27th February 2026

Every profession, craft or game uses ordinary words in its own ways.

“How did it go today?” “I only made eight. Two singles and a lovely six over long on then I snicked one and was caught by short leg.” It makes sense to a cricketer (or his daughter) but may be meaningless to you. All the words are English but ‘caught by short leg’?

In church, we too use words giving them a particular meaning which would make no sense to someone who has never been a churchgoer.

Every Sunday we say the Lord’s prayer. Twice recently I have been at a service where the old form ‘Forgive us our trespasses…’ was used. Trespasses? Do you mean getting into military areas or buildings like GCHQ? Trampling cornfields? Rarely, you hear “I will not trespass further on your time”? That is not what we mean in church.

The Scots use ‘Forgive us our debts…’ That almost always means money or, for instance, “We are indebted to James for his work selling tickets”.

We have ‘Forgive us our sins…’ which I think is a better single word than either of the above but for many outside the church ‘sin’ is mainly used for sexual crimes or misdemeanours.

(‘Syns’ is used by Slimming World to denote treats!)

We have to use words to try to encapsulate concepts which defy words. We cannot get our faith completely into tidy simple language so we use a word but put a much more complicated weight of meaning on it. This is fine but we do need to notice when we are doing that if we are talking to those outside the church.

Margaret Clements