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Every church building is a repository of stories which are lived out by people, told and retold again and again. They are stories of the encounter between God and his people in and through Jesus Christ. The great cathedrals of Europe have always had stories told in them and about the people who built, supported, and worshiped in them. The Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris has contributed its share of such stories to the literature of the church and the world and, specifically, to preaching.

In the middle of the thirteenth century, while Notre Dame was still under construction, a storyteller named Rutebeuf - "Rough Ox" - acted out one of his tales for the congregation - this one a retelling of the ancient story of Theophilus cast in the mold of a miracle play. It was especially appropriate for the Church of Our Lady because, through a "miracle of miracles," she accomplished the defeat of Satan and the subsequent release of Theophile, as he was named at that time, from the clutches of the Devil.

Rutebeuf could be a comic, a clown, or one who would cajole the audience, but in "one matter Reutebeuf was serious to the point of gravity: his belief in Mary." He was convinced that she had the power to work miracles and, especially, to defeat Satan. His play was really a statement of his faith in God through the work of the Virgin Mary. At the close of the play, the restored Theophilus is "perched on the edge of his (bishop's) throne as he speaks:

Hear, for the sake of God, Mary's Son,
Good people, the true-life lesson
of Theophile,
Whom the Enemy tricked by guile.
As clear as Blessed Evangel
Is this thing.
Immaculate Virgin Mary
Saved him from such a quandary.
And now for this delivery,
Let us all rise,
Singing: "O Lord to Thee our Praise."1

Allen Temko, who recreated and retells this story, imagines that "Notre Dame echoed triumphant music, taking it upward in buttress and arch, and through the transept spire to Heaven. The Church became a great Te Deum in itself."

This story is connected to an earlier tale of how St. Dominic Domingo de Guzman "prayed passionately to Mary shortly after 1200, at the time St. Francis was preaching to the birds at Assisi." According to the story, "in a blinding flash of light,"

the image on the altar came to life, as it did in the play for Theophile. The Virgin opened a Bible and gave Dominic the text for his sermon. Whereupon the founder of the Dominican Order made his way back through the sanctuary, past the tombs of prelates and princes, including the gilded copper sarcophagus of Eudes de Sully (bishop of Paris at the time construction began on Notre Dame,), to the entrance of the choir to address the people in the nave.2

And so the Dominican Order, the great preaching order of the Roman Catholic Church, was born through - and has been, to some extent, perpetuated by - an encounter-story.

Domingo must have made at least a portion of that sermon into a personal narrative, which he told over and over to clergy and laity alike. He might have said, "The Virgin, just now in a vision, gave me this text. Here's how it happened ..." - and a narrative sermon, in part, at least, came into being. That story must have been as moving an experience for the congregation that day as was Rutebeuf's play about the Virgin Mary some sixty years later. Narrative preaching received fresh stimulus through St. Dominic's experience, based on the Word of God and not simply upon the mystical experience of the founder of the Dominican Order. The Dominicans today, with most of the liturgical churches of Christendom, base their sermons on a system - the church year and lectionary - that selects lessons for worship and preaching.

The Lectionary: Selections from the Story

When the New Testament books were written down and used in worship along with the Old Testament, the Bible was read as a story within a calendar year. Genesis 1 was read on Septuagesima Sunday and continued to be read in the daily worship until it was completed. Exodus and the other books followed until the entire Bible was read during the year. That method of reading Scripture gave way by the Middle Ages to the pericope/church year system of assigning texts to Sundays and festivals. The current lectionary scheme combines both methods for reading the Bible in public worship; three of the four Gospels are read as continuing stories in a semicontinuous manner, and the epistles follow the same plan for most of the year. The Old Testament lections are selected to harmonize with the Gospel for the Day* (* A proposed "Common Lectionary" would change the character of Old Testament readings, allowing them to stand independent of the gospel readings.) and most of them, like the gospels, are stories of the faith - how God has dealt with his creation and his children, and how they have reacted to him and to each other.

The lectionary ought to be thought of as the "story book of the church," particularly in conjunction with the gospels. On Sundays and the festivals of the year the Story of Jesus is read as the climactic scripture reading of the day or feast. Arndt Halvorson, a coileaque, stated in an unpublished lecture: "Through the big Story God entered the world; through the little stories God entered our lives."3 The "big Story" of the redeeming events initiated by the Father in Christ is read on the principal festivals of the Christian calendar; the "little stories" (in the pericopes) are read on the Sundays of the year. Through the reading of the Bible in this way the "story of Jesus" - the gospel - is thrust into a primary role in Christian worship. The most important parts of the Story are read over a three-year period, and then are repeated again in this ongoing three-year cycle of scripture readings. The worship of the church, the preaching of the Word, and the faith of the people rest firmly on the Holy Scriptures rather than on contemporary topics or tradition. The lectionary insists that Christian worship must be biblical.

The great festivals of Christ - Christmas, Easter, Pentecost - are shaped by the stories that are read as they are anticipated and celebrated. The beloved stories about the birth of Jesus, his life, ministry, suffering and death, and resurrection generate wonder and excitement among the listeners when they are read in proper sequence during the year. The story they tell has power inherent in it - sometimes even without preaching - to evoke faith and trust in God. That power has been experienced by untold numbers of people who have read the Story for themselves, and when the Story is read aloud in a Christian assembly - as it is meant to be read - the impact is just as great, or greater. The "old, old Story" retains its ability to move people to repentance and faith.

The genius of the lectionary is that the first and second lessons, as well as the Holy Gospel, were chosen for their "gospel content" rather than for doctrinal foundations or ethical emphases. Luther understood gospel this way, especially in connection with the whole Testament. In his A Brief Instruction on What to Look For and Expect in the Gospels, he wrote:

It is a common practice to number the gospels and to name them by books and say that there are four gospels. From this practice stems the fact that no one knows what St. Paul and St. Peter are saying in their epistles, and their teaching is regarded as an addition to the gospels ... One should thus realize that there is only one gospel, but that it is described by many apostles. Every single epistle of Paul and of Peter, as well as the Acts of the Apostles by Luke, is a gospel, even though they do not record all the works and words of Christ, but one is shorter and includes less than another. There is not one of the four major gospels anyway that includes all the words and works of Christ; nor is this necessary.4

In another writing, Prefaces to the New Testament, he adds: "Therefore it should be known ... that the notion must be given up that there are four gospels and only four evangelists ... so the New Testament is a book in which are written the gospel and the promises of God, together with a history of those who believe and of those who do not believe them."5

For Luther, the Old Testament was not gospel, but a "book in which are written God's laws and commandments, together with a history of those who kept and of those who did not keep them ..."6 Luther might not accept the concept of gospel in the Old Testament, because he applies the term strictly to Christ, and he might not be pleased with the "Year of Matthew," "Year of Mark," "Year of Luke" arrangement in view of his opinion about the value of those three gospels over against the Gospel of John and the epistles of St. Peter and St. Paul,7 but he would be pleased with that fact that John is the most used New Testament book in the "consensus lectionary" and that Romans is the work among the epistles most often employed as a second lesson. He believed that these two books told the story of Christ - the gospel - better than any of the other books of the New Testament. Luther will never allow us to forget that the gospel is the story - and only one story - about Jesus Christ. The three-year lectionary we use, even though of Roman Catholic origin, attests to the enduring value of Luther's opinion in regard to the church's public worship, especially regarding scripture reading and preaching.

The Lectionary and the Liturgy

The genius of the liturgy as it employs the lectionary (and church year) in worship is that by highlighting the reading of one of the four gospels the entire service of worship becomes Christ-centered. And the liturgy does this by making the Gospel for the Day the chief lesson; it is always read as the third lesson, the "dominant" lesson of the liturgical occasion. And while the first lesson always is meant to harmonize with the theme of the gospel, during approximately thirty-five percent to forty percent of the year (Advent, Christmas, Lent, Easter, and all festivals), first and second lessons "graduate" into the gospel. Thus the life of Jesus Christ, from before his birth to his ascension, is reviewed and his Story is retold by the readings (and sermons) and at least part of the Story is reenacted every Sunday in the Eucharist. "Our job, as preachers," says Arndt Halvorson, "is to help people see the big Story in the light of the little portion of it, the pericopes."8 Thus, the perspective from which we proclaim any of the lessons in the lectionary is kergymatic.

Simply because the liturgy recognizes that the gospel is a story, not merely a "third lesson" (the formula for introducing the gospel is always "Holy Gospel" and never "lesson"), it seems to be reminding preachers that preaching is always telling the Story and not teaching a lesson. Thus, the liturgy informs the preacher about the form best suited to the proclamation of the person and work of Jesus Christ, the biblical story sermon rather than other types of biblical sermons. Many preachers take for granted that the best shape for biblical preaching is the expository sermon without realizing that at least five types of expository sermon-shapes are in existence and used by various preachers. Evidence in printed sermons and conversations with numerous pastors indicate they choose the expository style because it seems best suited for teaching from the pulpit. "After all," a great number asks, "if I don't teach on Sunday morning, when will I be able to reach the greatest number of my people?" They assume that the lessons of the lectionary should be taught, not simply told.

But preachers ought not make hasty decisions about using didactic sermon shapes simply on the basis of homiletical theory; they need to take the revised liturgy, as well as the lectionary, into consideration, remembering that the first half of the liturgy, which is often called "the Office of the Word," is different from the missa catechumenorum (which Luther inherited and reformed in the sixteenth century). Today's liturgy calls for announcement of the Word, proclamation of the gospel, or preaching the Story of Jesus, and not for pulpit-teaching of the Bible. Preachers ought also to realize that didactic preaching is always risky business, difficult to do well under most circumstances. Too many preachers are locked into this type of preaching, according to Richard Jensen, who observes: "Ninety percent of the preaching I hear and probably ninety percent of the preaching that I have done is essentially didactic in character ... What I would like to maintain is that didactic preaching dOminates the present homiletical world ..."9

Jensen has developed what he calls "Gutenberg homiletics" to point out the characteristics in didactic preaching that call for other types of sermons. These are:

1. The goal of preaching is to teach the lessons of the text.

2. In order to teach the lessons or meaning of the text, the points to be made are usually abstracted from the text.

3. The sermon is aimed primarily at the hearer's mind.

4. The sermon is developed in a logical, sequential and linear manner.

5. The sermon is prepared under the criteria for written material.

6. The faith engerdered in the hearer is "faith" that the ideas are true.10

His goal is to encourage didactic preachers to rethink their preaching methodology so that they change to an oral style that will radically alter the shape of their sermons. His goal is to convince preachers to attempt - occasionally, at least - to prepare and preach story sermons.

The liturgy, by its very nature, suggests that liturgical sermons ought to be clear, and uncomplicated, and uncluttered - like a good story. The whole liturgy is constructed around Jesus and his story, not around the concept of a "worship experience." The reading and preaching of the Word are intended to reach us where we are, convict us, turn us to Christ and edify us, and send us to the table where he is host, renewing our baptismal covenant in his Body and Blood and reconciling us to God our Father. The Eucharist is a sacrament, not a seance. It gives us the opportunity to participate in Jesus' story in our Christian assembly and liturgy instead of simply listening to a sermon, making our offering, lifting our prayers to God, and, perhaps, going on our way rejoicing. When the sermon tells the Story, there is a good chance that the response, especially in the Holy Communion, will be immediate participation in the life offered by the risen Christ.

James W. Cox is right when he states that the renewal in worship has made an impact upon preaching that calls for change in the shape of the sermon;

If the worship setting is agreeable, the sermon may be monologue, a dialogue, a trialogue, a drama, a film, a multi-media presentation, or some other form of preaching that answers to a need. In fact, the very style of the liturgy may dictate the form of the sermon.11

He parallels Richard Jensen's concern for change and variety in the form of the sermon:

I am pleased when I hear of a preacher who seeks and can find opportunities to do something different - so different that he can break through the crust of indifference that characterizes so many gospel-hardened worshipers. 12

The style of the Sunday liturgy - the Eucharist - does not encourage as much experimentation in sermon-shaping as Cox might like to see preachers attempt. The eucharistic liturgy employed by many churches on Sundays suggests, if it does not "dictate," some kind of a story sermon in the preaching. Liturgy, lectionary, plus the church year, when they are considered as a "kerygmatic combination" that informs preachers about the proclamation of the gospel, call for biblical preaching that tells the Story and, through our "little stories," involves us in it.

Worship and the Church Year

The proclamation of the gospel inspires the song that God's people sing, as Luther and others have noted, and which has taken the shape that we call liturgy. One liturgical element - the church year - serves both worship and preaching as it signals presider and preacher - and the people - concerning the biblical orientation of celebration and proclamation. Frequently called the calendar of the church, it enables the church to "tell time" from the perspective of what God has done in the world - and what he does now and will do in the future - in Jesus Christ. Structured as it is about the major events in the life of Jesus Christ - the kerygma, as C. H. Dodd called them - the church (or Christian) year might be called the kerygmatic timepiece of the Christian Church. It reminds God's faithful people about extraordinary moments in time, but it also establishes a rhythm of worship in ordinary time which creates a "flow of time" - chronos - from past to present to the "last things" within the plan of God. Rachel Reeder, in an issue of Liturgy devoted to the calendar, writes:

We live between two ages always, and the seasons are always changing, but they, and we, are centered in the mystery of redemption. That is our point of equilibrium; the father of Jesus is the Lord of Time. Let there be no mistake - we cannot live the struggles of yesterday's church and saints, but we can share the intensity of the desire to find a meaning, purpose, and style of life that will survive the risks of evil and sin.13

The calendar zeroes in on the new creation God began when the Kingdom of God broke into time. It fills us with hope because the fulness of that Kingdom is yet to come through the return and triumphant reign of Jesus Christ.

Rachel Reeder almost understates the case when she comments: "It takes only a few minutes to read the general norms on the church year in the new worship books; it will take much longer to realize their depth."14 As a calendar it directs the church when - and what - to celebrate in its life in Christ. As a hermeneutical framework formed about the lectionary and the liturgy, it insists on theological interpretation of those gospel events that are celebrated. We begin to plumb the depths of the church year when the birth of Christ is put forth as incarnation, when his death and resurrection are pictured - especially in preaching - as redemption and justification, when his ascension and promised return are interpreted as glorification and parousia. The hermeneutical framework, ultimately, is eschatological, especially in the liturgy as a "foretaste of the feast to come" and "a proclamation of his death until he comes again."

The church year discourages preaching within the liturgy to be an exercise in exegesis or Bible study that attempts to take the hearers back to another time and place and locates the religious experience of people today in the past. Gerard S. Sloyan insists on an eschatological stance in liturgical preaching:

Appeals to the past (in liturgy and proclamation,) as such, even the sacred past, are so much lost time. The mood must always be contemporary if it is to succeed ... even in the most traditional religious cultures ... Relevance has to do with what applies properly to the matter at hand ...

He adds, "The liturgy, the preaching that looks to yesterday and backward and not to today and forward is archaeology; a symphony of dead forms."15 And so, the church year, properly understood, establishes and maintains an eschatological "mood," as Sloyan would likely call it, for both worship and preaching. Unless preaching, in particular, is cast in this eschatological dimension when the gospel-story is told, there is little point in preaching at all in a world like ours. The end of the Story is yet to be told - by God and in Christ - but it has been promised, and it will surely come at the appointed time.

The Church Year and Planning One's Preaching

One of the blessings of the ecumenical lectionary is that sermon planning and preparation have been given new impetus. Denominational and interdenominational lectionary study groups have sprung up in numerous committees; pastors study the Sunday pericopes a week or two before they will be read in worship and employed as preaching texts. This means that there is long-term hope for the future of the Christian Church; when pastors study God's Word together, feasting upon the story of his faithfulness and grace, allowing Christ and the Spirit to instruct them, they just might discover their unity in Christ and his church. But the immediate results will be evident in the sermons that they are preaching; regarding content, at least, the preaching in liturgically-oriented churches has to be improving, and we can hope it will continue to improve.

Whether or not preachers participate in homiletical study groups, each preacher still has to prepare his or her own sermon and preach it. Lectionary or nonlectionary related preaching, to be effective, requires some sort of Sunday-to-Sunday procedure, or system, that takes advantage of time available each day of the week. The systematic use of time for sermon preparation is critical in sermon planning and production, and there simply is not enough time to prepare during the week if the preacher does not have a preaching system to follow. Preachers may belong to lectionary study groups, but they still have to do their own hard work and that begins with the reading of the Sunday texts - as a story - allowing the gospel story to come to life in the mind and heart. Each preacher has to do that in private, in the study. Arndt Halvorson adds his voice to that of Donald Miller, Andrew Blackwood and other homileticians when he insists:

So our first step in the sermon is to read the text - in English. Don't begin as an historical, grammatical, literary, theological researcher. Neither begin as a contemporary sociologist and psychologist. Begin the task as a human being who happens to be living in the early twilight of the twentieth century, who now must deal with these words as if they made the difference between life and death. So read, read, and re-read the text.16

It was this type of study of the Scriptures, according to Andrew Blackwood, that transformed Thomas Chalmers from an ordinary to an extraordinary proclaimer of the Word.

In the first six years or so of his parish ministry, Chalmers gave no promise of becoming an outstanding preacher. He had a friend, John, who visited him quite often and said to him one day, "Whenever I come (to see you), you are always busy but not with your preparations for the Sabbath." To which Chalmers replied, "An hour or two on the Saturday eve is quite enough for that." But then Chalmers began to preach with power; with Luther he had discovered the Bible and had begun really to explore it. After this change had taken place in Chalmer's preaching ministry, his friend John observed: "Now, sir, whenever I come, I always find you at your Bible." And Chalmers is reported to have said, "All too little, John. All too little."17

Halvorson gives some excellent advice to preachers on how they ought to read the biblical texts as preaching texts in a section of his book, Authentic Preaching. He believes that the preacher should read the text "as if it were a clue to the whole story. Read it as a detective who has found a relevant but unclear scrap of paper in the wastebasket of the dead person's room." The text ought to be read "for its concreteness," "with reverence," "as the symbol you have to make room for in your imagination," "as a story - or part of a story," "for the tone of the discourse," and "as one involved in it personally." After this approach to beginning the sermon - and only after this advice - does Professor Halvorson proceed to the other matters involved in preparing the sermon, "from text to sermon."18

Homiletical Planning

The church-year pericope system takes us to another level of dealing with the lectionary texts - reading and planning one's preaching from the perspective of the Christian year; this gives an additional dimension to one's sermon preparation. Good sermons take time to germinate, to grow, and to mature. Andrew Blackwood believed that effective preaching could only be achieved through long-term planning and effort through the use of what he called "a sermonic seed plot" - a protracted preaching plan. He taught a course in "Planning the Year's Pulpit Work" - and wrote extensively about it. He believed that such planning is of utmost importance in the parish homiletical process. I fully concur with him and others who have seen the wisdom of such preaching procedures.

The church year offers preachers an almost ready-made, long-term plan for one's preaching ministry. The three cycles and six seasons, together with the greater and lesser festivals, situate sermon planning and production in a broader perspective than is possible if the preacher works only on a week-by-week, or Sunday-to-Sunday basis. It encourages preachers to work within the scope of the whole Story before dealing with portions of it as the Lectionary excises them and appoints them to the Sundays and festivals of the year. It urges preachers to read all of the lessons of the year before - preferably long before - the First Sunday in Advent. It intimates that the "gospel of the year" should be read through, perhaps at one reading - and at least a second time - before the critical work of exegesis and the tedious business of preparing the weekly sermons begin. The church year is a ready-made "sermonic seed plot" whose soil is rich beyond compare because that soil is the sacred Scriptures that culminate in the story of Jesus Christ.

Planning by the Cycles

The church year has a plan-within-a-plan built into it that can be of considerable assistance to preachers as they attempt to develop a long-term plan. It is in the two sanctoral cycles, Christmas and Easter, and the long temporal cycle, Pentecost. By dividing the Pentecost season into a summer portion and a fall section - for planning purposes - preachers avail themselves of what amounts to a four-cycle system for sermon planning and sermon production. The system accommodates worship planning, as well.

Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany constitute the Christmas cycle. Since Advent is always a season of four Sundays' duration and the Christmas season is twelve days long, the addition of the old gesima Sundays to Epiphany creates a cycle that is approximately three months in length. In some years the cycle will be exactly thirteen weeks long, but it will always be approximately one quarter of the calendar year. But more important, if preachers plan their sermons for the entire cycle rather than for one Sunday at a time or even for a season, the themes of their preaching ministry will be coordinated with each other and reflect the motifs of the church as well.

Lent and Easter are always thirteen weeks in length; Lent includes six Sundays (six and a half weeks from Ash Wednesday to Holy Saturday), and Easter always has seven weeks in its season. This never varies; the Easter cycle is always one quarter of the year. By planning one's preaching for the complete cycle, one not only develops a more comprehensive plan, but the preacher is given the opportunity to deal with two of the most obvious weaknesses of Lent-Easter preaching. First, Lent will be cast into its proper role in the cycle as a season of preparation for the celebration of Christ's resurrection, and Easter will receive proper emphasis as the "essential season"19 of the church year. Lent, as now understood and celebrated in most churches, tends to overshadow the "great fifty days" of Easter. The recovery of Easter in the worship of our churches could make a marked difference in the lives of the people of God. Preaching in this cycle connects our "little stories" to the "big Story" of Jesus Christ and proclaims the "whole" Story.

Second, with a more definitive study of the structure and purposes of Lent, the "assumed" themes will yield to the "actual" and intended themes of the season. The forty days of Lent are, as is commonly supposed, given over only to the Passion of Christ; the passion is properly assigned to the last week of Lent, now known as "the Week of the Passion." The first five and a half weeks of Lent remain penitential in character, but an existential thrust - new to most twentieth-century Christians - is given this portion of Lent (and Easter, too). Lent becomes a time when all Christians are to die with Christ in Baptism and to renew their baptismal covenant in the Easter event of cross and empty tomb. Lent is the period when the faithful approach the cross to participate in his death; Easter means resurrection with the Lord as a "new creation" and results in living out the new life in Christ. Thus, Lent and Easter can become - when worship and, especially, preaching are cycle-oriented - the pattern for daily living, "dying and rising daily with Christ" (Luther). Baptism is the fulcrum on which rests our experience of the Easter event, as well as the means by which the right relationship of Lent and Easter can be restored. Preaching planned within this kind of a sacramentally-related cycle should be radically different from and more biblically and theologically oriented than planning done separately for Lent and Easter.

For sermon planning purposes, the season of Pentecost presents another set of problems. Revised, as it is, in name only, it is still too long and thematically shapeless; its hermeneutical framework seems rather fragile. Sunday, the little Easter, sounds the clearest kerygmatic note among the signals that are indistinct and uncertain; the days of saints and martyrs amplify it.20 But, in Pentecost, the reading of the "Gospel of the Year" comes into its own through the semicontinuous reading of Matthew, Mark, and Luke in their appointed turns. The gospels set the themes for each of the weeks of Pentecost, but within the "time of the Church" (as this season has been described).

Preachers would do well to divide their Pentecost preaching-planning into two parts of approximately equal length - a summer section stretching from Pentecost to the end of August and a fall portion from the beginning of September to the Festival of Christ the King close to the end of November. In such a plan, Labor Day becomes the dividing point in Pentecost, replacing the festivals of SS. Peter and Paul (June 29), St. Lawrence (August 10), and St. Michael and All Angels (September 29), which anciently separated the season into four sections. Divided into two parts, the church year not only gives preachers four cycles, but provides for planning that will accommodate the two radically different situations (summer and fall) which preaching has to address during Pentecost.

A four-part preaching plan of this kind, when put into action before each cycle begins, allows preachers adequate time to study the gospel in detail, as well as do preliminary reading, research, and exegesis, and develop the sermon ideas for each Sunday of the cycle. A short-term plan for each week of the year leads to the fmal preparation and production of the sermon to be preached that week. Plans for the Advent-Christmas-Epiphany cycle could be developed during the fall of the year, those for the Easter cycle during January, for the summer portion of Pentecost during the month of May, and for the last half of Pentecost during July or August.

Preachers who develop such a preaching plan avoid the pitfalls of the "homiletical crash program" that calls for the sermon to be crafted completely in a few days of the week. They almost never come up "dry." They have the opportunity to accumulate preaching materials - stories and illustrations, to react to movies and drama and TV - instead of attempting to find such sermonic items at the last minute. They might discover that they not only have time to prepare properly on paper, but to learn the sermon for delivery, too. They may learn that the Word can come alive in their preaching as never before when this sort of system is in their preaching ministry. A short-term - within the week - preaching plan is essential, but for excellence in preaching a long-term plan is indispensable. The church year offers such a plan - the Story - to conscientious preachers.

A Church-Year Sermon In Narrative Form

The church year calls attention to a story, the Story of God's gift to the world, Jesus Christ. By its very nature, it encourages God's preachers to tell that Story to their people, yet it imposes no single narrative shape upon the sermon. One thing that the preacher has to keep in mind as he or she attempts to prepare and tell the Story is how that pericope-story speaks to people today and meets the needs of persons living right now. There will always be different, yet biblical, ways to tell the Story.

About a decade ago, when the use of story in the pulpit was being encouraged and attempted, Oswald Hoffman preached a radio sermon titled "Born Free." The text is part of the John 8 pericope appointed for the Festival of the Reformation: "If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed." The sermon is textual yet expository, topical yet narrative in style, interweaving the text and its theme with a contemporary story and the people's stories in the sermon. Informed by the kerygma and sound theology, it is also thoroughly evangelical. I see it as an excellent example of how to make a single verse into a narrative sermon by combining a contemporary story with it. Perhaps Dr. Hoffman had been thinking about the text when he was reading the story about Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and then and there the sermon idea was born - or it could have been developed some other way. At any rate, it is worth reading and studying - and analyzing - as a sermon shape for preparing story sermons on epistle texts as well as the gospel stories.

"Born Free"
Oswald Hoffmann

Most gulls don't bother to learn more than the simplest facts of flight - how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

That's from a best seller in the United States titled simply Jonathan Livingston Seagull, A Story, by Richard Bach, with magnificent photographs of seagulls in flight by Richard Munson.

Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a kind of parable. It describes the adventures of a gull who broke through the usual customs of the flock, soaring to extraordinary heights and speeds, breaking through even the usual restrictions of space and time.

I have talked to a lot of people who have read this story, this parable, and each one saw in it something different. Some immediately talked about Jonathan Livingston Seagull as if he were human. Others treated it for what it is: a story about a seagull. Still others saw in it overtones of various kinds, a commentary on all of life.

The theme of the story is how one gull found freedom, and then shared it with others who didn't think such freedom was possible. Indeed, the one gull was ostracized by the flock because he broke out of the usual way of doing things.

The whole thing is a fantasy, of course, and fantasies don't have to be justified except to those who cannot accept the fact that it is a fantasy. This one can't be justified on a lot of grounds. It refuses to recognize that gulls have certain limitations, but that's the story.

When Jonathan Seagull joined the flock on the beach, it was full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they'll be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging back and forth to the fishing, there's a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

That reminds me of something our Lord said to human beings; to people, not to seagulls: "If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed." Preposterous as it may sound to a lot of people, he meant exactly what he said. It is possible for people to be free, amid all the limitations of life, with a clean breakthrough that comes in a remarkable way by direct, straightforward faith in Jesus Christ.

He himself talked in parables. He said if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you might say to this sycamine tree, "be plucked up by the root and be planted in the midst of the sea, and it would obey you." That's pretty strong talk, but not too strong for him, and not too strong for people who are willing to try it. Faith has power, indescribable power, when it is faith in him.

The flight of birds has always been impressive to people. With all the dangers of life attached to birds, flight has the charm of breaking away from earth, and maybe, from the earthy. The first attempts of human beings to fly, from Icarus to the modern age, were efforts to copy the flight of birds, with flapping wings and even feathers. When people actually did learn to fly, they used the principles of aerodynamics which govern the flight of birds.

The Bible is full of references to birds. "Birds shall tell the matter" said the writer of Ecclesiastes. Hosea talked about flying away like a bird. Jeremiah spoke of making one's nest high as that of an eagle. Obadiah talked about setting his nest on the stars. Describing himself, our Lord said, "Birds have nests and the foxes have holes, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head." People understand that kind of language. Having a mortgage is not everything, but he did not even have that.

In many respects, Jonathan Livingston Seagull was an ordinary bird. He looked like the other seagulls. In other respects, he was not ordinary. As it turned out, he reached speeds and heights which were thought to be forbidden to seagulls. He survived death, and he came back from the dead. He defied angry mobs of jealous seagulls and left a trail of disciples behind to carry out his mission. Rejected by his flock as an outcast, he learned the secret of flight. His instructor, an older gull named Chiang, explained the secret of flight. "The trick," according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.

The key to achieving this perfect state, as the fantasy goes, is understanding. If only Jonathan could understand his true nature, he would be able to get outside himself.

It is a liberating thought. I imagine that is why the story appeals to so many people, and why it has turned out to be a best seller. People like to hear that kind of stuff. If only they could get outside themselves! If only they could learn the secret of life! If only somebody would discover the secret and share it with the rest of us!

People are looking for hope in a world that has lost hope. It is not only Jonathan who wants to fly higher and faster than he's supposed to. Humankind feels that there is more to life than what it is getting. Despite the wars, the greed, the hatred, the jealousy, and the anger, our world has a sneaking hunch that people were put on earth for more than this. If only we knew what it is, and then if we could find it and have it!

Jonathan Livingston Seagull seems to say to people today, "The key to my own flight, and to the soaring of humanity lies in self-understanding, grasping the powers in the heart of man, and then holding fast to that knowledge despite opposition."

Some people like to think of Jesus Christ as one of those special people who have found a special secret - a sort of key to all of life. If you can get that secret, they seem to think, you will have the key, and you will be free. Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a fantasy, and so is this a fantasy, that Jesus Christ is just a discoverer of some secret. Far from breaking through the bounds of space and time, he took all of that for himself. The Son of God became a man, not the other way around. The story of Christmas and of Calvary is not of a man finding out how to be God but of God becoming a man, becoming a part of history and taking everything that goes with that.

It is not a question of man realizing his possibilities, but of God taking man as he is, doing for him what he cannot do for himself, atoning for his sins, and bringing him back again to what he can be without carrying a load of guilt upon his back. Forgiveness from God is liberating, and that's in Jesus Christ. Forgiveness frees a man to be a man today and tomorrow, as no man can be without that forgiveness from God, and as no man will be without wholehearted acceptance of that forgiveness from God himself. That's what it takes to be a man and to be free. "If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed."

Appealing as it may be to the instincts of man for freedom, Jonathan's philosophy is quite different. "They are saying in the flock that if you are the son of the great gull himself," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after advanced speed practice, "that you are a thousand years ahead of your time." Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he thought. They call
you a devil or they call you God. "What do you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?" A long silence. "Well, this kind of flying has always been here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; that's got nothing to do with time. We are ahead of the fashion, maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly."

That's appealing to people. They like to think that somehow they can do it their own way, get ahead of the game. Jonathan's sign of hope, salvation "from within" is appealing to people. It gives them a picture of perfection that can be achieved by working hard enough at it. Given enough time, enough patience, you can arrive.

It all depends on the teachers, of course; the enlightened ones who can show us the way. Then, like a downhill snowball, we'll gain momentum. We can get outside ourselves. We can overcome sin, we can beat greed, we can stamp out ghettos and prisons and POW camps all by ourselves. Give us enough time and resources, and freedom will happen.

Appealing as it is, that's a dead-end street. I am sorry to have to tell you that, but it doesn't work. It's been tried, and it hasn't worked. Here it is again, in a really beautiful story about a seagull. When you are finished with it, you know it won't work, but it is a beautiful dream, isn't it?

I am not talking about a dream, today. I am talking about what is real. "If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed." This is not a preacher talking. This is the Son of God himself, the One who died and was raised from the dead to be declared the Son of God with power. He has got it, including the resurrection and everything. He has got the whole world in his hands, because he is Lord. He has got it to give, and he gives it. "If the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed."

I know that doesn't seem possible in our workaday world. We have tried our wings. We have soared to certain heights, we have raced with the speed of sound and beyond. What it really takes, however, we lack. All of us know that Jonathan Livingston Seagull makes for great reading - and dreaming - but its vision is hollow.

Vanity of vanity, futility of futilities, said the preacher, all is vanity, all is futility. What does a man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun? A generation goes and a generation comes but the earth remains forever. What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 1:2, 3, 9)

That's man as he is. As people say, "That's us, as we are." That's the picture of man we see on the television screen, every day on the front pages of newspapers and in the history books. It faces us in the quiet moments of our solitude when we look at the real self that only we know.
There is another preacher. St. Paul was not talking about seagulls but about people, about himself, telling it like it is: "For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can wIll what is right, but I cannot do it. I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do ... Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Jonathan might say, if you take this fantasy about seagulls as having something to say to people, "Reach beyond that, grab hold of the real - the real you behind this self-condemning front of yours. That's the way to fly, Paul!"

Paul knew something that Jonathan doesn't. He is just a seagull, after all. The best of men, trying to fly by convincing themselves of their own godliness, have only deceived themselves. That kind of life is hypocrisy. Paul had to see himself as he was, rebel, runaway, afraid to face up to his own identity. Only by fully confronting the evil that is in man's heart can that man stand wide open to the grace of God that comes to those who are poor in spirit.

The fantasy of Jonathan Seagull does not end with flight. He goes on to discover the secret of life: Truth, love, understanding, unlimited capabilities lie within your own head and heart. You like that? A lot of people do. I wish it were true, but it isn't. All of us know better. It may sound all right to a seagull, but it's pretty frothy when it comes to people.

Jonathan learned to do full wing snap rolls, barrel loops, and 135 to 234 miles an hour. Through that, he came to know the secret of life, that truth, goodness, and beauty are the real thing. That sounds awfully good. Then the other gulls began to refer to him as the son of the great gull, a thousand years ahead of his time.

That's Jonathan. The Son of God is not named Jonathan. His name is Jesus. He, too, gave of himself and he had to take opposition from the flock. But that's where the similarity ends. Jonathan strained and stretched, tucked in his wings and soared to new heights in a fit of glee. Jesus, Son of the Almighty God, humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. That's no way to fly. It isn't excitement, but it is agony. No thrill of pulling out of a dive at 193 miles per hour; only seven hours between two thieves on a scaffold put up by the executioners!

The breathtaking surprise is that all of this happened for us. It wasn't the unfortunate end of a bumbling prophet. It was God's plan that his Son should die in order that his flock, his disobedient flock, might come back again as part of the family.

God doesn't show us how we can do it ourselves. He sent Jesus Christ to be the Savior of the world. Jesus is not a teacher to unlock certain secrets in our heads and set us sailing to new heights of awareness. His way is sacrifice, and that's a real one, for freedom.

"If the Son shall make you free, you will be free indeed." That comes from God who gave up His Son for us all. It comes to those who are, so to speak, reborn for freedom. As one of his men said, "For freedom Christ has made you free."

Talk about being born free, this is it! We are too far gone to cash in on our birth. We have to be reborn to freedom. That rebirth is by faith in Jesus Christ, crucified and resurrected Son of God.

Accept the invitation of Jesus, follow him, and discover how fresh and exhilarating life can be with him. With Jesus Christ, life has purpose and meaning. With Jesus Christ you have a direction to travel and power to go that way. It's a little like flying, and the motive power comes from his Spirit.

Jonathan was right about one thing. He diagnosed the situation very well. "The reason a gull can't fly as high and as fast as his capabilities allow is fear - fear of the unknown, of failure and defeat." A lot of people are the same way. They won't take the risk of faith in Christ, because they are afraid to do it. That's the only way. Faith in Christ, with his forgiveness and his life that he shares with those who trust in him, carried ordinary people past the terrors of the unknown, the fear of death and the terrible haunting fear of guilt around which so many people are trying to walk all the time. Faith just carried through when it is faith in Christ.

St. Paul, whose life was filled with failure and defeat, persecution and frustration, was talking about something real when he said, "I can do all things through Jesus Christ who strengthens me." Now, that's audacity, a little bit like that of a little seagull named Jonathan. There is one big difference, In Jesus Christ the dream of freedom and of flight comes true. It is like being reborn. That is the way to fly. It is the way to go. Amen.* (* "Born Free" by Oswald Hoffmann. Used by permission of the International Lutheran Laymen's Leaque, sponsor of "The Lutheran Hour.")