Proper 16

Language is an imperfect medium. Because language is human contrived, no matter how carefully we use our language, it always remains an imperfect means of communication. And for the most part, that’s okay. We know that. We expect that. And we make allowances for that. Or do we?

Our greatest misunderstandings come from rifts in our medium of language. And these rifts typically occur in a few common ways: 1) from idioms 2) from mishearings/misreadings 3) and from misinterpretation or misconstruing of symbols, images, and metaphors.

In English alone, we have hundreds of idioms. An idiom is a phrase in language that cannot be literally translated. Let me give you an example.

In English, we might say, “He takes after his father.”

We, as native speakers, know what we mean by that: he looks or acts a lot like his father. But a non-native speaker might imagine a boy running after his father down the road.

Or think about this one: In English we might say, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

Think how terrified someone from another country might be about that one!

Or, how about these:

“I can kill two birds with one stone.” Or “She stabbed me in the back.” Or better yet, what about our theatre phrase for good luck: “Break a leg!”

Sounds terrifying, doesn’t it?

A young man once questioned his pastor, “In the 23^rd psalm, why does it say, ‘The Lord is my Shepherd I shall not want.’ I thought we were supposed to want God? Why does it say that?!” The pastor then explained that in this case, “want” meant “I won’t want for anything,” an antiquated phrase that means “There’s nothing God will deny me” or “I’ll always have everything I need.” The man was instantly relieved.  Language or the misunderstanding of this language had mystified him and bothered him all of his life and kept him from trusting in God.

Misreadings and mishearings are equally as dangerous.

Many people mishear song lyrics. There is the running joke about Elton John’s song, “Tiny Dancer.” Some have thought the lyrics said, “Hold me close young Tony Danza,” since the show “Who’s the Boss?” was so popular at the time, and so was Tony Danza.

Or what about those who have for years misheard the Lord’s Prayer? 

“Forgive us our trash passes, as we forgive those who passed trash against us.”

Or “Our Father who makes art in heaven, how do you know my name?”

Or how about these: “And deliver us from eagles.” “Lead us not into Penn Station.” Or better yet, “Deliver us from Email.” Or “Howard be your name.”

But the third category messes with us perhaps the most: our metaphors. Just as we can take idioms literally when they are meant figuratively, we can also, and frequently, take other phrases, stories, and examples literally when they were meant to be symbolic or metaphorical.

Some of these are idioms or similar to idioms, such as,

“Work today is a bear.

“You’re a chicken!”

“The classroom was a zoo.”

“He’s a total night owl.”

We have others that we use many times in poetry, such as “Her long hair was a flowing, golden river” and “The lake was a mirror.”

Or perhaps we use them in descriptions, such as, “The sky was dark and angry” or “That fellow is a sly fox.”

Our language is filled with metaphors, descriptors, symbols, and idioms. And the Bible is no different. The Old Testament is the source of many root metaphors that pervade the scriptures. The Bible show us important truths through the language of metaphors, truths we cannot comprehend with literal language. So, what does this mean for us?

In our Christian faith, language is the medium for our scriptures, our faith, and, ultimately, our way of living. And yet, reading the Bible can cause us a great deal of trouble if we forget what language is made of and take everything literally. We can lose the depth of spiritual truth that the scriptures were meant to convey about God, Jesus, and ourselves.

This is what Jesus is experiencing in his encounter with his contemporaries as told by the apostle John in today’s Gospel. Jesus is explaining something spiritually and metaphorically. His contemporaries – whether purposefully or not — are taking what he is saying factually and literally. Jesus is explaining to them an important truth about God and himself. They are missing the truth and challenging him with facts – accusing him of cannibalism to be exact. They are offended by his language, and Jesus loses many followers after this encounter.

And yet, Jesus needs metaphorical language to talk about spiritual and divine things, because spiritual and divine things go far beyond literal and factual descriptions. Metaphors help us understand what we cannot know with our mere human senses, things beyond our current understanding. Super natural things. Super human things.

Jesus spends a great deal of time with his contemporaries trying to explain what he means spiritually by calling himself the Bread of Life. He invites people to eat of his flesh and drink of his blood in order that he can abide in them and they in him. The gift of eternal life comes from the eating of Jesus’ flesh, he says.

Now I want you to imagine for a moment that you don’t already know what this means, that you haven’t experienced Holy Communion or Christian theology. Sounds pretty horrific, right?

It sounded pretty horrific to Jesus’ contemporaries too, because they had a habit of taking Jesus literally when Jesus was trying to explain important truths by using spiritual and metaphorical language.

It’s important to understand that Jesus spoke in parables and metaphors in order to illustrate spiritual truths. And it’s always important for us when we read the scriptures, the language of our faith, to understand that most of it is written in spiritual metaphor. It tells us important truths about our past, our faith, our future, and our relationship with God.

When we begin to read with awareness and delve into the rich metaphors of scripture, we will discover depths to our faith that we have never before imagined, truths we have missed, and a connection to Jesus that we have never before experienced.

This is the kind of wisdom we need, the wisdom of discernment. We need humility about our humanness and our language and the commitment to abide in relationship with God so that our reading and understanding is also divinely inspired.

When we pay attention to the language of metaphors, the meanings in Jesus’ time, and the message of truth for our time, we can walk with Jesus in living color and truly hear what he has to say to us in the here and now. And his words will then resonate with our current lives and our current situations.

If we truly want to abide with the Word of God, the Son of the Eternal, we need first to abide by the mystery and beauty of His language, the only way to describe the indescribable and to imagine the unimaginable. Imperfect? Of course. Factual? Not meant to be. But Truth? You bet! Now and forever.

For he is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.