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The Sanctus and Metaphor Theory

Posted by Justin Rossow on October 10, 2011 in Biblical Studies, Example Sermons, Featured, Sermon Structure, Story Interrupted

I got to preach Isaiah 6 recently; a text I love in the midst of a sermon series devoted to the biblical images that shape our worship. You can listen to the sermon below, before or after you read the comments (or both), but the sermon brings up some interesting points of metaphor and homiletic theory.

See This Has Touched Your Lips

This sermon basically follows a Story Interrupted structure where the Biblical story is told, but in the midst of the telling, some kind of application is made. (For more on sermon structures, see David Schmitt’s excellent work here.) As the story gets retold in our current context, however, some dynamics of metaphor come into play. Continue Reading »

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Metaphor and Worship

Posted by Justin Rossow on October 1, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Metaphor Interpretation, Cultural Studies, Image and Metaphor, Metaphors in the Text

For centuries the Christian liturgy has taken Biblical texts and used them in the flow of worship. This juxtaposition of ancient text and present activity is, in effect, a metaphor. The images and narrative context of the Biblical text become the Source Domain, the lens through which we understand the activity of Christian worship. Worship is the Target Domain, the actions and expectations of which are shaped by the structured relationships of the implied narrative of the Source. In terms of Christian liturgy, these narratives tend to be more explicit than the narratives implied by most metaphors, but the dynamics are the same.

So, for example, we begin worship with the Invocation, placing God’s Name on God’s people. Where in the biblical story does God’s Name show up in important ways? How do these moments in the biblical narrative map onto our actions in Christian worship? Continue Reading »

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Bug Zapper, Unplugged Light, or Warm Fire–It Matters!

Posted by Justin Rossow on September 6, 2011 in Example Sermons, Featured, Metaphor and Everyday Objects, Not This But This, Sermon Structure

This sermon was preached on Epiphany by a good friend of mine, Pastor Steve Wiechman at Peace Lutheran Church, Hurst, Texas. Steve has read my dissertation and whether he meant to or not, he did a great job of putting theory into practice. Building on the Epiphany theme of light in the darkness, Steve invites his hearers to consider how they view God. He then shows how the way we conceive of God affects how we treat other people. The result is a great sermon that follows a Question Answered (Not This, or This, But This) structure and utilizes the dynamics of metaphor for preaching.

Comments on 0.00-1.15

The intro to this sermon was actually an overview of the sermon series and it is omitted here for time and clarity. When Steve turns to the theme of light in the darkness, he poses two questions: How do I view God? and How does this affect the way I view people? In the Not This, or This, But This sermon structure, posing a relevant question is part of the intro. Here Steve poses two related questions, giving the whole sermon a double helix kind of feel. He is going to answer both questions with help from images and metaphor theory.

Listen to 0.00-1:15:

Comments on 1.16-4:28

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The Potter and the Clay

Posted by Justin Rossow on September 6, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Metaphor Interpretation, Dynamics of Metaphor, Example Sermons, Featured, Metaphor and Everyday Objects, Metaphors in the Text, Sermon Structure

Listen to this sermon here:


This sermon uses the Scriputral image of God as the potter and the disciple as clay in His hands. The basic structure follows a Metaphor design with the following three moves:

1) Evoke the Source Domain

2) Map to the Target

3) Explore with a New Lens

The fourth move in a Metaphor structure, 4) Test the Limits, is embedded in the second move.

Texts: Isaiah 64:8, Jeremiah 18:1-11, Psalm 138:8, Romans 9:20, Isaiah 29:16, Romans 8:28-29, Matthew 4:19

Comments: Besides the biblical texts listed, I used a description of discipleship from Robert Mulholland to help shape the sermon: discipleship is “the process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others.” Continue Reading »

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LIFE IS A JOURNEY

Posted by Justin Rossow on September 5, 2011 in Conceptual Metaphors, Cultural Studies, LIFE IS A JOURNEY

The following is an excerpt from my 2009 dissertation Preaching The Story Behind the Image: A Narrative Approach to Metaphor for Preaching. The LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor is prevalent both in our culture and in the Biblical text.

The cognitive linguistic approach characterized by the work of Georg Lakoff, Mark Johnson, and Mark Turner is especially concerned with metaphors within the conceptual system shared by a culture.[1]  Their approach to metaphor makes a careful distinction between conceptual metaphors, which structure thought or experience, and metaphors at the level of utterance, which themselves are linguistic manifestations of metaphors already present in a conceptual system.  Lakoff and Johnson give a summary definition: “conceptual metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains that structure our reasoning, our experience, and our everyday language.”[2]  For this approach, metaphors manifested in language are seen as reflecting patterns of cross-domain mappings already present in thought.

In the prevalent culture, for example, people often think about, make decisions about, and experience the rather abstract concept of life in terms of physical travel or journey.  Continue Reading »
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He Will Make Straight Your Paths

Posted by Justin Rossow on August 27, 2011 in Conceptual Metaphors, Cross-Cultural Metaphor Interpretation, Example Sermons, LIFE IS A JOURNEY, Metaphors in the Culture, Metaphors in the Text

The following is a manuscript of a wedding sermon. I never really looked at it once the service got going, and there are a few things in the manuscript that are much rougher than I would like. But this sermon does connect the lives and history of the hearers with the biblical text and intentionally interacts with a prominent conceptual metaphor in the culture. So do this, just do it better.

The LIFE IS A JOURNEY metaphor includes an inference pattern related to relationships: relationships are like vehicles, they get you moving toward your life goal. Of course, the implication of this mapping is that if your relationship is no longer heading in a direction you see as your goal, it is perfectly reasonable to change vehicles.  In order to replace that inference with a different kind of inference structure, I replaced the mapping that I am in charge of my life goal and direction with the text from Proverbs 3 that the couple had chosen for their wedding day: “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make straight your paths.”

The result is actually a blend of the inference structure from the potter and clay image: God is using this journey of marriage to mold and shape us. God is in control and able to use even difficult times for our benefit according to His purpose. It is no longer reasonable to change vehicles if I don’t feel happy. A different lens has been laid over the journey metaphor to invite a different way of experiencing and reasoning about marriage.  The text of the wedding sermon is below:

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How Metaphor Theory can Structure a Sermon

Posted by Justin Rossow on August 23, 2011 in Hom Helps 
 

1) Explore the Source Domain

Metaphor works by mapping relationships, characteristics, and inference patterns from the Source Domain to the Target Domain. By introducing elements of the Source Domain at the beginning of the sermon, the preacher does two things. First, evoking some key features of the Source Domain causes the hearers to bring other aspects to mind as well. The preacher has primed the pump for the associations and inferences metaphor interpretation requires.

Second, the heart of the proclamation is presented early on, but in a veiled way.

Continue Reading »

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