Sermon Illustrations No One Else is Using

I know a preacher who writes small books, which is good, and publishes them himself to give away, which is even better. However, it has occurred to me that all his illustrations are dated. Some stories he tells I used and overused forty years ago. I think I know what happened.

He pulled them out of memory or some old file of clippings in his office. This is the kind of illustration file we preachers of the 1960s used to maintain. (I’m assuming young pastors keep their illustrative treasures in computer files, not those green metal monsters that used to sit in the corners of all our offices.)

There is nothing wrong with an old illustration. For those seeing it for the first time, it’s sparkling new.

What’s wrong with an old illustration is that it bores the writer/speaker. He needs something fresh to spark his creativity, to ignite his imagination, to send him down fresh avenues.

I have the solution. A solution, I might add, which will seem paradoxical.

For fresh illustrations, the kind no one else is using, read an old book.


The fun thing about this is you will read something fascinating penned a half century or more ago, write about it on the internet, and soon, your story is being repeated everywhere. In fact, the time may come when someone accuses you of plagiarizing another preacher/writer’s stuff. That’s when you know you’ve done well.

All of that is to lead up to this.

Last week, in Jasper, Alabama, my sister Carolyn and brother Glenn and I were on our way to lunch, and Carolyn wanted to run by a certain thrift store. We ended up spending an hour in that massive establishment. I came out with 2 books, the one below and a biography of Paul Scofield, stage actor and star of my favorite movie, “A Man For All Seasons,” the story of St. Thomas More.

Bruce Catton, Civil War historian of the first degree, wrote “Waiting for the Morning Train: An American Boyhood” concerning his growing up around the turn of the 20th century in a small town in Michigan. (Published in 1972, by Doubleday)

History lovers will know Catton’s name. Some of the best-loved histories of the Civil War era are his. He won a Pulitzer for one. He was the first editor of the American Heritage magazine. He is “somebody.” Born in 1899 and died, I think, in 1977. Buried in the town cemetery in Benzonia, Michigan, the town figuring most prominently in his book.

This boyhood memoir is not like any other you will read. Ever the historian, Catton talks about the logging industry in that part of Michigan that stripped the land to the bone of all its beautiful pines and hardwoods and left it denuded. He has a gift for metaphors and remembers some intriguing stories.

Which brings us to the point of this. I wanted to share with you a little of his writing and several of his stories.

Waiting for the Morning Train: what that metaphor means.

“Early youth is a baffling time,” Catton says. “The present moment is nice but it does not last. Living in it is like waiting in a junction town for the morning limited; the junction may be interesting but some day you will have to leave it and you do not know where the limited will take you. Sooner or later you must move down an unknown road that leads beyond the range of the imagination, and the only certainty is that the trip has to be made. In this respect early youth is exactly like old age; it is a time of waiting before a big trip to an unknown destination. The chief difference is that youth waits for the morning limited and age waits for the night train.” (p.39)

Benzonia, Michigan, was a great place to wait for the morning train, Catton writes.

When I quoted a little of this on Facebook, two or three friends pointed out that the “night train” for which believers await does not have an unknown destination, because “I’m going to Heaven.” I responded, “True enough, thanks to the work of the Lord Jesus on Calvary. However, Scripture gives us so few details and speaks of Heaven in such symbolic language, we still know very little about what to expect.”

I Corinthians 2:9 fits here. Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man the things which God has prepared for those who love Him.

A good illustration about the situation we find ourselves in.

Catton says this story is probably apocryphal, but it’s still a good one. A certain U.S. senator was campaigning for re-election. Before one appearance in Michigan’s north country, the local party chairman took him aside to brief him on issues the citizens would be asking about.

The party chairman said, “And Senator, you’ll notice at the back of the hall quite a few Indians. Now, sir, it would be helpful if somewhere in your speech you could say you are fully aware of their problem and that you will do your best to solve it.”

The Senator promised to do this, then, out of simple curiosity, he said, “By the way, what is their problem?”

The party guy looked at him in surprise and said, “What’s their problem? Dadgummit, they’re Indians!”

Catton uses that as a metaphor for the situation the land of his birth had found itself in, but it works for all of us no matter the period. We’re all Indians!

What does this mean? A) We are living in a time of great cultural upheaval; B) We are in danger of being overwhelmed by the cultural shifts and left behind; C) We’re all in the same boat in this regard; and D) this is so obvious, it’s a no-brainer.

The present time is always temporary, no matter how fixed it appears. If we settle down and cease to grow and adapt, we become fossils. We become (in his word) Indians.

When you lose an election.

Catton’s father was a Congregationalist minister, although for most of his life he was an educator. Benzonia, Michigan was an enclave of Christian people who took great pride in the absence of sin in their community. When a referendum came up to prohibit the sale of alcoholic beverages in the county, Benzonia supported it but most of the county opposed it. The movement failed.

A few days afterward, a fellow encountered Reverend Catton on the street and asked how he felt about the way the election had gone.

“I feel like Lazarus,” said Catton.

“Oh? Like Lazarus?”

“Like Lazarus,” the reverend repeated. “According to the Bible, Lazarus was licked by dogs.”

Bruce Catton notes, “So much for the opposition.” (pp.24-25) (The reference is to Luke 16:21.)

The story you don’t quite know what to do with.

The best thing about an old book–or a new one for that matter–is coming across an incident that grabs you and will not turn you loose. Even if you do not know what to make of it, you keep the story in your mind, taking it out from time to time and turning it over like a pretty rock you picked up, trying to decide what there was about it that attracted you in the first place.

In the chapter on the deforestation of Michigan’s hardwood wilderness, Catton tells about one tree in particular in his hometown.

“On a hillock back of the girls’ dormitory there was a nice stand of second-growth hardwoods, mostly maples and beeches–the same in which I played the part of Daniel Boone with my trusty broomstick rifle. In the middle of this little woodlot there was one towering tree that had somehow escaped the ax and saw when the village was built…. It was a noble tree, rising far above all the other trees, a landmark visible from anywhere in town.

“Now, there lived in Benzonia a man who served in some official capacity; member of the county road commission or the county surveyor’s crew, or something similar. This man looked upon this tree every day, and apparently it offended him. It had survived, the only tree in the whole township that dated back to the original forest, and he seems to have felt that he ought to do something about it.

“He consulted the blueprints on which the village had been platted and discovered that this tree grew right in the center of what had been marked out as a highway. The highway had never been built, and never would be built, because it would be a dead-end street at each end, it led to nor past anything of consequence, and to build it would have required the builders to cross two deep ravines. It was wholly impractical, and everybody knew it, and to this day it remains unconstructed.

“But the plat says there is a roadway there and the big tree is a trespasser. So this petty official got a few men with saws and axes, went up to the hillock, and cut the tree down.

“It came down with a soul-satisfying crash and it lay, butt-end upward, on a steep hillside, leaving a flat stump as broad as a dining room table. It stayed where it fell, slowly rotting. Nobody cut it into logs or did anything else with it; nobody had ever intended to do anything with it, it was just a big tree that deserved to be laid low. A number of people shook their heads and made noises of disapproval…. Anyway, what was one more tree more or less in Michigan? It was gone, and my small sister found that the big flat stump made a fine place for her to play house with her dolls.” (pp. 118-119)

You read that and think, “What?! How could anyone be so insensitive?” Is it a sermon illustration? Probably. Maybe it illustrates something of the sinful, destructive heart of man. And yet, the citizens grieved over the loss of the tree, so shouldn’t we be cautious about applying such hard-heartedness to all people? And yet, they did nothing about it. Their protest was mild and half-hearted, the fuss dying down quickly, and the minor official feeling vindicated, I suppose.

Your public library has many such books, I wager. To find just one story is worth an hour’s investment any day of the week.

5 thoughts on “Sermon Illustrations No One Else is Using

  1. The story of the tree is a great illustration of how a few people with power in many churches see it as their God-given duty to take down the pastor. At the same time, the majority love the pastor and feel terrible when he is destroyed, but they never say or do anything to stop it.

  2. Re: Mike’s comment–That’s exactly what happened to the preacher of the true story in the book, “The Devil in Pew Number Nine”. What a tragic ending of a beautiful family because the congregation didn’t stop the devil in pew #9.

  3. Joe,

    Thanks for the reminder about “overuse and abuse” of a few illustrations! I’ve been guilty in the past of that crime!

    Yours in HIS Service,

    Danny

  4. What a wonderful story about the fallen tree which served no good purpose by its demise. Once we had twin trees ancient in age at the edge of our yard. Though they had stood side by side for many years a mighty hurricane came and felled the one on the right and compromised the twin on the left. A few years after the first tree fell and was cut into lumber the second tree weakened by the hurricane lost hold because of torrential rains lost its grip and fell as well. I was saddened at the loss of those beautiful trees and even though no evidence of their existance remains except in my memory…my sons climbing the tree and putting a board in the nitch where the lowest branch jutted out from the tree. They attached a rope and would climb to the seat where they could sit and see the view much more clearly and dream the dreams of the young supported by strebgtg of the ancient tree. Thanks for the inspiration of this story and the memories it evoked.

    God bless you, my friend.

    Jane

  5. What a wonderful story about the fallen tree which served no good purpose by its demise. Once we had twin trees ancient in age at the edge of our yard. Though they had stood side by side for many years a mighty hurricane came and felled the one on the right and compromised the twin on the left. A few years after the first tree fell and was cut into lumber the second tree weakened by the hurricane lost hold because of torrential rains lost its grip and fell as well. I was saddened at the loss of those beautiful trees and even though no evidence of their existance remains except in my memory…my sons climbing the tree and putting a board in the nitch where the lowest branch jutted out from the tree. They attached a rope and would climb to the seat where they could sit and see the view much more clearly and dream the dreams of the young supported by strength of the ancient tree. Thanks for the inspiration of this story and the memories it evoked.

    God bless you, my friend.

    Jane

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