Church!
You may have noticed that I don’t give too many “applications” in my sermons. I don’t try and figure out the meaning of passage and then see how it might fit into our lives.
For example: in the Gospel reading for this Sunday, Jesus is asked to divide an inheritance between two brothers. He finds that to be an idiotic request. “Who set me as judge between you too?” He could care less. He finishes with a parable, condemning riches and greed, “You Fool! This very night your soul is demanded of you! And all your possessions, whose will they be?”
So, what could we say? If you want to follow Jesus, you should not worry about money. And maybe you should tithe more. Maybe you should spend more on family and friends. Maybe you should give away more.
Teaching and application.
Easy.
But I’m trying to do something very different. You see, if you try and apply the Word of God to you life, you’re making the assumption that it stands outside of your life. That you and it are separated. And now you need to figure out how to get it into your daily life. But can that be? Does the Word of God wait for you to apply it? Did Jesus wait for you to see if he would be applicable to your life, or did he just come in the flesh, born of Mary, before anyone asked? Application? Are we gods that we are able to apply the Word of God and move it as we see fit? No. Rather, he is God and applies himself to us.
Here’s the thing. I’m not trying to apply the Word of God, because the Word of God has already applied us. We are already folded up into it. It does not stand outside our world. It has already defined our world. It’s not that we need to bring it into our lives, but rather, we need to figure out where we already stand within in it.
That’s why I say things like, “In Hosea 1, you don’t need to figure out how to apply it. You are already written in it: you are Hosea and Gomer. In 2 Kings, you don’t need to figure out how to apply Elisha to you life, for you are already written into the Word of God: the Church is the Jordan River and you are Naaman needing faith to be clean.”
Our lives are already written into the Word of God. When you open that Book, it’s not that you need to figure out what it has to do with contemporary America. When you open that Book, you, America, and all of history are already drawn into it. The question is not then, “what is the Word of God?”, but “who are you?”
Within that Book every line of history, all the infinite cosmos, and even movements of your small life are already traced out. Open that Book and all is swallowed up into it. It holds everything that ever was and is and will be.
“Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my Word will not pass away.”
Application? Yes. There is application. But it does not move from earth to heaven. It moves from heaven to earth.
Tom+