As a preacher, the temptation to use phrases like ‘we all know the story’, or ‘of course it is widely accepted that…’ has to be resisted. Not everyone knows, or has heard, or is on the same wavelength as I happen to be at the moment.
Straplines in advertising or colloquial catch phrases take on meaning for a while. On Christmas Day in a sermon, I harked back to the BT strapline of several years ago, ‘it’s good to talk’ which has the advantage of still being sensible out of context, even if when we use it we may not mean what was originally intended. So to the point; ‘Build back better’…a catch phrase of the moment which we may have a go at understanding but which does not bear grammatical or linguistic scrutiny.
What are we building?
Where is back?
Why do we need to be better and anyway, better than what?
Politicians have to pronounce in the language of soundbites and more they can say without the rigour of proper definition, the less anyone can ever analyse their success or otherwise.
What of we who would proclaim the Gospel? How good are we at avoiding ill constructed phraseology and making sure we never speak in sentences without subjects, objects and verbs. As we clamber out of the crater in the early twenty-first century caused by COVID-19, I hope church historians will look back and see this time as the age of transformation when some big things happened.
The problem of taking worship to the housebound was solved technologically and for the long term. The challenge to see the Church as more than the building became more than theoretical argument as Christians learned to be true to God without piles of stones. The people of God learned to speak to the needs of frightened people in clear language and to explain that for God in Christ, life is about more than survival. Will that be the verdict the future passes on our today and our immediate yesterday? Are we stretching ourselves to make sure this is so, or preferring to wallow in self-pity?
A prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today and forever, when you were among us you spoke in the language of the day and you illustrated your teachings in ways that people understood. We pray for the wisdom to be contemporary and real in our witnessing as we yearn to be true to your ever modern Gospel and be helpful, not platitudinous to those we meet.
Amen.