Lord willing, Michele and I will be traveling to Talbot Seminary later this week to participate in the annual meeting of the Evangelical Homiletics Society. In preparing for those meetings, I recently read Daniel Green’s paper, Robert Alter and the Apostle Luke: Finding the Big Idea of Lucan Narratives by Examining Direct Discourse. Some of you know that for the past 15 or 20 years, I’ve been extremely interested in finding ways to help pastors find the big idea of preaching portions. My forthcoming book, Preaching With Greater Accuracy (Kregel), presents a method that allows genre and structure to signal meaning. So, I was excited to read Daniel’s application of Alter’s method to Luke’s Gospel. I’m also currently preaching through Luke, so the timing was excellent for me personally.

 

Green summarizes Alter, “Direct discourse, the spoken parts of the narratives, carries the crux meaning literarily and theologically.” It’s true that direct discourse often carries crucial parts of meaning, but in narratives the plot drives the subject. The placement of direct discourse in the story determines if it contains the subject or complement. Take for instance, Luke’s record of Jesus’ transfiguration. In verse 35 we hear God saying, “This is my Son…listen to him!” Because God’s speech appears so late in the preaching portion, it forms a major part of the complement. The subject, however, occurs early in the plot as Jesus’ handpicked trio sees Jesus’ glory (what Ryken in his commentary on Luke refers to as a “vision of the glorified Christ”).

 

We could state the big idea of the transfiguration: The result of seeing the glory of Christ (subject) is that we should recognize Him as God’s Son and listen to Him (complement).

 

Find your subject in the opening plot and let that subject drive your sermon. Then, allow strategic speeches occurring in the climax or conclusion of the narrative to complete your subject and provide the primary application.

 

Question: How did you identify your big idea in yesterday’s sermon?