Topic: How to use a variety of preaching forms.
Big Idea: Let the whole width of the Bible be the governor of the form you use.

I'd like to be able to tell you that every time I open up a passage of Scripture I take the exact form that's there and I put it in a form just like that as I make it palatable to the people on Sunday morning. But you know as well as I do that we have preconceived forms. That's the way we learned it. We learned a deductive form from a Socratic form of argumentation.

This deductive form has a proposition statement, a first point, a second point and a third point. I think that's a good form because there are senses in texts that are very much didactic. They are very much teaching-oriented. And the thoughts are logically arranged within a sequence that should be presented just like that.

The challenge and frustration that I found is that our tendency is sometimes to put every text of Scripture into the basic form and the skeleton that we learned in homiletics class, which was a good learning tool but probably not the tool to guide every part of your preaching throughout your lifetime. I'd ask that your quiver be as wide as it can possibly be throughout every form of deduction you can possibly consider and also several forms of induction.

Some have used the narrative concept in induction. Induction simply means to be able to communicate so the people are in process with you as you are guiding them in the point to the truth.

The majority of Scripture is inductive rather than deductive. Things were happening in front of them. Nobody goes to a movie, is told the conclusion, and then told, " This is what happens at the end. Now sit here and watch the movie. " That's not the way life unfolds.

Jesus has 5,000 people in front of him. They're all hungry. The disciples come with a question. It's a question about how do you feed these people. And the series of events take place, and finally you get to the bottom line where everyone says, " All ate and were satisfied. " That's the conclusion, but you don't want to start with that one. It's a narrative expression of what's going on. I'm not sure how to always put something like that in the one, two, three form.

The problem with induction in our day is that if you take the Socratic/deductive form away from me, I don't have a skeleton on which to hang the sermon any more. I don't have anything to pull an outline together. How am I supposed to arrange my thoughts? It becomes a little more frightening to me. In inductive forms there are some skeletons that you might be able to hang some things on, but they're really not as concrete. One of these is a narrative form.

There is a question that's emerging in contrast with other fundamental questions. There is a complicating factor that make resolution very difficult. There are some clues to the resolution often set in the narrative context. And the conclusion ultimately does one of the following: it leaves the question for the listener to resolve, gives a partial resolution to the question, or resolves the question.

My goal is not to be a slave to any particular structure. If the contrast in my audience is great and the contrast of literary forms of Scripture is great, my job is to get into the middle of those and bring those enormous contrasts together. I don't want to narrow everything in those two realms down to a single focus. I don't want to take every sermon and fashion it to my personal form because that's my style. I think if you do that you've limited the spiritual diet of people, and I think you limit the ability to communicate to both lawyers and janitors. My job is to be as wide as the text is.

Let me give you some examples. There's a sermon called " Song of Simeon " that I would call a segmented inductive. If my audience is experiencing certain life happenings and there's a truth of Scripture that is also being displayed before them, then I could put in a segmented inductive form. Then I could do a segment of this and a segment of that and a segment of Scripture and a segment of their life. Maybe there's some point in which these things come together.

That's the attempt of this particular sermon. It's a Christmas sermon delivered on the 18th of December. It's from a series of sermons on reactions to the birth of Jesus, and this one comes from Luke 2:22-31. The text is the meeting of Simeon and the baby Jesus in the temple.

This is an odd piece to the Christian story. It's a part that's unfamiliar to many. For some reason Luke 2 feels it necessary to record the testimony of some old man who has been lurking around the temple. If you read this carefully, you can almost see the old fellow standing in the temple. He has large gloomy eyes, spittle in his beard, and slow motion movement which leaves the impression that every body gesture is premeditated.

Actually there are two old people here — a man and a woman. I didn't read you Anna's story. Just a few sentences announce her presence at this time. Each of them, loitering in the temple, are apparently the kind of people to whom the priests have grown accustomed. Around the temple these two appear as familiar as the furnishings — the altar, the golden candlesticks. So what difference should it make to a world what some old man and some wrinkled old widow have to say about Jesus?

That's simply the establishment of the place of the text. Now, the contrast of that is to bring in another segment. The intention is " I know old Christian people too, and so do you. " That's the next segment. Everybody knows Harry. He's become a bit of an institution. You can see him every day in his wheelchair parked in front of the big picture window at the " home. " You have to be careful how you say that. For different people the word has different meanings.

Then I go on to talk about home a little bit. I want to explain Harry.

After breakfast each morning a sweet lady in a white uniform pushes Harry's chair out into the day room in front of the picture window. He likes to sit there in the sun and watch the activities of the outdoors — the parking lot, the sidewalk, nature's critters who scurry about in the snow, and the sky. Seems like Harry spends a lot of time looking up in to the sky. He likes the shape of the clouds, I suppose.

The next part of this text talks about Harry simply moving across the floor as the sun moves across the floor warming its space in the morning. You talk about Harry for just a moment, then shift emphasis.

It must have been just over 30 days after the birth of Jesus that Mary and Joseph made an eight-mile walk from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Levitical law indicates that the ceremonies of purification were to take place 33 days after a male child was born. It was a little difficult to determine what manipulation has taken place in that ceremony due to rabbinic teachings that had become dominant by 4 B.C., but I would guess that somewhere between 31 and 41 days after Jesus' birth his family showed up at the temple for purification.

Now, if my calculations are right, that would mean that Mary and Joseph were gone for a long time.

In the segment of induction what I want to do is take the start of the story. Harry is presented in the nursing home. Simeon is confronted by a man and a woman and a baby coming to the temple. The segment stops.

Do you ever wonder what he thinks about? Harry, I mean. Sitting in front of the window in the sun. There's 24 hours in his day just like yours. Do you ever wonder what occupies his mind hour by hour? Some who sit in the day room make the hours turn by ruminating on the past. For some it's as though today does not exist. They're so fascinatedthey're fastened, rather, to yesterday. It's almost as though they've resigned in a way — resigned to the reality of now.

But that's not Harry. Oh, he occasionally delights in the joys of yesterday — children bouncing on his lap, a look at his wife's face when he gave her that special gift, the first grandchild, a little girl. Everybody says she has Harry's nose. Sure those are all great memories, but this man, this one by the window, does not force memories to be more than they were meant to do. Harry's thinking seems deeper than memories.

I told you that he was waiting. That's an important concept. The difference between Harry and the other people around the room [and I explained it in the first segment] is that others are indeed wasting away.

You've seen it. You've been on those nursing home visits and you've walked through that lobby area, and so has everybody else in your audience. Whether they are young, old, janitor or lawyer, their parents have been in that setting someplace. And they've walked through that lobby to see some who are wasting away. But Harry is waiting, waiting.

Where does that concept come from? Simeon. What's he doing in the temple?

Too weak for anything but a wheelchair, too silent to foster conversation, too tired to do what others think he should. There is something in that aching, the broken physical frame that sits by the window. He's waiting for something that his faith has told him. He's waiting for something that's as real as his leathery skin but far more appealing. He is waiting.

But he's not waiting for the fatal. He is waiting for the future. You think he stares out the window to watch the squirrels nibbling at acorns. He's not. He's looking at the sky staring deeper into the universe than you and I have ever seen before.

The segment stops. We return to Scripture.

At the temple in Jerusalem, it's a little hard for us to comprehend an old man's enthusiasm. He'd never met this family before. Surely he's never seen this child. It's not as though he was the grandfather or something. Then why does the old stranger named Simeon hold this baby so close to his chest? Why does he swing and sway as though there was a melody playing somewhere causing his feet to dance? Why are there tears streaming down his face? Why do the words to this song come out choked and broken? Why is the look in his face one of fulfillment, the kind of look you get when everything has gone exactly as you have been hoping? Why does he say this incredible thing — " Now I'm ready to die " ?

Some people in your audience have heard their mom or their dad, their grandpa say those very things. Why can't I just go home? And then I stop and I break out into a personal segment there. The text of Scripture is running segment by segment with this image of Harry. And then I chose to offer a segment that says something from my personal life.

I told a story about Jenny. When I wrote this she was 98. She's 102 now. I talked about a visit to her home where she was describing the same thing that you've had people talk to you about in your own ministry. They wanted to tell you about their funeral long before they've had it. It's something they've considered. And in that phrase she said those words: " I don't know why God keeps me here so long. I just want to go home. " I've seen that look on that face before. She's waiting. She's not wasting away. She's waiting.

I tell that story and then I bring it back to one more segment from Harry, the conclusion.

One more time you've come back to the home to pay a visit to your aunt. As you move through the lobby, you look toward the window where Harry always sits. But today Harry's not there. It's surprising not to see him there. Your pace comes to an abrupt halt. Your head rotates to check the other faces seated around the room. They're all in their places. They're all there, but Harry isn't in his. You have kind of a sour feeling being stirred up in your guts when you proceed down the hall to visit your aunt.

On the way to your aunt's room you go by Harry's room. And there you find some other man standing by a dresser placing socks and underwear into a top drawer. Harry's name isn't on the door any more. And that sour feeling in your tummy has graduated to a full-fledged bellyache. Something makes you turn.

Back up the hall you go to the dayroom, and there's a pull that compels you as you walk as if no one were around to watch, as if you were the only one in the place. You go to the dayroom and you stand in the spot. You reach for a chair. You bring it to the place where the sun is illuminating the floor. And there you take a seat in the sun, the very spot where Harry parked his chair. You sit there for a few moments while the agitation of your stomach quiets down.

And there in the sunlight you feel the warmth that Harry felt. Its radiance a penetrating reminder of the power behind the sun. You look out the window and up in the sky, and for a moment you think you just might understand what he was seeing in that spot. Sitting in the light, feeling the warmth, looking to the sky you may just be seeing a piece of what Harry saw, what Harry was waiting for.

Do you think you could die in peace today? It all depends on whether or not you have met the Baby, the blue blanket boy Savior of the world.

There is a structure to that sermon. That structure is something that helps life come into reality with the text of narrative. It is the narrative experience that flows through this temple experience, and it is a narrative process of life where I walk through the nursing home and see these old people all the time. Some of them are wasting away, but they're not wasting away any more than anybody else I go to work with. And they'll end up in those same places. But how do you get to that point in your life and actually still have a purpose? My friend Jenny is the perfect example of that. She has a purpose still. She's wanting to go home. She's waiting.

There is some structure to that. It's a more difficult structure, and it's a structure that joins at the place where the audience has been exegeted as well as the text of Scripture has been exegeted.

Now, is that an expository sermon? Most people these days would say no. I believe it is an attempt to expose the text into the reality of people's daily lives. In my mind, that is an expository sermon. But my base concept of expository preaching is that I am called to expose the text, and I don't want the form that I choose to get in the way. Your job is to stand in the place of communication to this wide audience and you, through the incarnation of your own life, communicate what God has called you to do.

So if that's true, then I don't want to sit down with my Bible preparing my sermon with a preconceived notion in my head of what form this particular sermon is going to have. The same mistake can be made with inductive-style preachers. My tendency is to take deductive, didactic passages and make them inductive. They're not.

Go to a hortative passage. It's Ephesians 4:25, used in a sermon called " Be Imitators of God. " Hortatory is that kind of pithy, repeated statement that commands.

Paul begins in 4:17: " This I affirm and testify in the Lord that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their minds. " And then he goes on to outline exactly what that means. " They are darkened in their understanding. They're alienated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to their hardness of heart. They become callused. They've given themselves up to licentiousness to practice every kind of uncleanness. You did not so learn Christ, assuming that you heard of him and were taught in him as the truth is in Jesus. Put off the old nature which belongs to your former manner of life. " Now, there's a point! Put off your old nature. " Put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor. "

See the repetition of these statements? " Let everyone speak the truth with his neighbor. Be angry but do not sin. Do not let the sun go down on your anger. Give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his hands that he may be able to give to those who are in need. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, slander be put away from you with all malice. Be kind, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. "

You hear the repetition of those words. How in the world do you make an inductive sermon out of that? It is a point by point by point by point hammering home of a number of things that are the criterion for having this new nature put on. If that's the form in which Paul's writing, then maybe that's the form I ought to figure out how to present it.

This one came in two particular forms, two points. Put off the old nature; put on the new nature. I can understand that. It shows a contrast. That seems to be presented in the text. Put off the old nature is represented by what the Gentile lifestyle was all about. Put on the new nature was represented by the new criteria, by what Christians established themselves. Maybe I ought to talk about each one of those points because each one of those points will relate to these people.

That text comes in a form of didactic teaching and probably ought to be presented like that. Don't try to create an inductive form that suggests this is a narrative text. It doesn't look narrative to me. So if I have a wide audience and if I have a wide Bible, let's let the width of that Bible be the governor of the form that I choose.

So what does that mean? We're trying to expand the possibilities on the form that I would present on Sunday morning. The more I narrow myself to form the more I put my people in the posture of apathy on the 400th Sunday that I preach to them. It's not like the first Sunday anymore. That's the really tough part. Are they still listening after 30 years? I'm guessing that they can. But if everything has to conform, they know where it's going. Point one. Point two. Point three ought to be getting about time. Eleven twenty-five. Let's see. We're getting there. Heading toward conclusion.

The wide variety is the best quiver for us, and that's what we're hoping for. If I want to grant any permission here today, I want the form to be established by the text and I really want to mean that and do everything I can to be creative within the exegesis of that text and to believe that God's Word is true when it says this is the feeding for people's lives. So my job is to get it to them in the form, in the presentation that it has.