Sermon Illustrations on reframing
Background
Stuck in the Houses Our Words Construct
All day long, all of us are framing and reframing our lives. We talk about the memory of our adorable but sexist grandpa. We label ourselves as movie critics or introverts or justice-lovers. We say that the future is full of doom and despair—or stocked with opportunities and adventure. Most of us sort out life well enough to keep moving along. Then something happens—a car accident, a promotion, a cancer scare, an offer of marriage, a terrorist threat, a retirement party—and our world gets turned inside out.
Our sense of order bursts with joy or unravels. Our words seem inadequate. They don’t say enough or they say too much. When these kinds of events happen, if we slow down long enough to examine our speech, we may see cracks in our frames and begin to search for ways to reframe. One disruption might lead a person to say, “I thought I trusted God for the future, but my anxiety about my children is so faithless.”
The way we describe reality matters because, as simple as it sounds, we cannot see through a window unless the window is there. We are stuck in the houses that our words construct. What if my windows are small and barred and leave me in a prison of prejudice? What if I realize that I can make my windows larger—to see more and appreciate the landscape before me? Specific language choices give us access to specific realities.
Gregory Spencer, Reframing the Soul: How Words Transform Our Faith, Leafwood Publishers, 2018.
Stories
Farewell to the Known and Dear
St. Columba was an Irish monk and abbot, who is largely responsible for the evangelization of Scotland. He founded the monastery at Iona, which became a training ground and launching point for further missionary activity into Scotland. While most folks associate him with his adopted country of Scotland, it’s easy to forget that leaving his homeland-Ireland, was quite difficult for him. After once seeing the distant shore of his beloved Antirim coast, Columba had to steel himself to complete the work he had vowed he would to God. This included bringing the gospel to the Picts, a notoriously difficult and hard-edged people. To keep his vow, Columba prayed this prayer:
Cul ri Erin, the back turned towards Ireland;
Farewell to the known and dear,
Advance to the unknown,
With it’s formidable hazards,
Its sharp demands.
All of us are not called to leave a known land to plant the gospel. But we are all called to have courage to face the unknown and the uncertain faithfully. Perhaps we can draw some inspiration from St. Columba and this prayer.
Stuart Strachan Jr. Source Material from Celtic Daily Prayer, Harper Collins.
Not Going to Church
As was the normal routine on a Sunday morning, a wife got ready for church. She got up, had breakfast, showered, got dressed, put on makeup and was ready to go. It was just as she was ready to leave that she noticed her husband was still in his robe and pajamas. She asks him what’s going on, “I’m not going to church” he says. “What do you mean, you’re not going to church?” Give me one good reason why you’re not going to church?“
The husband responds, “I’ll give you three good reasons why I’m not going to church. Reason number one, the church feels cold. Reason number two, no one likes me. And reason number three, I just don’t like it there. Is that good enough?” he concluded quite proudly.
“Well, what if I give you three reasons why you should go to church.” the wife answered. “Reason number one, the church is actually quite warm and friendly. Reason number two, there’s a few people there who like you. And reason number three, you’re the pastor sweetheart, so you better get dressed and get to church.”
Original Source Unknown, Stuart Strachan Jr.
A Rich New Perspective
In a short story, Jhumpa Lahiri writes about Mr. Kapasi, a man who translates to a city physician what rural Indian people say about their illnesses. When Mr. Kapasi complains to a friend, Mrs. Das, that the job is meaningless, she tells him that his occupation is a significant responsibility, that he is “interpreting people’s maladies.”
Mr. Kapasi is greatly affected by her description. He feels named, enriched, emboldened, a person conveying delicate and dark truths. For Mr. Kapasi, the words from Mrs. Das opened a window. He had perceived his work as a typical mindless job, but Mrs. Das offered a fresh perspective, a different and beautiful way to frame his work. She fulfilled Walker Percy’s rich phrase that one of the noblest roles of a communicator is “to render the unspeakable speakable,” to point to qualities others have been unable to articulate.
Gregory Spencer, Reframing the Soul: How Words Transform Our Faith, Leafwood Publishers, 2018.
Skin is Meant to be Touched
Brenda Peterson is an author whose work crosses multiple genres, including fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books. In an essay entitled In Praise of Skin, Peterson shares a true story from her own battle with painful skin rashes. Similar to the woman with the hemorrhage in the gospels, Brenda visited multiple doctors, but was unable to find a cure. One day she was visiting with her grandmother, who came up with a different solution than the ones offered by the many dermatologists Peterson had already visited.
“Skin,” she exclaimed, “needs to be touched!” After that, the grandmother began regularly massaging Brenda’s skin, and eventually those massages were able to cure what all the those prior, fancy medicines were unable to: she was cured of the painful rashes. The grandmother, it turns out, was right: “skin is meant to be touched.”
Stuart Strachan, Source Material from Brenda Peterson, Ballantine Books, 1993.
The Snake in the Cell
John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a night in a cell with a poisonous snake. Any movement, even the smallest stirring, would cause the snake to strike with a lethal bite. The man convinced himself the best course of action was to stand in the corner of the cell, as far away from the snake as possible, as still as humanly possible. So the man stayed awake all night, huddled in the corner, praying that he would not arouse the poisonous snake and meet an early end.
As dawn began to settle on the cell, the man began to make out the shape of the snake, and he was relieved that he had stayed so still for such a long period of time. But as the light began to more fully illuminate the room, something strange became evident: the snake was no snake at all, just an old rope.
The point of the story is clear: there are many rooms in our minds where ropes, not snakes exist. These snakes keep us from fully living, entrapped as we are by the fear of being stricken. We become prisoners of our own making. The solution is not to merely protect ourselves, but to face the dangers head on, so that we can experience the fullness of life Jesus offers us in his Word.
Stuart Strachan, Source material from John O’Donahue, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World (Convergent Books, 2018).
Analogies
The Snake in the Cell
John O’Donahue, in his book, Walking in Wonder, shares a story from India that is thousands of years old, but just as relevant today as it was back then. It’s about a man who was forced to spend a night in a cell with a poisonous snake. Any movement, even the smallest stirring, would cause the snake to strike with a lethal bite. The man convinced himself the best course of action was to stand in the corner of the cell, as far away from the snake as possible, as still as humanly possible. So the man stayed awake all night, huddled in the corner, praying that he would not arouse the poisonous snake and meet an early end.
As dawn began to settle on the cell, the man began to make out the shape of the snake, and he was relieved that he had stayed so still for such a long period of time. But as the light began to more fully illuminate the room, something strange became evident: the snake was no snake at all, just an old rope.
The point of the story is clear: there are many rooms in our minds where ropes, not snakes exist. These snakes keep us from fully living, entrapped as we are by the fear of being stricken. We become prisoners of our own making. The solution is not to merely protect ourselves, but to face the dangers head on, so that we can experience the fullness of life Jesus offers us in his Word.
Stuart Strachan, Source material from John O’Donahue, Walking in Wonder: Eternal Wisdom for a Modern World (Convergent Books, 2018).
Understanding Reframing with Physics and Titanic (The Movie)
While the second example is a bit dated (Titanic is over approaching its third decade in circulation!) the logic holds and can be applied to a variety of films set in a historical context:
I think of these perspectives as frames of reference. Within the field of physics, for example, a frame of reference is a framework that is used to observe and describe a physical phenomenon. It is a structure of views or values used to understand and evaluate data. (For example, imagine two people standing, facing each other on either side of a sidewalk.
If a skateboarder rides down the sidewalk between them, for the person on one side of the sidewalk, the skateboarder is moving to the right; for the person on the other side, the skateboarder is moving to the left. The two people constitute two different frames of reference from which to describe the skateboarder’s movement.) By placing data into a certain frame of reference, interpreters are able to describe it in a particular way. In fact, reframing a collection of data into different frames of reference yields new meanings that aren’t necessarily visible from other frameworks. And if we place the same set of data into different frames of reference, we are often able to understand and describe it in more than one way.
For a nonscientific example, think about the ways that contemporary movies often take known facts about a historical person or event and reframe them within a storyline that gives them new dimensions of meaning. We might think here of the many movies made about the sinking of the Titanic cruise liner in 1912. One of the most recent of these movies, for instance, incorporated the names of historical persons involved in the events into a fictional, tragic love story of a romance forbidden by the social and economic class divisions of the time.
This film creatively used various facts to tell a different story, and in the process left its viewers with new ways of imagining the personalities and actions of some of the real-life persons who experienced the actual event.
The point is that frames of reference are ways of gathering and viewing certain materials that bring out new dimensions of meaning. Whether physicists, moviegoers, or readers of scripture, observers can switch frames of reference and see different emphases and insights.
Humor
Not Going to Church
As was the normal routine on a Sunday morning, a wife got ready for church. She got up, had breakfast, showered, got dressed, put on makeup and was ready to go. It was just as she was ready to leave that she noticed her husband was still in his robe and pajamas. She asks him what’s going on, “I’m not going to church” he says. “What do you mean, you’re not going to church?” Give me one good reason why you’re not going to church?“
The husband responds, “I’ll give you three good reasons why I’m not going to church. Reason number one, the church feels cold. Reason number two, no one likes me. And reason number three, I just don’t like it there. Is that good enough?” he concluded quite proudly.
“Well, what if I give you three reasons why you should go to church.” the wife answered. “Reason number one, the church is actually quite warm and friendly. Reason number two, there’s a few people there who like you. And reason number three, you’re the pastor sweetheart, so you better get dressed and get to church.”
Original Source Unknown, Stuart Strachan Jr.
More Resources
Still Looking for Inspiration?
Related Themes
Click a topic below to explore more sermon illustrations!