Despite what I said last week about the difficulties of communicating with people who speak different languages, there can’t be any doubt that language is of the greatest gifts we have as human beings. In fact, in the minds of many people, language, the ability to communicate through the spoken word, is perhaps more than anything else, what defines us as human beings. That’s not to say that other creatures don’t have languages that are at least in part made up of verbal communication, but none have a way of communicating that has the depth or complexity of human language. Dolphins, for example, are often held up as examples of highly intelligent animals which do communicate with one another by means of language and researchers into the field of animal languages have estimated that the patterns of clicks through which dolphins communicate, make up a vocabulary of about 36 ‘words’. By comparison, the average human being has a vocabulary of between 25,000 and 30,000 words.

Nevertheless, human language still has its difficulties. There’s the problem of communication between people who speak different languages. That actually hinders communication between people, it can separate them and because of the misunderstandings that can cause, it can cause serious disagreements and problems between people. And human language has its limitations too. Despite its depth and complexity and descriptive power, there are some things that human language can’t fully describe or explain.

For example, we all know what pain is because we’ve all experienced it. We all know how pain feels, but could we actually describe pain, not what it’s like, but how pain itself feels? A dictionary definition of pain is an unpleasant physical sensation causing discomfort and distress. But that would also apply to having insomnia, being unable to sleep, or to travel sickness, or to being too hot or too cold, but we wouldn’t usually say any of those things are painful. It’s actually very difficult to explain or describe pain itself and so we rely on the fact that people know what pain is and use metaphors, similes and analogies to describe it. We say something is a burning pain or it’s like being stabbed or that a pain is so bad we don’t know what to do with ourselves because whatever we do, we can’t get comfortable.

Whilst all those things show the descriptive power of language, they also show the limitation of language too. The fact that we have to use metaphors, similes and analogies to describe something, shows that we don’t have the words to describe the thing itself.

And we could say something similar about love too. I’ve spoken before about the limitations of the English language in speaking about love, as opposed to Greek, for example, which has multiple words for different kinds of love. But even so, what do we mean by love? I don’t mean the kind of love that the Christians are called to feel for all people, agape, the love that seeks to do good to all people, regardless of our personal feelings towards them. I mean what’s generally meant when people talk about love. We all know what that kind of love is, I hope, because we’ve all loved, and been loved, and probably been in love with someone. But how can we describe love itself. A dictionary definition of love is an intense feeling of affection for something or someone. But why do we have that feeling for one thing and not another, for one person and not another? We could say we love someone for their kindness and generosity or some other admirable or attractive character trait. But we probably know many people with those kinds of qualities so why do we love some but only like or admire others? And what is that undefinable thing that makes us fall in love with one person and not another? We sometimes call that the ‘spark’, but that’s another metaphor for something that we can’t describe or explain directly. We’ll know what it means to be ‘in love’ if we’ve experienced it ourselves, but if we can think back to the first time we fell in love with someone, we also know what a strange, new and indescribable experience it was. So it’s very difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t experienced it for themselves. Or even to someone who has because how often do we hear people say, “I don’t know what they see in him, or her”?

So despite its complexity and descriptive power, language can’t really convey what we mean by things like pain and love as those things are in themselves. We can use metaphors, similes and analogies to give others a sense of what we mean but we have to rely on the fact that people have experienced these things for themselves if we want them to really understand what we’re trying to say. And if that’s usually true when we speak about things such as pain and love, it’s most certainly true when we speak of God as Trinity.

We simply don’t have the words, in any human language, to describe how something can be three separate and distinct things and yet, at one and the same time, be only one thing.

We understand the words, but the words don’t allow us to explain or to understand how such a thing can be, or to explain and describe what such a thing is really like, in itself. And yet this is the uniquely Christian way of speaking about and describing God.

And so, because we can’t explain or describe the Trinity directly, we use various similes to try and convey this understanding of God. Perhaps one of the most well known is the image of God as Trinity, being like water. Just as God is three persons but one God, so the same water can exist as a solid, ice, as liquid water, and as a gas, steam. But this doesn’t describe the Trinity accurately. The same volume of water can be three distinct things, but it can’t be those three things at the same time and yet still be the same volume of water. What this simile actually describes is a heresy known as modalism. The Modalists taught that the three persons of the Trinity were only transitory, that is, God could be Father, or Son, or Holy Spirit, but not all three at the same time. So, for them, the Trinity referred to three states, or modes, hence their name, in which God could exist depending on which role God chose to fulfil at any one time.

Because of the difficulty we have in speaking about God as Trinity, it’s often said that the Trinity is simply a mystery of faith that defies explanation, and for many people it’s sufficient to leave it at that. But in the same way that we can use people’s own experience of things like pain and love to speak about those things, so we can use people’s own experience of God to help us when we speak about the Trinity because the Trinity is something that people have experienced.

The idea of God as Trinity is implicit in Scripture from the very beginning:

In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.  And God said, “Let there be light”, and there was light.

In those first three verses of Genesis we read that God is the source and creator of all. This is the one we know as the Father. We read that God’s Spirit, the one we know as the Holy Spirit, was present with the Father before all things. And we read that all things were made through God’s Word, the one we know as the Son, and as the one St John calls the Word made flesh, Jesus.

And if the idea of God as Trinity is implicit from the very beginning of the Scriptures, the understanding that Father, Son and Holy Spirit are all present at one and the same time is found in the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ baptism.

‘And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.”’

What is that other than an experience of God as Father, and Son, and Holy Spirit all being present at one and the same time in a definite time and place in human history?

And any hint of modalism or of there being three Gods, is dismissed in Jesus own words. When asked what is the greatest commandment, Jesus began his answer by saying,

“The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

But, if we think about those words, aren’t they a strange way to say there’s only one God? Wouldn’t a better way to express that be to say, ‘The Lord our God is the one Lord’? Don’t Jesus words give the impression of more than one, coming together in and as one?

So the idea of the Trinity is implicit in Scripture form the very beginning and it’s an idea that’s reinforced by the experience of people who, through the years, have come to know God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And it’s an idea and understanding of God that finds expression in the Christian doctrine and understanding of God as Trinity. It might be beyond the limitations of human language to adequately explain and describe this understanding of God but that shouldn’t worry us because being able to do that would mean having the ability to know and understand God, as God is in himself. In that sense, the Trinity is and must remain a mystery. But it’s not one we can’t believe in, nor speak about, because it’s one we can experience for ourselves, even if words do fail us in trying to explain and describe it.

Amen.   

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The Propers for Trinity Sunday can be viewed here.

Those of you who’ve been in higher education will know that for each course, or unit of a course that you do, you’re given a bibliography, a list of books that you’re either expected to read or that it’s at least suggested you read to help you with studying that particular course or unit. That was certainly something that happened when I was an ordinand at Mirfield.

Typically, a course or unit bibliography at Mirfield would be about 2, A4 pages long. But one of our lecturer’s, Fr Thomas, a member of the religious community at Mirfield, was a little more demanding. He’d give his students a bibliography up to 2 pages long for every lecture. Not only that, but he’d also turn up for every lecture with a stack of books under his arm that he either especially recommended or that he either hadn’t had time or space on the paper, to add to the bibliography. And if that wasn’t asking enough of his students, quite a few of the books he recommended weren’t even written in English.  So, as Fr Thomas went through the books, as he did at the end of every lecture, there would always come a point where we’d hear something like this, which is actually taken from one of the bibliographies he gave us:

‘For those who have German, I recommend Medard Kehl’s Die Kirche, if any of you have French, I recommend De Lubac’s Corps Mystique.’

But it could be that, for those who ‘had’ the languages, Fr Thomas might recommend books in any one of the seven languages he was fluent in.

But it got even better, or perhaps worse than that. If he was quoting from one of these foreign language books and he thought that something might be lost in translation, Fr Thomas would just quote in the original language. I’m sure you can imagine the bemusement, and amusement too it must be said, that caused among the students. And we were bemused at times because, if you didn’t ‘have’ the language, it wasn’t a case of something being lost in translation, but of everything being lost in the lack of translation, because you didn’t understand a word he was saying.

That story is really just an example of something that I’m sure we all know, and that’s just how difficult it is for people to understand one another if they don’t speak the same language. And if we think about how difficult it is for people to communicate when they don’t speak the same language, we can perhaps get a clearer sense of the difficulty and enormity of the commission Jesus gave to his disciples before his Ascension.

As we know, Jesus told his disciples to go out into the world, to teach the people of the world all the things he’d taught them, and to make disciples of the people of all nations. But I wonder if we can imagine just how bemused the disciples must have been at Jesus words. Not because they didn’t understand his words, but because they understood the words exactly, they understood just what his words meant and wondered just how they were going to carry them out.  We have to remember that Jesus’ disciples were Galileans, and for the most part, Galilean fishermen. Perhaps some, like Matthew who’d been a tax collector, might have spoken some Greek, the international language of the day, but for the most part they would have spoken Aramaic and Hebrew. How were they going to tell and teach people of other nations and languages about Jesus?

When we think about the commission Jesus gave his disciples in those terms, it really should come as no surprise that the first gift the Holy Spirit gave the disciples on the day of Pentecost, was the gift of speaking “other tongues”. We read about speaking in tongues in various places in Scripture and what often seems to be meant by tongues, is a strange, perhaps heavenly language that no one on earth usually speaks, the meaning of which needs to be interpreted by someone who has the gift of interpreting tongues. But the particular gift of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost was the gift of speaking other languages, and it was given to the disciples so that they could fulfil the great commission Jesus had given them. It was given so that the disciples would have the ability to pass on their knowledge and understanding of Jesus to people of different nations, races and languages, and make disciples of them.

That tells us something very important about the gifts of the Spirit. When we think about the difficulty and enormity of the task Jesus had given the disciples, and who and what those disciples were, the most astounding thing about it is, that they actually did carry out the task Jesus had given them.

In the face of state sponsored opposition and persecution, within less than 300 years, a Church which The Acts the Apostles tells us numbered a total 120 believers at the time of Pentecost, grew into the official state religion of the Roman Empire. An empire of about 55 million people that covered most of Western Europe, the Near and Middle East and North Africa.

Now, of course, we can manipulate numbers in all sorts of ways, and not all of those 55 million people would have become Christians simply because the emperor said they should. After all, one of the reasons the Church was persecuted was because it wouldn’t obey the religious dictates of the Roman emperors. But, in terms of growth, a rough comparison with our own situation would be the people of this united benefice, which has a combined electoral roll of 82 members, converting the population of Oldham and Rochdale to Christianity in 5 or 6 years. If we were told to do that, I think we’d be quite bemused and wonder how we were going to do it. But that’s the scale of growth the early Church achieved. If we were asked to do that, we might think it was impossible, at the very least we’d be daunted by the enormity of the task. But what the gift of the Spirit at Pentecost tells us, is that God doesn’t look at our abilities and give us tasks that suit our abilities. God looks at the tasks that need to be done and sends his Holy Spirit to give us the gifts and abilities to do them. How else can we explain the growth of the early Church?

Today, the Church faces many problems, not the least of which is the decline in the number of people who come to church and who consider themselves to be Christians, even in a nominal sense. Stopping that decline and reversing it so that the Church begins to grow is probably the biggest task that we face in the Church at this time in our nation and society. And I think, in many ways, one of the biggest problems we have in teaching people about Jesus and making disciples in our nation today, is a problem of language. It’s not that people don’t understand English, it’s that they don’t understand the language of faith and religion. To many people in our country today, the language of faith and religion is completely alien to them and so, if we try to speak to them about those things, we might as well be speaking a foreign language.

I’ll give you an example of what I mean. A few years ago, before I was ordained, I was driving to a site near Scunthorpe to work. I had a young lad, in his late teens in the car with me, and he noticed the palm cross I had behind the rear-view mirror of my car. He asked me what it was but as I explained, I could tell that he really didn’t understand a word I was saying. We established that he had heard of Jesus Christ and that he thought Jesus had ‘something to do with Christmas’, but that was about as far as his knowledge and understanding went. He never once said he didn’t believe anything I said to him, and we spoke for quite a long time, for most of the journey as I recall, but it was obvious that he had no understanding of who Jesus was or is. No understanding of worship or prayer or of why people go to church. No understanding of sin and forgiveness. No understanding of the Cross or of sacrifice. No understanding of religious symbolism; he seemed to think the palm cross in my car was ‘a good-luck charm’. Now I’m sure that young lad understood my words, we couldn’t have had a conversation at all if he hadn’t understood my words, but he didn’t understand the meaning of what I was saying because all the things I was talking about, the things that are central to our faith and religion, were completely alien to him. And in that sense, I was speaking to him in a foreign language, one that he didn’t understand.

So how do we speak to people who don’t understand the language of faith and religion in ways that they will understand. Well, if people don’t understand our words, we obviously need to speak to them in non-verbal ways, and that means we have to speak to them through our actions.

It’s believed that one of the things that helped the early Church’s phenomenal growth was that, in a world that was very inequitable, a world where slavery was the norm, the Church’s Gospel of salvation for all, it’s proclamation that all people, from the lowest slave to the highest ruler, were of equal importance and worth, it’s practice of holding all things in common and of caring for the sick, the poor and needy, spoke to people in a very, very powerful way. We know that our world is still inequitable today. There’s still great injustice in the world, there’s still exploitation of the weak by the strong in the world and there’s still sickness, need and poverty in the world. People may not understand our words, but if our deeds show that we care about these things, and care about them enough to do what we can to alleviate them, people will understand that. Perhaps then, they might be a little more inclined to take the time to learn the language of faith and religion that we speak, so that when we do speak to them about Jesus and his teachings, they will understand what we’re saying, and we can make disciples of them.

Amen.

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The Propers for Pentecost can be viewed here.

We’ve now come, once again, to that time of year in the lives of our parishes that we could call ‘APCM Season’. Over the last couple of weeks the various notices and nomination forms for the APCMs have been displayed in our churches and today, St Mark’s holds its APCM with St Gabriel’s due to hold theirs in 2 weeks’ time. So, whilst I’m sure they haven’t been chosen for that reason, today’s readings are very fitting.

In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we read the story of Matthias being chosen to replace Judas as an Apostle. Now, before I go any further, I want to make it clear that I’m in no way implying that those who have held posts in the Church and have retired, resigned or for any other reason need to be replaced as officer holders in our parishes should in any way be equated with Judas and regarded as traitors and betrayers of the Lord. Rather, this reading makes it quite clear that the Church coming together to choose and appoint people from amongst its membership to hold office in the Church and on behalf of the Church, is a custom and practice that is as old as the Church itself. Older perhaps, because Matthias was chosen before the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost and we usually regard that as the birth of the Church.

And if our first reading is fitting because it assures us that we’re on very firm ground for what we do at our APCMs, our Gospel reading is equally fitting because that tells us what those who are chosen, elected or appointed to hold office in the Church, need to be about.

We know that, in the world, those who hold office don’t always act in a manner appropriate to their office and position. For example, we call our politicians ‘public servants’ but we know that very often, our politicians use their position to be self-serving. That’s the root of the political scandals we hear about so often in the media. But that’s the world’s way, and in this morning’s Gospel, Jesus makes it quite clear that whilst we, his disciples, are in the world, we called to be not of the world. In other words, we are called to do things differently than they’re usually done in the world. And Jesus calls on the Father to sanctify, or consecrate his disciples in the truth, the truth that is God’s word. So what does that mean?

Well, to sanctify or consecrate means to make holy and, as I’ve said on a number of occasions in the past, to be holy means to be called and set apart from worldly affairs, to serve God. And if we’re called to be sanctified or consecrated in the truth that is God’s word, we’re called to become holy by our observance of God’s word and our obedience to his word. In other words, we’re called to become holy by doing things God’s way rather than the world’s way. But there’s more to it than just that.

In the prologue to his Gospel, St John calls Jesus the Word made flesh. And Jesus himself said that he was the way, the truth and the life. So, if Jesus is God’s word and truth, to be made holy in the truth of God’s word, is to become holy by our observance of and obedience to Jesus’ words and example. And, of course, that is the calling of all Christians, it’s why we’re called Christians, because we’re followers and imitators of Christ.

That is the calling of all Christians, but it’s especially important that those who are chosen and appointed to office in the Church are true to that calling because they are called to represent and serve the Church and its people. They’re called, if you like, to be the public servants of the Church. And there is very often a wider public aspect to holding office in the Church too. Those who hold office in the Church are usually known as Christians in the wider community and because of that, it’s especially important that they’re not like so many of their public service counterparts in other areas of life. Political scandal can be very damaging to those involved, but a scandal in the Church impacts the whole Church, each and every one of us who profess to be Christians. Most people in our society may not come to Church and they may not have much time for the Church, but they know that Christians are supposed to do things differently than other people. A scandal in the Church says that we don’t. It says that we’re no different to anyone else. If people think that, why should they take any Christian, or the Church, and what we say seriously? And if our actions bring the Church into disrepute, what are we saying about the truth of God’s word? At the very least we’re saying that we don’t take the truth of God’s word seriously, and how then can we ever hope or claim to be made holy in the truth of God’s word?

I don’t want to put anyone off offering themselves for office in the Church or to decline the offer it they’re asked, but to stress that with office in the Church comes responsibility. Responsibility to our fellow Christians, both in our own parish and in the wider Church. It also comes with responsibility to Jesus and to God. That might sound frightening, but it doesn’t need to be. We can use those responsibilities as an incentive and encouragement to be true to our Christian calling to be consecrated in the truth of God’s word and his word made flesh, Jesus.

We know that we often fail to live up to our calling as well as we should but, as long as we don’t deliberately neglect or reject our calling, as Judas Iscariot did, we always have the reassurance that Jesus himself, our heavenly advocate and High Priest, will plead to the Father for our forgiveness. And as Jesus, God’s word and truth said, he will watch over us to make sure that none of those who are called are lost, unless we ourselves choose to be lost.

Amen.

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The Propers for the Seventh Sunday of Easter can be viewed here.