"Putting on" the breastplate of faith and love, or learning the rules?

A group of us from St. Paul's in Newburyport are traveling to El Salvador in July under the auspices of Fundacíon Cristosal to continue some mission work we began a year and a half ago. I'm privileged to be able to go along with our group. But, I never learned to speak Spanish: I grew up in the era when most public schools taught French instead.

So, lately I have been cramming to learn this new language. I'm using one of those total-immersion tutorial computer programs, and it's a really transformative experience. The last language I learned was the Koiné (Biblical) Greek I studied in seminary.  In that class we used a little black textbook full of grammatical jargon and lists of vocabulary words.

Fun grammatical fact to know and tell:  When Jesus said (Mark 1:15) "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." the verb fulfilled is the written in in the perfect passive indicative tense.  Wow! How about that?

I can hear you muttering "Whoop de doo. Who cares?"  Who cares, indeed?  Maybe some Bible geeks care (I admit that I am a Bible geek), but these factoids of grammar don't have much to do with the life of the world, do they?

But this full-immersion Spanish curriculum I'm studying doesn't work like that. I'm a month into it, and I haven't yet heard one word of grammatical jargon.  Instead, I hear sentences and see pictures, and the program asks me to speak and write what I see and hear.  Amazingly enough, it's working: I'm starting to "put on" this new language. I'm starting to learn it without knowing anything about it. When I tune in Spanish-language TV I'm starting to be able to follow what people say.

Is there a lesson here for our journeys of faith?  Most Sundays we repeat the Nicene Creed in worship. Certainly, if we spend a lot of time unpacking those words we can learn plenty about our faith. If we're trying to figure out who Christ Jesus is, there's a lot to be gained from pondering over "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten not made."

But, learning about Christ Jesus is not the same thing as experiencing his presence. Paul didn't write a letter to his congregation in Thessalonika saying "this is faith, and that is love." Instead he urged them to put on, and to wear, that faith and love.

That's what the Way of Christ Jesus is all about: putting on faith and love. When we do that, it's like learning the language from the inside out. It's about recognizing Christ in the people around us, and about growing into his full stature. Learning about our faith journeys is good, just as learning about a language is good. But living our faith journey together is VERY good.

May the peace of Christ that transcends all understanding guard your hearts and minds.

Ollie Jones+