Revelations from the Sanctuary Floor
by Casey Thompson
Language Lessons
I want to tell you something about pastors. We’re peculiar. You knew that already, didn’t you? We’re made this way by our language. That is, we talk funny. We don’t pepper our conversations with words like upside or productivity or synergy. We don’t utter phrases like, “If we could increase the discipleship quotient of each member unit so that it approaches the figure estimated for maximal congregational involvement, then we’d have sufficient man-hours to cover outreach this year.” We’re more likely to say “faithfulness is more important than effectiveness” or “God’s strength is made perfect in weakness” or if all else fails, “just try living in the tension for a while”. If we have to resort to buzzwords, and let’s be candid we do love a good buzzword, we’ll employ old theological standbys like hypostasis and filoque and perichoresis but it’s a toss up whether we remember what they mean.
In short, pastors live with a language barrier. Now in my precredentialed life, I was a translator, someone who heard the faith language of the church and could render it in a way that people with glazed eyes could understand. Their dead eyes would pick up, they’d hear the gospel spoken for a second, it would excite them, they’d lean in, sometimes they’d start to breathe a little faster, a little like Christ was a needed inhaler and the dryness of their faith was asthma. I used to be a translator, but now I’m a tangled web of doctrine, a perfect one-language fellow, like an exchange student who stayed too long and forgot his German, who spits out the babel of theology and thinks it’s faith.
I’m making my way back now, back from the language lessons of seminary, back from the language that has taught me the critical importance of iotas when we’re talking about the substance of Christ, back from the language that hears R.E.M. on the radio singing “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine)” and subconsciously parses five models of eschatology. I’m making my way back because it’s lonely to speak a language that few others know. Not because others don’t understand you. After enough pointing and grunting and trying to Americanize your German, they understand, and after doing this a few times, it’s apparent that you’re in need of translation practice again. Rather, it’s lonely because no one speaks your primary faith language to you. When your asthma kicks up, no one has your prescription. It’s a patented medicine, after all, and the generic just won’t do.
I don’t say this to set up pastors as unique or special people. Actually, it’s just a rhetorical device. I start with us so I can move onto you. See, the truth is that you’re weird too. The language barrier is an intrinsic risk for any Christian because we speak in reversals. We say, the first shall be last and the last shall be first. The hungry will be fed and the full will hire themselves out for bread. And so forth and so on (or perhaps it’s ‘and so on and so forth’). If not in reversals, then parables. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. The kingdom of God is like a woman who put leaven in her bread. See, it’s abnormal. We need a pocket Rosetta stone just to decipher our own thoughts.
Just listen to Jesus talk: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.” (Luke 4:18- 19). Who else talks like this?
With such a language problem, it’s no wonder that normal folks don’t know what to do with us Christians. For them, we’re either the provincial defenders of an authoritarian God, a God who suits us just fine, thank you, or we’re the ethereal, impossibly-gifted folk plucked from special regions of heaven for God’s good work upon earth. Or to a growing legion, we’re simply irrelevant.
But here in Memphis where I make my home, where even the atheists are southern and genteel, the people of God still have a place in the public conversation. But it’s hard for us to be understood because regular worship, the place we gather to hear the words of life spoken to us in our primary language, leaves us with an accent that we just can’t shake. Out amongst the normal people, we very carefully practice saying, “a living wage will benefit businesses” but it still sounds like “good news for the poor.” We stand before our mirrors and run the line “TennCare cuts create a hardship for people with insurance too” until it sounds smooth and secular, but everyone hears the twang of “recovery of sight to the blind”.
It leaves us Christians in a quandary: more language lessons or more quirkiness? Perhaps you and I could split the two and cover both our needs. You pick first: want to be a translator or just plain weird?
Casey Thompson is the Associate Pastor for Congregational Care at Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee.
Posted: 11-Jun-2006 2:58 PM
