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.
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 a clue which 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 change 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 a sermon structure which may actually help you keep your hard work and be useful in leading your hearers to 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 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.”[1]
The “aha!” is 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 which 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 that 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.”[2]
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 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 which can give your hearers a fresh perspective that 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 favorite topic or 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, likely the scenario all of us 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 miracle from God, genie style. Now, here is the problem, how do you as a preacher make that sound religious, because this is clearly what the text is giving us just by a cursory reading of 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, which makes God angry. Do not mess this up. God is good for a wish, 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.
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 at this are examples we could show of what prosperity teachers do to 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 God sacrificed to cover Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:21) for their sin, Solomon now asks God to give him the grace and forgiveness He gave his father David which covered him all his life. Solomon knew God was a promise keeping God, and no promise was greater than the one God made in promising the Messiah (2 Samuel 7:1-16) to David and to all peoples.
We tend to focus on the part of the story we want the most, that 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 the later son of David, the Christ, our Jesus who brings His grace to fullest flower for us and for all in His death and resurrection.
Some people might cry foul here, claiming that such an interpretation is without warrant because this is about preserving a line of kings as a favor from God. However, preserving a line of Davidic kings was not a sign of divine approval of these kings themselves. It is an act of God’s faithfulness towards the promise He made to David, which is the focus here. God maintained His great grace toward him, not the other way around. The greatest gift Solomon received from God was not the wish fulfillment, it was the grace God gave Him and the kept promise we see fulfilled in Christmas, Good Friday, and, most importantly, in Easter. The end of the sermon can develop a teaching on prayer which 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 will be grace that gets us all there, not wish fulfillment. Solomon may have had it all, but he had it all by grace. The same is true for us in Christ.
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Additional Resources:
Craft of Preaching-Check out 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.
Text Week-A treasury of resources from various traditions to help you preach 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!
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[1] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/narrative-structures/lowry-loop/
[2] https://concordiatheology.org/sermon-structs/dynamic/narrative-structures/lowry-loop/
