Hang it on a Word Picture

Peter Lundell

I was preaching the astounding truths of Christ to uneducated farmers and laborers in Maharashtra, India. My translator was great, but these people stared blankly. They understood the words we expressed, but I could tell they didn’t have a clue what we were talking about, despite my great illustrations.

So I cast the sermon notes aside and just began talking about oxen and yokes. Their heads picked up. I talked about planting and harvesting, and their faces beamed. Each time I connected these images with Jesus, they nodded. Not only did they understand, they were now connecting and responding. We later baptized many of them.

This is the power of a word picture: abstract becomes concrete. It’s amazing that I had to go halfway around the world to figure it out.

Illustrations provide a visual image to support what you say. Word pictures go beyond that. A word picture may contain the same information as an illustration. Content does not make the difference, nor does length. It’s a difference in how you use it.

A word picture is like a big hook from which you hang a load of cargo. You can attach, or hang, numerous meanings on your word picture. Or you can hang one big developed meaning. The word picture hook does two important things for your cargo of meaning: 1) Intellectual or complex ideas become understandable. 2) Your hearers more easily remember the message and its meaning.

An illustration becomes a word picture when it goes from merely supporting what you say to become the central defining image of what you say. An illustration props up or fleshes out a point. A word picture is itself a concrete expression of the point. Try describing your picture image more vividly than you might for an illustration—your hearers need to see it, feel it, and identify with it. Help them relate personally to it. Once they do, connect your meaning to it like cargo on a hook. Whether you use visual aids or not, the principle is the same.

My wife received a ruby ring, worth thousands of dollars we were told. It fooled lots of people until we brought it to a gemologist, who pronounced it fake. As I develop the image and the feelings, I hold the ring in my hand and discuss with the congregation how we all encounter false claims in life. Or perhaps we’re living hypocritically. So many things can embody that ring. But God enters as the great gemologist with the seeing eye to discern genuine from fake. The ring doesn’t support my idea; it embodies my idea. The ring is the vivid image, the hook, from which I hang all the meanings.

Or take an image from Scripture. In Numbers 21 the bronze snake lifted on a pole creates a powerful visual hook that carries numerous cargoes of meaning: God answers prayer differently from how we expect. We’re healed by faith. Problems turn into symbols of hope when they’re given to God. And of course this all connects to Jesus embodying our sin nailed to the Cross. Jesus on the Cross stands as the most eternally powerful word picture of all.

Jesus used word pictures in the form of parables all the time. Look at how the image of the sower and seed acts as a hook. On it Jesus hung meanings of the message about the Kingdom and about four different responses to the gospel. See how with every parable Jesus told, the picture image is central and, like the hook, holds together any amount of meaning Jesus, or we, attach to it.

Parables are types of word pictures, but not all word pictures are parables. By strict definition a parable is a simple story. But a word picture can be, and most often is, a nonnarrative image. Second, a parable can stand on its own, expressing its meaning through the narrative, without an explanation. A word picture is meant to be explained, just as a hook is meant to have something hang from it.

Some of what we loosely call Jesus’ parables are in reality not so much parables as object lessons. The new cloth on an old garment, new wine in old wineskins, the mustard seed, the fig tree, the light under a bowl, and the yeast are a few. Jesus used them all as word pictures.

Just as Jesus employed parables and word pictures precisely, we also must choose word pictures carefully. Our hearers must be able to relate to them, and they must be appropriate to what we are saying. For example, most of my Indian farmers didn’t have electricity. So Jesus as the light shining in spiritual darkness did not come as a light bulb but as a kerosene lamp that pierced the surrounding shadows. On the other hand, my high school students in the States stared blankly when I talked abstractly about Jesus transforming their lives. But when I depicted changing software on a computer, their faces lit up, smiling and nodding. You can’t change your hardware, but Jesus will change your software. I carefully and colorfully created the image of changing software—the hook—then hung the meaning on it. They got the message, and more important, they kept it.

Jesus utilized images everywhere, enabling His hearers to grasp the Kingdom of God. Now it’s our turn to employ images surrounding us today for our hearers to lay hold of the same Kingdom. So describe your hook, and hang your meaning.

Peter Lundell is pastor of the Walnut Community Church of the Nazarene in Walnut, California.