So, this past Sunday my Seminarian, Jay Hobson, preached. It was his first public sermon - and this morning we were discussing in and the whole field of homiletics. He had a good observation based on our discussion. I had been talking about the importance of having implications in your sermon. Jay points out that he likes the idea of implication rather than application.
What does this mean? I was pointing out that importance of implication in writing a sermon. The idea that is that when you say something, it will lead to another idea, it will imply something else - that there will something that will be led to.
This includes how things hit us. If the Gospel text shows that a person knows God via Scriptures, this *implies* that we know God via the Scripture. We are "implicit" - we are involve, that truth which is preached is something we are part of.
This is opposed to application - where something is applied, laid on a person. How about we add this part to your life. That's the typical image, but we aren't preaching about applications - we are preaching about what our life in Christ actually is - what the implications are - whether or not we are aware of them. Indeed, we are seeking to learn more of what Christ has done.
I think this works well. We don't have to ask how things work - rather, just the old Lutheran Question - what does this mean, how does this impact me?
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