And I do ask them to believe that when we try to make our sermons and speeches more or less amusing, it is for the very simple and even modest reason that we do not see why the audience should listen unless it is more or less amused. Our mode of speech is conditioned by the fact that it really is what some have fancifully supposed the function of speech to be; something addressed by somebody to somebody else. It has of necessity all the vices and vulgarities attaching to a speech that really is a speech and not a soliloquy.
-G.K. Chesterton, The Well and the Shallows
I once took a few classes on preaching. During one of those classes, someone went on a diatribe about why they didn’t understand all the fuss about making ‘applications’ in sermons. What if a text doesn’t have any modern applications? What if you just don’t see any? Isn’t it enough that we simply ‘teach’ the text?
Chesterton reminds us that people who talk to people are not in the business of making soliloquies. If you’re making a soliloquy, then who exactly are you talking to? Perhaps you are talking to yourself. Perhaps you are trying to entertain. But you are not actually talking to people.
