Last week I spoke about reading Elizabeth Strout’s new novel Tell Me Everything.
I read it twice on holiday. I find that reading her books once is never enough. It is not because they are difficult to read; it is because they are such a pleasure to read. The language is crisp and fresh, and the storytelling is so engaging that a Strout novel is always compelling.
I was struck by the way that two of the main characters spoke about telling untold tales.
One of the characters, Lucy Barton, is a novelist. The other, Olive Kitteridge, is a retired maths teacher. In their discussions they relate stories that otherwise might remain untold. What struck me about these stories was how both these women had so carefully observed the characters they were describing.
This is a skill that is invaluable for the preacher, who must be able to develop the art of noticing! There is a way of seeing life that sees beyond the obvious and superficial. This observation skill notices what is not immediately obvious to others and thinks about whether it is important or not.
This is something that a preacher does with the biblical text every week.
It is important to see what happens if this observational process does not take place. The knock-on effect is that the preacher preaches a generic sermon that communicates what they have always thought about a biblical passage, rather than a sermon that communicates what is going on in the text.
I sometimes play a little game when I am preaching on the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (recorded in Luke 16: 19–31). This is the only parable that Jesus told where a character is named. Is this important, and if so, why?
The little game I play is to ask at different points in the sermon, “You know what the name Lazarus means, don’t you?” I then move on into the next stage of the sermon until finally I ask the question again at the end and reveal the answer. The answer of course is that Lazarus means “God helps”. Why did Jesus use his name in this parable when he does not name a character in any of his other parables?
This story shows the rich man’s callous disregard for the poor beggar Lazarus. On earth he gets no help from human beings, longing for scraps from the rich man’s table. His only consolation comes from dogs who lick his wounds.
The untold story of this parable is embedded in an obscure name that has a significant meaning. The unnamed rich man has everything in this life but in the end has nothing and no one to help him as he faces eternity.
By contrast the named beggar is known by and helped by God not because he is poor but because he has looked to God as his helper in this life. That is an untold story worth telling.
When reading Scripture it is always worth having an eye out for the details that help us tell untold stories that lead people to trust Christ alone.
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
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