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We got our highfalutin' words of wisdom from seminary, but we had to translate them for the people in the pews. Some were even proud of those seminary words because they showed how learned we were. We got more respect for showing off our degrees and using fancy language!
When I was in Nepal, my seminary students could barely understand English! I had to translate some of those high-level words into simple English for my boys. With the help of God's Spirit, his message can be understood in any language. It came to us in Hebrew and Greek! We had to find words in English that carried the same meaning. Imagine the time we had translating eros, philios, storgey, and agape when we had only one word: "love." We have words like "philosophy" that are not translated from the Greek.
We should all know nothing but Jesus Christ and his crucifixion and resurrection. It can be humbling but that is what God wants from us.
Fancy words may be okay in college, but when we have a message about Christ for the common people, we need the Spirit of Christ to give us the right vocabulary so that people see Christ and not us. The pastor I served with in my first parish refused an honorary D.D. He felt that "pastor" was a more important title than "doctor."
There are members of almost every church who can reach out to others through the power of the Spirit of Christ, and sometimes they have more success than a pastor. They might win people without a single word -- just by acts of kindness and love.
Sometimes the most learned have trouble understanding the message of Christ. Their minds block it out. My son just got his Ph.D. and is still recovering his faith. One of my professor's sons said that his son got his doctorate and it would take a while for him to recover. He started one sermon given to a farming community by saying, "Of course all of you have read the play by Moliere." Then he looked out and saw the blank looks on the farmer's faces and proceeded, "Perhaps some of you have read the play by Moliere." He still got blank looks so he concluded; "There is a play by a writer named Moliere" (and then he went on to explain what Moliere had written). We sometimes assume that we are talking to a different audience or congregation than the one we had in mind when we were organizing our sermon.
God's wisdom is different than ours! We need the mind of Christ and his wisdom!
When I was in Nepal, my seminary students could barely understand English! I had to translate some of those high-level words into simple English for my boys. With the help of God's Spirit, his message can be understood in any language. It came to us in Hebrew and Greek! We had to find words in English that carried the same meaning. Imagine the time we had translating eros, philios, storgey, and agape when we had only one word: "love." We have words like "philosophy" that are not translated from the Greek.
We should all know nothing but Jesus Christ and his crucifixion and resurrection. It can be humbling but that is what God wants from us.
Fancy words may be okay in college, but when we have a message about Christ for the common people, we need the Spirit of Christ to give us the right vocabulary so that people see Christ and not us. The pastor I served with in my first parish refused an honorary D.D. He felt that "pastor" was a more important title than "doctor."
There are members of almost every church who can reach out to others through the power of the Spirit of Christ, and sometimes they have more success than a pastor. They might win people without a single word -- just by acts of kindness and love.
Sometimes the most learned have trouble understanding the message of Christ. Their minds block it out. My son just got his Ph.D. and is still recovering his faith. One of my professor's sons said that his son got his doctorate and it would take a while for him to recover. He started one sermon given to a farming community by saying, "Of course all of you have read the play by Moliere." Then he looked out and saw the blank looks on the farmer's faces and proceeded, "Perhaps some of you have read the play by Moliere." He still got blank looks so he concluded; "There is a play by a writer named Moliere" (and then he went on to explain what Moliere had written). We sometimes assume that we are talking to a different audience or congregation than the one we had in mind when we were organizing our sermon.
God's wisdom is different than ours! We need the mind of Christ and his wisdom!
