How to Tell the Story—a Simple Structure for Holy Week, Easter, and Every Sermon
If you're not prepared yet with your Easter—or Holy Week—sermons, then here's my number one tip to discern and organize your sermon(s): tell the story.
Download the graphic here.
A year ago I wanted to help you prepare for Easter with a series about this simple, save-you-time, quick-to-craft sermon structure based on the components of a story. The first installment was published on March 9th, 2020 as “Resurrecting the Easter Story.” The post lays out the framework step-by-step so you know exactly how to apply it.
But within a week, COVID-19 disrupted everything.
I then turned my attention toward preaching into the crisis—and was never able to return to this useful content.
So now I’m resurrecting the post to show you how to employ this simple story-structure process for Easter (or any sermon). In the video below, you’ll get an over-the-shoulder demonstration of how I’d apply this structure to the experience of a character sometimes overlooked at Easter: Mary.
Actually, I just demonstrated the structure in the paragraphs above: Want. But. Then. So.
I encourage you to return to last year’s post to get all the full description of the process.
Then check out the short video below, which demonstrates the process in real time so you see how to apply it this week. You can also download the infographic from last year’s post for handy reference below.
Whether you preach, lead, or worship this week, God bless you as you prepare your heart and mind for these holiest of days.
Transcript below.
Download the Story Structure Infographic for easy reference!
Video Transcript*
Hi, I'm Lisa Cressman. I'm an Episcopal priest and the Founding Steward of Backstory Preaching. In this video, I'm going to walk you through, in real time, how to craft a sermon based on story structure, looking particularly at resurrecting the Easter story.
I'm going to use a mind map to show you how this process works. A mind map is something I use all the time when I'm brainstorming. And when looking at story structure to resurrect the Easter story, this is a perfect use of a mind map, which is a visual representation of your thoughts.
Resurrecting the Easter story means we can look at the characters around Jesus.
So, for example, there's Mary Magdalene; the disciple whom Jesus loved; Peter; and Mary, Jesus's mother. And I'm going to focus on [Mary, Jesus’s mother] for the purpose of this video.
The story structure we're using is a simple one. It is: want…but…then…so. Let's look at Mary then, and consider:
Want?
What did Mary want?
Well, she is a mom. And so what does any mom want?
Well, she wanted to protect her son.
I added a few things to what Mary, as a mother, would have wanted: she would've wanted to care for her son, love him, see him succeed, not to be hurt.
Well, then, what happened? The problem was she wanted to protect him.
But…?
The big "but," of course, was crucifixion.
And so how might Mary have felt about that?
Well, she might have felt that she'd failed.
At least, she felt his pain and her helplessness to alleviate it. So she would have wanted to be there to suffer with him.
Imagine the agonies of body, mind and spirit she endured that day.
Just imagine her touching him when he came down from the cross, holding him, preparing him for burial, wiping off the blood, holding his hands that were flopping from broken wrists. There we go, angry at the system that hanged an innocent man.
I can't even begin to imagine.
But I know most mothers feel that when something goes wrong with their children. I know that in general they wonder:
What did I miss?
How did I fail?
Where did I go wrong?
What didn't I see?
How didn't I warn him?
How did I not protect him?
So what strikes me the most is the sense, perhaps, that Mary had failed.
Then…
Then resurrection.
Mary is feeling perhaps that she had failed. A couple of days have gone by, and now she begins to hear that her son was still alive. This comes from Kenneth Bailey from the book On Golgotha:
“Mary chose to remain to the end and witness the suffering of her son until his death. She was not under arrest and could have walked away.
She knew she could not change what was happening before her by arguing with the soldiers or pleading with the high priests.
The only decision she was free to make was to choose to remain and enter into Jesus’s suffering. Indeed, a sword had passed through her heart. And in the process, once again, she became a model for Christian discipleship."
So she had not failed to protect because she couldn't. There was no way.
So… (for Mary)
Then what does this imply?
So Mary hadn't failed Jesus in light of resurrection, as she was coming to terms with how does all of this work. Her ability to protect Jesus from those who sought his death simply wasn't available, so it was not her failing. The only decision available to make had been to stay with Jesus in his suffering, and in that she had succeeded.
So now what? The only decision Mary had available had been to stay with Jesus in his suffering.
So—what does that mean for her? Well, Mary, had stayed with Jesus in his suffering as he had with others.
So… (For us)
So perhaps the question is not worrying about what we have not been able to do, what we cannot accomplish, because it is not within our means.
Perhaps the question is, how do we stay with those in their suffering? That is the call, as Mary saw it.
So our decision to be with people in their suffering, not to turn away, [is one idea we can take away from this story].
And God knows there is enough suffering going on in our world right now.
There are so many who suffer, and it is easy to get wrapped up in our own issues and problems.
Mary's witness of being Jesus's disciple, who stuck with him to the end, and voluntarily—[is what I’m taking away]. She didn't have to be there.
But to choose to be with those who suffer in this world seems to me a great way that the the Easter story is still alive for us today.
Conclusion
So there you have it. Real time pondering on a story structure for “want…but…then…so....”
Summing it up, then, for us:
What do we want? Well, we want to be able to follow Jesus and do right by him to help the world in so many ways.
But there are forces that thwart [us] that we do not have the capacity [to stop].
Then there is still resurrection. Jesus is still alive.
So, by Mary's example, what we can do is enter into people's suffering—not shy away from it, but walk right into it—to witness to Jesus still being alive with compassion and grace and mercy and fixing the systems we can fix.
That, I think, will preach.
Thanks for watching this video. I hope you found it useful. Let me know what questions you've got.
As ever, be good news to preach good news.
*edited for readability