to shift the focus onto God.

4) it can help us subvert the status quo – showing the seams and edges, and even the dark underbelly of many of the sinful systems that enslave us.

Several potential problems seem to accompany humor in the pulpit, however.

1) it can focus too much attention on the preacher who is trying to communicate (sometimes desperately): “Look, I’m a funny, likable person!”

2) it can be forced – unnatural to the preacher’s own personality and style. This is especially true when stock jokes are told.

3) it can work at odds with the purposes of Christian communication – shifting the genre of communication to “barroom banter,” or “office party,” or “comedy club routine.”

4) it can dislocate the sermon’s “point.” We’re so busy laughing and sharing a good mutual “wink,”  that we forget what the message is about.

When humor is not used for its own sake, however, and is relevant to the idea being expressed, it can have tremendous communicative power. And when it is used well in preaching it expresses the shared humility of both preacher and listener before a God who topples all of our self-serious agendas.

For more on this topic, and 143 other homiletical topics, see my book Preaching Words: 144 Key Terms in Homiletics. 

Epiphany as Sermon Form

03 Thursday Jan 2013

Posted by in Musings, Views from the Street

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How does one preach “epiphany” in an “epiphany-like” way? And how does a preacher keep epiphany alive throughout the year in one’s preaching?

Epiphany, in one translation, means “manifestation.” It is the manifestation or  “showing forth” of God’s glory and divinity in Jesus Christ. The word also translates as a sudden insight into the essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some ordinary occurrence or experience. Epiphanic truth, therefore, is truth that arrives as a sudden insight. It is the endpoint of significant delay, and is the hidden object of great anticipation. And its arrival is unexpected because it is not grand and overstated,  but shows itself within the ordinary stuff of life – like a child in a manger.

Many of the best sermons are “epiphanic.” They delay the arrival of the sermon’s meaning or deepest “truth,” and then, within the anticipation established by that delay, “manifest” that truth by means of the ordinary – in an image of grace, mercy, hope in spite of despair, love, or joy within the fabric of everyday life.

Eugene Lowry’s “homiletical plot” is one such sermon form. In 1980 Eugene L. Lowry published a very popular little book entitled The Homiletical Plot: The Sermon as Narrative Art Form. In this book, he created what is now commonly known as the Lowry Loop to describe the way that a simple narrative plot functions in a sermon. The first part of the loop involves upsetting the equilibrium. An enigma is presented that energizes the sermon’s forward movement: something is wrong that needs fixing, something is out of balance that needs restoration, something is missing that needs finding, something is confusing that needs clarification, etc. This problem is deepened in the second, and downward part of the loop, called analyzing the discrepancy. Like a good plot line, the sermon goes deeper into the problem at hand, complicating the issue and creating a heightened concern among listeners. At this point, the sermon reaches the bottom of the loop in which the preacher discloses the clue to resolution. This is the decisive turning point in the plot. The gospel brings a reversal or “aha” that begins to move the loop upward toward resolution. This, in effect, is the “epiphany” or manifestation of gospel truth that is the heart of the sermon. This “clue” is often taken from ordinary human experience – a picture of “God with us.” From here the sermon moves upward in the fourth part of the loop, experiencing the gospel. The preacher fleshes out the good news of the gospel and its meaning. Finally, at the end of the loop, the sermon helps the congregation anticipate the consequences. The preacher unpacks fully the implications of the sermon’s message for the living of life. In order the help preachers remember each aspect of the loop, Lowry created a little memory device for each part of the loop: Oops!, Ugh!, Aha!, Whee!, and Yeah! The “Aha!”  is the epiphany at the heart of the sermon.

Another epiphany-form is parable. Parabolic communication is designed to introduce as an “epiphany” some form of contradiction and unexpected irresolution where reconciliation and order are otherwise assumed. According to John Dominic Crossan, parable is the polar opposite of myth and functions as an agent of deconstruction, interruption, and change. Many parables take what listeners expect to hear and reverse it. In this form of communication, therefore, the epiphany in the sermon is some form of reversal of listener expectation. For instance, in the New Testament story of the Pharisee and the publican we assume that the original listener expected the Pharisee’s prayer to be accepted by God and the publican’s to be rejected. In the story, however, the opposite occurs, opening the story to new meanings. Epiphany within parabolic preaching is iconoclastic, introducing contradictions or unexpected tensions where none previously existed.

So, how does one preach “epiphany” in an “epiphany-like” way? In two ways, mainly. First, by acting like a storyteller and delaying the arrival of one’s “meaning” in the sermon – and allowing it to arrive as a “clue” embedded within the ordinary fabric of human life. Second, by interrupting and reversing listener expectations; showing how God’s ways cannot be “storied” at all, but often arrive in entirely unexpected and counter-intuitive ways.

Preaching and Penn-Gate

14 Monday Nov 2011

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The allegations of childhood sexual abuse at Penn State last week call for a response from the pulpit. The statistics are clear: one in three girls and one in seven boys are sexually molested before the age of eighteen. If one adds the striking numbers of those who are experiencing domestic violence, the situation looks even worse. This means that most congregations have many members and visitors who are survivors of childhood sexual abuse and/or domestic violence. At that same time, if statistics are correct, many congregations unknowingly harbor perpetrators of sexual or domestic violence. And to make matters worse, as the Penn State situation suggests, our congregations are certainly replete with bystanders – those who are potentially part of the larger “culture of complicity” that prefers silence on these matters, moves perpetrators from one place to another unchecked, and, in worse case scenarios blames victims and survivors.

Some years back, pastoral theologian Nancy Ramsay and I co-edited a book entitled Telling the Truth: Preaching About Sexual and Domestic Violence. The book, originally published with the United Church Press (Pilgrim) is now available free as a pdf file from Google Books. Here are just a few thoughts taken from that book.

First of all, it is important to remember that we have three audiences when it comes to sexual violence: (1) victims and survivors, (2) perpetrators, and (3) bystanders. The bottom line, then, is that we must preach, over time, three fundamental messages.

  • Message One to Victims and Survivors. To victims and survivors we preach words of welcome, which includes words that listen, lament, resist, seek justice, offer compassion, and convey hope. Victims and survivors need to know that our worship services and sermons are safe holding environments for their pain and suffering. They need to know that their innermost selves, often haunted by shame, fear, helplessness, and sometimes hopelessness are welcome, heard, and honored. They need to feel genuine solidarity, not only in suffering, but in resistance, the struggle for justice, and the difficult process of re-creating lives that have been de-created by violence.
  • Message Two to Perpetrators. For perpetrators, we preach clarity. The goal is to assess with stark clarity the damage that they do, and to state in no uncertain terms that the damage cannot be undone. Nothing they can ever do can restore fully what their victims have lost. No rationalization or self-deception is possible. This is not so much the voice of judgment or condemnation as it is the voice of clarity. Even if we hope in our heart of hearts for eventual transformation for perpetrators, there must be no cracks through which they can slip as they listen to our sermons. Only this kind of preaching brings the possibility of genuine self-confrontation that could, perhaps, lead to change.
  • Message Three to Bystanders. To bystanders, we preach breaking ranks with the status quo. Listeners can be encouraged to bind their allegiance to a higher authority than the culture of complicity around them, and to make clear decisions to speak up and speak out in situations of known or suspected sexual violence. They can also be invited to re-create their church as a genuinely safe place and become a force for resistance, justice, compassion, and healing.

Here are a few more homiletical encouragements:

  • I encourage us to avoid the isolated sermon on this subject, to build messages to these different audiences into the fabric of many sermons on a variety of subjects, including sermons on human sexuality, creation in the image of God, justice, compassion, family relationships, marriage, forgiveness, judgment, hope, power, healing, anger, relationships, and violence. It is not always possible or advisable to address all three of these audiences simultaneously. Over time, however, it is crucial to do so.
  • I encourage us to develop a consistently nonviolent theology. A nonviolent theology is a theology in which violence is clearly identified as evil and in which, in the last analysis, neither the ways of God toward people nor the ways of God’s people toward others are implicitly or explicitly violent. By saying “in the last analysis,” I mean to imply that we do not remain unaware of and uncritical of the biblical tradition’s collusion with the violence that we, as interpreters, ultimately refute. We cannot avoid the “texts of terror” in the Bible or the entire violence-laden sacrificial system that undergirds much of the Old and New Testaments.
  • I encourage us to examine our illustrations for subtle ideologies that are complicit with violence and abuse. Many illustrations encourage family roles, relationships, gender stereotypes and attitudes that subtly feed violent or abusive attitudes.
  • I encourage us to avoid illustrations that place the experience of sexual violence “out there.” Statistics, and references to “Penn State” or “the Catholic sex scandal” have the effect of turning our gaze outward and away from the reality of sexual violence in our own midst. Brief narratives that particularize rape or battering as an everyday occurrence in a world identical to that of our congregation will underscore that this problem is immediate and “in our midst.”
  • I encourage us to use language that names sexual violence appropriately as a sin of volition. Carol J. Adams invites us to avoid “eliding agency” when speaking about abuse. We subtly let people off the hook when we only speak about “violent relationships,” “incestuous families,” or “battering couples.” Better to say “when a man molests a child…,” or “when a man batters his wife…,” or “for abusive men….” This may sound terrible to our ears, but this is precisely the reason for such language – to make us aware of the terror we are naming.
  • Finally, I encourage us to develop a delivery that is non-violent. There is a cartoon in which a preacher is in a tall pulpit hovering over the first few pews, ranting and raving like a barely chained beast. About four pews back, a young child is whispering to his mother;” What are we going to do if he gets out of there?!” The cartoon identifies another way in which the church and its preaching can be unwittingly complicit with violence. Our nonverbal communication often conveys messages that can be abusive and prevent those who have been abused from seeking our help. Why would a victim or survivor of violence seek help from a violent communicator? I’m not asking us to take the energy from our delivery. Just to assess it for messages portraying hostility, manipulation, or coercion.

There are many other aspects of this topic: the need to create a community of education and accountability around sexual violence within our congregations, the need to develop our own clear sexual boundaries as a part of our own professional ethics as clergy, the need to develop and create pastoral and theological resources around these realities in our midst. Again, for much more on these topics the reader may want to read chapters from John S. McClure and Nancy Ramsay (ed.), Telling the Truth: Preaching About Sexual and Domestic Violence.

Don’t Re-hash the Bible. Exposit or Interpret it.

11 Friday Nov 2011

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In my previous post, I focused briefly on sermons that incorporate “wind-ups” that actually “wind-down” sermons. I asserted that one such wind-down occurs when the preacher begins the sermon by re-hashing the biblical text. I made it clear that by “re-hashing” I was referring to a non-interpretive, non-expository walk through the text – sort of a “tour-guide” approach, pointing out this over here, and that over there as we go, providing more background for this, identifying the original significance of that for the ancient community. The kind of thing one finds in a good non-thematic, verse-by-verse Bible commentary.

A shift toward exposition, however, will put the preacher into a slightly different posture – one that allows the text to interpret us. Theologian Karl Barth was a proponent of this approach. According to Barth:

“I have not to talk about scripture but from it. I have not to say something, but merely repeat something. If God alone wants to speak in a sermon, neither theme nor scopus should get in the way….Our task is simply to follow the distinctive movement of thought in the text, to stay with this, and not with a plan that arises out of it.”

Barth’s approach is not far from “re-hashing.” Those who know Barth’s theology will know that he’s worried about too much interpretive intervention by the preacher. He seems to want something fairly close to simply repeating the text. Notice, however, his reference to the ‘movement of thought’ in the text. This is crucial. The preacher doesn’t just “walk through” the text, but does so, over the course of the entire sermon, in a way that helps the listener discover how thought moves in the text, how the semantic motion within the text captures our thinking and re-shapes it in some way.

A shift toward interpretation (hermeneutic) will put the preacher in yet another posture – one that interprets the text by moving the listeners attention toward a particular aspect or dimension of the text in order to draw out a particular meaning for today. In this regard, I posted a few weeks back on five “places” to find a sermon in relation to biblical texts. Each approach assumes that sermon listeners are invited to take a particular perspective or angle of vision on the text. Is the preacher drawing my attention to some analogy to my life in the text (place 1), to a profound historical continuity between Matthew’s church and our church (place 2), to the way the language works and wants to shape us (place 3), to a timeless theological truth (place four), or to a hidden trajectory of meaning we could never have seen, if it weren’t for what’s happening right now in our church or world (place 5). No matter which of these interpretive models is at work, the biblical text will be heard in its fullness, but from a particular hermeneutical perspective.

Re-hashing gives the sermon listener little or nothing of either exposition or interpretation. Re-hashing is largely movement-of-thought-less, and perspective-less, and leaves the listener groping for an angle of vision on the text. When this occurs listeners will provide several of their own…or just check out altogether for lack of focus and direction from the preacher. From great biblical preachers you’ll always hear the text (its content, world, context), but from a particular perspective – one charged with theological meaning and energy.

Some of us are correctly concerned that our listeners don’t get to hear the biblical text often. In a biblically illiterate world, it is natural to feel that by repeating the text in slow motion, we create a better opportunity to hear Scripture and let it soak in.

I have two things to say to this. First, we need to counter the assumption that “front-loading” scripture is the best way to get the text heard. With most biblical texts there’s a lot going on – a lot to take in and process! For the sake of both memory and understanding, it is better to introduce the biblical text in dynamic ways throughout the sermon. Each movement of thought in a sermon can capture some aspect of the text and bring it to life – creating a picture of the whole. For the biblical preacher, there shouldn’t be a single thought communicated that can’t be pegged to something in, under, behind, or in front of the biblical text. We can allow our listeners to re-hear the text dynamically throughout the sermon, instead of at the beginning only. Here’s a picture of this:

Sequence 1 Sequence 2 Sequence 3 Sequence 4
Theology
Message
Experience
Scripture

In this model, each sequence of thought in a sermon contains four things (see The Four Codes of Preaching): 1) a biblical warrant (again, see the five places to get a sermon), 2) a message to our listeners, 3) theological shaping, and 4) some kind of experiential connection or illustration. In this way, scripture is heard strongly throughout the sermon.

Second, we need to work on interpretive reading. If a unit of scripture is read aloud in worship service each week, we can work hard to make it a dynamic, energized, and interpretive reading – one that accents and emphasizes those elements in the text that will be crucial for the sermon. If we are those who read the text aloud, we can provide clues regarding what to listen for and how to hear the text. If we use lay readers, we can work with them each week to insure that this is occurring. A good reading should stand alone, and will do far more than a tour of the text to bring the Bible alive in the hearing of listeners. Even an intervening children’s sermon or anthem between scripture reading and sermon will not dull the impact of Scripture well-read!

Please Tear Your Sermon in Half!

04 Friday Nov 2011

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Ok. Maybe not exactly in half. But I’ve listened to lots of sermons over the years, and I’m worried about the way we begin sermons. I have to say that about three fourths of these sermons would be dramatically improved if the preacher started about two pages (or about 3-5 minutes) into the sermon. I don’t know what it is, but most of us love the “wind-up” not realizing that we are not baseball pitchers; sermon wind-ups are usually sermon “wind-downs.” Here are the most common “wind-up/wind-downs.”

  1. Re-hashing the biblical text. The preacher in this mode drags the listener through a long, expanded, or “imaginative” re-hashing of the text. No. This is not an exposition or interpretation. I’m speaking about a non-interpretive re-hashing of the bits and pieces of the text. Sometimes this never ends and lasts the entire sermon. The preacher forgets to have anything to say to us – or what is commonly called a “message,” and seems to assume that we’ll “get it” if we hear the old, old story re-iterated.
  2. The sermon “set-up.” In this mode, the preacher spends a few minutes exegetically framing the biblical text – providing what the preacher considers useful background information – some interesting tid-bits, mostly exegetical by-products.
  3. Touring the cutting room floor – In this approach, the preacher tells us how he or she arrived at this message – strolling us around the room and pointing out all of the fascinating options left behind on the cutting room floor.
  4. Climbing to higher ground. In this mode, the preacher tells the listener all of the ways she or he has heard this text preached in the past – leading us to the superior ground of their own interpretation.
  5. The rapport story. In this mode, the preacher decides to tell a personal story. This is not a story told about someone or something else, narrated through the lens of the preacher’s experience, but a story about the preacher’s experience (of self, other, family, sports, memory, life, etc.). This story might contain a catchy thematic hook designed to capture our interest. Often, the story goes on interminably. No matter what they are supposed to be illustrating, these wind-up stories seem to be saying something else, namely: “Welcome to my world – please like me and be my friend while I preach this sermon.” When this occurs over and over, genuine sermon content is sacrificed to a rather contrived rapport-building exercise. 
  6. The message grope – In my experience this is the most common “wind-up/wind-down.” When beginning to write the sermon the preacher didn’t really have a clue what to say. The preacher just started writing or speaking, hoping a message would pop out. By the time a message finally arrived, several minutes had been wasted groping one’s way toward it, and most of the energy of the sermon had evaporated. For whatever reason, rather than removing this material, it is kept.

Anton Chekov’s famous advice to writers comes immediately to mind: “Tear out the first half of your story; you’ll only have to change a few things in the beginning of the second half and the story will be perfectly clear.” This is serious and solid advice for many preachers. Once we’ve written the sermon, or organized it and preached it through a few times extemporaneously, it is a good idea to ask ourselves whether, in fact, the sermon would be better if we started it further in – on page two or three. If we did this on a regular basis, I believe we’d avoid many of the “wind-up/wind-downs” that currently sap the energy at the beginnings of our sermons.