Psalm 47, Exodus 28:1-4,9-12, 15-21, 29-30, 1 John 5:9-15, John 17:11b-19
The Language of the Church
I read a lot of blogs focused on Bible and theology. Something I read this week dovetails nice with our Lord’s words in the gospel lesson appointed for today. There is an online version of a magazine called Relevant [http://www.relevantmagazine.com]. A man named Matt McDonald who lives in Monroe, LA published an article this past week in Relevant.
In this article, McDonald describes his own early Christian life – the life of a typical, baptistic evangelical growing up in the Church. He sang hymns that people in his church were accustomed to singing; he observed that all the preachers had a distinctive cadence when they were preaching; he stood up when others stood and sat down when others sat down; and he acquired a Christianese vocabulary. As he puts it: “I grew up learning what I understood to be the language of Christianity.”
But as McDonald grew up, he started to learn a new language. Here’s how he describes this [http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god_article.php?id=7134] :
“It was a language that included cooler speakers who told jokes and praise songs played by bands that were pretty good for the most part and always better than the hymns (which I still felt bad about not liking). It included a lot of games and Christian t-shirts. … A lot of open sharing was encouraged, and these people talked about things like drugs and sex and peer pressure—stuff the other preachers didn’t touch.
“And there were these things called “camps” where we would go to learn about all of this stuff. They were a lot of fun, for sure, but they taught me another language. … They taught us to raise our hands, to kneel down, to use words like ‘broken’ and ‘holy’ and ‘mighty’ a lot. They taught us how to pray cool prayers using those words. They taught us that we didn’t have to say things like ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ when we prayed. And we ate a lot of pizza.”
As McDonald continues his story, he says he began to realize that he had changed one language of Christianity – the one he was reared with – for a new and immature language of Christianity (the cool one). And yet, this new cool language had even less claim to credibility and authenticity than the one he was reared with. And, that eventually led McDonald to ask this intriguing question:
“That person who was not raised in a church environment—that person who grew up in a world where God did not exist and Jesus was never an option—what do they see when they come to Christ?... They don’t hear church language and quote church slogans and catchphrases. ‘Holy,’ ‘hallelujah,’ ‘glory,’—these words might have no meaning to them.”
On one hand, McDonald is quite correct: To such a person the words “holy” and “hallelujah” and “glory” and a host of additional words – none of them would have any meaning for a new convert in a culture utterly unconnected with the Christian faith. But, McDonald’s solution is dismaying. In order to “see God” correctly, “ … I would have to rewrite the language that I have learned. For us to see God … we would have to stop talking about Him the way we do and start doing things differently.”
In other words, McDonald’s cradle church language is, as far as he’s concerned, inadequate and inaccurate. His second church language – the cool one – is just as flawed and faulty as the first one. And so what? He thinks a THIRD language is going to help?
That’s where Jesus’ words in today’s gospel have an answer to McDonald.
In verse 13 of John 17, Jesus says this to His Father in Heaven: “13 But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world.”
What are “these things?” Jesus has already explained them a few verses earlier when he said this: “Now they have known that all things which You have given Me are from You. 8 For I have given to them THE WORDS which You have given Me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came forth from You; and they have believed that You sent Me.”
Jesus has given his disciples God’s words – God’s words about Jesus, God’s words about the work the Father gave His Son Jesus to do in the world, God’s words about sin, salvation, and judgment. Said another way – Jesus has given his disciples a language, if you will, not just something like Hebrew or Greek or Aramaic, but something vastly more basic which is conveyed THROUGH language: a way of thinking, a way of knowing, a way of perceiving.
There’s an urban legend that the Eskimo language contains hundreds of words for snow. The truth is closer to 25 words for snow, depending on the dialect of Eskimo you’re talking about. When I look out the window and see the ground covered with white stuff on a winter morning, there is only one word for what I see: SNOW. Maybe I can add the word “sleet.” Or “hail,” because that too can cover the ground and make it white. But if your world is composed entirely of snow, it is no surprise if your language develops a large vocabulary for all the different things you see and understand concerning snow.
When it comes to the gospel – and, here, I mean the gospel in all its breadth and depth and height – there is a language, a vocabulary, an entire way of thinking, seeing, and understanding – and all of this is appropriate and necessary to communicate the gospel. McDonald is correct that the pagan has no idea what the Christian means by the words “holy” or “glory” or “sin” or “salvation” or a host of other things that the gospel speaks about. But, that does not mean that these words – or the things expressed by them – are optional, or dispensable.
In this connection, think again of our Lord’s words in the gospel lesson for today: “16 They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 And for their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also may be sanctified by the truth.”
Did you notice here what sanctifies? It is God’s word. “Sanctify them by Your truth,” Jesus prays. “Your word is truth.” Sanctify – there’s a gospel word. What does it mean? It means “to make holy, to set apart for God’s purposes. The opposite idea is worldly – that which is common in the sense of used and useable for any purpose arising in the world.
Jesus says that what makes his disciples holy is God’s word. And, this isn’t crudely magical – as if speaking some sort of religious mumbo-jumbo were to confer holiness. Matt McDonald is correct to suppose that Christianity has a language, a language that names things, and by naming them provides knowledge, insight, understanding of the things that are named.
Again, Jesus’ prayer in John 17 tells us. It all begins with God’s word. To put it in the bluntest terms, it is the Bible – the revelation of Himself and His purposes which God speaks to the world and to his people in the world through the Prophets of Israel and the Apostles of Jesus Christ. And, it is a natural thing that the language spoken by God’s people should be rooted in and grown out of the soil of God’s revelation. We see this already in the pages of the New Testament, in the epistle appointed for today in 1 John 5:
“13 These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God. :
Please notice that this is one of Jesus’ disciples WRITING IN WORDS to Christians. And, he tells us why he is writing: “So that you may know that you have eternal life, and that you may continue to believe in the name of the Son of God.”
This is Apostolic language. This is New Testament Bible language. And, from the earliest fathers of the Church in the second century down to this present day, we have a church language that grows out of the language of the Bible, which itself is God’s word.
I will say this about the English Reformation and the pattern of worship that we have received from it: it is a church language and it is an authentically Biblical church language. By various estimates, 80 percent of the Book of Common Prayer is either direct quotation, close paraphrase, or obvious allusion to the English translation of either Old or New Testament texts. And, beyond this, the Book of Common Prayer incorporates vast and fundamental ideas drawn from the Scripture, even when it is not referring expressly to some passage of the Bible.
For example, the collect for the Second Sunday in Advent, reads like this:
BLESSED Lord, who hast caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning; Grant that we may in such wise hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and comfort of thy holy Word, we may embrace, and ever hold fast, the blessed hope of everlasting life, which thou hast given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.
Did you notice that odd word “digest?” When we think of God’s word, it is quite ordinary to think of reading them, or marking them, or learning them. That’s what we do with words. But, “inwardly digest them?” You don’t digest words; you digest food that you have eaten, right?
But think again. How often does the Bible construe God’s Word as food, something to be eaten and inwardly digested? Well, this idea is very common in the Bible. In Ezekiel Chapter 3, this idea becomes quite vivid, with Ezekiel getting a Scroll from God, and God telling him to eat it. “3 And He said to me, ‘Son of man, feed your belly, and fill your stomach with this scroll that I give you.’ So I ate, and it was in my mouth like honey in sweetness.”
Or what about Jesus’ temptation, when the Devil tempts him to turn stones into bread. Jesus answers him with God’s word: “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” Indeed, bread is food, and by it we live. But it is not the ONLY food by which we live. God’s Word is food.”
Peter speaks of God’s word as food [1 Peter 2:2]: “2 … as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word, that you may grow thereby, 3 if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is gracious.”
The author of Hebrews speaks the same way, except he is frustrated that his readers are STILL eating milk rather than stronger food. He laments that his readers are still so underdeveloped spiritually that they are like babies – “ … you need someone to teach you again the first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not solid food.”
Or, consider the culmination of our salvation – it is a banquet. And in the New Jerusalem we are finally given what Adam was denied – to EAT from the Tree of Life.
You see, food as a picture, a type, an image of God’s Word. And, we could do this with hundreds of similar concepts, expressed in specific vocabulary, much of it drawn from the creation, through which we behold the glory of God. McDonald is EXACTLY correct to suppose that true knowledge of God, true knowledge of salvation, true sanctification from the world – that it comes through a language, a language we learn from the Church, a language the Church received from Jesus’ disciples, who got it from Jesus, who gave it to them from His Father in Heaven.
How did any of us learn to speak? I’m pretty sure none of us remember, but we do remember watching others learn to speak. How did they learn to speak? First of all, it was by listening to others who spoke to them. And, then by copying what they heard. And, as we gained crude ability to speak, we often spoke in ways that the mature speakers found hilarious. But, they continued to speak to us, and we continued to listen and to mimic. And, here we are, by the grace of God, speaking a mature form of English. Others in the world are speaking a mature form of German, or Spanish, or Japanese, or Russian.
How do we learn to speak the oracles of God? I submit it is by listening to God’s word, and by doing this a lot. Again, to put this in the bluntest possible terms, there is nothing that will substitute for regular, copious, generous, abundant exposure to God’s word. It DOES NOT MATTER if you do not understand it at first. You didn’t understand 95 percent of what you were hearing as a three-year old. If your parents only spoke to you what you could have understood, you’d still be chattering like a three year old.
That, by the way, is why the general Christian populace today is so anemic spiritually, why they cannot even digest the pure milk of the word. They have been fed some ghastly thing that is nine parts water and one part skim milk. No wonder some people who think they’re Christians read The Da Vinci Code and supposedly lose their faith. I don’t think they had much of a faith to lose in the first place?
And why is that? It is because they were never fed. It is because no one told them the truth. Or having heard it, they rejected it, because it didn’t suit their tastes at the time. I can still remember refusing to eat char-broiled steak when I was a very young boy. I can also remember my father admonishing me about this, how unseemly it was to refuse such good food. And, he made me eat it anyway. And, today I am so grateful for that. I almost never take a bite of something off the grill without thinking of that scene in my boyhood and feeling grateful to my earthly father for such a blessing.
God is not sitting in front of you at the table telling you to feed on his word, unless the Holy Spirit should be impressing this on you at this moment. If so, heed Him in what he says. We must think God’s thoughts after him. And there’s only one way to do that – it all begins with hearing God’s thoughts, God’s words, God’s point of view, God’s perspective on everything, and you have it between the front and back covers of your Bibles.
May God grant us to hear him, even when we don’t fully understand him. ESPECIALLY when we don’t understand him. It is God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, and who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. May we look and listen until the light shines brightly in our own hearts.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
