In Dominico Eloquio

(“In Lordly Eloquence”)

 

And the Word became flesh . . .

(John 1:14a)

 

 

A sermon by Siegfried S. Johnson on the Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 23, 2007

Volume 2 Number 24

First United Methodist Church, 605 West 6^th, Mountain Home, Arkansas 72653

 

(For other sermons by Rev. Johnson, see our website at www.fumcmh.org)

 

 

When St. Augustine was 32 years old, in 386 A. D., he abandoned his teaching of rhetoric to enroll for baptism.  He asked St. Ambrose, then bishop of Milan, what he might read in the scripture to make him “readier and fitter to receive so great a grace.”  Ambrose directed him to the book of Isaiah.  Augustine, who would later become one of the most influential forces in the shaping of the Western Church, was so perplexed by what he read that he laid aside the book of Isaiah, explaining that he would resume, “when I have more practice . . . in dominico eloquio . . . in Lordly eloquence,” or, perhaps better translated, “in the Lord’s style of language.” 

 

The Latin, in dominico eloquio, is an arresting phrase.  Augustine, trained in the poetry of Virgil and the philosophy of Plotinus, found the Lord’s way of speaking incomprehensible.  What are these strange wordings of Semitic origin?  It seemed so alien to his Western, European way of knowing.  He recognized that if he were to enter the Church he need learn a new language.  He needed more time to hear it spoken, to grow accustomed to its sounds, to read the books that use this language, to learn its idioms, to share in its stories and, at last, to be able to speak this language himself. 

 

This is the reason for the church’s traditions of Confirmation.  In the early church, catechumens were received during the great vigil of Easter, beginning on Saturday evening where the creed was ceremonially “handed over.”  These had been instructed in the catechisms, a means of instructing novices in this new language.  This was not merely so that these novitiates would learn how to recite a creed or memorize a set of doctrinal propositions.  Catechism began with the understanding that our faith possesses its own language. 

 

Language defines who we are.  I think more than any other subject during my public school education, my father most emphasized English and proper grammar.  I’m glad he did.  Let me become my father for a moment by emphasizing to young people how important English grammar is, whether on an esoteric level of developing your own patterns of thinking, or on a practical level of sitting down one day for an interview with a potential employer.  Your language, your manner of speaking, defines who you are, revealing your education, to be sure, but more.  Your manner of speaking tells of your seriousness, your ambition, your values, your ability to think.   Your words are windows into your mind and heart.

 

Language is not a solitary act, but establishes us as social creatures for whom communication is vital, certainly to our well-being, and perhaps even to our very existence.  Genesis teaches that we are alive through the breath of God, and what is that breath but the Word, ourselves recipients of this divine Word.  We are endowed with the gift of speech and, with it, creativity, inquisitiveness, imagination.  As the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz wrote, “What is pronounced strengthens itself.  What is not pronounced, tends to non-existence.”  

 

Much of Genesis, the story of human beginnings, is about speech – God’s and ours.  Over and over we read in Hebrew va-yomer elohim (“and God said”).  This becomes formulaic to the Creation Narrative.  Adam, made alive by the breath of God, then is given the privilege of using his own breath in speech, naming the creatures.  By Genesis 11 the human story of language has advanced to the Tower of Babel, where we read of the scattering of languages. 

 

It is important to note that there are languages within languages.  Just as there is a language proper to medicine or law or engineering or computer technology, so there is a language proper to Christianity.  Our beliefs, our values, our attitudes are carried by specific words and images.  Think of the many words Christians use in a distinctive way: Father, Son, Holy Spirit, faith, hope, love, grace, repentance, forgiveness.  Think of the phrases -- burning bush, still small voice, the Lord is my shepherd, lamb of God, Our Father who art in heaven.  On and on we could go with these words and phrases which, clustered together, shape our stories, the primary means we have of conveying our faith from one generation to the next. 

 

This common language is drawn from the lexicon of the bible.  Christians may speak English or Spanish or Japanese or German or Russian – but they nevertheless are bonded by a common language.  I have marveled at this throughout the Holy Land.  Our group arrives at a sacred sight, let’s say the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem built by Queen Helena, Emperor Constantine’s mother, in the 4^th century, before St. Augustine’s birth.  We form a cluster with our guide so we can listen in English.  Yet, we are moving along with other groups, listening to their guides and pastors, speaking Japanese, Hebrew, Korean, German.  As we make our way into the grotto, the cave where the church through centuries of tradition has recognized the birth of Jesus, we sing our favorite Christmas hymns in English, often to hear the same songs then sung in other languages.  Different languages, yes, but in a higher sense, we are all speaking the same language, gaining practice In Dominico Eloquio, in the Lord’s way of speaking.

 

The story emerging from a cave in Bethlehem is, I think, the Lord’s way of speaking never expressed more eloquently.   I think the most profound expression of the Lord’s way of speaking are the words of our text, “and the Word became flesh.”  This same “Word” that was in the beginning, this same “Word” that was with God, and was God, this same “Word,” this God . . . was now born in human flesh!

 

In Dominico Eloquio.  So eloquent was this message from God that John writes, “and we have beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”  We call it the Incarnation.  The Hebrews had a different word for this, but you have learned the Lord’s language sufficiently that this Hebraism will not shock you.  The Hebrew word is Emmanuel, meaning, God with us.  No, the word won’t shock you, but the message in that word shocked the world.  What a scandal, that God would become flesh. 

This is our language.  Let us cherish it and not lose it, lest we lose something of ourselves.  To some extent, Christians are losing the ability to speak their own unique language with unfettered freedom within our culture.   The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette editorial from Friday spoke of the growing tradition of holiday squabbles over religious displays on public property, specifically the objection to a Nativity scene on the grounds of the State Capitol in Little Rock last week, that such a scene sends an unlawful message of endorsement of Christianity.  Wrote the paper, “What an unholy spectacle . . . religious displays on public property are constitutional only so long as they’re not too religious . . . Only if the symbol of one faith can be offset by symbols of others, or sufficiently profaned by addition of secular symbols, may it be constitutionally kosher.  This is how we get those official extravaganzas every year in which a manger scene is squeezed in between Santa, elves, reindeer, candy canes, snowmen, and maybe an American flag or even a Razorback or two.  Just add enough other stuff to the holy, and the holy isn’t holy anymore.  To sum up:  the less tasteful, the more legal.”

 

Even if we lose the ability to speak our language in the public square, let us not lose the desire to hear it and share it.  As Augustine craved to learn the Lord’s way of speaking, the church must re-discover herself, learn to savor her speech, to delight in telling her stories.  Our stories are our holiest of places . . . our Jerusalem.   “Walk about Zion,” writes the psalmist, “go round about her, number her towers, consider well her ramparts, go through her citadels, that you may tell the next generation that this is God, our God forever and ever.”   How seriously our Jewish ancestors took those words, and how joyfully.  Zion, Jerusalem, was made theirs by their stories, their music and poetry.

 

Our stories, you see, are holy places.  Let us then Walk about our Zion, Christmas, go round about her, number her magi and shepherds, consider well her angels, go through the Shepherds fields, remember the jealousy and the danger of King Herod . . . let us remember this sacred story, so that we may tell the next generation that this is Christ, our Christ, forever and ever. 

 

Finally, in learning the Lord’s way of speaking, let us always remember that the Word is not an end in itself, but is a pathway to Relationship.  The Word must always become Something Else, Something Other.  However much it is true what I said earlier, that our language, our manner of speaking, reveals our education, our history, our ambition, it is far more true that only when our language is translated into flesh, our words into action, our expressions into relationship --  only when the Word becomes flesh, does it reveal our deepest character.   I said that our words are windows into our hearts, but more than words, our actions, how those words are made flesh, are the truest windows into our hearts.  

 

So it will soon be Christmas.  Nearing the end of Advent we lean forward to hear what will happen, even though we already know what will happen.  We listen hard for new, undiscovered meaning, the hearing of which will be fresh.  And we begin to hear, only faintly at first, as the beating of unseen wings, that we must be more than our words. 

 

Sources:

“The Church’s Way of Speaking,” an essay by Robert Louis Wilken, The Best American Spiritual Writing 2006, Philip Zaleski, editor, originally published in the journal First Things.

 

“’Tis the Season,” an editorial in The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, December 21, 2007.

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