Painting a Story (part 3)

If reading helps us to see the story, then writing helps us to communicate the story. Generally I find that I have more to say than I should. What I mean is that if I have done my work in the study well, it has provided me with much more information than I have time to impart in a 30- to 40-minute sermon.

This is where writing comes in. Writing will help keep the preacher on task. It will help him or her craft the sermon in such a way that keeps the main idea front and center.

As I write, I will generally pick an unusual entry point into the text and frame the sermon from an uncommon perspective:

• Gabriel looking through Mary’s window before he makes the announcement of the Savior’s birth (Luke 1).
• Bartholomew as he watches the exchange between Thomas and the risen Christ (John 20:28).
• The events of the passion and crucifixion from the perspective of Peter lying alone with his thoughts pre-dawn on Sunday morning.

These small excursions into what the setting and scene may have been like can serve as powerful communicative tools as we paint the story for our hearers.

We must certainly be careful that we don’t say too much or speculate too wildly. That is why such thorough historical, theological, and textual research must go into our narrative sermons. We must also be cautious about coming up with new information from these familiar texts. Heresy certainly makes for interesting preaching, but it is still heresy.