Towards A “Big Story” Homiletic
In the first two posts of this series, I have attempted to establish why Big Story Preaching is essential for making disciples in a post-Christian environment, and how the grand narrative of the Bible forms disciples, by shaping identity, worldview, mission and community.
In this post, we come to the practical question: How do we go about intentionally establishing a ministry of “Big Story Preaching?”
The first idea that comes to mind is to preach a regular “Big Story Series”. Perhaps we might begin by preaching chronologically through selected high points in the biblical story, to give our congregation a sense of the narrative arc of the Scriptures. We might also consider topical series that trace important issues through the grand narrative of the Bible. For example, we might address a “theology of work,” beginning with God’s intention for work in Genesis, moving on to the impact of sin on work, the way the gospel redeems work, and the future of work in God’s economy. We could walk a similar path on the topic of rest, tracing the theme of “Sabbath” from Genesis to Revelation. We could likewise structure the annual family series along the lines of “God’s plan – sin’s distortion – gospel restoration.”
Each of these series ideas holds possibilities for fruitful gospel-centred preaching that could help establish a sense of the grand narrative of the Scriptures in our preaching ministry. However, on any given Sunday, they could also be susceptible to some of the pitfalls mentioned in the first post of this series. We need a “big story homiletic” that could secure a metanarrative thread in every sermon. Such a homiletic will need to weave the big story into its theology, its hermeneutic, its cultural engagement, and its application of the text.
Big Story Theology
The starting point for a big story homiletic is a theological commitment to the unity of the entire Bible as a single narrative. This is no disconnected collection of loosely-related anecdotes, poems, and speeches. It is a single story, with a unified plot line, revealing the character and purposes of a single protagonist from beginning to end.
The God we meet as creator in the first verse of Genesis is the same one who reveals himself as provider to Abraham, as deliverer to the children of Israel, and as redeemer in Jesus. This God is not only the main character; he is the author of the story, plotting his purpose from Creation through Fall to Redemption and New Creation. He composes each scene, not merely as a stand-alone episode with its own isolated meaning, but as an essential piece of the whole with a significant part to play in the larger story.
The Scriptures give us the quintessentially well-crafted story, in which the purpose of every scene ultimately becomes clear in the climax. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, then, is the key for unlocking the meaning of every text. When we commit to read the Bible in this way, we have chosen to prepare our sermons through the filter of biblical theology, which Graeme Goldsworthy defines as “nothing more nor less than allowing the Bible to speak as whole: as the one word of the one God about the one way of salvation.” (Preaching the Whole Bible as Christian Scripture, p. 7)
This theological foundation affects how we approach the Scriptures for preaching. We do not spelunk the hidden places of an ancient text merely to bring it to light, examine it, and translate it into a “helpful thought of the day.” Rather, we will be looking for the connection of each text to the whole, and how it contributes to and contains the Gospel message that is the overarching theme of the entire Bible.
Big Story Hermeneutic
A commitment to “Big Story Theology” will naturally lead to a “Big Story Hermeneutic.” Obviously, our starting point for interpreting any text is to take the context seriously—but not just the literary context in which a passage is located. Big story preaching requires us to explore each text through the perspective of its wider, canonical context. We want to see how it fits, and why it matters, in the larger story, resisting the temptation to draw moral lessons directly from the text without filtering it through the grand narrative.
We should not, for example, see the Joseph story in Genesis merely as a tale of a younger brother who was rewarded by God with outrageous success when he remained faithful in the face of injustice and trials. Nor should we see it merely as a story about how God overcame and even used the weaknesses in the character of the older brothers to provide for their family in a time of famine, or how God “hits straight licks with crooked sticks.” Rather, our treatment of Joseph’s story is not complete until we cast it in the larger story of God’s plan to redeem all of creation through a family that he has chosen. From this perspective, Joseph’s story not only highlights God’s providential provision for this chosen family, but it also serves as a backdrop for the transformation of Judah, who will become the ancestor of kings, including the King of Kings who will bear the sins of the world. To stop short of this canonical context is to leave the text vulnerable to being coopted by other non-biblical narratives, such as the American success story, the story of unlikely heroes, the gospel of prosperity, etc.
The principle of the canonical context then points to the second pillar in our big story hermeneutic: every text should be read in light of the gospel of Jesus. If we see each text in its relation to the whole, and if the whole points to Jesus, then it follows that, on some level, we will preach Christ from every text. This means that any text can and should yield not merely inspiration or moral teaching, but the gospel message that, though we cannot fix ourselves, Jesus can.
How do you find the path to Christ from any text? This question has been the subject of thousands of pages written on Christ-centered preaching. Most authors describe multiple ways, from type/antitype to promise-fulfillment to covenant-Christ connections. Tim Keller uses the analogy of watching a movie with a surprise ending. Just as you can’t help but see details in a movie that point to a surprise ending, once you know what the ending is, “sometimes … you can’t help but think about Christ.” (Preaching, 87)
My own best analogy, from the perspective of Big Story preaching, is the “Google-earth” method. Study the details of the text through sound exegesis to gain a thorough understanding of the meaning of the text in its original setting. Then zoom out until you see the entirety of the gospel story, and find the clearest and most direct path to Jesus.
Big Story Cultural Engagement
We know we must address the cultural milieu in which we preach. The question is, “How?” Will we critique the behaviours and practices that violate God’s law? Will we challenge the values that deny God’s reign? Will we cast down the symbols that our culture has raised up as strongholds against the knowledge of God? Each of these represents a valid, prophetic posture. Big story preaching, however, will engage culture with the understanding that, underlying each immoral practice, each twisted value, each idolatrous symbol, is a cultural story from which it all flows.
The stories that shape our culture are powerful because they are unseen and unacknowledged. This poses both a challenge and an opportunity for Christian preaching. The challenge is that, because the stories behind the practices, values, and symbols of our culture are under the surface, these practices, values, and symbols seem self-evident, beyond critique. The opportunity for preaching is that, because the underlying stories of our culture are unacknowledged, they are also unexamined. Big Story cultural engagement will bring these stories to light, uncover their inconsistencies and weaknesses, and tell the Gospel story as the better (and true) alternative.
For example, many in our culture today practice a principled rejection of any claim to absolute truth. This posture reflects a strong value of “tolerance,” in the sense of considering all “truth” claims to be equally valid. When pressed for the basis of this value, most people will point in one way or another to the violence and oppression that have existed in the world because of exclusive religious truth claims. For many people, this argument seems self-evident, airtight, beyond critique. This is the typical postmodern rejection of all metanarratives. They are unaware, however, that this rejection in itself is its own metanarrative – yielding its own exclusive claim to the absolute “truth” that all stories are equally valid. Ironically, this kind of “tolerance” can be just as intolerant in its rejection, oppression, and even violence towards those who do not adhere to its basic story as any other metanarrative in history.
We could debate the contemporary “tolerance principle” by pointing out the fundamental logical flaw in claiming that two contradictory statements can both be true, but we are not likely to convince anyone. Most people will ignore logic as long as their basic story remains intact. A better strategy is to point out the fatal inconsistency in this story – that in the end it is not tolerant at all – and offer a different story as a more consistent foundation for the value of “tolerance.” Christians practice tolerance not because all opinions, stories, or truth claims are equally valid, but because all people are equally valuable to God, created in his image, redeemed by his son, and given the privilege of either embracing or rejecting the truth that he has revealed. Unlike the postmodern story, the Christian story excludes no one in its practice of tolerance, but rather welcomes everyone and invites everyone without coercion to hear, understand, and experience the truth. True tolerance flows not from the postmodern story, but from the gospel.
Another deeply-embedded cultural story is the rags-to-riches narrative of personal success so prominent in our North American psyche. From this story emerges a high value on achievement and accomplishment as the primary source of personal significance. The result is people who are filled with either pride for their achievements, self-loathing for their lack of achievements, or a neurotic drive to succeed at all costs. We could try to counter these ills by simply exhorting them to live with healthier balance in their professional, physical, social and family lives. But the underlying story, the real root of the problem, remains intact. In fact, the American success story also proposes health and balance as a means to preserve productivity, and promote successful living. This merely adds to the list of areas of their lives where people stress over their attempts to succeed, and feel guilty when they fail.
The Gospel solution is to tell a different story. Our significance does not come from our success, but from our creator, who has made us in his image and redeemed all our failures through his son. We can be set free to pursue achievement, not as a source of significance, but as the fruit of the significance that God has already granted.
These are just two examples of the “big story” approach to culture. Engaging culture does not have to mean we must choose between cultural warfare or cultural accommodation. There is another alternative. We can simply tell a different story.
Big Story Application
A typical approach to application in preaching has been something like this:
Determine the meaning of the text in the original setting.
Extract from the text a universal principle that could be applied to all people in all places at all times.
Deduce from the principle the correct application for your hearers in your time and your place.
Big story preaching will use a different thought process, primarily because we see the story of the Bible as our own story. Our goal is to lead our people to take their place in God’s story in a way that is consistent with what he has revealed in the Biblical text. We do not merely apply principles from the story; we live in the story. In light of this, we might come to the text with a slightly different set of questions:
Where does this text fit into the overall flow of the Big Story?
What does this part of the story tell me about who God is and what he is doing?
How might I play my part in God’s story that is consistent with this insight?
NT Wright provides a helpful image for navigating this process. He compares the biblical story to a five-act Shakespearian play of which the final act has been lost. The first four acts are of such remarkable quality that it is generally agreed that the play ought to be performed, but also that it would be inappropriate to write a final act. In stead, a caste of actors, highly trained and experienced in the nuances of Shakespeare, are enlisted to improvise the final act in a way that is consistent with what they know about the first four acts, and about the playwright himself. Such a process “would require of the actors a free and responsible entering in to the story as it stood, in order first to understand how the threads could appropriately be drawn together and then to put that understanding into effect by speaking and acting with both innovation and consistency.” (The New Testament and the People of God, 1992, p. 140)
A shortcoming of Wright’s metaphor is that the final act of the biblical story is not missing, but clearly given in the biblical metanarrative. In fact, the beginning, middle, and the end are all clear, leaving us with perhaps less room for innovation than his analogy might suggest. However, we do inhabit the penultimate act, between the climactic, clarifying, transformative revelation of the life, death and resurrection of Jesus and the final new creation to be revealed at his return. The task of application in big story preaching is to help our hearers to locate themselves in this crucial moment of the story, and conduct their lives in a way that is consistent with that which has come before, as well as that which is yet to come.
Conclusion
There may have never been a time in history when a greater cacophony of stories vied for the minds and hearts of God’s people. The gravity of this moment heightens the urgency of our narrative vocation. Believers and not-yet-believers alike desperately need a clear account of the story in which we live. We must tell the story. Tell the whole story. Tell it faithfully. Tell it well.
