Pivotal
Later this month the Scottish men’s football team face two pivotal games in their quest to qualify for the FIFA World Cup. Will Stevie Clark go for a 4-4-2 or a 4-5-1 is the big question. Clark’s counterpart in Scottish Rugby is, as I write, probably praying that tight head prop Zander Fagerson is fit to face New Zealand on Saturday.
Particular
Different sports, in common with practically every area of life, have a language peculiar to it, and those who follow and or participate in these sports learn this language and its intricacies.
Football fans talk in strange number combinations to describe the formation of their team, e.g. 4-4-2. Rugby players and fans use terms like tight head prop, hooker, flanker and full back to name the different positions and roles players have on the pitch. To speak of a pit-stop in F1 motor racing and for a truck driver to say they are taking a pit stop is to speak of two very different activities. One consisting of a lightning-fast change of tires and the other a relaxing cup of coffee and some food!
Your Examples
These examples of specialist language particular to specific activities, i.e. football, rugby, and F1 motor racing are not restricted to sport. I’m sure you can think of non-sporting examples from your work life.
Medical professionals use a myriad of technical words. Where you and I might speak of a bruise a doctor or nurse will speak of an ecchymosis or contusion. Teachers speak to each other about pedagogical practice and ASN, lawyers of jurisprudence, and computer programmers have developed whole languages to enable our information age.
Peculiar to Christianity
Like all the activities and disciplines mentioned above there is a language and grammar peculiar to Christianity and our following of Jesus.
When speaking to our non-Christians friends it is generally good and helpful if we can avoid such language in much the same way as a doctor would when explaining a condition to a patient.
Yet, as church there is a similarity between us and sports fans, doctors, teachers etc. There is a language which is peculiar to the activity of following Jesus, talking about God, and articulating what it means to be God’s people.
An Example
For example, a fan of cycling, because they deeply and passionately connect with their sport, learns the language of cycling and starts to talk to fellow cyclists about the peloton, bidons, group sets, what kind of cleats they have on their shoes, and congratulate each other by saying “chapeau”.
In similar fashion, as Christians, because we deeply and passionately connect with our faith, we learn the language of discipleship peculiar to the activity of following Jesus, talking about God, and articulating what it means to be God’s people. Some of this language goes back to the earliest Christian communities.
Significantly there are some things which are difficult to talk about and remain connected to what the church has taught and believed through the ages without using particular (theological) language. The topic for this Sunday is a case in point.
The Spirit, and the Future
On Sunday we shall think about The Spirit, and the Future and our text is 2 Corinthians 5:14 – 21. The “therefore” in verse 16 means we can’t start there but need to at least start at verse 14 to catch Paul’s train of thought.
To speak of the Spirit and the Future necessitates that we think about what it means for us to live as God’s eschatological people. To say we are God’s eschatological people is to properly name who we are (!) and what flows from this understanding of who we are is exciting and challenging.
Eschatological
Eschatology from which we get the adjective eschatological has to do with God’s future and our future in God. New Testament scholar Gordon Fee comments:
“If the church is going to be effective in our postmodern world, we need to stop paying mere lip service to the Spirit and instead recapture …the Spirit as the experienced, empowering return of God’s own personal presence in and among us, who enables us to live as a radically eschatological people.”
How then should we live?
I agree with Gordon. It is essential that we live as God’s eschatological people and to do so is radical. 2 Corinthians 5, indeed the whole of all of Paul’s letters, are explorations of what this means and looks like, and an encouragement to faithfully do so.
So, on Sunday our focus will be to consider practically what does it mean and what does it look like to live as God’s radical eschatological people.
See you then.
Brodie