What Kind of Language? Outlining a Preaching Text
The Vehicle Defines the Journey
When it comes to the meaning of a journey, the mode of travel may be as important as the destination. If I say, "I traveled from California to Australia," you might immediately imagine a long day or two of flights, connections, and airport layovers. However, if I say, "I traveled from California to Australia on a cruise ship," the trip takes on a whole different flavor. But if I say, "I traveled from California to Australia in a rowboat," the meaning has shifted so radically that it has almost no resemblance to the original statement. The destination may be the same, but the journey is defined by the vehicle. Similarly, different kinds of language can communicate the same essential meaning with very different nuances.
Most biblical texts fall into one of three broad language categories: Prose, Poetry, or Story. Though they often overlap in many ways, each of these communicates, challenges, and shapes us differently. In fact, like the three modes of transportation to Australia, they give us such different journeys that the perspectives they give of the same truth might seem widely divergent, even when the destination is the same.
In your preparation process, these differences become impossible to ignore the moment you begin to try to outline the meaning of the text. Let’s think about each of these language categories specifically from the perspective of how we would outline the text.
Prose: The language of logic.
Many contemporary preachers find their “sweet spot” in the New Testament Epistles. They might say this is because they love the highly developed theology that we find there, the clarity of the Apostles’ reflection on the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. I suspect that often there might be another reason. Our modern western minds are so trained to think in deductive categories and structure that we find in the straightforward prose of the Epistles the most comfortable place to live. If we are looking for a traditional outline to preach, we will find it most naturally in an epistle!
Prose speaks to the mind. It is structured around major ideas and supporting ideas. Connections between ideas tend to be presented in logical and direct ways. Prose seeks to make a point. The goal is clarity and conciseness. Persuasion happens through tight argumentation. Understanding emerges as ideas are broken down into their parts or expanded through faceted development and application.
Outlining a text written in prose, then, is a process of analyzing the relationships of the ideas, paying attention to the syntactical and grammatical nuances and structures within the text. At the risk of oversimplifying, let me suggest three important steps towards outlining this type of text:
1. Begin with major statements, commands, or questions.
2. Identify conjunctions joining these major statements.
3. Fill in the “modifiers” that describe actions, ideas, persons, and objects within the major phrases.
Using these three steps to create a grammatical/syntactical outline of a prose text can give you a clear visual representation of its meaning. Check out this analysis of Matthew 28:18-20 as an example.
Poetry: The language of imagery and emotion.
The best prose will move our emotions by speaking primarily to our minds. Emotion wells up in response to a clear understanding of a truth. Poetry takes the opposite path. It speaks first to our emotions and then to our minds. Vivid language and imagery stir our hearts. Then, in the glow of the poem’s emotional impact, we come to clarity about the truth that has moved us.
Both paths are powerful, but in different ways. And both paths have been used by God in the Scriptures to reveal himself and shape his children.
Because poetry works differently from prose, we need to approach its structure from a completely different perspective. Trying to make a prose-style syntactical diagram of a psalm will be both frustrating and fruitless. We need to analyze a poem according to the rules of poetry. This means being attentive to the rich language and imagery. It also means being sensitive to the emotional movement of the poem through its own poetic structure.
In most biblical poetry, especially in the Old Testament, the basic structural unit is a parallel couplet or triplet. Two or three (or sometimes four) lines work together to form a nugget of meaning. Sometimes the second line simply repeats the thought in the first line in slightly different terms (synonymous parallelism). Other times, the second line restates the first from the opposite point of view (antithetic parallelism). Often, subsequent lines will carry the thought forward in some way (synthetic parallelism). Occasionally, we will find four lines in a chiastic structure, where the first and fourth and second and third lines correspond to one another.
I find that the most helpful approach to analyzing Hebrew poetry is to begin at this basic level, paying close attention to how each set of parallel lines develops a thought or emotion. I will sum up each with a single phrase and write it out to the side.
Then, I look for groups of couplets and triplets that work together to form a larger thought unit or “strophe.” Summing up each strophe’s impact with a single phrase will usually give me a clear picture of the major thoughts, emotions and movement within the poem. With this type of outlining process, I am well down the road towards a structure for my sermon that reflects the structure of the text.
Here is a sample analysis of Psalm 46 to give you a clearer idea of how poetic outlining can work.
Story: Assumptions challenged through tension and resolution.
If prose speaks to our mind, and poetry speaks to our heart, narrative impacts us at the point of our worldview. Stories provoke us to deeper thought and challenge us to see life in a new way. They do this through conflict and resolution, character and motivation. A tension challenges us at the point of our assumptions. When this tension is relieved in a climactic moment of reversal, the meaning of the story begins to take shape deep within us – even when it is not spelled out by the storyteller.
Clearly, neither the grammatical/syntactical analysis of prose nor the structural analysis of poetry will help us when it comes to studying the structure of a story. In fact, the term “structure” doesn’t even seem to fit when talking about narrative. With story, we need to analyze the setting, the characters, and the plot. A great resource for an in-depth and step-by-step method in this process is Steven Mathewson’s book, The Art of Preaching Old Testament Narrative (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002).
We start by paying close attention to what details the story gives us about the setting – when and where the story occurs. Biblical story tellers tend to use their words carefully, giving only the information that is needed. So, when they tell us something about the story’s setting, we should pay close attention. Matthewson calls the details given within the story itself the “inner-textual” setting. (68) We need to ask, “What information about the setting does the writer give, and what does it mean?”
The “inter-textual” setting (Matthewson, 69) has more to do with the literary context. Look for clues to meaning in the story’s placement in the overall narrative, any verbal links or parallel plots that you can find between this story and other stories in the flow of the book, and any themes that seem to run through them. All of these details can provide significant pointers towards meaning that the storyteller intends to convey.
Character analysis means first identifying the protagonist – the main character at the center of the story who goes through the greatest transformation. Next, we will want to identify the antagonist – the character, circumstance, or force that is causing the tension for the protagonist. Then, we will likely find a foil or two – characters who are present in the story to provide a contrast or companion to help us see and understand the protagonist more clearly. Then there will be minor characters who must be in the story to keep the action moving forward. (see Matthewson, 58-59)
Once you have identified the roles of the various characters in the story, it is important to pay close attention to the various ways they are developed. Note every bit of information that is provided – descriptions, actions, conversations, comments along the way. Be especially aware of the change that happens in the protagonist over the course of the narrative, as this is one of the main indicators of the meaning of the text. (See Matthewson, 60-66)
Even more important for discovering the meaning of a story is the plot. (See Matthewson, 43-46) Pay close attention to how the equilibrium is upset in the beginning of the story to create tension for the protagonist. Trace the development of this tension throughout the story, paying attention to the various twists and turns, and what they reveal about the protagonist and their situation. The most important moment in the plot is the crisis-climax-resolution sequence at the end. It is here that you will find the clearest expression of the story’s meaning. Add to this analysis any assessment the narrator gives you at the beginning and/or the end of the story, and you will find the meaning becoming more and more clear.
Reading a story well is more than a matter of cold logic and systematic analysis. Immerse yourself in the story. Identify yourself in the story. Allow yourself to get to know the characters, experience the tension, and live the relief of the resolution. Also, don’t forget to read the story in context. Biblical authors always have reasons for placing a story in a particular place.
Take a look at this sample analysis of the story in Genesis 38 for an idea of how this process can help us coax the meaning out of a biblical narrative.
Conclusion
As you can see, the variety that we find in the Scriptures makes a one-size-fits-all method of analysis impossible. But mastering a few skills for each of these major types of language will get you well down the road towards being able to discover the unique expression of truth in every text.
