First Lines: Vocab and Words We Don't Say At Church

Vocab and Words We Don't Say At Church

This summer National Geographic ran a brilliant piece on the lack of clean water and the problem of human waste, a truly stunning piece that showed how far we really have to go as a people and how many still lack basic sanitation. In the Editor's Letter at the beginning of the magazine he talked about how hard it was to write this article because of the different words for human waste- some vulgar, some juvenile, and very few in between. He said that the lack of vocabulary almost stopped the article. 

 

This reminded me of the church. 

 

Bill Leonard is a wonderful Baptist historian and an incredible human being. I was once at an event where he was asked how he would deal with baptism and those who are mentally handicapped. Dr. Leonard gave a great answer and then went into his personal story. You see, Dr. Leonard has a daughter who is mentally handicapped, so this was an answer he knew all too well. 

 

He began by sharing information about his daughter, telling parts of her story. He said that he and his wife thought baptism was out of the question for her, thus they had never really pursued it or taught this practice to their daughter. Driving home from church one Sunday, his daughter said, "Mom and Dad, I have been thinking about it and it's about time I get baptized." With tears in his eyes, he said, "We did not teach her that word. The church taught her that word. The church called her to baptism. What we thought impossible, the church called forth. The church gave her that vocabulary." 

 

That is an incredible picture of the church. 

You see in both stories we see that the church helps us to build our vocabulary. The church reminds us of old words and teaches us new words, and in giving us a vocabulary, the church calls us to become more than we are and more than we thought we could become.

Resurrection. Trinity. Omnipresent. Holy. Sacred. Sacrament. Crucifixion. Eucharist. Incarnation. Eternity. Peace. Baptism

Looking at that list, I think of the infamous line from Alice in Wonderland, when Alice says you can’t believe impossible things, and the Queen responds by saying “I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Or as Aristotle said, “That which is probable and impossible is better than that which is possible and improbable.”

The church teaches us and asks us to believe in some real seemingly impossibles: Resurrection. Trinity. Omnipresent. Holy. Sacred. Sacrament. Crucifixion. Eucharist. Incarnation. Eternity. Peace. Baptism.

And yet each of these impossibles calls us to more.

It’s the church’s job to hold onto an old vocabulary and teach a new vocabulary, to introduce us to a different set of words, to show their meaning, and to call us to be better because of those words.

There are things each of us thinks impossible to believe, and our task is to struggle with the vocabulary and then to be open to the church’s teachings. We might suddenly find ourselves in a place we never thought we would be.

In other words, we might suddenly find ourselves baptized.

Grace and peace.

Love you all.

Griff