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"The Language of Faith"
The Rev. Dr. D. Scott Stoner
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In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Holly and I were fortunate to be able to get away, Easter Sunday we went down to Mexico for a week and returned last Sunday night. We have really come to love that country I think this was our eighth trip to Mexico and each time we get a little more adventurous. We’re practicing our Spanish and so we try it out a lot more and we go to remote towns, we do our best to avoid Americans if at all possible so we go up to the mountains at this time of year in the old colonial towns where you can be in a church that was built in 1550 and then a half mile in the other direction and be in the Aztec ruins from the third century.
But I want to start with an analogy and just stay with me here for a second. Now like I said I was really working hard on my Spanish this year, I downloaded all kinds of podcasts on my iPhone and listened to them in the car and practiced my Spanish. So like I said we got more adventurous, we only had reservations for a couple of nights and then when we were ready to move we had to figure out what city we were going to go to so we talked to some people, some local people and they recommended we go to Puebla. So we did. So I had to get on the phone and call and make the reservation. I was so proud, I practiced my Spanish and I call up to make the reservation. I always say when I call someone on the phone or when I meet someone, first I start out with “entende englaise?” which means “Do you understand English?” and they almost always say no and I say, “Habla espanol muy poco.” I want to clarify this for them in case they confuse me for a native speaker. If I don’t say it up front I’m sure they are going to think I am totally a native speaker. So I call the guy on the phone and I say," Do you speak English, I speak a little Spanish."We need a room for two people, we re going to stay a few nights. And I’m doing really well until I finish and then he says, “ Badadadadadad, daddadda.” Wait, where’s my book, I don’t have my book here!” I’m sure he’s saying things like, “ Well we have a junior suite and a master suite, we have a pool view and a garden view.” And those aren’t things in my vocabulary and I pick up a few words and basically I do make a reservation. And what’s wonderful about this is that we have no idea what kind of room we are going to get when we get there so it is a surprise! In this case he kept talking about La escuela, which is school. I thought, is this an old school? So when we checked in we found out they have a cooking school there. And so we enrolled in the Mexican cooking school and so we got two days of cooking lessons with a Mexican chef. See? It’s an adventure when you go that way. And it got me to thinking when people ask me, “Do you speak Spanish.” I say, “Mas o menos, More or less.” But actually the question they should be asking is and we should be thinking about “Do you understand Spanish?” That I would have to say, No. No I don’t. I can speak it but I really don’t understand it. And so that’s the analogy. I’m not here to talk about Mexico and Spanish but it struck me that there is an analogy there in terms of our faith life.
All of us speak spirituality, that’s why we are here. We speak Christianity that’s why we’re here. But do we understand it? And I would have to say, mas o menos, more or less, yes and no. And it seems to me that the journey of faith is like the journey of learning a foreign language the more you know, the more you realize you don’t know. The better you get at asking questions the more complex answers you get. It used to be I could say, “Donde esta al bano?” “Where’s the bathroom?” That’s all I could say and back at that point, this is the ultimate insult when you are in a foreign place and you are trying to practice the language and you ask “”Donde esta da bano?” and they say, “Oh, it’s down the street and around the corner.” They answer in English because they can tell that you really don’t know what you are doing. So the more complex questions you can ask the more complex answers you will get and those answers like the ones I got on the phone that day will be beyond your understanding and that’s okay that’s why we call this a faith journey. It’s what’s happening in the Gospel story today that we just heard, the disciples are on the road to Emmaus, Jesus has died they have some sense that maybe there has been a resurrection but they don’t know. Jesus shows up and is walking with them in their midst and they don’t recognize him, they don’t see him. They invite him for dinner and it is not until he sits down with them and breaks bread with them that they see is the resurrected Jesus. To me it is a similar process they were speaking the faith they were learning to speak the language of the faith of Jesus they were a disciple but they really didn’t fully understand so they could not see him. They could not see the resurrected Jesus when they were standing right in front of him because they didn’t fully understand what was happening.
And again I think that is so true, it is so true in my own spiritual walk. I have to be able to speak the faith, I have to be able to stand up here and preach so I’ve got to be able to speak it! But sometimes I forget and there is so much I realize I still don’t understand. And especially if you think of the the disciples here, part of what they were struggling to understand they were in such turmoil, they were in such a state of loss, Jesus had died, was this whole thing a scam? Was any of it true? Were they going to be crucified next? And it seems to me I know when I am in the most state of confusion or unrest in my own life is when I have the hardest time seeing God and understanding God. But, the promise in this story and the promise in the journey of faith is if you keep asking the questions we will come to a greater understanding and often we will be surprised what that understanding is. We don’t get to control what it is going to be.
Thinking very specifically about the baptism today and about Stephanie and Aaron as Lindsay’s parents, I was thinking that it’s a similar journey in parenthood. When you first think about becoming parents and you get pregnant you read all the books and you learn how to speak parenting but you don’t know anything about it really or understand anything about it until Lindsey is born and shows up in your life. And it’s like, “Oh my goodness.” Nothing I read and nothing I was able to say before this could have prepared me for this miracle. You know in a whole new way what miracles are now because you have this miracle in your life and trust me this is the journey that will continue. Just when you think you know what you’re doing as a parent, she will change and she will be beyond your understanding and she will reveal new things to you. And you will continually learn a new language and a new faith and a new walk. And she will continue to reveal to you God in your midst. She will be your most important spiritual teacher in your life. She already is. And what you are promising here today is that you will raise her in this community, the community of the church, you are recognizing today in having her baptized that she is a gift from God, that she is your child but that she is truly a gift from God and you will continue to surround her with that knowledge. And that all of you here, because baptism is a community event, will all have your part in walking with her and you will learn from her and she will learn from you and that is how we learn this language of faith. So let us keep trying to learn the language, let’s practice it with one another and know that our speaking will always fall short of our ability to understand but that’s o.k. because God will continue to reveal new things to us in this parish in this time of transition all of us are going through our own transitions in our personal lives and sometimes we don’t understand where it is going. But it is okay because we trust it will be revealed to us.
