The Use of the Imagination in Exegesis and Preaching

Transcript (edited for readability).

I don't know what your training in homiletics was like, but my training in homiletics basically concentrated on content and arrangement of material in an argument. And initially, when I started preaching, I had great difficulty distinguishing between a sermon and an essay. In seminary — in high school, in college, in seminary — you're trained to write essays. Well, at least that used to be the case in the past. I don't know what they train people to do these days, but we were trained to write essays. It's very difficult to marshal ideas in a logical order, to collect your thoughts, and to make sure you present a unified argument. And I thought then that that was basically what preaching was about.

Somehow, right from the beginning — I still remember my first sermon — it was quite correct. I thought it was brilliant, and it was even pastoral, at least I thought so. But somehow it didn't work, and I knew it didn't work. People were kind about it. It's only gradually, in my time as a pastor, that I've begun to understand that preaching is different from writing an essay, or reading an essay, or reading a lecture, which I do a lot of. And I've come to appreciate that preaching involves much more, and one of the very important aspects of preaching is the appeal to the imagination. Appeal to the imagination. The best preachers, like the best communicators, appeal to the imagination.

Sadly, rhetoric is no longer taught in any schools except those schools that have classical education — the new movement toward classical education. One of the very important subjects in the classical curriculum is rhetoric. The ancient Greeks and the Romans reflected long and hard on oral communication. You see, they lived in a world where the written word wasn't terribly important. Oral communication was still primary. And if you wanted to be an effective leader, or effective in community, you had to learn how to speak in public, and to speak in such a way that you spoke effectively.

So we have a very famous ancient handbook by Quintilian, a Roman writer, who builds on the work of Greek thinkers like Aristotle, who wrote a rhetoric, and others. And these thinkers, these teachers of rhetoric, said that the mark of good oral communication was noteworthy because it appealed to four different things. It was distinguished by four features.

First of all — and this is not a logical order, an order of importance — first of all, what they called pistis, or fides in Latin. Pistis, which you know from the New Testament as faith, but very useful in this sense as credibility. You need to appeal to people's sense of trust and confidence. Sometimes speakers get up and immediately, from the first sentence, betray that they lack confidence, and they never recover. They lose their credibility. You are embarrassed by them; you don't have confidence in them. But if I speak with confidence and win your confidence, then I've won a quarter of the battle. Credibility isn't just an immediate sense that this guy knows what he's speaking about, but that what he speaks about is credible, is believable. You trust not just him, but what he says. Credibility.

Now, I don't want to give you a lesson in rhetoric, but just to put this in context — secondly, good communication consists of logos: clear, cogent argument, I would say. Now, that's what I was basically brought up on, and that's what I was taught to concentrate on — just the content of the sermon, the doctrine, the dogmatics — to lay out a clear, logical argument with good content to it. Not too much, not too little, but in the right proportions and in the right order — the argument.

Now, they said, okay, those two things are axiomatic, but there are two other things you need to be aware of if you're going to communicate effectively. The third thing is what they call pathos — that is, to speak with emotion, and to appeal to people's emotions. There's a great difference between speaking like this: "The doctrine of the atonement is one of the central doctrines of the church" — that kind of manner — and saying, "Jesus died for your sins, to atone for you." Can you see what the difference is? What am I doing in the second way of addressing you? I am speaking with my whole body. I am speaking emotionally, and — without you being aware of it — what am I doing? Appealing to your emotions. And the appropriate response is to respond emotionally.

Now, we Lutherans have a bit of a suspicion about emotion, and rightly so, but we sometimes get things back to front. We know from Lutheran tradition that we don't base our faith on emotion, and we don't manipulate people by appealing to their emotions in an ungodly way. But if you do present your material, if you do present the gospel properly, you will appeal to the emotions. But before that happens, in a sense, you try to allow the text to address you emotionally. Now, I could do a whole session just on that — I urge you to do some reflection on it.

So you've heard a number of sermons at this conference. Let's think — which one appealed to emotions most effectively? As far as I can see, all of them had a very high level of credibility. They had a clear, logical argument. Now, what about pathos — appropriate expression of emotion and appeal to emotion? The reason I'm putting a little side emphasis on this here is that in the USA, as much as in the rest of the Western world, in post-modernism, emotion has become pre-eminent. And we've got to be careful — if we are cold in the way we preach, we will be driving people to Pentecostal churches and those other sorts of generic charismatic churches where you have emotion without content. There are certain emotional tricks of the trade that you can learn in order to manipulate people, but I don't want to teach you that.

No, the last one is the thing I'm interested in, and that's what the Greeks called enargeia, which means vividness — the appeal to the imagination, vivid communication. So let it appeal to your emotions, but let it appeal to your imagination as well. That's what I want to talk about, and that's what I want to explore.

As I said before, looking back, one of the failings of my training in homiletics was — well, this was very strong, this you can't really teach, except in one way. What is it that gives your sermon credibility, the highest level of credibility? It's your own faith in the word of God, and that you actually preach the word of God rather than your own ideas. The more you preach the word of God properly, appropriately, fully, the higher the level of credibility you have with your people. People might not like it, they might not agree with you, but you will come across as credible. Okay, so there was very little emphasis on this, and no emphasis on that at all.

Now, the other thing that I didn't receive from my seminary education was — there was great emphasis on exegesis, but exegesis was done in a very abstract kind of way. We looked at the content of the text rather than the imagery in the text, or what the text was meant to do to people. So I want, in a sense, to model for you a way of doing exegesis imaginatively — the kind of exegesis that looks at the imagery in the text.

My chosen text is Ephesians chapter 2, verses 1 to 22. You'll see fairly quickly, when we go through it, why I've chosen this text. It's a whole chapter, so I want a broad sweep. It's not going to be an exhaustive exegesis, but I want to show you how to read a text imaginatively — look at the imagery of the text.

Now, a few words about my approach to this text. First of all, I want to see what Paul is saying here — not what Paul means, not the ideas here, but the pictures here. I want to see what he is saying.

I've heard it said — and I don't know whether this is right — but a theologian I respect very greatly, a teacher of dogmatics, used to have a special highlighter, and whenever he got essays from students who spoke about "the idea of" the atonement, or "the concept of" the church, he would just run the pen through "the idea of" or "the concept of." That was all. Why did he do this? Because the church is not an idea. The atonement is not a concept. They are realities. And in order to have access to these realities, you need to see what the text is saying.

So it's quite simple — I want to see, in this chapter, what Paul is saying to the Christians in Ephesus. The purpose of this exercise is, if you like, to clean my glasses. You know, when you've got dirty glasses, like me, or a dirty window, you can't see clearly. So I want to clear my sight — not my physical sight, but my mental sight. What I'm aiming to do is bring the text into focus, like a blurred film. Years ago we used to have these old movies, and you had to tune the lenses to get the picture in focus, and you still have to do it with some cameras — most cameras do it automatically, but you've got to get the lenses into focus. That's kind of what we want to do here. I want to get the text clear in focus so that we see clearly, rather than a general blur.

Or, to use another picture — very often when we read something that's familiar to us, we see only the surface of the text. We see the text in black and white. Now, what I want to do is help you see the text in color as well. It won't add anything new, but it will add full dimensions to the text.

Now, to give you an analogy of what I imagine the text to be like — Paul here, in this chapter, in all his writings, is not so much developing abstract ideas or concepts, but working with pictures. And those pictures together tell a story. It's very much like the story that every television commercial tells. As you know, television commercials are made up of a montage of shots, pictures that follow each other — moving pictures. It's not the same picture, it's not a still, but you get a number of pictures. Some parts stay the same, and some parts are different.

Now, in terms of the television commercial, which are the most important pictures — which are the most important shots in that montage of shots? The first and the last. The first one is the hook that grabs you, grabs your attention. Very important in preaching — you've got to hook people. Do you realize that most of us either gain or lose our congregation as soon as the first sentence? More than anything else, I concentrate on my first and last sentence. If I get them right, then I get the sermon right. Okay — first and last picture are important. The others are important too, but these are the decisive ones. They're the framing ones.

Now, the problem that we have — one that's been exacerbated both by our culture since the Enlightenment and by our whole education — our whole education is lopsided, because it trains us basically to think abstractly rather than concretely. It disenfranchises the emotions, the imagination, physical reality. You know, concrete training is done in tech schools, and it's looked down on as inferior to training in abstract thinking.

So what we have now, despite the fact that we live in a video world, is a world in which abstraction has triumphed. We live in a world of abstract ideas — like government, the economy, justice, compassion, all those buzzwords — that are just vague, general, worn-down, trite abstractions. And one of the things about it is that we live in a world where we not only think in terms of abstractions, but we regard these abstractions as real entities. Do you realize there's no such thing as "the economy," "science," et cetera? Those are abstractions. They're not real things.

By the way, just take the word "idea" — it shows the shift in the way people think. Idea — the word comes from Greek. Do any of you know what idea meant originally? It comes from the verb "to see." It means a picture. An idea is a picture, but now for us it's a general concept.

Now, the question that I bring to any text like this is quite simple — a range of questions. The question is this: who or what — that's the key word, compared — who or what is compared with whom or what, how, and why? You can add extra ones, but I don't want to complicate things too much for you. Who or what is compared with whom or what, how and why, in this text? So I'm going to focus on comparisons, pictures, analogies, images, and analyze them in order to get my seeing in focus, so that I see more clearly.

There are scholars who analyze literature and poetry, and film, and so on, who say there are three different kinds of imagery. There's background imagery, which is setting. Now, that's important, but it's not most important — it's background, it's back there, it's kind of the setting of the set of shots. Then there's foreground imagery — that's the dominant imagery, up front. And within foreground imagery, there's dominant imagery — pictures that don't just come on for a moment and then disappear, but pictures that repeat themselves more than once. And by their repetition, they show that they are important. Those categories aren't terribly important for this, but I find them very helpful.

Okay, now let's read Ephesians 2, one to 22, and I read from the English Standard Version. I've made some changes to that, because in some cases, as is the case with many modern translations, the translators go from images to ideas. But just to give you the general overview — you probably know it well yourself. Ephesians. As I read it here, you'll notice there's an alternation between "you" and "we" that drives this text. The question is: who are the main actors here?

"And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

"Therefore" — now this is the conclusion, it's an important link — "therefore remember that at one time you were Gentiles in the flesh, called 'the uncircumcision' by what is called 'the circumcision,' which is made in the flesh by hands — remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to those who were near. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit."

Now, when you first come to a text, you need to identify — not what the main ideas are, but who the main characters are, who the main actors are. And this is complex, because Paul uses pronouns in more than one sense. Who are the main actors? First of all, there's the "you" — plural, the people whom he addresses. Most obviously — not most obviously, actually — they are not, first and foremost, the people in Ephesus, but they are "you Gentiles." So the "you" here is first Gentiles, and only secondly the Christians in Ephesus. So there's a bit of a surprise there, because when I use "you," usually I'm not talking about somebody else, I'm talking to the gathered community.

And then there's the "we" — who are the "we"? Obviously Paul's included in the "we" — he's the writer here, he's the speaker, so he's included. But first it's the Jews — Paul and other Jews — and it's the members of the whole church, not just Jews, but the church. And then, thirdly, the congregation. So you see the rhetorical strategy here — the congregation is both the "you" and the "we." There's something rather profound being done here theologically, which I don't want to go into.

And then, thirdly, you have the Triune God — the Son of God Jesus, the Holy Spirit, and God the Father. They're the main actors. There are other actors as well, but they are the main ones. Okay — if you're going to say who or what is compared to who or what, the important thing is to pin down who the "who" is.

Now, I want to go through this and look at the sequence of pictures that Paul presents to us in each section. Obviously I can't go into great detail. Let's start right away — chapter 2, verses 1 to 2. "And you" — plural, the people he addresses — "were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience." The spirit who is at work in the sons of disobedience — the Greek is "the spirit that energizes" — energeō, to work in, to energize — who energizes the sons of disobedience.

Just at the end of the last chapter, he's spoken about how God the Father energized Jesus — verse 20, "the immeasurable greatness of his power" — that's God's power toward those of us who believe, "according to the working of his great might, that he worked in Jesus" — that he energized in Jesus — "to raise him from the dead." So there's a contrast here between those two kinds of energizing.

Well, who or what is compared here? First of all, there's "you," the congregation. And secondly, the "you" who were Gentiles — there are three pictures that he uses for the people he addresses. First of all, he uses a very graphic picture and says that you were once corpses — that's a term that's used for the dead, corpses. You were once former corpses. That's the starting point of God's work.

But you weren't just corpses, and here the picture changes — it's a kind of surreal picture, because you were walking, talking corpses, zombies, if you like — dead men walking, dead travelers. You were dead, but it didn't stop you walking. You went on a particular journey as dead men, like ghosts, or zombies.

The second picture he uses is of the devil. The devil is the prince who leads a rebellion against God's royal sons, against God the Heavenly Father, the royal Father of the sons of God. So the picture here is that the angels are God's sons, and the devil leads some of God's sons in rebellion against their heavenly Father, and then gets human beings to join in that rebellion against God the Father. So he's the prince who leads a rebellion of God's royal sons, his children, against their heavenly royal father.

Verse 3: "among whom we all once lived" — so you Gentiles, the congregation in Ephesus was primarily former Gentiles, you were corpses — "and among whom" — amongst these corpses — "we all at once lived," or had our way of life, "in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires" or wishes "of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind." So among the Gentiles, we all once had our way of life — there's a kind of lifestyle thing — in the desires of the flesh, carrying out the wishes of the flesh and of the mind, that's focused on fleshly reality.

So it's not as if the Gentiles are the baddies and the Jews are the good guys. Both are equally driven by wrong desire, by evil passions. Notice the terms he uses there — the passions, or the desires of the flesh, carrying out the wishes of the flesh and of the mind. So what are the pictures here? First of all, he uses a picture for himself and the Jews that most Jews would have found utterly offensive — he says that we Jews were once involved, were going on the same road, as the Gentiles. Now, why is that offensive to the Jews? Because the Jews said that they had the Torah, God's law — they walked in the way of the Lord, and the Gentiles didn't walk in the way of the Lord. But he says, no — we were all walking along the same route, the same journey. So the Jews were travelers on a common journey with the whole human race.

And the picture that he uses for both Jews and Gentiles is of children who have angered their heavenly Father by what they've done, because they've rebelled against their Father. So we all — Jews and Gentiles — were by nature, by birth (that's the literal sense of "nature"), children of wrath, children under the wrath of our Father. And then he uses an interesting picture for the way of life mapped out by the common desires of both Jews and Gentiles. He says the desires of the flesh map out, present, a road or a journey, a route, for both the acting and the thinking of both Jews and Gentiles. So both Jews and Gentiles lived a desire-driven way of life, both mentally and physically, in their lifestyle.

Let's go on. "But God, being rich in mercy" — what's the picture there? Rich in mercy. "Because of the great love with which he loved us" — that's a picture there. "Even when we were dead in our trespasses" — we've had that picture. "Made us alive with Christ, by grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him, and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show" — display, advertise — "the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus."

Now, one of the problems is that, in typical Pauline fashion, you get one picture piled on top of another. He doesn't just stick to one picture — there's picture followed by picture. It's like a television montage. He begins with a picture of God as a rich man, a rich benefactor, a royal patron, who demonstrates his wealth and power not by accumulating it and keeping it to himself, but in his benevolence to his clients. This was an important feature in Greco-Roman society — rich people were expected to be benevolent. They were patrons, they gathered clients, they gave away most of their riches in order to get a following of people.

You get the same thing in many parts of the world — you have the "big men" in New Guinea, and the big men in Australian Aboriginal communities, who give everything away, all their possessions, away — they bank on their followers. So that's the picture — he's a royal benefactor, and Christians are his clients.

Secondly, he's a lover — a lover not just of Jews, or of Christians, but a lover of humanity. Thirdly, he's a resurrector, a life-giver — he's a doctor, or a magician, if you like, who can raise, bring to life, dead corpses. Fourthly, he wakes up sleeping people — "makes us alive together with Christ" — there's the picture — he awakens us.

He "seats us with him in the heavenly places" — this is a very important image. God the Father doesn't just raise us with Jesus, but he enthrones us with Jesus. So you have a king here who enthrones someone else as his co-regent. But you get a funny picture — instead of having one co-regent, all Christians are co-regents with God, and they sit together with God on his heavenly throne. Not two thrones, but the same throne. It's not as if you have God's throne here and I sit at the right-hand side. God seats me, and you, and the whole church, at his right hand. What an amazing picture, an amazing reality — that we reign together with Christ, together with God the Father, in the church.

So, what are the pictures used for us as Christians? We were neither Jews nor Gentiles — we were former dead corpses. We are people who have been revived and woken as if from sleep. We are honorary co-regents with Jesus — we were enthroned together with Jesus, who's enthroned together with God the Father. And what does that mean — that we have royal status? What's our status? The same status as Jesus. We belong to the royal family, and not just as lowly members of the royal family, but with the same status as the heir designate, the right-hand Son of God. We have the highest possible status and responsibilities.

Okay — we not only have status, the question then is: okay, we're enthroned with God together with Jesus — what's our responsibility, what's our task, what's our vocation? And lastly, we are richly rewarded clients of God, the heavenly King. God enthrones us in part — he raises us from the dead so that he can distribute his estate to us. And here you get another funny picture — it's not as if he apportions bits and pieces of his riches to people in the church. He gives everybody his full riches. Can you see the picture breaks down? How does he do that?

Verses 8 and 9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one can boast. For we are his workmanship." Now, the word used there in Greek is poiēma. The verb poieō is to make or do something. Poiēma is something that's made — from that we get the word "poem." So a poiēma is something you make with your hands, it's a product, it's an artifact — a word that was used in Greek for works that artisans create, that artists create. So we are God's work of art, his artifact.

"Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them." Okay, three actors here, three pictures. First of all, you Gentiles — but also the whole congregation. You were once people rescued from certain death — so you are resurrected people. You were once dead, but you were resurrected from the dead. And then you have the "we" — the "we" here is not "we the Jews" but "we the church." The central picture here is that we, the church, are God's work of art.

Now, I'd like you just to dwell on that picture. An artist creates a work of art in order to express something, to show something, to give something to people. What is it that God is expressing through the church as his supreme creation? God, the artist — we, his supreme work of art, his beautiful work of art. Your congregation is God's work of art in your location. What is God trying to express, show, give to others through the church?

"We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for" what? Good works. Good works are God's works. So this is not a static work of art, but it's something like a drama. We've been created to work together with Jesus in doing the work of God the heavenly Father, and he gives his riches to us so that we, as his work of art, can give his riches to the world. So our position, if you like, in the world is to enrich the world. People should come to your church in order to be enriched by you and your congregation.

So you get the last picture there — of us being employees. God is the employer, and we are coworkers with God, employed by him, doing what he gives us to do as we travel with him. He has prepared the good works that we are to do before the foundation of the world — he's mapped it all out. It's a bit like a playwright who scripts the roles that the actors are to take. So God has scripted the roles that we are to play in our station and vocation, the role that your congregation is to play.

How's the time? Okay, I'm going too slowly — let me move on. "Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles were in the flesh, called 'the uncircumcision' by what is called 'the circumcision,' which is made in the flesh with hands. Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ" — or "without Christ," the Greek says — "alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now, in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Jesus."

First of all, Gentiles — you Gentiles, what were you once like? You were like people who were without God and without Christ. You were outsiders, people who had no connection with God and with Jesus. So the picture is of religious deprivation, poverty. Secondly, you were like aliens who didn't belong to the city-state, the commonwealth of Israel. Now, this is a powerful image for Paul's hearers, because they lived in the Roman Empire, and there was one thing everybody in the Roman Empire aspired to — in the same way that every migrant to the USA desires the green card — and that's Roman citizenship. That was the greatest privilege you could have — citizenship, membership in the Roman city-state.

Thirdly, you were once foreigners without the privileges of citizenship. Now, as foreigners — you maybe aren't aware of it, but I'm acutely aware of it, visiting this country — as a foreigner, I don't have the same legal or economic status as you do. I can't work here, I can't access social security, et cetera — there's a whole lot of stuff I can't access.

The last picture is a liturgical picture — you were once people far from God, but are now near to him. So there's a picture about location — you were dislocated from God's presence, but now you are relocated in God's presence, you are located in God's presence, and you have access to him. The people who heard this would immediately think of the temple in Jerusalem and access to God in the temple in Jerusalem.

Verses 14 and 15: "For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one, and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility, by abolishing the law of commandments, expressed in its ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility." You're breathless there, because Paul just tumbles it all out. "And he came" — that's Jesus came — "and preached peace to you who were far off from God, and peace to those who were near to God. For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father."

Now, the basic picture here is taken from the arrangement of the temple in Jerusalem. You had three courts. There was the inner court, where the temple and the altar were — that's the court of the Israelites. Then you had the second court, the court of the women — only clean people, and Jews, could come into that second court. And then, outside of that, you had the court of the Gentiles. Now, a person who was a Gentile, not a Jew, could not go from that outer court into the second court. In fact, archaeologists have found an inscription on stone which says that any non-Jew who comes through that gate into the second court will be put to death.

Now, that aroused a great deal of hostility, because, in the rest of the ancient world, anybody, no matter what their religion was, could access the temples. But here you had this dividing wall separating Jews and Gentiles — a wall which said the Gentiles could come this close to God, but no closer. On the other hand, the Jews could come into the third court, right up to the altar. That's the basic picture here.

He is compared to a whole number of things here. He's the peacemaker. He's the unifier. He's the wall-breaker — he breaks down walls that separate people from each other. And most remarkably, he is the creator of a new humanity, a new Adam. He's an agent of reconciliation. He's the killer — and this is an ironic picture — killer not of people, but of hostility, he's the killer of hostility. He's the herald of good news, and he's the mediator who gives both Jews and Gentiles access to God the heavenly King, here on earth.

Thirdly, what are the pictures used for Jews and Gentiles? Number one — both Jews and Gentiles, notice, both, not just Gentiles — were once hostile enemies of God. They were God's enemies. Secondly, both Jews and Gentiles are now members of one body in Christ — they've been incorporated into Christ's body. And most remarkably, both Jews and Gentiles have royal status — they are members of God's royal family, they have sonship, they have the same status as Jesus, they have the same access to God the Father as Jesus has, through the Holy Spirit.

Lastly, verses 19 through 22 — so then, notice there's a link here, this is the conclusion, the climax of this section. We tend to end at "by grace you're saved through faith" — but this is the climax, not that verse. "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are fellow citizens with the saints" — now, they are the hagioi. In this letter, and in many letters, "saints" are angels. If you went to Jews contemporary with Paul and said, "Who are the hagioi, the holy ones?" they'd say straightaway, "the angels." But most remarkably, Paul says it's not just the angels who are holy ones — Christians have the same status as the angels. Here he says that all you Christians are fellow citizens together with the angels, the holy ones, "and members of the household of God, built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure" — or house, or home — "being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built together into a dwelling place for God, by the Holy Spirit."

Now you can all see immediately here — what's the main picture? It's the picture of the church as what? A building. What kind of building? A temple. Whose temple? God's temple — a temple for the Holy Trinity, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So the church is a temple of the living God. You, the congregation in Ephesus, are no longer foreign residents in an alien land — you are co-citizens together with the angels, in the heavenly city, the city of God. You are members of God's royal extended household, like adopted children and servants. You are building blocks in God's temple — you are God's holy temple, that grows larger and larger and larger.

Now, the picture here is quite deliberate. It's meant to counteract what would be dominant in the imagination of every person who lived in Ephesus. Do you know what the dominant structure was, up on the high place in Ephesus? It was the great temple of Artemis, Diana. Ephesus was a temple city, dominated by this temple. And Paul wants to focus people away from that building, to the building that God is building with people, in the little congregation in Ephesus. So the congregation is God's royal residence, his palace, and Paul wants to focus on that rather than the temple of the goddess Diana. The rest is quite simple — the apostles and prophets are the foundation stones of God's house, God's temple. Jesus is the cornerstone, to align the whole temple — the great big block, which is the starting point of the building of the temple. And the Holy Spirit is the temple builder.

Now, what's the problem? I've taken you through the pictures, and if we had time we could unpack them — that's the next thing, to look very closely at them and meditate on them. But just practically speaking, I've taken you through — you have all these pictures. What's the basic problem here? There are far too many to take in and preach on. Okay, so there are two ways of preaching on this.

You can take one of the pictures which strikes you — and just as I've gone through, can we just have, at random, anybody — which is the picture that's captured your imagination most? Just shout it out.

"Jesus, the killer of hostility." What else? "The temple — the congregation is a temple." Now, you need to see — your struggling congregation is the temple of the living God. This is the place where God exhibits himself in your community, this is the place where God exhibits his grace, his riches, out into the world. Temple. What else? Any other pictures? "The walking corpses." Okay — the Walking Dead. Yep, yep. "The artist creating a wonderful, beautiful work of art." What else? "The rich benefactor, who doesn't accumulate wealth but gives his wealth away in order to win the loyalty of people." Yes? "The wall-breaker." But which is the most important wall broken? The danger, if you go down that road, is you'll say, "Oh, you want to break the walls between human beings" — but what's the dominant wall that Jesus has broken? The curtain — the curtain into God's presence. And it's because he breaks down that wall — the wall between heaven and earth — that it's then possible to break down the walls between human beings.

Any other pictures that grab you? "That's amazing — that we reign with God in glory." The danger, if you go down that road, is a Pentecostal kind of way — but notice, we die with Christ, we are raised with Christ, we are given life with Christ, we are seated with Christ in the heavenly realms, so that God can show the riches of what? His grace, through us, to the world. He hasn't enthroned us so that we can have prosperity, but he enthrones us so that the world can prosper spiritually.

And how do we most obviously reign with Christ? You'd probably have to go elsewhere in the New Testament — how do we reign with Christ? Number one: by interceding for the world, we reign with Christ — we get the riches of God's grace for the benefit of others. And then, particularly in the book of Revelation, there's a second way in which we reign with Christ — by praising. Okay, the Pentecostals at least got that right.

How's time? I won't go through those final questions — you can do that yourself. Any other pictures that have grabbed people? "Aliens becoming" — sorry, what? "Aliens becoming citizens." Now, that's a very graphic picture at the present moment, because, as you know, one of the big issues in debate here is the question of illegal migrants and whether they should be granted the privilege of citizenship. Of all the countries in the world, which is the one people desire citizenship in most of all? Not Australia — that's where the losers come, down our way. They dumped convicts there, and losers have been coming ever since, and losers live there. Our national holiday is a military defeat. The dominant picture of an American is somebody who's a winner — everybody aspires to be a winner. In Australia, the dominant picture of us as Australians is what we call a battler. A battler was a fellow who tried to make a living out in the bush and was basically defeated by everything, but he never gave up — he kept battling through. So we're a nation of battlers, losers, defeated people. Okay, that's another story — but it would be very resonant if you preached along that line, at a moment when you have the debate about citizenship here.

Any other pictures that grab you? Okay, now, just to wrap it up — when you preach imaginatively, you need to focus on one dominant image; you can bring the other ones in. What criteria do you use to decide which other ones to bring in? The ones that are relevant to what you want to say. Don't try to use all of them. Paul gives you so much material here — you could preach a hundred sermons on this text. Don't try to emulate Paul; stick with one dominant picture and unpack that.

Now, in terms of your strategy in the sermon — can we go just a couple of minutes more, we're supposed to finish right now — okay. In your strategy, where do you place the picture in your sermon? Beginning and end, at least. Bring it right up front at the beginning, in such a way that it arrests attention. Put it up front, in your first sentence, in your opening paragraph — that's your hook. And then you can unpack it, and then, just to make sure people get the picture, you reintroduce it at the end, even if you've gotten away from it in between.

Okay, any questions before we wrap it up? Yes?

Where does humility come in? Are we to be humble, or are we to be boisterous?

Yes, we are to be both of those, because humility doesn't come in manner — it's our stance over against God and people. Humility is not manner, it has to do with attitude. There is a bit of a problem there, a cultural problem, but do begin confidently. Don't act in a way that's contrary to your nature — don't try to be a Brian Vollmiller, or a John Kleinig, or a Hal Senkbeil — that would create no credibility whatsoever. You create the highest level of credibility when you preach consistent with your own personality. You'll preach much more gently, and less boisterously, less exuberantly, than me or Brian. So credibility partly has to do with preaching in a way that's consistent with your personality, and consistent with the way the Word of God has impacted you.

Yes? As I'm sure you're aware, it's become popular now during sermons to use screens like these and project images. I'm just curious — do you see that as enhancing what you're saying, or destroying it?

Like most things, it depends how it's used, and in most cases it is more abused than rightly used. There are two ways that I feel you can use the screen appropriately. Not to put the whole text there, but the key verse of the text. Let's say you were dealing with "we are his workmanship" — I'd put there, "we are his work of art, created in Christ Jesus for good works," and I wouldn't even include "which God prepared beforehand for us to walk in," because that's the dominant picture. So you put that text there and you leave it. Don't have a jumping screen, because you want people to look where? At you — the embodied word, not the depicted word. That's one way you can use the overhead screen very effectively — just put the key verse, not the whole text, up there.

The other way of using it is to use an appropriate graphic. You could have a picture of a work of art — a beautiful piece of pottery, or a statue — though a statue is dangerous — but an appropriate work of art that you just leave there, not just during the sermon but on the screen before the service, keep it there during the sermon, then take it off, and bring it back at the end of the service. That picture will remind people not of your sermon, but of the word of God. That's the best way of using it, as far as I'm concerned. But don't try to put a summary of your sermon up there, and don't try to have these corny graphics that many people use. Most people find it a little bit annoying. But if it's used appropriately, it's brilliant.