HOW TO PREACH A PARABLE

HOW TO PREACH A PARABLE
By Eugene L. Lowry
Abingdon Press, 1989, 173 pages
ISBN 0-687-17924-6

If you are going to read one book on preaching, read “How To Preach a Parable”, by Eugene Lowry, and wear it out reading it over and over again. Granted, I have not read a great many preaching books, but it is hard to imagine how one could top this one.

The format of the book is most helpful. There is a short section that either introduces, or reminds the reader (depending on their prior experience), of Lowry’s narrative method. Narrative preaching, in Lowry’s fashion, is not merely “telling a story”. There are many possible variables, but the theory is that a good sermon will have a plot that works like a story from beginning to end. After the preliminary issues are dealt with, Lowry offers four sermons from four preachers, and analyzes each one. Within the entire book there are a great many pearls, and I shall try to pick out a few to whet your appetite.

Lowry first encourages the preacher to slow down. “Our intention to plan a sermon (emphasis original) is commendable- and inevitable, for Sunday is fast approaching. Yet our task at this early moment in the preparation process should be to set aside our intentionality in favor of the possibility of inadvertent surprise.” (p. 32) what Lowry is arguing against is imposing our agenda on scripture, and he offers a few ways to avoid it. 1) Read the text out loud, several translations. 2) Look for trouble- what doesn’t seem to fit? What raises your eyebrows? What seems “weird”? This places the preacher in the position of investigator rather than explainer.

The four “designs” that Lowry goes on to analyze are: Running the Story, Delaying the Story, Suspending the Story, and Alternating the Story. Each section features a sermon that illustrates the method, and then Lowry helps the reader to see how the sermon achieved its goal, and how to possibly begin doing that yourself.

Running the Story featured a great sermon by Dennis Willis, “Noah was a Good Man.” I liked this sermon so much that I wanted to find out who Willis was (Lowry tells us that he is deceased), so I searched on the Internet for him, but only found a few references to this sermon in this book. Presumably, he preached other great sermons, somewhere. This sermon is as close as the book comes to the stereotypical narrative sermon, one story from beginning to end, but even this story steps out of that mold at one point, briefly. I like how Lowry describes Willis as a “painter” who leads listener to a spot where he is free to paint what he (the preacher) wants to paint “Because art of all kinds has the potential of grasping us rather than being grasped as ideational material.” (p. 62) Now you see that the point of being open to “inadvertent surprise” early on the process is carried out from beginning to end, so it is always the gospel that grasps us, and not the other way around. Perhaps, though, the most important point that Lowry draws form this sermon is the movement from indicative to imperative. In Lowry’s understanding throughout the book, the imperative (what WE need to do) is always made possible by the indicative (what the gospel has made POSSIBLE for us to do). All the examples, beginning with Willis, do this quickly and by surprise, grasping the hearer.

Delaying the Story features a sermon by Leander Keck, Academic Dean at Yale, from the time when he was a professor at Candler. It is a sermon on Mark’s account of the feeding of 5,000, delivered in a seminary chapel. As with all four of the sermons, Lowry asks the reader to read it aloud. Thus, one can “hear” the sermon the way it really WOULD be heard. Since I do most of my reading in the local café, I did not do this (but maybe I should have!). One of the points, though, is that reading something on print enables us to go back and check things that we can’t do when we are listening to something said. We need to write sermons so that they will work for listening, not for reading.

Keck actually delays the reading of the text until part way through the sermon, and by that time he has already taken the position of the protagonists in the text (something that is often a great technique), the flabbergasted disciples. Keck’s sermon gives some tiny but powerful examples of dealing with exegetical questions- “and now he takes those loaves and fishes and says the blessing and divides them just as any Jewish father would do at home…” Lowry notes how Keck “fits (contextual information) into the sweep of the action” (p. 97). But more importantly, Keck leads the listeners AWAY from another exegetical question. I’ll quote Keck, preceded and followed by Lowry’s comment:

“More important, he doesn’t actually say the crowd was fed. He knows we will say it to ourselves. But in the next paragraph it will be assumed, as he asks, ‘How?’
‘Now our curiosity is strained. We want to know how Jesus did it. But curiosity goes hungry while the crowd is fed. Mark wants us to see the people, not the loaves. The crowd has more than enough to eat, and there were twelve baskets of leftovers. And don’t ask where they got the baskets either!’
Once again Keck is faced with the same old question…about miracle. Again, he doesn’t want us to go on a detour…he utilizes the story’s own imagery in noting that ‘curiosity goes hungry.” (p. 97)

The other thing that was helpful in Lowry’s commentary is that he points out how Keck used other examples from scripture to show how God’s transforming power is always at work. The feeding of the 5000 was not an isolated case. But the sermon ends in such a way those those who walk away would not overtly be praising the preacher, but rather, the God who was proclaimed. Says Lowry, “The point is that our inadequacies, if solved by the evocation of the sermon, are solved by the power of Christ’s blessing. Nothing less can be any sermon’s purpose.” (p. 113)

Suspending the Story featured one of Lowry’s own sermons, a sermon on the laborers in the vineyard. Lowry introduces the chapter this way: “This sermon will begin inside the text, run into a problem, and hence require the telling of the story to be suspended while another text provides a way out of the dilemma. Once accomplished, the sermonic process moves back to the central text for the completion of the message.” (p. 115) There were some really good suggestions here regarding lateral moves within the sermon, but perhaps the most helpful thing that Lowry offered was not uniquely connected to this form, and that was the issue of questioning the text.

“…There comes great relief for many people when a preacher ‘dares’ to ask what they have always wanted to ask. Moreover, there are many in most congregations who are close to illiterate about the Bible who can be helped by this procedure. Certainly, one defense against having to ever read the Bible is the presumed attitude that people who have read it are precisely those who do not question it. This misplaced ‘respect’ has contributed to the next generation’s ignorance- at least I have found it so in some congregations I have served. After all, if you don’t read it, you won’t know what you ought to believe and don’t. My experience is that sermons that include such questioning are the ones that tend to draw the greatest amount of substantive comments after the service.” (p. 137)

But back to the sermon, questioning the text in the sermon serves the purpose of helping the listener investigate along with the preacher. It should be noted, however, that Lowry insists that if the preacher cannot find a way out of his questions, he or she should not use the text. “The sermon must find a way out of the apparent dilemma.” (p. 138)

In the weeks since I read this book, I have tried several of its techniques. My attempts have been rather crude, compared to the examples Lowry supplied, especially so my “questioning” of the text. But, like Lowry, I found it was appreciated.

The final form, Alternating the Story, begins with a sermon by Fred Craddock. And it was here that, in my opinion, Lowry is at his pedagogical best. Craddock is a genius, and Lowry knows it. He knows that we are likely to read Craddock, say, “I wish I could preach like that,” and then go back to preaching the way we do. But Lowry offers ways to LEARN to do what Craddock does.

One of the most prominent features of Craddock sermons are freely created stories. Lowry talks about how this technique serves the sermon, but “There is another, perhaps more important, purpose for preachers attempting such freely invented stories. Such recreations will open the mind of the preacher. I suggest their use even if the final result is not good enough to be included in the finished sermon. Before the shock of recognition can occur for listeners, it needs to occur for the preacher. Freely invented stories often promote that shock.” (p. 167)

In another section, Lowry marvels at Craddock’s choice of words, in this case “rearranging the dust” (referring to a struggling farmer in a bad year). First, he notes that adjectives and adverbs are modifiers, and “most of us are not greatly impacted by an alteration. We are impacted by a radically new and different image. To do that, one needs the power of nouns and verbs” (p. 163). With regard to Craddock’s genius, Lowry says, “We may think the result of our efforts a bit feeble in comparison. But the proper comparison is not with anyone else; the proper comparison is between how we do things now and how we might do things…Find another term for the usual one, then find another context for the new term, and then find a phrase associated with that other context” (p. 164)

But I would like to add a thought, and I add it because Lowry was so enamored with “rearranging the dust”. I don’t know much about Lowry’s background, but I do know that some of Craddock’s early preaching was in Oklahoma. So I suggest that Craddock may be a good listener. Not in the east, but In Kansas, during times when crops AND prices were good (a long time ago), I heard farmers repeat the phrase “playing in the dirt”. Listen to what people are saying. We have a way of coining our own phrases. Listen, and it is not too hard to move from “playing in the dirt” in good times, to “rearranging the dust” in bad times.

“When listeners begin to believe the preacher knows them better than they know themselves, a kind of communion emerges…when (Craddock) said: ‘Let me tell you a story.’ Who would say no?” (p. 170).

Not me!

George R. Pasley
September 23, 2002