Doesn't Jerusalem rather often in the scriptures signify the soul, which when she does not want to recognize the Lord's visitation is surrounded by demons and various temptations? After being besieged, she falls, is cast down to the ground, and no virtue or good work in her is left without being destroyed. She is deprived of all grace and is not restored in some other way because she did not know the time of her visitation.

You precisely. You, I say, are that city, resplendent with many great benefits from God, but you did not acknowledge them but were ungrateful. He created you in His own image. He begot you in the midst of His Church, not among unbelievers. He established you in a prosperous city. He sanctified you with the water of baptism. He nourished you in a religious house. But you chased after your own ideas.14

Notice how the author creates an internal narrative: "You, I say, are that city." No longer are the narrative and focus 'out there' somewhere. The focus has now been internalized because the narrative was developed from within the lives of the hearers while employing elements from the sermon itself.15 This story becomes our own story. By naming the hearers as that person in the narrative, all people are focused upon one thing; they are forced to see them- selves as the agents in the narrative. Since the hearers see themselves in the narrative, they are under greater control and guidance by the preacher. Through every second of the narrative the preacher is holding the hand of our focus and attention as he walks us toward the context of the sermon.

Narratives are powerful. They order the world around us and in fact they create reality as we hear them unraveled before us. However, vague, indirect and unfocused narratives are detrimental to any sermon.

Vital to any successful narrative is the employment of certain tactics as described in the synthetic method and internal narrative. The synthetic method will assist the speaker in creating a narrative that is born from the body of the sermon itself while an internal narrative structure will incorporate parishioners into the message itself. As with everything a speaker says, great care must be taken in the choice of words because, "Spoken style must be instantly intelligible to the hearer. The reader may pause to ponder the meaning of a word used by a particular author. The listener is not given this luxury. He must understand in an instant what is being said by the speaker."16

1David Buttrick, Homiletic: Moves and Structures. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987) 10.

2Sonja K. Foss, "Narrative Criticism," Rhetorical Criticism: Exploration & Practice. (Prospect Heights: Waveland Press Inc., 1996) 399.

3Bausch 32.

4Jerry Vines, A Guide to Effective Sermon Delivery. (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986) 86.

5Richard Eislinger, Narrative & Imagination: Preaching the World that Shape Us. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1995) 151.

6Richard Caemmerer, Preaching for the Church. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1959) 71.

7Buttrick 83.

8Ibid.

9Fisher 274.

10Bausch 11.

11Fisher 279.

12Leonora Tisdale, Preaching as Local Theology and Folk Art. (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997) 95.

13Vines 86.

14Girolamo Savonarola, Trans. John Donnelly, Prison Meditations on Psalms 51 & 31. Ed. John Donnelly. (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1994) 132.

15Fisher 274.

16Vines 86.