Windows Into the Text

Matthew's statement is strong: 'He did not tell them anything without using a parable.' Within its context, the sermon by the lake, the meaning is that his public teaching to the crowds that day came entirely in parables; Jesus also taught plainly elsewhere, and the Sermon on the Mount is mostly direct instruction. But even the Sermon on the Mount is full of images: salt, light, a city on a hill, the birds of the air, the lilies of the field, a house built on rock and a house built on sand. The most important teacher who ever lived did not talk in abstractions. He talked about seed and bread and coins and sheep.

He was standing in a long line. The prophets taught in pictures and enacted signs. Jeremiah was sent to the potter's house and told, 'Just like clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel' (Jeremiah 18:6). Amos was shown a basket of summer fruit, and the image carried the message of the end (Amos 8:2). Jotham told a fable about trees choosing a king (Judges 9:8-15). Proverbs is a book of comparisons. The Bible does not treat image and story as decoration added to truth; it treats them as one of the main ways truth is told. When the writer of Hebrews wanted to explain what the tabernacle had been for, he called it 'an illustration for the present time' (Hebrews 9:9).

The Church has long known this. Thomas Fuller, the seventeenth-century English preacher and historian, wrote in The Holy State (1642), in his portrait of the faithful minister, that 'reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon; but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights.' Charles Spurgeon quoted the line to his students and built on the image of windows; he also published collections of illustrations for preachers, such as Feathers for Arrows (1870). The image is worth keeping because it sets a limit as well as giving permission. A window lets light into a house. A house that is all windows falls down, and nobody builds a house in order to have windows.

What does an illustration do that a statement cannot? It makes the abstract concrete: forgiveness becomes a father running down a road. It makes truth memorable, because people carry stories home much more easily than propositions. It reaches feeling and will, not only understanding: David understood the law against adultery perfectly well, and it took a story about a lamb to make him feel what he had done. And it gets past defences, because a hearer who would resist a direct accusation will listen to a story about somebody else. In oral cultures, where wisdom is handed down in proverbs, songs and stories rather than in books, illustration is not an extra at all. It is the normal vessel of truth, and a sermon without it may simply not be heard as teaching.

The hard saying has to be faced, because it affects how a preacher thinks about what an illustration can do. When the disciples asked why Jesus spoke to the crowds in parables, he answered with Isaiah 6: this, he said, is why he speaks to them in parables, because 'Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand' (Matthew 13:13). Mark's version is sharper still, with its purpose clause: so that they may be ever seeing but never perceiving (Mark 4:12). And yet Mark also says that Jesus spoke the word in many parables 'to the extent that they could understand' (4:33).

Interpreters have read this in several ways, and the main ones deserve a fair statement. Many read it as judgment: the parables were given to a crowd that had already begun to harden, and they confirmed that hardness, as Isaiah's preaching had done in his own day; the same story that opened the hearts of disciples hid its meaning from those who did not want it. Others stress mercy within the judgment: the parables veil the truth in a form that does not crush the unwilling at once, and that invites them to come closer and ask, as the disciples did. Others note that Matthew, unlike Mark, puts the reason in the hearers' existing blindness rather than in a purpose clause, and read Mark in that light. All of these readings agree on two things the text makes plain: the parables did not work automatically, and the same parable could open one heart and close another.

For the preacher, this cuts both ways. On one side it is a warning against thinking that a good enough story will produce faith. Illustrations do not do the Spirit's work. A preacher who believes the right anecdote will convert the unconvinced will soon be choosing anecdotes for their emotional power rather than their truth. On the other side, it does not license obscurity. Jesus explained his parables to anyone who asked, and the reason the preacher illustrates is that he wants his hearers to understand. Matthew 13:52 describes the scribe discipled in the kingdom as a homeowner who brings out of his storeroom new treasures as well as old, which is a fair description of what a good illustrator does.

A related question concerns how a parable means. For much of the church's history the parables were read as detailed allegories, with every element standing for something: in Augustine's famous reading of the Samaritan story, the inn is the church and the innkeeper is the apostle Paul. Adolf Jülicher's work on the parables in the late nineteenth century argued, against that, that each parable makes a single point. Later scholars, among them Craig Blomberg in Interpreting the Parables (1990), argued that this overcorrected, and that many parables make one point for each of their main characters: in the prodigal son, something about the father, the younger son and the older son. This matters for preaching in two ways. When you preach a parable, preach the point or points it makes, not the details you can make it carry. And when you illustrate, keep your own illustration's point single. A story that illustrates three things usually illustrates none of them.

Start with the text itself. Very often what a passage needs is not a story from outside it but a picture of what is already there. What was a threshing floor, and why did Ruth go to one at night? What did it mean to a shepherd to lose one sheep in a hundred? How heavy was a millstone? A few sentences that let the hearers see the scene often illuminate more than an anecdote, and they keep attention on the passage. In many rural congregations the world of the Bible is closer than it is to a Western city: hearers know about drought, harvest, debt, bride price, shepherds and village feuds without needing them explained. Use that. A preacher in a farming community may only need to say what time of year the sower went out.

Next, scripture itself. Other biblical stories are excellent illustrations, especially for congregations that do not know the Bible well, because every time you illustrate with a biblical story you teach a second passage. Grace to the undeserving can be illustrated with Mephibosheth at David's table (2 Samuel 9) as well as with any story from modern life. This is also the oldest form of Christian illustration: the New Testament illustrates constantly from the Old.

Then the hearers' own world. Jesus drew on what his hearers saw daily, and the preacher should do the same. That means the actual daily life of your congregation, not the daily life of the place where a sermon book was written. The queue for water. The bus that does not come. The school fees due before the harvest. The mobile phone that has no credit when it is needed. The market woman who knows exactly what every one of her customers owes. The burial society. These are the mustard seeds and fishing nets of your congregation, and an image from them will land in a way that an image of snow, an American football game or a motorway will not.

Proverbs and sayings deserve special mention. Many cultures have a deep store of proverbs, and a well-chosen proverb can open or close a point with great force, because the hearers already believe it. Use them with care: test the proverb against the text. Sometimes scripture confirms what a culture's wisdom says; sometimes it overturns it, and the sermon can make that contrast its turning point. Songs and hymns the congregation knows can work the same way. And there are the images that take only a sentence: a comparison or a metaphor that makes a point vivid without stopping the sermon for a story. Many of the best illustrations are a single line.

Your own life is a source too, and the next section is about its dangers. But a preacher who has noticed things, who watches how people treat each other at a funeral, how a child trusts its mother in a crowd, how a farmer waits for rain, will never lack illustrations. The habit is simple: carry a notebook, or use the notes on your phone, and when you see something that makes a truth visible, write it down that day, with no names. In a year you will have more than you can use, and they will all be from your hearers' world.

The first danger is dishonesty. A sermon is a claim to speak truthfully on God's behalf, and an illustration presented as true must be true. 'Lying lips are detestable to the LORD' (Proverbs 12:22). Many stories circulate among preachers, in books, in emails and online, that never happened. A well-known example is the story of a warship ordering a light ahead to change course, only to be told that it is a lighthouse; it has been passed around for decades as a real radio exchange, and it is a legend. If you use a story like that, say what it is: there is an old story, or here is a parable. Jesus' parables were plainly parables; nobody in the crowd thought the sower was a real farmer he had met last week. What is forbidden is not telling stories but telling invented ones as true.

The worst form of this is the preacher who tells a story he heard or read as though it happened to him, or to someone in his last church. It may move the congregation. But if they ever discover it, and in the age of the internet they often do, the preacher's credibility for everything else is damaged, including for what he says about the Bible. The same applies to stories taken from another preacher's sermon: say where you found it. Module 5 will return to this under the heading of integrity and plagiarism.

The second danger is the preacher's family. Stories about your wife, husband or children can be warm and human, and they can also be a betrayal. Your family did not choose to be sermon material. A child who hears himself described from the pulpit, even kindly, may feel exposed in front of the whole church; a spouse whose weakness becomes an illustration has been shamed in public. Paul's command that fathers not provoke their children, so that they do not become discouraged (Colossians 3:21), and his refusal to write so as to shame (1 Corinthians 4:14), apply to the preacher's use of his own household in the pulpit as much as anywhere. The rule is simple: never tell a story about a family member without asking them first, never tell one that makes them look foolish, and if in doubt, leave it out.

The third danger is confidence. Never use what someone has told you in private counselling, confession or prayer, even disguised. 'A gossip reveals a secret, but a trustworthy person keeps a confidence' (Proverbs 11:13). In a small congregation, a village or a tight-knit community, every disguise is transparent: change the name, the age and the town, and someone will still know who it was. And in persecuted settings, a story that identifies a believer, a place or a meeting can put lives at risk, especially if the sermon is recorded. Composite stories, built from many experiences and told as composites, are the safe form.

The fourth danger is the illustration that is larger than the truth. The hearers remember the story and forget what it was for. This happens when the story is more dramatic than the point, or when it is told at such length that it becomes the centre of the sermon. Test it the way the Why it matters question in the Inquiry tested you: if a hearer can retell your story next week but cannot say what it illustrated, the window has become a wall. Related dangers: the preacher who is the hero of all his own stories, which quietly preaches himself rather than Christ; and illustrations that only work in another culture, or only for the educated, or only for men, which tell part of the congregation that the sermon is not for them.

A good illustration is attached to something. Before you tell it, or immediately after, say plainly what it illustrates. A hearer should never have to guess why you are telling them about your neighbour's goat. The attaching sentence can come first, as a promise, or afterwards, as a key; in an inductive sermon it may come later still. But it must come, especially if you are preaching through an interpreter, who needs to know what the story is for in order to translate it well.

Keep it short. Most illustrations need no more than a minute or two. Give it concrete detail, because detail is what makes a story real: not a man, but a man selling oranges at the bus station; not a long time ago, but the year the river flooded. Give it a turn, a moment where something changes or is revealed, because that is where the light comes in. Then bring it back to the text with a sentence that connects them, and move on.

Watch the difference in a composite example. A preacher on Luke 15:8-10, the lost coin, wants his hearers to feel how much one lost person matters to God. The weak version: We all know what it is like to lose something, and God is like that with us. The stronger version: Last month a woman in our market dropped the money she had saved for her daughter's school fees. It was not much, a few notes folded small. She did not shrug and go home. She closed her stall, she borrowed a torch, and she went over the same ground until it was dark, asking everyone who passed. That is the woman in Luke 15, sweeping her whole house for one coin out of ten. Jesus says there is joy like that in the presence of God's angels over one sinner who repents. Notice what the second version does. It has a place, a person, a reason the money mattered, and a concrete action. It is told as a composite of something the hearers have all seen, not as a report about a named woman. And its last two sentences carry the hearers straight back to the text.

Choose illustrations that the whole congregation can enter. If you have a mixed congregation, vary the sources: an image from the market, one from the field, one from school, one from the home. Lesson 5 of this module will look at children and mixed ages in more detail, but a simple rule helps now: if a ten-year-old could follow your illustration, the adults will too, and they will not be insulted.

Finally, consider how the illustration will survive translation. Stories that depend on wordplay, puns, rhymes or local jokes rarely survive an interpreter. Stories built on universal things, a lost child, a meal, a debt forgiven, a journey home, travel well. That is part of why Jesus' parables have been translated into thousands of languages and still work: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son do not depend on anything a hearer in any culture needs explained. Lesson 4 will say more about preaching through an interpreter.

Take the page with your passage, main idea, skeleton, introduction and conclusion. Today you add illustrations, and you will probably add fewer than you expect.

Step one. Go through the skeleton move by move. Beside each move, write one of three letters: U if the move is hard to understand, F if it is easy to understand but hard to feel, and N if it needs neither. Most sermons need illustration in only two or three places. Do not illustrate a move marked N; it will only slow the sermon down.

Step two. For each move marked U or F, look for an illustration in this order. First the text: is there a detail in the passage itself that you can help the hearers see? Then the rest of scripture: is there another biblical story that shows the same truth? Then your hearers' world: what in their week, their work, their homes or their village makes this truth visible? Then your own observation. Write the illustration in three to five sentences.

Step three. Test each illustration with four questions. Is it true, and if it is a parable or an old story, have you said so? If it involves a family member, have you asked their permission? Does it reveal anything someone told you in confidence, or anything that could endanger a believer? Would it be understood by the poorest, least educated and youngest people in your congregation? If any answer is wrong, change or drop the illustration.

Step four. Under each illustration, write the bridge sentence that connects it back to the text: That is what the father does in verse 20, or So when Paul says do not be anxious, this is what he means. If you cannot write that sentence, the illustration does not belong to this sermon.

Step five. Count. If any move now has more than one illustration, choose the best and keep the other in your notebook for another sermon. Then start a page at the back of your notebook headed Windows, and this week write down two things you see in ordinary life that make a biblical truth visible. That page will feed every sermon you preach from now on.