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Luke 18:9-14 – Contemporary Parable – Part 1

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Some weeks ago I mentioned the idea of retelling a parable in a contemporary setting.  I preached Luke 18:9-14 and used a contemporized version for my introduction. In this post I will give the transcription of the parable.  In part 2 I will share my explanation of why I did it this way.

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It’s amazing how a brother and sister can end up in such different places.

For example, Steve and Lyndsey.  Steve and Lyndsey grew up in a good Christian home.  Father was a minister in a small rural church and they had everything that they could ask for.  They went through their teenage years, went off to university, and then things seemed to go a little bit differently.  Lyndsey did well, she went to university, studied hard, was very effective in her studies and got a good degree.  She was very involved in the Christian Union, and they invited her back to take an extra year working in the CU among students.  So she spent that extra year there on campus and during that year she met the man who would become her husband.  They got married.  And they settled into a good life, a very good life.  They were very involved in their church: leading home groups, leading youth work, leading Sunday School classes.  In fact, if there was something on a Monday night they would have been there too, because they were there every night of the week doing something, they were the kind of people you love to have in a church.  Lyndsey and her husband were the epitome of a busy, hard working, Christian couple.

Steve was a bit different, he went to university and he was clever as well, very effective, but not very focused on his studies.  He was more motivated by money.  He found a way to make money very easily.  In the university where he attended there was a bit of a drug culture, not obvious on the outside, but it was there and if you knew where to go you could get the drugs.  And Steve sort of dabbled a little bit, but didn’t want to get addicted so he pulled back.  But recognizing the power of the drugs he decided to start selling.  He knew that if he could get other people on the drugs then they would be dependent on him and he would be raking the money in – especially if he wasn’t addicted and having to spend the money himself.  That’s how he went through university, scraped through his final exams and headed out into the world to continue making massive money.  Steve drove the nicest car.  Steve didn’t own a home, he rented a hotel room to live in.  He lived in absolute luxury paying cash day after day.  Because he had everything he could wish for. He got involved in different forms of illicit living and in the end one of his male friends gave him a disease.  And Steve, with all the money he could ever wish for, was being ravaged by this deadly disease. 

Christmas came, and Christmas day Steve spent in his hotel room.  All day his mind played games with him, reminiscing, taking him back to memories of his childhood.  But somehow he couldn’t put that together with where he was now and the state he was in.  And that night, before he fell into bed he sat on the edge of his bed, with tears pouring down his face and cried out to God, “God my life is a mess, have mercy on me.”

Lyndsey and her husband had a busy day.  Of course, church all morning, very involved with that.  Then they came home and had a great Turkey dinner – her parents were there, his parents were there.  And all day her mind was playing tricks on her.  She kept reminiscing back to childhood and remembering all those times with Steve her brother.  That night, before she fell into bed content and happy with the way the day had gone, Lyndsey prayed.  And she said, “Thank you God that I’m not like Steve.  Thank you God that my life has turned out the way it’s supposed to.  Thank you that I don’t do those sins that he does, I don’t even know some of the things he does.  I thank you that I can be involved in all these good things.  I can be so involved in church, I do above and beyond what any pastor would suggest his people do.”  Then she went to sleep.

Lyndsey and Steve, brother and sister, ended up in completely different places.  Actually, completely different places.  Because Steve went to heaven.  Lyndsey didn’t.

Now in the interest of honesty let me tell you that that story is not strictly true, I made it up.  It’s fabricated and any likeness to anyone you know is completely coincidental.  And yet that story is so true all around us.  On both sides.  In the interest of honesty let me also tell you that that isn’t my story, it’s actually Jesus’ story.  And if you have a Bible, let’s look at it, Luke chapter 18 . . .

Manipulation in Proclamation

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

As preachers we are called to do more than inform the mind.  We are not lecturers.  We are not called to achieve a stated goal by any means possible.  We are not salesmen.  So how are we to navigate the pulpit so that we fulfill our calling, but don’t overstep the mark and take on tasks that are not ours?

1. Preach to the heart.  It is important to understand that people are not just mind and will, but first and foremost are heart-driven.  The Bible teaches this, even with all the gymnastics some teachers go through to avoid what the text says.  The heart is more than mere emotions, but it is not merely the mind as some suggest. In Ephesians 4:17-18 Paul urges the believers not to function like the unsaved Gentiles.  They do not act well because of their minds, thinking, and understanding.  But there is another issue.  Their minds are the way they are because their hearts are hardened.  The heart is central, critical and very much in control.  So, as preachers we must address the heart and not take a short cut to just the mind or will.

2. Don’t stir the emotions and then attach spiritual content to that.  Since the heart includes emotions, it is tempting to merely stir the emotions and then attach our message to that emotional reaction.  You can tell a moving story about the little boy who finally hit a home run (for Brits think of a boy hitting a six), then as people feel themselves filling up, drive home the application of the sermon.  “You too are standing at the plate, Jesus is asking you to commit to this challenge this week, will you commit?  Will you swing the bat?”  This is riding on the back of imported emotion to “achieve” something while preaching.  This is manipulation.

3. Allow the text to reach the heart. The solution is not to merely preach an intellectual sermon and avoid the heart.  The key is to preach the text well so that the text itself and the message of the text can do its job.  If the passage is moving, let it move people.  If the passage is stirring, let it stir people.  When the text itself and the message itself stir the emotions, great.  Don’t feel you have to import a moving story to get the job done.  Make sure that emotions are stirred by the text, the message, the idea itself.

That Message from That Text?

/ Peter Mead / 4 Comments

It is vital that the listener be able to see how the message comes from the text they are looking at. The credibility of the speaker matters, but the credibility of the Bible matters more. It matters that people listening to a sermon can look at the text before them and see how the message flows from that particular text. It is not good enough to preach truth, or to preach a sound idea. It matters that the truth and the idea come from the text presented to the people.

Some years ago my wife and I sat in church as the visiting preacher preached the gospel. The message was true, the gospel was clear. But the message was not true to that text, and the gospel was not clear from that text. His “clever” presentation of the gospel undermined the very credibility of the gospel he proclaimed.

Since you’re wondering, he preached the gospel using the three phrases from Job 41:8. First point was that we must identify with Christ (lay your hand on him). Second point, that we must remember what He did for us (remember the battle). Third point was that our salvation is not dependent on us, but on Him, there is no need to keep “getting saved” again (and you will do it no more). The text is not presenting the gospel, it is God telling Job to get in the squared circle and slug it out with leviathan.

May our listeners never leave saying, “Great message, but I don’t see how he got that message from that text!”

Peter has responded to comments on this post.

Question: Should We Cover More in Our Sermons?

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

Following on from yesterday’s post, I want to address the issue of “covering more.”  Here’s the question again:

In the Church today, we find that most preachers preach for 30-60 minutes on one topic or passage. Indeed, many will take a few verses and preach on them at length.

The examples we have in the bible of Jesus’ sermons show a very different way of preaching. He seemed to cover many topics in every sermon. For instance the ‘Sermon on the mount’ covers a range of things but preachers these days tend to just take one section of it and preach for an hour on that section.

Is there any validity, in your opinion, to the idea that we labour points too long and actually ought to cover more in our sermons?

Peter M responds:

Preaching on one passage – Expository preaching does not require a preacher to stay in one passage. It is possible to have an expository sermon that goes to several passages. Yet to deal with each passage as one should tends to make the process overwhelming. I always encourage preachers to deal with one passage more fully, rather than skipping around unnecessarily. There are reasons to refer to other passages, but for some preachers it seems this is a standard practice. I suggest it is usually better to stay put in one place.  This does not mean boring preaching though.  The preacher should be as engaging and interesting as possible.  It takes some skill to demonstrate the relevance and interest in a passage.  It is better to develop that skill than to hide the lack of it by jumping around the canon.

The example of NT sermons – We can learn a lot by analyzing the sermons recorded in the New Testament.  There are different sermon forms used, clear awareness of differing audiences, and so on.  Yet it is important to remember that while the written form represents the original accurately, it is not an exhaustive transcription.  I suspect Peter preached for longer than a couple of minutes at Pentecost, and Jesus’ “sermon on the mount” was probably not delivered as it stands in our Bibles.  So it might not be wise to try to recreate the Sermon on the Mount. At the same time recognize that it is not as random as many suspect.  What seems to be one subject after another, may actually be one illustration or application after another.  For example, notice the repetitive pattern in Matthew 5:21-48 – do we have five new subjects or five specific applications of the same principle?

Amount of content in a sermon – I am not an advocate for “dumbing down” sermons or “salad preaching” (no meat).  A message should have an appropriate amount of content at the right level of weightiness for the listeners present.  Yet the goal is to communicate the main idea of the passage in order to achieve the purpose of the message.  The goal is not to impress people with content (sadly, for some preachers, this is their goal).  This wrong goal is often encouraged as some listeners tend to affirm dense preaching despite their own inability to take it in!

Some preachers should cover more, others would do well to cover less.  There is no standard rule, but the passage and the audience are both significant factors in determining how much content, both breadth and depth, should be covered in one message.

Getting to Grips with a Genealogy

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

What do you do when you are preaching through a book and there is a genealogy? I have faced this a few times, although I don’t claim to have a ‘one-size-fits-all’ solution to the challenge. Here are a few tips:

1. Study the function of the genealogy. The author included it for a reason. How does it fit with the flow of thought in the book? It is easy to get caught up in the details of the list, but miss the function of it.

2. Select the preaching passage carefully. If you are able to divide the preaching passages, do not assume lots of verses in a genealogy mean lots of preaching material. It may be that the genealogy can be summarized briefly, leaving plenty of time for an adjoining text.

3. Survey the framing of the genealogy. What does the author write as a lead in, and what are the first comments leading out of the genealogy? Consider, for example, Luke 3:21-23 and 4:1-3.

4. See if any pattern is broken. Sometimes there is a pattern in the way the text is written, which can become quite rhythmic to the ear. Be sure to check for any breaks in that pattern that might suggest a place of emphasis. For example, consider the change in pattern for Enoch in Genesis 5:24.

5. Scrutinize the places of emphasis. Be sure to consider carefully the first and last names in the list. Often a genealogy is a bridge through time linking one place in history with another. For example, see Ruth 4:18-22.

6. Scan for misfits. In light of the apparent function of the genealogy, are there individuals whose inclusion might be considered surprising? For example, the presence of, and similarities between the women, in Matthew 1:1-17. Be careful not to allow an interesting observation to overwhelm the rest of the genealogy. This example in Matthew has more than one interesting feature!

7. Search for every clue to the author’s intent. Your goal is not to preach random details from a list, nor to exhaust listeners with exhaustive historical details, but to search diligently for the author’s intent when he wrote and/or included the genealogy. This is a repeat of the first point, but this is worthy of restatement in this final position of emphasis!

Luke 18:9-14 – Contemporizing a Parable

/ Peter Mead / 5 Comments

Timothy Reynolds commented on my post regarding the preaching of parables. I’d like to elevate that comment to a post, along with my response, so that perhaps others might want to have a go at a modern retelling of Luke 18:9-14. If there is some activity on this, I might also post what I actually preached. I used a contemporary version of the parable as my introduction to the message. My introduction is by no means a great example, but it is an example. Anyway, Timothy wrote:

Interesting idea to retell the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector in a modern context – I’d be interested to know how you did this in a way that would gain the same reaction or anticipation as Jesus’ audience had. I can’t see how it would work, because congregations don’t have the same sort of expectations of religious leaders as those in Jesus’ day did. Let’s try:

An elder arrived early for the service and sat down on the other side of the chapel from the young lad he’d never seen before. He looked like one of that gang that hung around outside the swimming pool being a nuisance on their skate boards. The elder bowed his head to pray as he always did and said, “Thank you, Lord, that by your grace I have been kept from that sort of life and was a member of the church and had a good job by the time I was this guy’s age.”

The young lad didn’t even bow his head or close his eyes, but just said , “God, I don’t even know why I’m here, but I know I need you. Please forgive me for ignoring you.”

Are we getting any where near with that? I’m not sure – I think most congregations would see it coming!

My response:

Thanks Timothy – perhaps you have started something here. Your story certainly parallels the original in many respects. Like you wrote, I also think most congregations would see it coming! Of course, it’s hard to really surprise people when the reference for the message is in the notice sheet. Having said that, I think it is possible to think through a modern version of a parable, deliberately paralleling key points, but also deliberately obscuring some parallels, so that the tension is not given away too early. The goal is not to totally surprise people, but to have our story “do” what the original story “did.” So, perhaps others will follow your lead and give modern versions of this parable.

Peter has responded to a question on this post – see comments

Preaching Familiar Texts

/ Peter Mead / Leave a comment

What should we do with stories that are very familiar to our listeners?  For example, a friend of mine recently preached the crucifixion account in Matthew 27.  How should he approach a passage that is so familiar and is a subject addressed every week in his church in one way or another?

1 – Know your audience.  For some groups, more emphasis on explanation or proof of the passage would be necessary.  In this particular case the people would generally understand the passage (apart from the miraculous events as Jesus died).  They also have little need of proof.  This leaves the majority of the focus on application.

2 – Retell familiar stories, but help people feel them.  It is easy for people to hear something often and be familiar with it.  This does not mean the passage should not be preached.  People often know Biblical stories, but rarely feel them.  Take the opportunity to tell the story in a gripping way, helping people to feel as if they were there.  You cannot force this to happen.  It doesn’t help to keep haranguing people with phrases like, “Imagine you were there, come on!”  It takes the skill of vivid description and effective story telling to achieve this.  Perhaps a slightly unusual angle could help.  Since the text eventually brings in the centurion’s perspective, why not tell the whole story from where he is standing, still keeping to the details in the text?

3 – Apply, apply, apply.  Don Sunukjian teaches preachers to give only as much explanation and proof as necessary, then apply, apply, apply.  This is good advice.  It is easy to give redundant explanations and exegetical details.  As preachers we are prone to do information dumps on our people (after all, we worked hard on this message!)  But people can always benefit from more application.

4 – Apply specifically.  What does the crucifixion story mean to a Christian working in a factory this week?  What does the familiar story mean to a mother of small children and sleepless nights?  What difference could this make tomorrow morning at 10am?  It is easy to preach a “church” sermon, and easy to listen to one, but get the Word into real life by being as specific as possible.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

/ Mike Roth / Leave a comment

Have you ever found in the middle of writing a sermon that you have ten minutes of preaching material that has nothing to do with your main idea? This is easy to do. Some possible factors…an unclear main idea, too much time on one point, an illustration that is over the top in length and detail or too much time explaining what the text is not saying. These are just a few reasons that the main thing ceases to be the main thing in our sermons.

Lately, our church has been working its way through Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. A recent sermon covered Matthew 6:1-21. In this section, Jesus makes the point that our piety is to be sheltered from the sight of others. The world is to notice our gentle words (5:21-22); that we pursue reconciliation (5:23-26); that our relationships and vows are marked by fidelity (5:27-37); that we are charitable – even toward our enemies (5:38-48). According to Jesus, this is the kind of salt and light the world should taste and see (5:13-16). However, God alone is to taste and see our piety (6:1-21).

To preach this sermon, it could be very easy to slip into preaching what this passage isn’t saying instead of what it is saying. For example, it is not saying don’t pray corporately. It is not saying don’t tithe at church. It is not saying don’t pray with others. The list of what this passage is not saying could go on and on!

While it is important to address questions our congregations are asking when we preach, we must be careful not to lose sight of the main thing. So what do we do? I suggest speaking to the questions we know our listeners are asking. Otherwise, we will lose them as we continue forward while they sit in their questions. However, in our preparation, we must carefully monitor the time we allot to such caveats in our sermons. Otherwise, by the time and emphasis we give, we communicate a thing we do not intend to communicate. In this case, multiple points about what Jesus is not saying. This would be a tragedy.

Jesus is saying so much in this passage (6:1-21)! How are we known by the world? Are we known to go to church, pray at meal-time and tithe but unknown as kind speaking, reconciling acting, fidelity keeping kingdom participants? It is easier to do piety publicly than it is to live out chapter 5. Why… What motivates our hearts to piety? Is it the applause of others? Is it a spiritual checklist? Is it to worship and love our Lord? All of this and more (related to the main idea) is missed when we lose sight of communicating the main thing.

Preaching Parables – Two Thoughts

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Last Sunday I preached from Luke 18, where there are two parables at the start of the chapter. A couple of thoughts about preaching parables:

Jesus told stories that packed a punch, don’t deaden the force – Of course the preacher’s role includes the need to explain the story, but we also need to preach the story in such a way as to achieve a similar effect as Jesus intended. For example, as I preached on the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, how could I help the listeners today to feel the force of that story in the way that Jesus’ listeners felt it? Well, I couldn’t just read the text. Nor could I just tell the story as it stands. As Jesus set the scene in verse 10, “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector,” his listeners would immediately have significant emotional reaction. One was a good guy, the other a very bad guy. But for my churched listeners, their emotional reaction would be muted at best, the exact opposite at worse. For churched folk listening today, one is a bad guy (the one who typically opposed Jesus and ultimately got Him crucified) and the other is probably ok (the one who Jesus would hang out with, the one who might be like the other former tax collector that gave us our favorite Christmas readings in a Gospel). This is the opposite emotional reaction than Jesus intended. So, I chose to tell a contemporary story, in some ways equivalent to the parable, but not a forced equivalency. Having felt the force, we were ready to go back, read the text and have it explained. When it comes to preaching stories it is easy to kill the specimen by dissecting it. Stories are best observed alive, rather than cut up.

Incidentally, I could have chosen to do the same thing with Luke 18:1-8, but chose not to. I felt that story would work with a more straightforward “read a bit and then explain” approach, while maintaining the flow of the story. On another occasion I might use a contemporary version first.

The Gospel writers recorded stories in carefully packaged contexts, don’t rip them out – Whenever I preach from a Gospel passage, I am very aware of the double context. There’s the original historical context when Jesus spoke the words to the people around him. Then there’s the written context when Luke arranged, edited, commented on and put together the Gospel (different audience, different point in time, sometimes with different purpose). So when preaching a parable of Jesus, I am not dealing simply with a story Jesus told, but with a story Jesus told in a context Luke put together. So it is important to recognize the blending of both contexts. In the case of Luke 18, I focused primarily on the stories as Jesus told them (as presented by Luke), but was careful to notice the written contexts stretching back into chapter 17 for 18:1-8, and then on through the next two stories for 18:9-14.

Question: First person preaching from an epistle?

/ Peter Mead / 2 Comments

Tim wrote the following:

Preaching in the first person – do you think this could ever be used for epistolary texts? I realise people use it to good effect on narrative texts. But what about a section of epistle?

What I’m thinking is, say, first part of Galatians 5. If you were first-person Paul then it might:
a) add variety (if you’ve been working through the book)
b) enable you to communicate the historical setting well
c) perhaps enable you to strongly communicate the passion Paul had for the Galatians and the sense of exasperation he felt.

What do you reckon?

Peter responds – Absolutely! First-person preaching is usually thought of as being ideal for narrative texts, but epistles are set up for this approach as well. Although epistles are didactic in form, they are also “story” or at least part of a story. You have characters (Paul and recipients, plus false teachers and other influences), in a specific setting, there is a “plot” (Paul preached, others came in, the locals shifted, now Paul is addressing the problem), which has its own tension (unresolved – we don’t know what happened in response to the letter). Paul wrote the letter, every letter, in response to specific circumstances. So I feel it is set up for a first-person sermon. This would definitely add variety to a series. It is often seen as a good option for overviewing a whole epistle either as an introduction or conclusion to a series (I know Mike has used first-person very effectively to conclude a series in James). But there is no reason why it cannot be used for a shorter section within an epistle. Jeffrey Arthurs, in Preaching with Variety, suggests the approach of dictating to a secretary, which allows for elaboration in a verse-by-verse manner.

First-person sermons allow you to, and often require you to include more background and historical information. And as you wrote, Tim, they allow you to communicate the passion of Paul in a section like this in a less threatening manner to your listeners. They will tolerate more passion and strong wording since “it isn’t really you” and the delivery is more intriguing than threatening. This approach will not be a short-cut though. You have to do all the normal exegetical work in studying the passage, then probably extra on culture and historical context, then think through various aspects of first-person presentation as well. You will need to practice, even if you don’t normally “practice” a sermon.

You will need to decide on preaching situation and viewpoint. Are you letting the audience secretly view Paul as he writes, or does he invite the group in as he is working on it and explain what he’s doing, or has Paul been transported through time to explain the passage to the congregation today. Or, perhaps, are they sitting in a Galatian church, with Paul giving them his perspective on the text as it is read, as he would if he had been there (this would be tricky, but possible) – perhaps using someone else to read the text out a verse at a time and Paul urging the listeners to get it and respond. You can be creative! Another option is to preach part of the message in first-person. You could set it up, then go back to Paul as he dictates and thinks out loud, then return to Tim for an explanation of how that text should influence us in our context.

You will need to decide on costumes and props (subtle is usually plenty!) You will need to think through the area you are to preach from and possible use of the space as an actor would a stage. Unless you transport Paul to today, you will need to think through how to make sure your congregation gets the point for their lives. Your ultimate goal is not just for them to understand the author’s idea in his historical context, you also still need applicational purpose for the present day. But you can’t put in direct references that are inconsistent with the historical situation of the “speaker.” So unless you revert to being Tim for some element of conclusion with contemporary application, you need to carefully plan subtle but effective points of contact between his intention for the Galatians and your intention for your congregation. I have found in bringing a Bible character through time to address my congregation that “clear but subtle” is usually effective. Somehow it strains the consistency of the presentation if an Old Testament prophet (or an NT apostle) has travelled through time and suddenly has full knowledge of contemporary life, culture, current affairs, recent history, etc.

So there is a lot to think about, but I think preaching first person on the first section of Galatians 5 could work very effectively! There are a couple of books available on the subject if you have time to read them before you have to preach this sermon – Haddon Robinson and his son Torrey have written It’s All in How You Tell It: Preaching First Person Expository Messages, and J.Kent Edwards wrote Effective First-Person Biblical Preaching. Tim, if you do this, please come back and comment on this post with your experiences, evaluation, lessons learned, etc.