May 24: Sermons with Personal Narratives

I am starting a series interviewing Massachusetts pastors on practical aspects of preaching. Recently I heard a sermon that deeply moved me in Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston. Using a metaphor to describe divine mercy, the minister described his own experience of not finding a healthy relationship until later in life, in his 50s. In the sermon, he described the sensation of being too traumatized by past abandonment to be loved—his fear that, as soon as he revealed his emotional scars, his partner would leave him. He then drew an analogy between the experience of God’s unconditional love, and the shock that his relationship remained intact, even strengthened, after he revealed his personal vulnerability.

Afterwards I had a debate with a friend on the topic of sermons in which ministers use material from their personal lives to make a point about theology, or elucidate a biblical narrative, or create a metaphor. “Many people in congregations get uncomfortable when pastors do this,” my friend said. “It is a natural impulse to want to idealize the church’s spiritual leader. People don’t want to hear information that gets in the way of that idealization.”

It was a fair observation, and with that in mind, I asked two pastors from the church Highrock in Arlington for their views on this topic. How would they advise ministers interested in going from the abstract to the specific—who want to incorporate more narratives from personal life into their sermons, but feel concerned about negative reactions from their congregations?

Aaron Engler, Young Adult Ministry, Highrock:

“In our current cultural setting, people are craving and desiring authenticity and sincerity. Taking cues from our cultural context and looking at people like Paul, leadership is not necessarily about charging forward on a white horse, looking impeccable.

Real leadership means 1) to be vulnerable, 2) to give hope. The reality is that sin has been defeated. Death has no sting. I don’t have a problem with opening up, because Christ has suffered for my sin, and in Him I hope. I feel His spirit will strengthen and provide for me and carry me forward.

I would be wary, though, of using the pulpit as a confessional. But it’s highly appropriate to say how you faced sin in the past and came through. To say, ‘I was here, but Christ has redeemed me. I can stand here before you today because Christ has redeemed me, and there is victory.’”

To give a specific example of personal narrative in sermons, I recently heard Dave Swaim preach about the crisis he and his wife faced when, despite prayer, they were unable to have biological children. The Swaims now have three adopted children.

Dave Swaim, Lead Pastor, Highrock (Harvard Divinity School ’00):

“Philip Brooks said, preaching is the way the truth of God’s word passed through the prism of human personality.” I need to digest God’s word before I can express it to them.

People come to church feeling doubt, fear, anger, pain. The only way to show them how to avail themselves of the resources of God’s power, is to talk about times when I’ve been in those situations. People need to know that I am a struggler. They may feel uncomfortable. But unless we admit that we’re wrestling and struggling and discuss it, we’re not going to be victorious.

In The Problem of Pain, CS Lewis wrote, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” Unless you can identify your own pain, you’re not going to be able to lead other people. I speak out of the times God spoke to me in my own pain.

When interns at Highrock prepare to preach, they turn in an outline with four things: 1) the problem in the text; 2) a corresponding problem in our lives today; 3) the solution in the text; 4) the solution in our lives today.

In this week’s Gospel reading, Joseph and Mary lose Jesus, then find him in the Temple. The problem around which I built my sermon was the sensation of losing Jesus. This is an existential human dilemma: not being able to find God. Then I ask myself, how have I had a genuine encounter with the same thing? Can I give a testimony to show that God has been faithful when I have been in that situation?

Craig Barnes wrote that he is suspicious of every theology that doesn’t stand up in the emergency rooms of life. In a congregation as large as ours, every week there is at least one person there who is desperate, and this is their last chance to hear the word of God before they go out and do a desperate thing.

It’s important not go give false promises in your sermon. Like, “when you pray, God will give you what you need.

You cannot preach a good sermon unless you are willing to mine your own pain for the times you encounter God there. Essential human dilemmas that all of us experience, which transcend culture and demographics."

Starting next week, I will split this post into two entries—one with a Massachusetts pastor about a practical nuts and bolts aspect of preaching, and one on the lectionary. The lectionary readings for this week are Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; Psalm 1; I John 5:9-13; and John 17:6-19. This week I will focus on Psalm 1:

1 Blessed is the man
who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked
nor in the way of offenders has stood,
nor in the session of scoffers has sat.
2 But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he murmurs day and night.
3 He is like a tree planted by streams of water,
which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither.
Whatever he does prospers.
4 Not so the wicked!
They are like chaff
that the wind blows away.
5 Therefore the wicked will not stand in the judgment,
nor sinners in the assembly of the righteous.
6 For the LORD watches over the way of the righteous,
but the way of the wicked will perish.

As Robert Alter writes in The Book of Psalms: A Translation with Commentary, this psalm is in the tradition of Wisdom literature. The Psalm develops a theological view of prosperity and suffering that is antithetical to that expressed in the Book of Job. In the latter, Satan argues that Job’s righteousness is merely a result of his happy, comfortable life. When Yahweh (translated as the LORD) calls Satan’s attention to Job’s virtue, Satan counters,

“Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 1:9-11).

This psalm, in contrast, interprets prosperity as directly linked with righteousness. Alter describes Wisdom literature as a genre in literature of the Near East in which universal, as opposed to national, principle for living are articulated. The Psalmist uses physical imagery that would resonate with an audience in a climate with scarce water. The person who anchors his life in divine teaching is like a tree growing near a water source. (Alter, 3-4). Alter writes of the opening verse,

“Walking on a way is a traditional metaphor for pursuing a set of moral choices in life. In this verse, that idea is turned into an elegant narrative sequence in the triadic line—first walking, then standing, then sitting, with the attachment to the company of evildoers becoming increasingly more habitual from one verset to the next” (Alter, 3).

Alter credits Nahum Sarna with positing that the psalm’s first word contains a pun: “the first word of the psalm, ’ashrei, ‘happy,’ may pun on ’ashurim, “steps,” and hence reinforce the walking metaphor” (Alter, 3).

The word hagah in the second verse is often translated as “meditate”; in the New International Version, the line reads, “on his law he meditates day and night.” Alter however writes that a more accurate translation of hagah would be to make a low muttering sound, “which is what one does with a text in a culture where there is no silent reading” (Alter, 3).

Finally, Alter highlights a linguistic parallel between the wicked who will not “stand up in judgment” in verse 5, and the act of “standing” with offenders in verse 1, although the two Hebrew words are different. The psalm posits a final moment of divine judgment, when those who sit with scoffers, like the chaff introduced in verse 4, “will have no leg to stand on (like chaff)” (Alter, 4).

The physical imagery and linguistic puns raise the question of whether or not the psalmist envisions a link between material prosperity and spiritual virtue: “. . . its leaf does not wither—and in all that he does he prospers” (v 3). The question then arises, how might a pastor interpret this passage for a reader who, despite prayer and honest effort, feels himself on the edeg of an abyss?

This question is directly relevant to the current time period, in which many people have the sensation of losing their material stability for reasons beyond their control. Members of a congregation might be resistant to biblical passages that posit that one-to-one connection between virtue and prosperity. However, since the psalmist uses metaphors from the natural world, not images of wealth that one might interpret as realistic (clothes, possessions, splendid architecture), I would argue that it is definitely possible to interpret the “prosperity” envisioned by the psalmist as spiritual, not necessarily material, wealth.


--Elizabeth Fels