SermonStudio

preaching multi-chapter texts as a story



In the year 587 BC, the Babylonian army captured the city of Jerusalem. The conquering soldiers tore down the buildings, stole everything worth stealing, and dragged off every reasonably healthy man, woman, and child to become slaves in Babylon. And so began the period of great sorrow in the history of our people -- the time known as the exile, or the Babylonian captivity.

Among those taken as slaves were three young men. Their names were Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah. Their new Babylonian masters told them that they would have to get used to the Babylonian way of doing things from now on. They would have to learn to walk and talk and think Babylonian. They even gave them Babylonian names.

Now Nebuchadnezzar, the king of Babylon, liked being king. He liked the power it gave him. He liked the deference everyone paid to him. He liked the fringe benefits. He liked it all. Yet even though he had it all and liked it all, he still was not satisfied. He wanted more. He decided to become a god.

Perhaps you have discovered, if you've ever tried to become a king, that it is not such an easy thing to do. It helps if you get yourself born to the right parents. It helps to be in the right place at the right time. Even then, it often turns out to be pretty iffy. You might well imagine that becoming a god would be even more challenging.

Nebuchadnezzar recognized that it would take some planning. His plan to become a god went like this: He had an image constructed, sixty cubits high. That's about as tall as an eight- or nine-story building. He had it built in the open fields, just outside the city limits. You could see it for miles.

Then he called in every government official to a special meeting, and this is what he told them. "From now on, everyone has to worship my image. Anytime anyone plays any music, on the bagpipes, on the harp, or any other musical instrument, everybody who hears it has to fall down and worship my image. I want every herald in the land to proclaim this notice." And because Nebuchadnezzar recognized that people might be a little reluctant to accept this right away, he also told them one more thing: "Anybody who doesn't fall down and worship my image will be burned alive in a furnace."

It seemed to work pretty well. The heralds went out and proclaimed. The music played. Everybody in the land fell down and worshiped. Well, almost everybody. Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah did not. They knew that the God of heaven had created the earth and everything and everyone in it. And they knew that no image fashioned by human hands was going to replace the God who had fashioned those humans. No king, no matter how arrogant, could claim the place of Yahweh. Not in fact, and not in their hearts.

King Nebuchadnezzar felt quite upset by their refusal. His attitude seems pretty harsh. If a person got stuck being the ruler of the biggest empire on the face of the earth, one of the very few negative features would be this: You wouldn't have much opportunity for advancement. Most of us would not feel too troubled about that. But suppose you decided that even though you were already right at the top, you still wanted a promotion. Suppose you decided you wanted to move up, from being a king to being a god. And suppose you had got nearly everyone in the empire to agree that you had, indeed, been promoted to become a god. Tell the truth now, wouldn't you feel pretty well satisfied with yourself? Why would you even bother to notice a few conscientious objectors here or there?

But Nebuchadnezzar was not satisfied. Three exceptions were three exceptions too many. He had Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah arrested. "Weren't you guys listening?" he said to them, when they were dragged into his presence. "Do you think I was just kidding about this furnace? You guys will do what I say or you're charcoal. You'd better decide to worship me, because there isn't any other god that's going to rescue you."

Their reply is quite instructive. It is one of those Bible verses that everyone ought to memorize, because the time will come when we will need to know it. What did Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah say in the face of King Nebuchadnezzar's threat? "We do not know," they said, "whether our God will rescue us or not. But whether he does or whether he doesn't, we will not worship your image" (Daniel 3:16-18).

It's the kind of line you'd expect to hear at the movies -- defiance in the face of danger. The difference is that when we go to the movies, we know that the heroes aren't really running much risk. Harrison Ford may get beaten up, and he may have to face impossible situations, but we know that he always wins in the end. We know the movie is not going to end with the hero dying as the villain laughs. By the end of the movie, the good guys are going to triumph despite all odds. We know that, therefore, we don't worry too much about them.

But in real life, the dangers are dangerous, and far more worrisome. In real life, people get hit by cars and they die. People get cancer and they die. People work as hard as they know how to work, and they still lose their jobs. And their homes. And their self-respect. And their hope.

"We believe," said Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, "that our God has the power to work miracles. We believe that our God has the power to rescue us from your hand, King Nebuchadnezzar. But we do not know if he will. We do not know if we will live or die. We do not know. But we still are going to worship him, instead of you."

About six centuries after these events would have taken place -- which is to say, in about AD 55 -- the apostle Paul left the city of Corinth, where he had been doing his missionary work, to return to the city of Jerusalem. There had been some crop failures in Judea and the surrounding countryside, so the local people didn't have much food, or much money to buy food from folks in the caravan and shipping business. The people in the churches of Greece and Macedonia had given so generously, to help the people of Judea buy groceries; and Paul was going to deliver that gift to feed the hungry children of Jerusalem.

You must understand how much he loved those people. They were his countrymen, his cousins, his nieces and nephews, his high school buddies, and his college classmates. Some of them believed, as he believed, that all the hopes of his nation, down the long reaches of the centuries, had been fulfilled in the Messiah Jesus. Others scoffed. Indeed, many of them burned with a great hatred for the followers of Jesus, and for Paul in particular, for he had once been a scoffer along with them.

He loved these people who hated him. As he got ready to leave Corinth to go back to Jerusalem, he wrote his letter to the Christian community in Rome, and in it he revealed some strong feelings. "I am speaking the truth in Christ," he told them. "I am not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen" (Romans 9:1-3).

What might a person do, for the sake of someone you love? What risk might you run? "I would give my right arm," you can sometimes hear a person say. Perhaps, to try to rescue someone you love, you might even dare to run into a burning building. "I would do anything," Paul suggests. "Whatever it would take. Even if it cost me my life, even if it meant that I, myself, would end up cut off from Christ, I would do it."

So Paul and his companions left Corinth, the book of Acts tells us. They traveled north up to Philippi, and then sailed east across the Aegean Sea to western Turkey, and then south through all those Greek islands until they found a ship headed for Syria. They bought their tickets and voyaged to the port city of Tyre. There was a community of Christians in Tyre. Paul and his friends stayed with them for a week. Those Christians discerned, in the wisdom the Spirit had given them, that Paul would be in danger if he went on to Jerusalem. They warned him not to go.

But he was determined to go.

The travelers got back on the ship, and continued their voyage south to the port of Caesarea. That's only about fifty miles from Jerusalem. While they were staying there, at the house of Philip the evangelist, a prophet named Agabus came down from Judea. Moved by the vision he had seen, Agabus had journeyed those fifty miles, desperate to make good speed on the road so he would get to Caesarea before it was too late, and yet having to check each caravan and each traveler going the other way in case Paul might have already left for Jerusalem. I suspect Agabus did not give himself an hour to check into his room at the Caesarea Shores Holiday Hotel, to take a quick shower and change into his clean suit. Instead, he marched right into Philip's house. Travel grime streaking his face, he marched right into the room where everyone was having church. He marched right up to Paul, right in the middle of the sermon probably, and looked him right in the eye. Then Agabus reached down and unwrapped Paul's belt sash, and he tied up his own hands and feet with it. He said, "The Holy Spirit has told me that this is what they're going to do to you when you get to Jerusalem."

Sometimes when a prophet speaks forth a prophecy, it's hard to understand what it means. But not this time. No one felt uncertain about what this prophecy meant. After the work and sweat of the journey down from Judea, pressing along mile after mile to get to Caesarea in time to issue his warning -- after all that, Agabus did not offer up a hesitant or ambiguous prophecy that people might interpret four or five different ways.

The message was clear. It was clear to Paul's companions. It was clear to the church in Caesarea. Everyone begged Paul not to go to Jerusalem.

The message, however, had already been clear to Paul. It had been clear to him before Agabus arrived. It had been clear to him as he considered all the warnings his friends had offered during the journey. It had been clear to him back when he was in Corinth, writing his letter to the Romans, as he set down his heart's sorrow and anguish over his kinfolk back in Jerusalem, as he set down his resolve that he would run any risk -- life, death, suffering, even being cut off from Christ if that would do it -- anything.

Paul dared to believe that maybe, just maybe, if their friend and kinsman Saul of Tarsus came to the people of Jerusalem just once more with this message of the gospel -- and if he came to them with the gift in his hand from the Gentile Christians of Greece and Macedonia, with this tangible demonstration of how the love of God had transformed the lives of those people, so that they gave generously to sustain the lives of people they had never even met -- then maybe, just maybe, the people of Jerusalem would listen this time. Maybe, just maybe, they would see that the gospel is real, when they saw the difference this gospel made in the lives of strangers from far away -- when they saw how the love of Christ had moved those Greeks to love the people of Jerusalem, and to put that love into practice by giving their money to buy them food when they had no food.

Paul told his friends, "I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." And they could not persuade him that the danger was too great; for he had resolved that he would make this effort no matter the risk. And so they said, "May the will of the Lord be done" (Acts 21:7-14).

We do not know, said Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, if God will rescue us from the burning fiery furnace. We do not know if we will live or die, but we will follow our God and do what is right, no matter the cost. Paul might have said the same thing: I do not know if God will rescue me from imprisonment and death when I get to Jerusalem. I do not know if I will live or die, but I will follow my God and do what is right, no matter the cost.

As all preachers come to know, there are certain passages that resist sermonizing. Sometimes it is because the ideas in them are so complex. You can try your best, but in your allotted twenty minutes you will not be able to explain all the things that need explaining in this text. In other passages, the ideas are not that complicated, but there is still so much material that it's not obvious how to present it fairly within a sermon. It's not that it's too hard -- it's just too long. You can select for the morning's reading a brief excerpt from within the overall passage, and then try to provide the necessary context within the sermon itself. That's often the best way to proceed, but it's still quite a challenge.

It is, for example, quite difficult to understand the point of any single passage within the book of Job, apart from an understanding of the entire book of Job. Job's story is a powerful one, offering a great depth of encouragement to those who find themselves in the midst of life's most painful situations, and also to those who hunger to know God more fully. Job remains one of the least-understood and therefore least-read books in the canon. Isn't that a loss that ministers should care about? Well, preacher, what do you have in mind to do about that? You could (just possibly) stand in the pulpit and read the 42 chapters of Job out loud for this Sunday's scripture text -- but please don't. If you did, you would end up using the entire time allotted for worship. There would be no time left for you to explain it, draw it together, make it accessible to the congregation, and enable them to find strength from it. Yet you need to find a way to preach the whole book before you preach the excerpts.

It is somewhat easier to consider an excerpt from the Jacob texts in Genesis, or from the passages concerning the exile, although the challenge remains much the same. The overall meaning of Jacob, and the overall meaning of the exile, can only be had by considering the full sweep of the story. But these stories are not to be found in one short passage; they are told across many chapters of the Bible. Consider the loss if we do not know the sweep of these stories. How can we understand what it is to be Israel, if we do not know Jacob? How can we understand the mark the exile placed upon the children of Israel, if the anguish of the exile, and the astonishment of the return, are not part of our sense of heritage? A preacher can certainly preach about prayer and use the example of Jacob wrestling with God (Genesis 32:22-32), even in the awareness that most people in the congregation do not know very much about the Jacob story. We who listen may well glean some helpful insights about prayer from that sermon. Yet it's hard to suppose this will be as rich an encounter as we might have, if we come to the story ready to appreciate the irony of Jacob the heel-grabber, unable to overcome God, unwilling to let go.

Similarly, a preacher can preach about sorrow or hope or rebuilding from texts in Ezekiel or Nehemiah, or from Psalm 126 or 137, in the awareness that most people in the congregation do not know the story of the exile at all. People will encounter the presence of God in those sermons, even without that background. Surely we should feel a lament for how members of the congregation end up settling for just a fragment of what they might discover, if they understood how these texts tremble with the devastation in the souls of generations of God's people.

What's a preacher to do? Sometimes it feels like we can only shrug. If people are going to grasp these passages, it will have to happen because of their own reading, in their personal devotions, and in their small group Bible studies. If they themselves would read the Bible, regularly and gladly, they would begin to see these extensive multi-chapter connections as an ongoing part of their own religious life. But Sunday sermons cannot make that happen for them. It would be nice to be able to explain all this biblical material to the congregation, providing the background that they need to see the big picture, but there just isn't time. As a preacher, you decide to stick to passages where eight or ten verses form a cohesive unit; then you preach from your selected text, for your allotted time.

Even so, it is possible to step beyond that feeling of wistfulness.

For starters, you could incorporate two small incremental steps in your preaching. First, when you are preaching from a passage of ten verses, such as the Valley of the Dry Bones (Ezekiel 37:1-14), you could take a brief moment -- no more than two minutes -- to recount for us a Cliff Notes summary of the exile; that will mean we will remember it a little bit better next time you make a reference to it. Second, when you are encouraging daily Bible reading from the pulpit, you can suggest that many members of the congregation are now ready to move beyond prepackaged magazine devotionals to lectio continua,2 so that we can begin to discover themes and plotlines that extend across many chapter divisions.

Beyond this, every once in a while you really can offer a sermon that covers multiple chapters of the Bible. It is possible to do this with integrity, within your allotted time. One clear way to make this happen is to discern a particular narrative line that weaves through the material, and then to tell that story.

Take, for example, the material in Romans chapters 9 through 11. It is two or three pages of fairly dense reading with some rather obscure allusions,3 as Paul considers the place of Israel in God's plan, now that Jesus has come. It is certainly possible to skip over this material. Some Bible study booklets on Romans do exactly that. You can read through the end of chapter 8, "Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!" And then you can pick up with Romans 12:1, "I appeal to you therefore, by God's mercies, to present yourself as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God; this is your spiritual worship." The sureness of the grip of God's love in chapter 8 can readily be the motivation for the exhortations in chapter 12.

Yet the material we would skip over that way offers us three chapters on the topic of the place of Israel in God's plan, now that Jesus has come. Most Christians find that to be a subject of more than passing interest. In our pluralistic age, it also applies readily to the question of the place of other religions in God's plan. Moreover, these chapters offer some probing insights into topics like faith, evangelism, and salvation. We could avoid this material, because we reckon it will be too lengthy if we present it cohesively and too shallow if we present it atomistically. But if we do, we will miss out on a lot.

The key to enabling a congregation to get hold of these three chapters (or to get hold of any unit greater than twenty verses or so) is to ask, "Can I discern a narrative line within this material?" Sometimes more than one narrative line may suggest itself to us but we only need one. Perhaps we can recognize such a possibility in Paul's words from Romans 10:1, "My heart's desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved." That is, there is a narrative line available concerning how Paul longs for the salvation of his people. So in preaching the material within these three chapters, we could tell that story: The story of Paul's determination to find a way to bring the gospel to his cousins in Jerusalem, even though many of those cousins were out to get him.

There are a number of ways to go about that. Earlier in this chapter, I offered a simple journey model, with Paul on his way from Corinth, stopping in Caesarea in his way to Jerusalem (with the exile story of Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah hovering in the background, as a way of highlighting the anxiety inherent in not knowing what God might do). But there are plenty of other ways to get hold of that narrative line.


Exercise 5-1

Take eight or ten minutes to try out one of the following three scenarios. Read through all three of them, and pick the one you like. Read that paragraph once or twice more. Then close the book, and go ahead and begin telling the story out loud, in your own words, making up the rest of the story's details as you go along. (Yes, I know that some of you are still resisting that "do the exercise out loud" instruction. And you may indeed feel intimidated at the thought of getting stuck in mid-phrase somewhere in your storyline, along with the sense that that will feel even more awkward if you are saying your words aloud. It could happen that way, of course. It nevertheless remains true that you will profit more from the exercise if you speak audible words. Even if your words sound clumsy, you will hear the story better now, and preach it better later on. Be brave, preacher, and do the exercise out loud.)


1.
Consider this story from the perspective of one of the named-but-still-pretty-obscure characters from one of those Greek or Macedonian churches -- Stephanas, perhaps, or Epaphroditus. What would it be like to find yourself musing once again about how this fellow Paul came to your community, preached the gospel about Jesus, and people came to believe it? Then the word came about the famine in Jerusalem, and in great generosity the people in your church decided to gather up a large sum of money to provide food for those people far away. You remember how moved Paul was by this. You remember as well how it set a great hope in his heart; that if he himself were to deliver this financial gift, this could be the moment when those who had rejected the gospel would themselves be astonished, and want to know what it was that had moved the heathen to offer such financial sacrifice on behalf of God's people. Now Paul and the gift are on their way, they sailed off several weeks ago, and all you can do is pray, not knowing how it might be turning out, in far-off Jerusalem.

2.
What would you be thinking if you were one of Paul's companions during this journey -- Luke or Timothy, or maybe Aristarchus -- as the group draws steadily nearer to Jerusalem? Perhaps you would feel the sick dread of how badly it could end. You find that Paul almost agrees with you. He acknowledges that the project could easily result in his death. Nevertheless, he continues full of hope. He is not afraid of dying, and he even reckons that his willingness to deliver the gift in spite of the risk -- or the reality -- of losing his life, will be part of the testimony of what the love of Jesus moves us to do. All right, you understand that possibility, too. You pray that it will come true, before Paul pays that price. But most of all, you are afraid.

3.
Perhaps Paul, the famous writer of letters to churches, also dropped a line to his old college roommate, Baruch, still living back there in Jerusalem. At one time, Baruch and Saul were the very closest of friends, but now Baruch burns with the anguish of shame and betrayal because Saul had pledged his allegiance to this Jesus. He remembers when Saul had come to visit him and his family a few years back. Dinner had gone pretty well, but after dinner Saul started talking about Jesus, and Baruch had become infuriated and insisted that Saul leave. The memories are pretty bad. The nightmares are worse. The rage in Baruch's soul comes out in this recurring dream, where he has to be the one to cast the first stone at the execution of his friend Saul for blasphemy. What would that feel like, if you were Baruch, waking up in a sweat, your pulse hammering? And that's not the only nightmare. There's another one, because you and your family are among those struggling with not quite enough to eat, in the food shortage that is gripping Jerusalem. You feel the great dread of the day when you will have nothing to feed your children. So it was an astonishing thing, to read in Saul's recent note that he is bringing a gift from the churches of Greece to help feed the people of Jerusalem -- to help feed your family. After the things you said to Saul, you cannot fathom why he would ever want to see you again, let alone why he would want to offer a gift in such compassion. And you can see no way to resolve this puzzle.



Simply by doing that much of an exercise -- selecting and filling in the details for the friend praying from afar model, the traveling companion model, or the letter to the roommate model -- you will find yourself better than halfway to a very preachable sermon. You now have a strong and moving narrative framework. To complete the job, you can easily select a handful of excerpts from the three chapters in Romans, and interweave them into the story line, as Paul's conversational voice within the narrative. That is, let Stephanas muse on the kinds of things Paul was saying, before he headed for Jerusalem (perhaps it was the conviction that in God's view there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, and therefore everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved). Or let us overhear Aristarchus and Paul in conversation, watching the sunset from the deck of the ship. Perhaps Aristarchus is feeling a little proud that he now holds a place with God that Jews no longer do, and Paul uses his olive tree metaphor to admonish him to reverence, awe, and humility. Or, let Baruch struggle with the fact that even though he intended to forget about Saul after he threw him out of his house, some of the things Saul said to him keep coming back to his mind, especially the one about how the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable.

When you have done that, you have created a sermon that your congregation will find both memorable and helpful. It will give them a good basic overview of the material in Romans 9-11. And they will feel like they understand the point of those chapters, perhaps for the very first time.

You could argue, of course, that they will have at best a very light understanding of the material found there, and that paragraph after paragraph cries out for deeper explication. What about texts like "Why then does God find fault? For who can resist his will?" and "all Israel will be saved" and "God has imprisoned all in disobedience that he may be merciful to all" -- don't these passages need more than a brief mention, if people are going to understand the depth and complexity of Paul's argument? Of course that's right. Still, isn't it also right that people need to start somewhere when they have never read this material (let alone studied it), and that a beginner's minimal grasp on what Paul is saying here is just such a start? That is: Wouldn't an overview of where Paul is going, a sense of the big picture, be a solid first step in understanding the details that make up that big picture?

All right. Suppose you feel like you want to explore the details of these three chapters with your congregation, more than you feel you could with any of the three narrative patterns I've suggested. What then? Here's another possibility.

What if you were to offer your congregation a sermon on a difficult topic, using brief citations and allusions to a dozen different books of the Bible, expecting them to get the references and put it all together in their own minds? That's essentially what Paul did, in Romans 9-11. It's hard to imagine there could be very many congregations in which that would work. Across the vast majority of churches, if you attempted to offer such an array of material, drawing from twelve different books of the Bible, surely most people would find themselves unable to keep up with the page turning, let alone the overall argument. Yet when Paul wrote to the congregation in Rome, he apparently anticipated that some of the people there would indeed catch his allusions and get his point. Rome was a place he had never visited, but he knew quite a number of the church leaders there, from occasions where his travels and theirs had overlapped. Thus it seems he was confident that there were people in the church in Rome who would know their Bibles well enough to understand his references and follow the argument he made in these three chapters.

Even so, there would have been plenty of people in the church in Rome who would not have anywhere near the background they needed to do that. Some of them were children, who were still just learning the names of the books of the Bible. Some of them were new converts, who had never read the Bible before. Others were people who felt embarrassed about their lack of Bible knowledge; people who kept saying they wished they knew the Bible better, but never quite seemed to get around to doing anything about that.


Exercise 5-2

What would it be like, to be one of the members of that congregation in Rome, hearing Paul's letter read during a Sunday church service? Perhaps you are one of the children, perhaps one of the newer members, or perhaps one of those embarrassed people who have kept meaning to develop a Bible reading habit, but haven't succeeded yet in making that happen. You are trying to keep up, but you're not doing too well at it. You hear quotations from books of the Bible you've never heard of. You see that the lines the preacher is reading seem to mean a lot to the people in the next row, but honestly you haven't a clue what those lines are about. The preacher seems so enthusiastic, like this is wondrous and vital information, but the message is as clear as granite to you and honestly the whole deal just feels frustrating.

Now, as a twenty-first century preacher, select one major point from these three chapters, the one exegetical crux you want your present congregation to grasp. Consider how the other material in Romans 9-11 helps strengthen that understanding. Then try out one of these:


1.
Tell the story of sitting in church, in first-century Rome, from the perspective of an almost-teenager of eleven or twelve. Your parents have become quite active in the church community, but you're not really sure if you want to be part of this or not. You are not as surly this morning as you sometimes are; but once again you mostly don't understand what the sermon is supposed to be about. The preacher is reading a letter from that Paul fellow who is off being a missionary somewhere, and ... wait, that was kind of provocative, what the preacher just said, about how the clay doesn't get to sass the potter. I wonder what it means?

2.
Tell the story of sitting in church in first-century Rome, as an adult who has recently heard of Jesus and has begun coming to these services, kind of eager but knowing so little about this Bible book that other people talk about. The preacher is reading a letter from Paul, who you guess must be someone important. There are a lot of quotations from that Bible book again. Most of this is, frankly, flying right over your head, but you find yourself fascinated by this thing the preacher said about how all Israel is going to be saved.

3.
Tell the story of sitting in church in first-century Rome, as an adult who is married to a very active Christian. Well, you're active, too, but not as much. You were raised in a fairly religious home, and you carry around this vague sense of guilt because you probably should know the Bible better, but you don't, and you just don't feel like developing the discipline that daily Bible reading would require. Well, maybe you will, someday. In the meantime, the preacher is reading a letter from that missionary Paul. You want to be interested, at least for your family's sake, but you just don't see what it's about. Except, what was that part the preacher just said about jealousy?


Of course, you don't have to pick the potter and the clay, all Israel being saved, or Paul's desire to make his kinsmen jealous for the gospel. Feel free to select the verses within these three chapters that you hear crying out in your heart for explication, then let that be the text that caught the attention of your first-century congregant.



In any of these instances, you would be letting the members of your congregation "look over the shoulder" of an individual in first-century Rome who is trying to make sense out of a complex passage from the Bible. With a little imagination on your part, this could be quite a humorous presentation, while it would also give you plenty of opportunity for detailed explanation of the meaning of a number of thorny verses. How does that happen? Your chosen character ends up going to ask a friend, "What did it mean, that part where the preacher said...?" The friend rolls his eyes, and then admits he didn't get it, either. The two of them go and ask a third individual, who points out that it makes sense if you remember what it says in this other book of the Bible. Ah, that helps, they say, but what about this other bit? The third one starts to explain, and then sheepishly confesses that she didn't quite get that part herself. So now all three go to ask yet another friend ... you see how much fun this could be.

Any of the longer narratives (such as the exile, the Jacob stories, the book of Judges, and the divided monarchy) can be handled this way, as can other long and involved doctrinal passages.


Exercise 5-3

Select one of the following. Gather together some of the wealth of biblical passages that address the topic you have chosen, some of them complementary, some of them contrasting. Then discern a narrative thread you can use to weave these texts together into a story where we will be able to see how these passages could intersect in a person's life.


1.
the theme of holiness in Leviticus

2.
justification by grace rather than works, in Galatians and elsewhere

3.
the second coming of Jesus

4.
the problem of human suffering in Job

5.
the recounting of covenantal history in Deuteronomy


With regard to the second coming, for example, you might look at a story line based on John, second-guessing the events that got him exiled to Patmos; or one based on an elder who was feeling rather dreary in the church in Laodicea until the letter got read in worship one Sunday morning; or one that tells about a widow in Thessalonica whose son was a steadfast Christian man just 24 years old when he died, and she finds that she doesn't know what to believe about whether he will be part of life in heaven.

For the theme of holiness in Leviticus, you could look at a person's heartfelt struggle to follow what Leviticus says, with your primary character being someone who desires to love God above all else and yet finds it very hard to put some of the book's requirements into practice: in the time of King David, or in the time of Jesus, or in contemporary society.


The friends of Paul had seen that Paul was journeying into dangerous territory. They pleaded with him to reconsider his plans for Jerusalem. He had answered them, "I am ready not only to be imprisoned but even to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus." They perceived, then, that they would not persuade him not to go. So in the face of this danger they prayerfully set their trust in God: "May the will of the Lord be done."

We pray that same prayer -- sometimes by rote, sometimes with a clear-eyed appreciation for the pains and challenges that lie before us: "Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."

There is an undeniable call to courage, then, when we pray such a prayer -- may your will be done, O Lord, and if your will leads me to danger or even to death, so be it.

Courage often seems to have this stern and resolute character about it -- a resignation that says, "Yes, we will probably die, yet it is our duty and we shall not shirk it." Yet when I look at Paul, eagerly anticipating his opportunity to make a difference for the people of Jerusalem, this acceptance-of-the-likelihood-of-suffering-while-resolutely-pressing-on does not seem to me to tell the entire story. There is this unquenchable joyous conviction in the courage that Paul demonstrated. Paul might well weep while some of his friends were pleading with him and breaking his heart. It might well be that he would die at the hands of other friends when he got to Jerusalem; but maybe, just maybe, this would be the moment when God would slip past the stubbornness of those presently antagonistic friends and convince them that they did not want to continue to kick against the goads any longer, but wanted instead to discover the fullness and wonder of the grace of Christ. "This could be the moment when that is what is going to happen!" -- that is the unquenchable joyous conviction that moves his soul. It takes courage to continue, when you see the danger, but it is not the stern-resolution part of the courage that moves Paul along. It is the unquenchable-joyous-conviction part, the recognition that he could be used by God to touch the hearts of these people whom he loved so much.

To speak of unquenchable joy is an odd thing. Any preacher has had plenty of opportunity to discover how severely the human soul can be stifled. You have seen it in the life of others, and you have experienced it when your own soul has been utterly devastated. No one is immune to illness, poverty, or bereavement, and such suffering can easily overwhelm any of us, quenching even the will to live, and certainly washing away any joy from our hearts.

That's why it's important to recognize that unquenchable joyous conviction does not come from a human source. It comes from the decision of Almighty God. Paul knew that. That is why he was able to believe with an unquenchable joyous conviction, even when his friends were telling him that his plans were very dangerous, and even when he himself knew that their perception of the danger was quite right.

It is this unquenchable joyous conviction that explains that line he wrote in the letter to the Romans, putting down his thoughts on paper just before he left Corinth for this trip to Jerusalem, the part where he said, "The gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable" (Romans 11:29). It means that God's love for the children of Israel is forever, unshakable, firm, and resolute no matter what. It means that regarding God's love for Paul himself, as well.

Maybe Paul would live. Maybe he would die. He didn't know how that part was going to turn out. Like Hananiah, Azariah, and Mishael, he knew that God was fully powerful enough to rescue him from the danger, but as to whether or not God would do that, Paul did not know. He did know that the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable. It wasn't a question of how his soul might be trembling at the danger of what might happen to him. It was not up to him to generate courage or joy from within himself, for the unquenchable joyous conviction comes from God, because the gifts and the calling that God had placed in Paul's life are irrevocable. So Paul would press on, no matter the risk, for the sake of his cousins and his classmates back in Jerusalem.

The depth of his love for those friends is revealed in Romans 9. The plan for taking up the offering to feed the children of Jerusalem is in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. The scene in the church in Caesarea takes place in Acts 21. The conviction on the irrevocable nature of God's gifts and calling is in Romans 11.

But most of us won't have figured that out. Perhaps we know almost nothing about the Bible; perhaps we know many bits and pieces from here and there. But it's quite unlikely that we will have figured out on our own how these texts interweave. And we probably never will -- unless at some point you present us with the narrative line that draws it together for us.

I expect you already know, preacher, that the gifts and the calling of God in your own soul are irrevocable. That can be the source for the unquenchable joyous conviction in your life: an unquenchable joyous conviction just as strong as Paul ever felt.

But it isn't just you, of course, is it? For your congregation and for your community, God's gifts and calling are just as irrevocable for them. What would it be like for them, to know that as the unquenchable joyous conviction in their lives? What would it be like for them, to know -- with this unquenchable joyous conviction that comes from God and sustains them even when the circumstances of their lives threaten to blot out every bit of joy -- to know that the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable?

A wise man once said, "How will they hear, without a preacher?"

Fortunately, they have a preacher. They have you.


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1. Some of the material in this chapter was first published as "The Courage of Conviction" in Best Sermons 7 (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), James W. Cox, editor.

2. There really is no substitute for personal daily Bible reading that works through (at least) entire books of the Bible; and by preference, the whole Bible, Genesis to Revelation, every year. Surely we need to encourage our churches to hold this as the corporate expectation for nearly every adult Christian, just as all preachers need to hold this expectation for themselves.

3. Within these chapters one finds both explicit quotations and not-so-obvious citations and allusions, coming from Isaiah, Malachi, Jeremiah, 2 Chronicles, Hosea, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, Joel, Psalms, 1 Samuel, 1 Kings, and Job.