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When I was a kid, my Sunday School teachers were always asking us, “What’s the moral of the story?”
I love Larry Norman’s critique of the propensity to seek some moral in every Bible story. His song, “Moses in the Wilderness” after tracing the exploits of Moses, ends with the ridiculous injunction, “Never borrow money needlessly.”
The Application
I’m wondering if this reductive reading of the Bible is embedded in the idea of the “Application.” This is the part of the sermon when the pastor explains how the Biblical text applies to our lives.
By the way some preachers talk about the application, one might get the impression that this is the most important part of the message. I wonder if it is. No doubt, it is very important to understand the connection of scripture to our real lives, but as a congregant, I am usually unable to live out the application of many sermons after I leave the pew–not only because Biblical standards of holiness are always out of our reach, but because I’ve forgotten it.
I think the problem is built into the word “application.” The word suggests a very modern, response to the text. Dare I say, a non-biblical response?
If I do some free association with the word application, I come up with Band-Aids and other things that adhere, like those decals I used to stick onto my model race cars. To apply means to stick something onto the surface of something else.
It follows then that to apply the lessons of a sermon means to stick its teachings onto me or my life. The limitations of this word are becoming obvious. For one thing, the pastor does all the work; he does the applying, and the listeners are passive, like a child receiving the Band-Aid. And, like a Band-Aid, it makes us feel better, but it doesn’t usually stick longer than a day. We walk away happiest if the bandage is one of those fancy kinds with cartoon characters on them. We might even show our friends, who will be only temporarily enamored.
When Scripture is a Story
This is not a very good way to interact with any story, let alone scripture, for it makes of the Bible a box of Band-Aids. A metal box filled with varied useful objects that can be extracted by the skillful hands of a skillful and equipped expert. I’m thinking of my mother who, with deft and nailed fingers, was able to extract the appropriate Band-Aid from deep in the box and masterfully apply it with a kiss for maximum effect.
The idea of application presupposes a gap between subject and object–between me and the Band-Aid, between me and the Bible’s text. It suggests that there are things in biblical texts that can be pulled out and used. These things are almost always ideas, that is, intellectual propositions or principles. It’s not that stories don’t communicate ideas, but that’s not all they communicate–stories are not primarily intellectual. We use the derogatory word didactic to describe stories that are.
Good stories don’t stick to our surface, but they penetrate us and the encounter is implicit and transformative. Let me illustrate this with the story of “The Good Samaritan” found in Luke 10:25-37.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”Sermon Writing: Stories don’t stick to us, they penetrate us and the encounter is implicit and transformative. #Pastors #Preaching #SermonWriting” quote=”Sermon Writing: Stories don’t stick to us, they penetrate us and the encounter is implicit and transformative.”]
The Good Samaritan
A lawyer, in an attempt to test Jesus, asks him what one must do to have eternal life. Rather than answer directly, Jesus asks him what he thinks the Law says. The lawyer correctly answers that he must love God and neighbour.
Jesus says, “Right. Here’s a sticker for giving the right answer.”
The lawyer then asks, “Who is my neighbour?”
The lawyer wanted simplicity and clarity. Jesus could have delivered the application right then and there, but because the answer cannot be reduced, a story is necessary.
A certain man was set upon by robbers and left seriously injured in a ditch. A priest and a Levite saw him but walked past. A Samaritan, hated by the Jews, helped the injured man and arranged for his care and promised to return.
If you were to apply the lessons of this story to your life, you’d likely be convicted to help others in need like the good Samaritan, and not ignore them like the priest and the Levite. The problem is, I already know I am supposed to do this, and I also know that I will not do it to the extent that the God’s Law requires—and the lawyer knew this too. So, I end up feeling guilty because I am a crappy Good Samaritan.
This application adheres to the surface and will, consequently, fall off during the first bath.
Two More problems with Application
As we’ve said, the Modern subject is separate from the world of objects. So there is an assumed, insuperable barrier between me and objects–between me and scripture. This creates two additional problems for the Modern reader that are implicit in the term “application.”
- The term application favours a self-centered understanding of the story. The story is about me and what I am supposed to do. After reading the story from Luke 10, I’ve got to be on the lookout for the people who have been tossed in the metaphorical ditch and do something about it.
- The term application assumes that the subject is in control of the work of scripture. The human subject takes up and applies the lessons to the life of the congregants. The term implication suggests that this work is done by the story. The object, the inspired Word of God, takes us into itself and transforms us.
So much for application.
The Implication of the story of The Good Samaritan
Rather than application, I would like to suggest the word implication. It suggests a lot more ambiguity than application, but that’s a good thing since the clarity of application is often achieved through a reduction of the truth to a moral.
Implication is not about how the sermon fits into, or onto, my life; it’s about how I fit into the story. Implication bridges the gap between subject and object because I enter the story and it enters me–I experience the story as a participant.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”The clarity of a sermon’s APPLICATION is often achieved through a reduction of the truth to a moral. #SermonApplication #SermonWriting #Application #Implication #Preaching” quote=”The clarity of a sermon’s APPLICATION is often achieved through a reduction of the truth to a moral. #SermonApplication #SermonWriting #Application #Implication”]
I can enter the story of the Good Samaritan at several points.
- I can enter it as the Samaritan and see that I am inadequate because I’m not enough like him.
- But I can also be honest and see myself in the action of the robbers,
- or the priest and Levite who are not so different than the robbers who harm the man through inaction. Let’s be honest, this is most of us.
- I can also enter the story as the victim of the evil of others.
In reality, I occupy all these roles in various ways—I am in the story. And because I am in the story I can experience the truth of the story. Implication is better than application because experiential. I experience the truth of the story with more than my mind–but with my emotions and my imagination as well.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”To read the story of the Good Samaritan as a lesson about what I am supposed to do is to miss the point. This story is more about what I can’t do, and what Jesus has done. #Sermon #Application #GoodSamaritan #Preaching” quote=”To read the story of the Good Samaritan as a lesson about what I am supposed to do is to miss the point. This story is more about what I can’t do, and what Jesus has done.”]
So what is the implication of the story from Luke 10:25-37?
What the Samaritan did was incredible and beautiful.
This story is all about Jesus.
When I understand that this story is not just about me and my inadequacy, but Jesus and his adequacy, I am free to love my neighbour out of gratitude because I have been given the eternal life the Lawyer was asking about, even though I don’t deserve it.
[click_to_tweet tweet=”When you read the story of The Good Samaritan, do you feel guilty or grateful? #sermon #SermonApplication #SermonWriting” quote=”When you read the story of The Good Samaritan, do you feel guilty or grateful? “]
Jesus refuses to give a straight answer to the Lawyer, as to who a neighbour is. By refusing to simplify the Truth to an application he points to something far greater–an implication–an implicit and transforming truth about God’s grace.
I am not suggesting that every pastor who uses the word “application” at the end of his sermon is leaving his listeners with a simplistic, individualistic idea. I am just arguing that the word implies a limited understanding of story. By using the word implication, we have a better tool to experience the transformative power of the Bible’s stories.
Hey Trent,
An interesting piece, Thanks for posting.
I am with you that there are implications to stories, and that stories have transformative power. Though I’m not sure implications necessarily replace applications. Part of the work of a sermon is to bring out the implications of a text, and then to apply them. I see this as a “both/and issue”, rather than an “either/or”.
Taking your example text. The point of the story is to reverse the lawyer’s paradigm for what “neighbour” means. Jesus flips the question from “who is my neighbour?” to “who proved to be the neighbour?” Such a reversal has implications!
Jesus then instructs the lawyer to, “Go and do likewise”. Jesus tells the story (which has implications), and then he applies the story by clearly instructing the lawyer to put it into practice.
And surely Jesus’ application was placed with more strength than a Band-Aid.
Hey Greg, I came across this quote from Lewis that, I think, reinforces what you said about “both/and.”
“It must not be supposed that I am in any sense putting forward the imagination as the organ of truth. We are not talking of truth, but of meaning: meaning which is the antecedent condition of truth and falsehood, whose antithesis is not error but nonsense. I am a rationalist. For me, reason is the natural organ of truth; but imagination is the organ of meaning. Imagination, producing new metaphors or revivifying old, is not the cause of truth, but its condition. . . . If those original equations, between good and light, between evil and dark, between breath and soul and all the others, were from the beginning arbitrary and fanciful–if there is not, in fact, a kind of psycho-physical parallelism (or more) in the universe–then all our thinking is nonsensical. But we cannot, without contradiction, believe it to be nonsensical.”
From “Bluspels and Flalansferes: A Semantic Nightmare”
Thanks for the comment, Greg. You make some great points.
I agree, there is a place for application. For instance, it is approprate to apply an instruction,like “Go and do likewise.”
My concern is the subject/object dualism that, I am claiming, is foundational to the idea of application. Implication, on the other hand is a better way to interact with a story. It has several meanings , but the one I was going with was the first in the OED: “The action of involving, entwining, or entangling; the condition of being involved, entangled, twisted together, intimately connected or combined.”
I am trying to defend narrative, from the instruments of dissection.
Thanks you again, Trent