Reading for Preaching

Arie C. Leder

The constant pressure of relevance drives some preachers to movies and novels as illustrations or even as the fundamental texts for their sermons. Because contemporary seekers do not know–may even be offended by–the old, old story, contemporary fiction is an effective bridge to a hearing of the gospel. This assumes, of course, that the preacher’s fiction of choice is a known quantity for the seeker. What if they haven’t seen the movie or read the book? Not to worry, just retell the story to get into that story, so that maybe they’ll be willing to hear the old, old story during the last few minutes of your “talk.”

Wait a minute! Isn’t that what we used to do, take time to read and explain the old, old story? Do teachers of English literature use a “known” contemporary text to get the student into an “ancient” text, Pride and Prejudice, The Canterbury Tales, or even The Great Gatsby? Do you first watch one movie in order to understand another?

What is the relationship between our reading, or movie watching, and hearing the gospel as expressed in the ancient texts the Church privileges as Scripture?

Reflecting on Madeleine L’Engle’s fiction, Sally Thomas recalls that “as a child, raised on a relatively secular diet of mainstream Protestantism and utterly unaware of the existence of any theological problem beyond being mean to somebody on the playground, I was captivated by the notion that there was such a thing as evil and, conversely, that there was such a thing as good. The idea, further, that even the weak and the flawed were called to the battle–that there even was a battle–roused something in my imagination that years of Sunday School had somehow failed to touch.”(“Fantasy and Faith,” First Things [November 2007], 16.) But the biblical story is filled with wickedness and evil, goodness and grace. Why weren’t those stories told? Maybe because the teachers couldn’t abide the womanizing Samson, hatred between brothers, the depravity of sin manifested in the lives of all the biblical saints. And reconciliation.

Thomas concludes: “the novels themselves were not the gospel, and I don’t think I ever mistook them as such. But they awakened my mind to the idea of a universe in which, even in distant galaxies, God is praised in the familiar words of the Psalms.” Burying oneself into good literature is fine, La Suite Française is achingly beautiful. But it isn’t privileged Scripture. Why not read Scripture as intensively? Ask of it the questions you address your favorite fiction? It has long been the classic that discloses the human condition for what it really is, that speaks the truth about impious believers and arrogant seekers, and that, if you are willing to hear it, will move you mysteriously to the grace of God. Let that classic help us to penetrate to the human condition depicted in all sorts of fiction.