Funny, the things you learn when you are not sleeping at 3.30am. Somehow, while looking up information on trains to and from Troon, I stumbled by a more complicated route than the said train journey on on a great new word: “sesquipedalian”: as in “I have sat through a few sesquipedalian sermons in my time,” or “I have preached a fair number of sesquipedalian sermons in the course of my ministry.” Both examples of the use of the word I have given here are from personal experience…apologies to those who witnessed and had to sit through the latter example..but probably not sincere enough apologies to repent or to promise I will not do it again.
What does it mean? Well if you studied Latin you will know it means “a foot and a half long.” So basically, either “long words” (not guilty) or being “longwinded” (guilty for sure).
You could use the same word, of course, in relation to the works of some philosophers and theologians (I have scratched the surface of both fields a bit) who repeatedly demonstrate an ability to take a simple idea and make it indecipherable to most people, so that then they can earn a living by trying to explain their sesquipedalian writings to make their meaning more simple again for those trying to get a degree in something or other akin to theology or philosophy. I used to know folk in Dounreay who kept themselves in employment in precarious times that way, creating a job in a narrow filed of science that no one but them could do!
Jesus, who claimed to be a theologian – in fact He claimed to be the only true theologian – definitely avoided sesquipedalian tendencies. He summed up His theology once in this way: “No one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal Him.” If you want rest from sesquipedalian thinking about God, basically Jesus is saying, “Come to me.” It is quite a claim, very succinctly expressed.
Jesus’ philosophical outlooks were free of sesquipedalian vanity too, though they were astonishingly cosmic in their reach. “I am the Light of the World.”
As we listen to Jesus words, we realise the terms “theologian” or “philosopher” as normally understood have been left far behind in some sort of thick sesquipedalian soup. His astonishingly simply worded claims mean we are faced with eternity influencing choices:. In the non-sesquipedalian summation suggested by C.S. Lewis: is a person who spoke such things mad,. on the level of someone who thinks they are a poached egg? if not mad are they bad, deliberately deceiving people? Or are they who they clam to be? God.
There you are then: some sesquipedalian thoughts that sprang from discovering that very word… and it has worked: I fell like going back to sleep now.
Have still not found out the precise information I was looking for re the to and fro of Troon trains…
God bless
Kenny
revkennyblog 