I once found myself giving a long and detailed description
to my twenty-year-old stepson about how to install a new toilet. I'd asked him
to help me with it so that I could teach him, having only recently learned it
myself. But the one I'd bought had a different way of mounting the tank and I
soon found that my confident and knowledgeable lesson was breaking down into
lots of thoughts along the lines of “now, let's see here...” and “let me just
look at the diagram again....” It was not my finest parental lesson, and my
son's interest was understandably lowering.
At some point, it was necessary for me to give up on the
text of the lesson and get down to the subtext of the moment, which is what was
really important in the first place. Text and subtext are terms I borrow from
literary work. The text is the actual content of the words. In this case, the
text had to do with the setting of screws in the base of the toilet. The
subtext is the unspoken message which is being conveyed under and behind the
text. Nine times out of ten, or maybe all ten times, the subtext is the more
important part of the message. For me, the subtext of my bad plumbing lesson
contained several messages.
1.
You're growing up and I want you to be prepared
for adulthood.
2.
I wish I'd learned more about taking care of a
house when I was growing up.
3.
I love you, and I want to teach you what I have
to pass on.
That's a lot to pack into a lesson on installing a toilet,
and when the lesson broke down, I decided I'd just tell him those things, in
more or less the words I just used. These were not new messages to him, but
they were worth saying out loud again.
I've been thinking about the subtext of some of the things
we do at church.
Text: We have ministry programs for children and youth = Subtext: we want a
safe and nurturing place for the young people we love.
Text: We have a writing group for elders = Subtext: we value our life
stories, and we believe that if we listen closely and honestly to our stories,
we will hear the story of God.
Text: We work with outreach partners locally and around the world
= Subtext: all people are our neighbors. Even if they are strangers to us, they are
relatives in the family of God.
Those are just a few, but you get the point. These are not
new messages, but they are worth saying out loud as often as we can.
