They call it easing the Spring: it is perfectly easy
If you have any strength in your thumb: like the bolt,
And the breech, and the cocking-piece, and the point of balance,
Which in our case we have not got; and the almond-blossom
Silent in all of the gardens and the bees going backwards and forwards,
For today we have naming of parts. (Henry Reed (1942))
All professions have their own jargon. No nuclear physicist would confuse a quark and a boson, no lawyer would confuse mandamus with certiorari, no sailor would mistake a pinnace for a cuddy. For some people, jargon is a help. For others it is a hindrance.
The earliest Christians were familiar with some basic trades: they knew how to sow seed by broadcasting it, they knew that without a keystone an arch would fall down. They knew the technical language involved in releasing slaves. But only 'the professionals' needed to know the difference between a dalmatic and a tunicle, a synapte and a kathisma.
Sometimes we Christians forget that we are using technical language when we talk to our non-Christian friends. Even words like sin, grace and atonement can act as jargon to outsiders, and part of our task in a partly de-Christianized world is getting the kernel of our message across.
One area of jargon that can raise a barrier is the way we talk about our buildings. At St Ursula's we are blessed (there's a jargon-word!) with chairs, but we could still call them pews - for a pew is anything to sit upon (a relatively modern innovation, for people in past centuries either stood or knelt - only the aged and the infirm would sit). But the area where we sit has a special name - the nave - to distinguish it from the area which we all face - the sanctuary.
As its German translation, Schiff, implies, the nave recalls the boat which, with Jesus in it, keeps us safe from the stormy world outside. It recalls the ark which saved Noah and his family from being drowned. And the sanctuary recalls that we use that part of the church for the holier part of our worship. Of course, all worship is holy, and the parts of our services which are led by the clergy are not necessarily holier than the other parts - nor do they have to be restricted to the area next to the big stained-glass window. But it is useful to give that part of the church a name, especially if a rail (the sanctuary rail - originally to keep dogs away) separates it from the nave.
Bigger churches have a chancel between the nave and the sanctuary, where a choir may sit (in choir-stalls!) and chant. Our own choir squeezes in where it can!
The big table in the sanctuary is the altar. Hebrews 13 makes it clear that this is a quite different type of altar from the altar in the Jewish temple - our own sacrifice is "a sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of lips that confess his name," and Archbishop Cranmer, the chief writer of the English prayer book, carefully called it 'the Lord's Table', for this is where our Lord shares his life with us.
What of crypts and villains? A crypt is an underground room in a church. Some contain tombs. Some contain rooms for worship. Ours used to contain the coal store and stove, but now contains various kinds of clutter and the exchanger for the heating system. Rooms, like words, sometimes change their uses, and just as villeins, who were the bonded servants of a feudal landowner, developed a new meaning (and a new spelling) when they became common evildoers, we need to be careful using words ('hallowed' and 'trespass' come to mind) whose meaning for non-Christians has changed. Jargon can unite, and jargon can (villainously!) divide.
HD