Sometimes the answer God gives to our “ask” means the end of what we want and the advent of what He wants for us and the world.
Sometimes, you discover something in the homiletical task for a given Sunday, and it really throws everything for a loop. You are working on a text, and you find some clue that changes your whole perspective on the reading and the direction you wanted to go. Typically, this can be frustrating, and you may be tempted to just keep foraging ahead homiletically rather than changing course so late in preparation. This is especially true if your sermon writing process happens intentionally or accidentally later in the week than your homiletics professors had hoped.
If this has ever happened to you, I want to suggest that a sermon structure may actually help you keep your hard work and be useful in helping your hearers have the same ‘aha’ moment you had. The structure that does this best is the ‘so called’ Lowry Loop.
“Eugene Lowry, in his work The Homiletical Plot and his revision of such work in The Sermon, suggests that the sermon create a sequence of experiences on the part of the hearers that mirrors the experiences of a typical plot form. The sermon, therefore, moves from conflict (even conflicting ideas of what we feel the text is about) through complication, to crisis, and, finally, to resolution. Lowry’s The Homiletical Plot depicts this design as having the following five sections: (1) Upsetting the equilibrium (“oops”); (2) analyzing the discrepancy (“ugh!”); (3) disclosing the clue to the resolution (“aha!”); (4) experiencing the Gospel (“whee!”); and (5) anticipating the consequences (“yeah!”). Just as in a narrative, the climax of the story often arises from a surprising discovery of a new way of looking at things, so too, in this sermon, the reversal is something unforeseen by the hearers and, therefore, a surprise or, as Lowry calls it, an “aha!” experience. This is also the most difficult part of the sermon to craft and keep tight. It is important because its skill in development and delivery will create a centripetal force that will launch the hearers successfully into the concluding parts of the sermon. If it is not done well, the Lowry Loop typically falls apart at the end. If the preacher simply moves from trouble to grace without the element of a surprising turn (an unanticipated viewpoint that is nevertheless coherent to the story), the sermon structure is probably a law/gospel/application structure rather than a Lowry Loop.”[1]
This structure is designed to highlight the discovery you made so late in the game that changes everything about the text. Finding a way to take them along for the ride actually turns your sermon frustration into a sermon opportunity. However, here is a fair warning: Do not turn the sermon into a step-through of your prep process. That would be rather boring, and nobody enjoys watching the sausage making process. Instead, what you are capturing with this structure is the experience of the so called “turn.” The turn is the disclosure of a clue, and the turn is a thrilling moment of discovery that can give your hearers a fresh perspective, which makes the whole experience of the Lowry Loop structure a favorite for hearer and preacher. Another fair warning is not to make the text say something it does not mean. If you have an “interesting idea,” but it is not really the main point of the text, then you do not have a Lowry Loop, you have a Hobby Horse. It is important to know the difference and to remain faithful to the text rather than crafting an experience of your interest during sermon preparation.
If you have an “interesting idea,” but it is not really the main point of the text, then you do not have a Lowry Loop, you have a Hobby Horse.
Take our Old Testament text for the Second Sunday after Christmas. It is a perfect example of the scenario just presented. At first blush, our reading on the prayer of King Solomon looks like a great text about wish fulfillment. It is, likely, the scenario we all want from God. He sidles up one day and asks us what we want. We are Christians, so we keep it humble and modestly make sure it is about Him. Then, BAM, you got yourself a custom deliverance from God, “genie” style. Now, here is the problem. How do you as a preacher make this sound religious because that is clearly what this text is giving us just by reading it?
The first two chapters of 1 Kings talk about the struggle Solomon had with the transition of power from his father to himself. Succession planning is hard and here comes God in the text assigned for today to make it easier on him by granting a wish. This is not the only place God has done this in the Bible. Look at Isaiah 7:11, where God does the same exact thing for Ahaz, but the king there plays it too humble and makes God angry. Do not mess this up. God is good for an ask, apparently, and we do not want to miss out. So, cut Solomon’s prayer into a recipe and, voila, you have a best hit seller on Amazon about how to get prosperous with God. However, sometimes the answer God gives to our “ask” means the end of what we want and the advent of what He wants for us and the world.
But everyone can smell the fake in this, right?! Here is where you move from “Oops” (that is not what the text is about) to “Ugh.” We do this kind of thing all the time to God in prayer, and the worst examples of it are the prosperity-gospel teachers who mangle the Word of God. Now that we are trapped and, worst of all, gospel-less, what are we to do? Well, there is this little clue in verse six to what the real point of the text is all about. Solomon himself points out how God has shown grace to His father David and all Solomon wants is the same thing. Like Abel asking God to cover him with the same offering that God sacrificed to cover Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) for their sin, Solomon now asks God to give him the grace and mercy He gave his father David that covered him all his life. Solomon knew God was a promise keeping God and no promise was greater than the one He made in promising the Messiah (2 Samuel 7:1-16) to David and to all peoples.
That is the wisest answer to the question if God ever came to you with an open ended ask. The wisest answer is: Give me the promise you made to David, give me the Messiah, give me Jesus to lead me and save me, and keep me all the days of my life. We tend to focus on the part of the story that reveals what we want the most. There is the trap. But here, Solomon’s prayer focuses on something else, something he did nothing to earn or deserve. Solomon prays for grace, and he gets it, and it is not because he asked for it. It is because that is the kind of God he has; a gracious God, full of steadfast love and faithfulness even when we are not.
Solomon is not the paragon of faithfulness by any stretch of the imagination, but God looks to that later son of David, the Christ, our Jesus who brings that grace to fullest flower for us and for all in His death and resurrection. He is the Jesus who shows up in our appointed Gospel lesson for today. In Luke 2:40-52, we see Jesus answering questions at the Temple better than Solomon could have. They could not have asked for anything better than a tutorial from the Messiah. In prayer, they asked God for wisdom and He gave them Jesus. Mary and Joseph were likely asking God to have mercy on them for misplacing the Messiah. They might have been worried He was lost or, worse, dead, but God’s answer to their prayer was receiving Jesus back alive again. Jesus was not lost or dead, He was alive and that news thrilled them. Maybe that is a good place for us to be as well. Lord, answer our prayer, we want Jesus! The one who was supposed to be lost in our Gospel lesson, the one we worry would be left in a grave, the one who is alive again, give us Jesus!
We are left in the same place as Solomon because the greatest gift Solomon received from God was not found in genie like wish fulfillment, it was the grace God gave Him when He kept the promise we see fulfilled in Christmas and Good Friday and, most importantly, in Easter. The end of the sermon can develop a teaching on prayer that comes from this new understand and crafts the “whee” and “yeah” parts of the Lowry Loop.
If you let the Lowry Loop structure help you order your hearers experience of the text in this way, they will move, like Solomon, from a High Place at the beginning of the text (verse 4) to right worship at the end of the text (verse 15), and it would be grace that gets us all there and not wish fulfillment. Solomon may have had it all, but he had it all by grace. The same is true for us in Christ.
------
Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 1517’s resources on 1 Kings 3:4–15.
Concordia Theology-Various helps from Concordia Seminary in St. Louis, MO to assist you in preaching 1 Kings 3:4–15.
Lectionary Kick-Start-Check out this fantastic podcast from Craft of Preaching authors Peter Nafzger and David Schmitt as they dig into the texts for this Sunday!
The Pastor’s Workshop-Check out all the great preaching resources from our friends at the Pastor’s Workshop!
------
[1] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/narrative-structures/lowry-loop/
