Without a story He did not speak to them (Mark 4:34).
(Don’t miss my note at the end.)
You hear it, see it, read it, or experience it. All your senses come alive. “This is one I’ll remember a long time,” you think, and sure enough you do. For a long time afterward, your mind reels with the possibilities. What can I do with this great story? What sermon will it fit? How can I work it in?
I’ve sometimes facetiously said that a great story will fit my sermon next Sunday. The sermon may have to be reworked, but if it’s a great story, it will fit.
Like the time my wife and I were dining in Baby Doe’s restaurant on the mountainside in Birmingham, Alabama. I noticed our waitress’ name was Auburn.
That’s when I decided to get cute.
“Your name is Auburn,” I said. “I’ll bet you have a sister named Alabama.”
She said, “I have two sisters, Tulane and Cornell.”
I said, “Yeah, right.”
She said, “I have four brothers — Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, and Duquesne.”
I said, “Lady, I don’t believe a word of this.”
She said, “My father’s name is Stanford and my mother is Loyola. They were engaged before it occurred to them they both had colleges as names, and decided to do this to their children.”
I was speechless. But she wasn’t through.
“When we were little, we were on the cover of Parade magazine, in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, and on Art Linkletter’s Houseparty (a delightful daytime television show from years past some will remember).”
She was married and had two children, she said. I said, “Let me guess. You’re married to Gardner-Webb. Or Truett-McConnell.”
She said, “My husband’s name is Ron Harris, a good old American name. But my children are Slippery Rock and Agnes Scott.” She smiled and said, “I’m teasing about that.”
Auburn formerly worked as a flight attendant on Southern Airways, the airline that serviced our home airport back in Mississippi. A few months later, flying back from Dallas, I asked the flight attendant, “Did you ever know a stewardess named Auburn?” She laughed. “Auburn Bardwell — had all those weird-named brothers and sisters!”
Auburn’s story made my sermon the following Sunday. I forget what I had been planning to preach, but the message ended up dealing with the significance of names in our culture, in the Bible, to God, and in Heaven (where we will receive a new name; see Revelation 2:17 and 3:12).