dialogue

Developing the Art of Storytelling

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Storytelling is an art that needs to be developed in today’s churches. Storytellers succeed through using dialogue, developing action and plot, opening up the imagination, and learning how to tell the story well. The following entry is one pastor’s account of the transforming power of story in his own preaching. Its original title, “Spinning Yarns,” suggests the necessity of retaining the first-person perspective because the best stories are our stories—stories told from personal experience.

Spinning Yarns

Throughout his conquests, Alexander the Great read the Iliad, a book that kindles martial zeal. He often placed his copy, annotated by Aristotle, under his pillow at night alongside his dagger. It’s not stretching it to say this one story’s effect on Alexander may have changed the course of history.

I confess I had been preaching for years before I realized that well-told stories wield this kind of power, that they can actually change people’s lives. I happened onto that realization the hard way. My college degree was in accounting, and I’ve always felt at home with facts, analysis, and principles—the abstract and conceptual. I would have been embarrassed to simply tell a Bible story in a sermon; that was for children. I thought adults needed a quick summary of the story followed by cogent lessons from it.

But then I became pastor of an inner-city church in Chicago. I began to notice my sermons had less impact than in my previous location, a college town. I wasn’t shirking on preparation. I painstakingly studied and outlined each text. But my people too often had blank looks. So I set a goal to learn how to communicate to my people, none of whom were college graduates, and a few of whom couldn’t read.

Other inner-city pastors emphasized oratory and delivery, so I bought a book on classical rhetoric and tried becoming a flame thrower. Blank looks became surprised looks.

Then I read Triumphs of the Imagination, by Leland Ryken, which discusses the nature and value of fiction. Frankly, I hadn’t read fiction in eight years. But Ryken argued that a story has power—in itself. Hearing one, we enter the experience of others, feel what they feel, learn firsthand.

So I tried recounting Bible stories in my sermons, accenting dialogue, building suspense. I began woodenly, then loosened up and found I actually enjoyed telling the stories. Best of all, my people now had interested looks. They were enjoying the stories, too.

Since then I’ve read many more books on storytelling and fiction writing. I’ve found the same principles these yarn spinners use to make characters appealing and to heighten suspense have aided my preaching.

Characterization

People love people. Many magazines exist solely because of this fact. We are inspired by others’ accomplishments. We are curious about their secrets. We are attracted by their virtues and repelled by their flaws. For good or ill, we are never neutral about people.

Fiction writers know that, and they labor to create characters that will bond with the readers’ interests. If we care about their character, we will keep reading their book.

God has filled his Book with fascinating people: Joab, a no-holds-barred pragmatist; Abigail, an unflappable crisis manager; Jonadab, a crafty schemer; or Jonathan, the greatest friend someone could have.

In order to spotlight characters in a Bible story or modern-day illustration, I must come to know them. Fiction writers spend days imagining their characters’ habits, emotions, weaknesses, abilities, ambitions, and fears. As I prepare to tell a story, I take the time to ask myself, Were these people extraverts or introverts? What was their relationship to God? Were they assertive or passive, impetuous or controlled, can-do or defeatist? Because people are complex, that sort of thinking takes time. But if I don’t do it, I end up with cardboard figures that are indistinguishable from each other and boring.

One way to bring biblical characters alive in my mind is to find contemporary parallels. Recently Jeroboam took off his sandals and put on black wingtips for me. Here is the consummate one-minute manager, high on the list of corporate headhunters. He is ousted from management only to return to claim the presidential suite. Yet he compromises principles and loses out with God.

Another way to ensure the characters in my sermons are vital is to concentrate on the universal elements of their personalities: ambition, loss, romance, unfulfilled desires, success, stress, and so on. Last year I preached an expository series through the life of David, and I wrestled with the text where David feigns insanity. Then I spotted the common denominator—when facing a crisis, David was resourceful. The text sprang open.

I have also found that Bible characters are more interesting if I portray their possible thoughts and motivations. My listeners know the complexity of their own inner lives. They identify with the Bible character when they discover his or her personal struggles.

For example, I imagined Sarah’s reaction when the Lord promised Abraham, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son,” something like this:

“Sarah was speechless. Then came a sudden association, a memory sadly pushed to the back of her mind years ago: God had promised they would have offspring as numerous as the stars of the sky. She had never known what to think of that. And now, at this word from these strangers, she did think, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I now have this pleasure?”

It’s easy to slide into the rut of characterizing by adjectives only. Though adjectives are useful, especially when time is short, fiction writers use many means to make each person in the story vivid and memorable.

• Dialogue. We get to know others by overhearing what they say.
• Actions. Play-by-play is perhaps the easiest way to inject life into a sermon.
• Thoughts. “As water reflects a face, so a man’s heart reflects the man” (Prov. 27:19).
• What other characters say. One person brings the best out of our character; another the worst. Together they give the whole picture, like a statue viewed from different angles.
• Description of appearance. We discern much about others just by looking at them.

Dialogue

Of those methods for enlivening a character, dialogue is perhaps the most powerful. Some fiction writers advise that dialogue should make up one-third of the novel.

Some of the most memorable words in the Bible come from dialogue. What preacher would want to do without Moses’ answer to God at the burning bush: “O Lord, please send someone else to do it”? or Abraham’s words to a curious Isaac as they climb a mountain of Moriah: “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son”?

I have found using dialogue in my sermon stories helps in several ways.

Dialogue Invites Immediacy. It beckons the listener to eavesdrop on each conversation. The storyteller gathers the listeners and the characters into the same room by using direct quotations rather than indirect. If I quote only indirectly, I put myself between the listeners and the scene: “Jesus then told Nicodemus that unless a man is born again … ” However, when I quote directly, I let the character do the talking: “I tell you the truth unless a man is born again … ” A subtle change, but a noticeable improvement in immediacy.

Dialogue Heightens Emotion. Which has more drama: to say, “Elijah sat down under the broom tree and felt depressed,” or “Elijah sat down under the broom tree and said, ‘I have had enough, Lord. Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors”?

Dialogue Reveals the Person. We learn much about Naomi through these few words: “Don’t call me Naomi. Call me Mara, because the Almighty has made my life very bitter. I went away full, but the Lord has brought me back empty.” In a sermon, I could say, “Naomi had been through great hardship and felt self-pity and bitterness,” but her own words reflect that truth much more powerfully.

Because my listeners intuitively gauge the character from his or her words, I am particularly careful how I paraphrase and deliver a Bible character’s dialogue. Slang and regional accents can add humor and contemporaneity, but they can also mislead or distract when used indiscriminately.

Action and Plot

When we recount a Bible story in a message, we obviously do not write the plot, nor do we alter it. The same thing applies to illustrations from books, news events, or our own lives. But learning what makes for a good plot has attuned me to the crescendos and decrescendos of a story. I want to be like the pianist who interprets a song more sensitively because of his or her grasp of music theory and composition.

When I was a teenager, I bought a classical music album entitled Fireworks, a marrow-throbbing collection of zeniths from various pieces. We owned other classical music, but I got every last spark out of Fireworks. My tastes have matured; I now enjoy the quiet and subtle movements as much as the grand finales.

My storytelling has followed a similar path. At first, I told stories like one long finale, trumpets blaring from beginning to end. But I’ve grown more sensitive to downs and ups. Now I reserve my highest intensity for the climax.

The key to understanding a story’s plot, and where the climax falls, is identifying the conflict. Whenever I prepare to tell a story, I consider: What problems is this person trying to solve? What adversity is there to overcome?

I had told the story of Isaac’s birth many times before I recognized and developed one of the subsidiary conflicts: Would Sarah ever laugh again? Would her life ever take on joy? This problem isn’t verbalized until the end of the story. At the birth of Isaac, Sarah says, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” I decided to tell Sarah’s story, basing it on the problem of her lack of joy.

Since conflict sparks interest, I usually begin my story with it. Normally I don’t launch the story with an eloquent description of a person, landscape, or background events; I unload that cargo as the plot progresses. With Sarah’s story, I had to establish from the start her lack of laughter, unstated in Genesis until the end. I imagined her reaction to someone else’s celebration:

“A new mother giggled with her family and friends. Sarah smiled too, but she couldn’t laugh; she hadn’t really laughed in years. She was glad for the mother, but it was a hollow gladness and a Mona Lisa smile. Would Sarah ever laugh again?”

Sometimes, feeling pressure from the clock, I rush the beginning of the story to get to the climax and make my point. Taking time to establish the person’s struggle is difficult for me, a get-to-the-point person. But by slighting the conflict, I defuse the climax, leaving myself with an emotional dud.

For example, the parting of the Red Sea is a moving climax, but only if you’ve been through Pharaoh’s repeated refusals and the ominous charge of the Egyptian cavalry. So when I told the story during a series in Exodus, I didn’t skip a single plague. The greater the struggles, the more powerful the victory.

Sensory Description

The doorways into the imagination are the five senses. By appealing to the senses, the storyteller takes the listener by the hand and leads him across the threshold into the scene. Notice how the following sensory-filled introduction involves you in Joseph’s experience.

“Joseph’s head pounded as he looked at the crowd of buyers and wondered, Which one will be my master? He wanted to get off his feet, blistered by the desert trek. Raucous, foreign tongues filled his ears, but he longed for the voice of Jacob.”

During my sermon preparation, I close my eyes, place myself in the scene, and use my imagination. What do I see? What do I hear? What do I touch, smell, taste? When I put myself into Elijah’s place at the ravine of Kerith where he was fed by ravens, the brook didn’t just run dry. Stones hurt the back of my cupped hands as I pressed them into the riverbed for the trickling water. In the message, I won’t use all these perceptions, just enough to satisfy a healthy imagination.

Of the five senses, sight is the most influential. Storytellers are like filmmakers, who search for meaningful, emotive images: David twirling his sling; Abraham lifting a knife over his son; Adam hiding in the bushes from God.

Lengthy descriptions slow a story, so whenever possible I embroider descriptions with action. For instance, instead of saying, “Goliath’s sword was heavy,” I would say, “David strained to raise Goliath’s sword over his head.”

When we taste, touch, sniff, observe, and listen, we tell the story freshly even to those who have heard the story ninety-nine times before.

Delivery

Rushing a story is like gulping down a Sunday dinner. It takes time to set the mood, to expressively speak the dialogue. Our listeners will not get emotionally involved in thirty seconds, nor can we build suspense in that time. We need pauses … silence.

There are occasions to speak rapidly, to increase the sense of fast action. But in general, a hurried story says, “Just get the facts.” A slower pace says, “Feel this; live this.” I used to balk at spending a large amount of time on a story because I wanted to get to the point. Now I realize the story gets the point across better than my factual, declarative statements.

By trial and error, I’ve developed a storytelling style that works for me. I write out the story in my own words, then read as little as possible, because when eye contact is broken, the mood evaporates. And I tell the story without pausing for principles or application. I want people to experience the story itself in a powerful way first.

Telling a story well requires extra preparation, and when a story is long or I don’t manage time well during the week, I read more during the sermon. And I’ve faced those dreaded moments in which I am a few feet from the pulpit, with solid eye contact, and can’t remember what’s next. But those blunders are forgotten when a story hits home.

Surprises

As I increased the amount of storytelling in my preaching, I didn’t have to jettison principles and propositions. But instead of the traditional format of ideas, then illustrations, I first tell the story or paint the image, proceeding from known to unknown, concrete to abstract. This gives the listener a solid box for storing sometimes wispy principles.

Recently I preached on how we often push God to the side during the week and live for our own pursuits. But I began by telling of King Ahaz, who was charmed by a pagan altar he saw in Damascus and then carved a copy in Jerusalem. He took the liberty of moving the furniture in God’s house, sliding his new altar into the center and the bronze altar to the side. Ahaz instructed the priests to sacrifice on his altar. At God’s altar, he would seek divine guidance.

Only then did I raise the question, “Aren’t we like Ahaz if we devote time, energy, and thoughts to personal ambitions but seek God only when we can’t pay the bills?” Weeks later a member confessed, “Pastor, that story showed me exactly what I was doing.”

A second surprise to come out of my increased yarn spinning is that Bible stories have become my main resource for illustrations. The Bible is packed with stories—adventures, mysteries, romances. It has heroes, villains, suspense. I never had enough illustrations before. Now I’ll often use Bible stories to open windows on a subject.

Through these stories, Bible events and characters are becoming symbols for my people, things by which they interpret their lives. Recently Mary told me, “I used to complain a lot: ‘Why do I have to go shopping today?’ ‘I hate to clean the bathroom.’ But when you preached on the desert wanderings, and I saw the Israelites grumbling all the time, I just couldn’t complain anymore. And if I catch myself complaining, it hurts me inside because I don’t want to be like them.”

As I tell stories, I am affected as deeply as the listeners. Some time ago I sat with my boys at bedtime reading the story of David and Goliath from a children’s book. I came to David’s famous line: “All those gathered here will know that it is not by sword or spear that the Lord saves; for the battle is the Lord’s, and he will give all of you into our hands.”

For the rest of the story I fought back tears … just reading a children’s book.

I’m not given to tears, but pastoring in Chicago, toe to toe with Goliath, I identified deeply with David. Suddenly I was ready to fight again.

African-American Preaching

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African-American preaching arises out of the cultural and religious experiences of the oppressed. It reaches people in their dislocation and relocates them in God and in the promise of a brighter future.

“Telling the Story”

The proclamation of the Word of God, the “telling of the story” is essential to authentic African-American worship. There is a saying among some African-American preachers that the brothers and sisters will forgive you for anything but not preaching. African-American folk expect the preacher to “tell the story.” What does it mean to “tell the story?”

Biblical Emphasis. African-American preaching, almost without exception, is biblical. It takes the biblical message and the biblical stories and weaves them in such a way that the stories come alive and relate to the lives, needs, feelings, and existential situations of those gathered in the congregation. Each story is told in a way consistent with the biblical story, yet having relevance and application for African-American people. This storied preaching is rich with sharp words and vivid imagery for disillusioned and disinherited people. African-American preaching is filled with stories that set hearts aflame and spirits right to have faith that God is more than a match for the evil structures of oppression. This preaching supremely illustrates Jesus’ power to overcome these structures through his death and resurrection.

Prophetic Rather than Pastoral. African-American preaching is characterized generally as prophetic rather than pastoral. The Old Testament and the prophetic literature are used as material for sermonizing rather than the more pastoral material of the Bible. In addition, the synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are used as the testimonies of those who knew the prophet Jesus and his revolutionary activities in and around Galilee as he struggled with the powerful Roman government and the religious establishment of his day.

One illustration of African-American preaching’s prophetic edge is that on the Sunday morning on which the four African-American children were bombed to death at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, a survey of the sermons preached in that city on that Sunday morning revealed that, almost without exception, the African-American preachers preached from the Old Testament. The white preachers without exception preached from the New Testament. That was not a coincidence. African-American preaching tends to announce judgment on the nation, and to call into question the institutions in society in a prophetic fashion whereas white preaching tends to be of a pastoral nature. Part of the reason for this is that the Anglo-American church has a different relationship to the establishment than the African-American Church.

Anglo-American Christianity is so inextricably bound to the American way of life that it sees God, country, and the American flag as almost synonymous terms. The emphasis more often than not in Anglo-American preaching is personal behavior and the individual rather than the revolutionary ethic of Jesus and the prophetic judgment on the whole community. In addition, there is not the strict dichotomy in African-American preaching of the priestly and the prophetic, the sacred and the secular. The priestly and the prophetic coexist as part and parcel of the same reality. Even where there is a clear element of judgment and the prophetic message, the celebration of life is present.

Poetic in Style. Generally, African-American preaching is poetic rather than rigorously logical and stymied by rationality. As Hortense Spillers has pointed out in her analysis of the style of the African-American sermon in reference to Martin Luther King, there is considerable use of metaphors and a greater number of nouns, adjectives, and adjectival clauses rather than verbs and verb forms. These combine to create a picturesqueness and grandness of speech. The African-American preacher relies on imagery to carry the subject, much like the language of the Bible. In the following excerpt from a sermon preached in 1962 by J. H. Jackson, president of the National Baptist Convention, it is clear that the preacher is painting a picture on the canvas of the mind. Jackson addresses facing the future with God:

But I say to you my friends, fear not your tomorrow and shrink not from the task or the lot that is yet to come. The future belongs to God, and the last chapter in the story of human life will not be written by the blood-stained hands of godless men but by the God of history himself. The same hand that raised the curtain of creation and pushed back the floating worlds upon the broad sea of time and flashed forth the light of life that put an end to ancient chaos and darkness; the same hand that erected the highways of the skies and rolled the sun like a golden ball across the pavement of the dawn; the same God whose hand has guided the destinies of nations, fixed the time and seasons and superintended the whole order of time and eternity will at His appointed hour pull down the curtain of existence, and will Himself write the last paragraph in the last chapter of the last book of human life and cosmic destiny. (Warner R. Traynham, Christian Faith in Black and White [Wakefield, Mass.: Parameter Press, 1973])

Such poetry, vivid imagery, and word pictures can be heard again and again in African-American preaching. The African-American preacher is confident that preaching is primarily an effort at communication both to the mind and to the emotions.

Dialogue between Pastor and People. African-American preaching is dialogical; it is a cooperative effort between the pulpit and the pew. The dialogue does not take place after the sermon but during the sermon. Sometimes an unpoetic preacher can be brought to new life, brilliance, and lyrical power when there is cooperation in the pew, with the help, expectancy, encouragement, and enthusiasm of the congregation.

Part of the African-American preaching tradition has been the prayers of the laypeople for the preacher and/or the expectancy about the sermon. These prayers reflect the same vivid imagery and poetry and imagination mentioned earlier. The following prayer is an example:

And now, O Lord, this man of God,
Who breaks the bread of life this morning—
Shadow him in the hollow of Thy hand,
And keep him out of the gunshot of the devil.
Take him, Lord, this morning
Wash him with hyssop inside and out,
Hang him up and drain him dry of sin.
Pin his ears to the wisdom post,
And make his words sledgehammers of truth,
Beat on the iron heart of sin,
Put his eye to the telescope of eternity
And let him look upon the paper walls of time.
Lord, turpentine his imagination,
Put perpetual motion in his arms,
Fill him full of the dynamite of Thy power,
Anoint him all over with the oil of Thy salvation,
And set his tongue on fire.

The dialogical style of African-American preaching reaches back into the wombs of Africa engendering, a call-and-response style that elicits participation of all those gathered. This makes African-American preaching a uniquely creative and beautiful art.

Teaches and Inspires. African-American preaching is didactic as well as inspiring. It seeks to inform as well as inspire. It seeks to discern the action of God in history as it relates to the existential dilemma of the African-American person, lends healing to people’s hurts, and proclaims a liberating word while not denying the reality of pain.

Some have accused African-American preaching and the African-American church of anti-intellectualism. What may be more accurate is that there is little tolerance for rarefied abstraction. The African-American preacher can discuss anything of philosophical and theological import as long as it is presented in such a way as to make sense of life and relate to the lives of the hearers. How an issue is presented is often more important than what the issue is. People such as Gardner C. Taylor, Howard Thurman, George Outen, Vernon John, and Martin Luther King, Jr. have proven that African-American preaching can contain intricate historical, political analyses while at the same time “feeding the flock.”

Declares Rather than Suggests. African-American preaching is characterized as declarative rather than suggestive. Someone once said when the Roman Catholic priests speak, they say, “The church says … ” When the Jewish rabbis speak, they say, “The Torah says … ” But when the African-American preachers speak they say, “My God told me … ”

There is little room in African-American preaching for equivocation and spurious sophistry. The moral issues of the nation are far too clear, the presence of evil too certain, to be tentative. A stand is taken on an issue. Even when a logical argument is used to present the case, the force of the preaching does not depend on argument and logical persuasion, but rather on the ability of the African-American preacher to probe the depths of the issue, to guide the hearers to reach the same conclusion. But always it is declarative rather than suggestive, a matter of fact rather than tentative. The African-American preacher is neither too timid nor hesitant to say, “Thus saith the Lord!”

Slow and Deliberate in Buildup. African-American preaching is characterized by a slow and deliberate buildup. The path the preacher takes may be winding with a few detours, but always he or she is expected to be heading someplace and to take time getting there. In fact, in many congregations, the African-American preacher can hear some members of the congregation admonishing, “Take your time.” He or she is expected to allow time for both the mind and the emotions to react in a natural process. The African-American preacher is deliberate with the material, and nobody has the sense that he or she is in a hurry, for there is no place more important and nothing more significant than what the preacher is doing: rightly dividing the Word of truth. It is more important to say fewer things and be heard and felt than to present many ideas that are merely words and concepts introduced.

The Dramatic Pause. The dramatic pause by many preachers is used as an effort to force the congregation both to reflect upon what has been said and to anticipate what is to follow. This leads to an antiphonal response and sometimes into a rhythmic, harmonious singsong. One can describe this pattern as the Four Rs: rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, rest. This was heard often in the preaching of Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of other African-American preachers. Often it is the repetition of a single word or phrase in which the congregation picks up the cadence of the preacher and there is almost a refrain. Recall King’s speech at Lincoln Memorial in Washington in 1963 in which he repeats, “I have a dream … ” By repetition and amplification, the speech builds. There is rhetoric, repetition, rhythm, and rest. The congregation echoes and verifies the preacher’s own words in such a way as to make them emphatic.

King was familiar with this technique, for he had learned it from his elders and had seen it work time and time again. He was a master at euphony, carefully selecting and using a combination of vowels and consonants so as to make his sounds and words pleasing. These need to be heard to be understood, for the most effective observer of this style and technique is the human ear.

Life Situational. African-American preaching is expected to relate to life and the life situations of the audience. When it does not, no matter how well-conceived or how well-constructed or how theologically sound, that sermon is considered a failure. Illustrations are often used—drawn from history, everyday experiences, African-American history and culture, and literature. Illustrations from biblical literature are shaped in such a way as to relate the experience to the lives of as many persons as possible.

The Element of Hope. There is always an element of hope and optimism in African-American preaching. No matter how dark or gloomy a picture has been painted, there is always a “but” or a “nevertheless” or an element in the climax of the sermon that suggests holding on, marching forward, going through, or overcoming.

This is illustrated in a sermon preached by Otis Moss in which he described drug addiction and its terrible effects on the minds of African-American families and the African-American community.

The last time that I saw the man he was on his way home. His eyes were clear with sight and insight. The scars of dull and dirty needles had been washed from his body. He was no longer the vehicle of dope but the instrument of hope. The last time that I saw him he was on his way home. His children saw him walking and smiled to themselves and said, “That looks like my daddy.” His wife looked out and saw him and said, “That’s my husband.” And I could hear the man describing what had happened to him. Can’t you hear him saying, “I met a man named Jesus and I had an exchange with him.”? I gave him my sorrows, he gave me his joy; I gave him my confusion, he gave me his peace; I gave him my despair, he gave me his hope; I gave him my hatred, he gave me his love; I gave him my torn life, he gave me his purpose. I met a man—a man named Jesus.”

African-American Preaching and African-American Theology

Authentic African-American preaching provides a gospel message to African-American people whose lives and very existence are threatened daily by the insidious tentacles of power and oppression. If preaching fails to speak to the condition of African-American people and offers no promise of life for the African-American person, then it is not gospel to them. It is simply lifeless rhetoric.

Preaching is at the heart of Christianity. Not rapping, not unintelligible gibberish, not “sound and fury signifying nothing,” not hip anecdotes from Playboy magazine or comic vignettes from “Peanuts,” not recovery groups (as helpful as those may be), but preaching in which the Word of God is declared with clarion sound and an impassioned heart that has been set on fire by inspiration and the experience of a God who calls the person to declare his Word. Such persons do not just preach sermons but preach that event in history and eternity by which God entered most fully and effectively into human life. Preachers must be persons who preach the judgment and the grace of God with passion and preparation, with fervor and faith, with prophetic vision and priestly hearts.

As important as ritual is to symbolize the acts of the faith and experience with God; as important as music is to convey the gospel of hope and the beauty of God’s holiness, in the Christian religion these can never be substitutes for the proclamation of the Word of God, the “foolishness of preaching,” the “inescapable claim” upon us. Jesus did not neglect the blind and the lame, the deaf and the lepers, the poor and the broken-hearted, the captive and the bruised—his gospel of liberation, love, and freedom was a declaration of the rule of God breaking in upon the forces that hold humans captive. He did not separate a gospel of changing conditions in society from changing the individual. His gospel is always personal and social. He knew nothing of a religion that spoke to the heart and not the conditions in which men and women live. But his words in Matthew 10 are clear: “As you go, preach!”

The Jesus that African-American preaching must proclaim has to be able to walk the dark ghetto streets of the North and the hot, dusty fields of a sharecropper’s farm in the South. The Jesus that African-American preaching proclaims is the Christ of faith who is relevant to the needs, feelings, and aspirations of African-American people. It is Jesus whose face and image one sees in the rat-bitten, mutilated faces of children, and his suffering one sees in the scars from dull and dirty needles in the body of a drug addict in a stinking, dirty alley. That is the Jesus who is not only the liberator and emancipator, but he is the bishop of the souls of African-American folk. It was this Jesus that African-Americans’ forefathers and foremothers knew and sang about: “O fix me, Jesus, fix me.”

It has been an understanding of, and an acquaintance with, this Jesus that has led African-American preachers to create new Christological categories and to declare him to be “A Stone rolling through Babylon,” “Water in dry places,” “Bread in a starving land,” “The Rose of Sharon,” and “The Bright and Morning Star.” When one hears preaching in a church where these Christological categories cannot be used, one can be certain he or she is not worshiping in an African-American church.

A Biblical Philosophy of the Literary Arts

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By far the most important of the fine arts in Israel and the early church was the field of literature. The Bible itself is the result of the sensitivity of literary artists to the Spirit of God. Each of the many forms of biblical literature contributes to our understanding of the philosophy of the worship arts.

Literature: Israel’s Enduring Monument

Archaeological excavations reveal that the material culture of ancient Israel was less advanced than that of the Canaanite city-states it displaced. Coming from a seminomadic state as a nation of tent dwellers, the Israelite tribes had no significant tradition of architectural, artistic, or technological innovation, although the nation had artisans such as Bezalel and Oholiab. Even the great temple of Solomon was actually designed and erected by a foreign contractor and reflects Phoenician models; it stood for less than four centuries. Israel left no monumental works of sculpture, art, or architecture to be placed alongside the cultural remains of other ancient civilizations that have survived to our day. The monument of Israel is a literary one: the Bible. It was in the various forms of the literary arts that Israel, including the Israel of the new covenant, excelled.

The literature of the Scriptures is the testimony to a community’s faith. The names of individual authors may be attached to it, and it may bear the distinctive imprint of a personality such as David, Jeremiah, or the apostle Paul. Nevertheless, as literature, it is never the artistic creation of an individual for the purpose of self-expression or recognition. In ancient cultures, the ability to write was a specialized skill, whereas the art of recitation from memory was widely practiced. Most of the Bible existed first in oral form and depended for its survival on a circle of people who memorized it, recited it, and handed it down to successive generations. Isaiah gives us a glimpse of this practice in his remark, “Bind up the testimony, seal the teaching among my disciples” (Isa. 8:16 NASB). Eventually, some major crises in the circle of tradition, such as the insecurities of the period of the fall and exile of Judah, would provide the impetus for writing the material down.

Even in New Testament times the teachings of Jesus and the stories of his acts seem to have circulated orally until the passing of the apostles and the linguistic transition from Aramaic to Greek made it desirable to produce written Gospels for the instruction of the church. In the Gospels we read of “the scribes and Pharisees” (Matt. 5:20 RSV); the scribes were men who had memorized the Mosaic law and the traditions associated with it and who served as a kind of walking concordance or reference Bible for the Pharisaic teachers. The practice of memorizing large portions of the Scripture and the rabbinic traditions continue in Judaism to this day. These procedures of oral transmission in a circle of dedicated people highlight the point that, from the biblical perspective, literature as a form of art belongs to the covenant community as a whole and not to the individual authors who serve as its spokespersons.

Forms of Biblical Literature

The important forms of literature preserved in Scripture can be listed briefly, in order to convey something of the fullness of this form of artistic activity as practiced in the life of the people of the covenant.

History. Historical literature, including chronicle and genealogy, grows out of covenant worship, in which the worshiper confesses his faith by telling the story of God’s dealings with his people. But the narrative and saga of the Hebrew Bible are remarkable in that, while written from a pronounced theological perspective, it often presents a realistic, nonidealized portrait of human leaders such as Abraham, Moses, Samuel, David, and those who followed. The Gospels and the Acts continue the same tradition, portraying Jesus in an authoritative yet convincing manner and his apostles as down-to-earth and familiarly human types. Biblical history shows that God deals with people as he finds them, in whatever circumstance or state of personal growth. God’s openness to people as they are allows the worshiper to come before him honestly, not boasting in his or her own worth but confident of the grace of God as manifested in his great redeeming acts.

Law. Covenant structure also yields the laws or instructions governing the community’s relation to the Great King. The Mosaic Torah contains laws in both the absolute form (“Thou shalt, thou shalt not … ”) and the conditional form (“If this happens, then …, but if this happens, then … ”); the absolute form especially is well adapted to recitation in worship acts of covenant renewal. Jesus’ principles of the kingdom of God are sometimes similarly cast in metrical form, as in the Beatitudes and other parts of the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5–7). The nature of Israelite “law” is often misunderstood; as Torah, it is really “instruction” rather than law in the modern sense of legally binding statutes and belongs in the context of worship rather than that of jurisprudence.

Prophetic Indictment. Equally dependent on the covenant foundation is the basic form of prophetic utterance, the judgment speech (or covenant lawsuit), in which the spokespersons of the Lord utter the consequences of the people’s unfaithfulness to their agreement with him. These indictments, as well as other kinds of prophetic address, are almost always given in poetic and musical form, evidencing considerable artistic reflection on the part of the prophets as they opened themselves to the word of the Lord. The same artistic skill is evident in the Revelation, where John uses a dramatic idiom to amplify the effects of the ruptured covenant.

Poetry. Since a great part of the Bible is poetry, the principles of poetic composition apply to many of the biblical literary forms. As to metrical structure, biblical poetry does not scan in some recurring pattern of metric “feet,” nor does it use rhyme. Instead, it generally employs a rhythm of stressed syllables, with a variable number of intervening unstressed syllables. Such a structure is well adapted to chanting or singing, in a style similar to what we know as the “recitative” in seventeenth-century oratorios such as Handel’s Messiah; most of the poetic material in Scripture was probably originally sung.

The most distinctive feature of biblical poetry, however, is the principle of parallelism of ideas. That is, the second line in a couplet repeats the same idea, using different words (synonymous parallelism); or it may present the contrasting or opposite idea (antithetic parallelism); or it may take the idea of the first line and develop some aspect of its thought (synthetic parallelism). Parallelism in one form or another appears throughout the Bible in poetic or semi-poetic sections such as the Genesis account of Creation, the oracles of the prophets, the Psalms, the Proverbs, and the Sermon on the Mount.

Both the stressed metrical structure and the parallelism of ideas of biblical poetry can be translated into other languages without destroying their character; they are what makes the Bible sound like the Bible in any language. Philosophically speaking, the proper use and appreciation of literature constructed in this way require close attention to the words being used and the images and associations they bear, not only from an intellectual standpoint but also from that of a word artist. The cadence of biblical poetry and hymnody, or even of metrically grouped teachings and commandments, adds to worship a sense of awe and solemnity, lifting it above the plane of the merely prosaic.

Proverb and Wisdom. The biblical proverb, or wise saying, is part of an international tradition of wisdom Israel shared with other cultures of the ancient Near East. Biblical wisdom, however, takes on a distinctive coloration because of the character and sovereignty of Yahweh. The temptation to exalt human wisdom is always tempered by the realization that “there is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord” (Prov. 21:30). Biblical wisdom is therefore practical; it is not the exploration of the esoteric but the consideration of how to live in “the fear of the Lord” (Prov. 9:10). Even the books of Ecclesiastes and Job, which probe the deeper issues of human suffering, eventually come up against the sovereignty of God as the only “answer” to life’s ultimate quest. This literature, too, is thus brought within the orbit of worship, which celebrates the sovereignty of the God of the covenant.

Dialogue. The biblical concept of “truth” is not the modern idea of absolute, scientifically verifiable fact; in Hebraic culture “truth” is created by speaking it, and the most powerful speaker creates the prevailing truth, hence the importance of dialogue as a way of approaching the truth. The best example of this principle is the dialogue of Job, in which Job, his three friends, and Elihu approach the problem of justifying God’s seemingly unjust ways from a variety of angles; if they cannot solve the problem, they can at least talk it to death. However, as the book brings out at the end, the supreme biblical dialogue is always with God, who listens but whose word establishes the final truth. Men and women of the Bible are not afraid to argue with God, to plead with him to change his mind, especially about the execution of his judgments, as we note from the examples of Abraham (Gen. 18:22–33), Moses (Exod. 32:7–14), Amos (Amos 7:1–6), and even Jesus in the garden (Matt. 26:36–44). God expects such a dialogue from his partners in the covenant, and this principle undergirds the teaching of Jesus and the apostles about the importance of prayer.

Parable. Although the parable was an ancient literary form, Jesus brought it to its highest level of artistic development in his parables of the kingdom of God. In these stories, Christ used familiar characters and situations from common life—a farmer sowing seed, a rebellious son, a corrupt judge, a woman who loses a coin, a servant forgiven a great debt, a merchant who discovers a priceless pearl—to illustrate the value of God’s kingdom and the consequences for those who refuse it. A parable is not an allegory, in which every detail stands for some hidden truth; the meaning of Jesus’ parables was quite clear and was offensive to the religious establishment of the time (Luke 20:19). To make its point, the parable depends on the human capacity to imagine and to make a transference of imagery from an ordinary sphere of activity to another, more significant sphere of concern. This must take place in the words and motions of worship, which is therefore highly parabolic.

Drama. In drama, there is a movement from problem to resolution presented in dialogue and action involving complementary and contrasting characters. Biblical history as a whole is a great drama; the problem is the rebellion of humankind, and the resolution is the appearance of the New Jerusalem in which the Lord dwells in the midst of his faithful people. The drama has its ebb and flow, with a hint of the ultimate resolution appearing already in the Lord’s covenant with Abraham. Scripture embraces a more specifically dramatic idiom in several places, particularly at the very culmination in the Revelation to John.

A feature of biblical drama wherever it appears is dynamic imagery in the form of word pictures that convey the sense of movement and energy in the situation. The description of Solomon’s bride (Song of Sol. 4), the four living creatures supporting God’s throne, the sun darkened and the moon turned blood red, fire or stars falling from heaven, the rending of the temple veil, the beasts from the sea and the land, the Word of God with the sword, a city coming down from heaven—these are images intended to propel and intensify the drama. As literary symbols, they are powerful and gripping. Reduced to visual form, as though literal, they lose their compelling power and become merely grotesque or even trite. Biblical drama builds with word pictures; the cross of Christ itself is such a word picture, an instrument of execution transferred through preaching (not visual representation) into a symbol of victory and the renewal of the covenant. Biblical worship is the enactment of the imaged resolution to the great drama of Scripture. The loaf and the cup of the Eucharist are powerful not as visual symbols, but as dramatic symbols, an acted-out word picture of the presence of the living Christ with his people. Perhaps more than any other literary form, drama brings the worshiper into the realm of the numinous and that communion with the holy that fulfills the chief end and aim of humankind: to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.