Lasagna

My son, Jude, comes to children's choir with me at church during the school year.  He remembers all the songs we sing and will often start singing one of them randomly in the midst of the day.  One song the choir learned for Palm Sunday was "Hosanna, hosanna, hosanna to the King."  I remember talking a lot with the kids -- and with adults in worship -- about how hosanna means "God save us!"  It's a word that I love.

Yesterday, my favorite word was done some injustice.  I was cooking lasagna and Jude was playing in the kitchen with me.  When I took the pan out of the oven, Jude asked me what it was.  I said "it's lasagna" and without missing a beat, Jude started singing "Lasagna, lasagna, lasagna to the King!"  Poor hosanna got ditched for lasagna.

It makes me wonder how many more "churchy" words are unintelligible to the world.  Hosanna, disciple, fellowship, parable, communion, liturgy -- and those are some we'd consider easy.  Our words can get even more cryptic -- ecclesiology, atonement, soteriology, theodicy.  My spell check doesn't even know three of these four.  I know that these words are important to the church community.  But as I sit preparing a sermon about how we are called to go into our communities and meet people where they are, I wonder if our time would be best spent trying to teach people about our words, or learning to speak a new language ourselves.