Day 153: Borrowed Words

Day 153

Faith in the Midst of a Pandemic

A series of daily reflections for people of faith, by Rev. Robert Bayley, Interim Pastor

Patuxent Presbyterian Church, California, Maryland – pastorrobert@paxpres.org

Week Twenty-two Friday 14 August 2020

Borrowed Words

“This pandemic has been teaching me something the Easter story has never quite managed to teach me: the limits of words and the limitlessness of faith...What words can people of faith use this post-Easter season? The world is still in the grip of a novel virus and the disruption stretches ahead for weeks if not months…Yes, the Easter celebration has come and gone, and Christ is risen every day. Let us proclaim it. But let us also fall silent, admitting how little we can say in the face of global grief. Let the limits of our words give way to a wordless faith in the one who dared lay in the tomb while his friends grieved.” - From a recent article “What Language Can I Borrow” in a Christian magazine

The writer of this article, a woman serving as a Presbyterian minister, takes her title from the third verse of one of the most moving hymns focused on the passion of Christ on the cross, “O Sacred Head Now Wounded.” It reads and has us singing to Him –

“What language shall I borrow to thank Thee, dearest Friend,…”

Borrowed language – that phrase intrigues me, because at the end of the day every word I use is borrowed – I didn’t invent any of them. Taken into my being they then emerge in certain configurations that reflect who I am. These borrowed words form my writing style, my preaching style, my conversational patterns. And when it comes to our conversations with the Lord, we again are employing borrowed words to say what is uniquely ours and ours alone, our relationship with Him. Some Christian traditions refer to such expressions as testimonies.

Whatever language or words we borrow they have their origin within us. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks,” observed Jesus in Matthew 12:34, making the prayer of the Psalmist a sober request when it comes to the language we borrow: “Let the words of my mouth, and the  meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.” Psalm 19:14 KJV.  May this prayer mark us on our pandemic journey.  

Reflective question: What language, words, would you borrow, use to express your thanks to the Lord for all He has done for you on the cross?

Reflective Scripture:  Psalm 119:16 – “I will not neglect your word.”

Reflective hymn:

“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded” – Paul Gerhardt (1607-1676)

Based on a Medieval Latin poem by Bernard of Clairvaux (1091-1153)

What language shall I borrow, to thank Thee dearest Friend,

For this Thy dying sorrow, Thy pity without end?

O make me Thine forever; and, should I fainting be,

Lord, let me never, never outlive my live for Thee.