It was good to enjoy some holiday over the past month.
The things I enjoy about being on holiday are seeing new places, eating a variety of foods and getting to read a few more novels. It is always a treat to discover a new author — this time I read three novels by Robert Seethaler, The Tobacconist, A Whole Life and The Café with No Name. There were several things that delighted me about these stories written about Austria in the periods before, during and after the Second World War.
The author writes with a beautiful economy of words. He is a great describer, who uses tiny details to paint vivid pictures of his characters and their surroundings.
I always love it when a writer transports me to the time and place they are writing about so that I can almost see the scene with my own eyes.
That is one of the things I particularly like about the author of Mark’s Gospel. In his telling of the story of the feeding of the five thousand (an event recorded in all four gospels), he is the only one to tell us that Jesus instructed the disciples to tell the people to sit down on the green grass (Mark 6:39). Such a detail is a vivid eyewitness recollection (probably passed on via the Apostle Peter, who appears to be the source of the material in Mark’s Gospel), that quite literally adds colour to the story.
Another thing that delighted me about these books was the way that the author skilfully focused on one main character and used them as a lens through which the whole story was viewed. This was not at the expense of the other characters, who are well-described and developed, but it is clear who is the central focus of the story.
I have been thinking about how to preach on stories in the gospels and reflecting on the lenses I choose to preach on them. In a sermon I preached recently on the Transfiguration of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel I looked from the perspective of what Peter saw, felt and heard that day. I think that this is a legitimate way of reading and preaching the story. We all have our challenges about getting our heads around who Jesus is and how we are to respond to him.
Yet there is a danger in such an approach. It is possible to turn the attention of the congregation to Peter and his experiences, thoughts and feelings but to fail to indicate that all of these where related to who Jesus is and how we are to view him.
In the Gospels Jesus is always the heart of the story, he is the one being revealed, he is the lens through which we see what God is trying to say to us. The Transfiguration story does help us to explore the psychology of human responses to Jesus but as we do this it is important to see that it is Jesus to whom we are responding.
We must not miss the wood for the trees.
Photo by Robert Anasch on Unsplash