2017-02

Have you noticed how, as a society, we are
moving rapidly away from a word-based
culture to a picture-based one? It may not
be immediately obvious – books, real and
electronic, still sell well – and the internet
is full of words, encouraging and harmful. But the
way that we interact with the world around us is
increasingly pictorial and not literal.
When I pick up my phone the fi rst thing I do is
select an icon and by pressing it I am taken into a
new world of social media, gaming or messaging.
My computer is much the same and some of us
now have smart televisions that look like a 50-
inch phone screen. I’m 30 years too old for it, but
I’m told that teenagers can now construct entire
sentences through emojis. In fact there is even an
emoji Bible translation.
February/March 2017
WOODSEATS • SHEFFIELD
Signs, symbols and icons are the ways in which people have
communicated and navigated their way around their social world for
millennia. They existed long before the alphabet and the writing of the
Far East is still based around pictograms, or characters draw a picture
rather than simply communicate a sound. If you’ve ever tried fi nding
your way around an airport in a non-Western country you will know just
how the familiar and the baffl ing exist side by side depending on how
easily we can recognise the signs.
One of the reasons why Church and the Bible can seem so strange
– even intimidating – to those coming to them for the fi rst time, is that
they are full of symbols. The rite of baptism is the sign of entry into
God’s new life and his Church. Holy Communion, with the tokens of
bread and wine, is the symbol (amongst many other things) of Jesus’
death for us, the bread and the wine pointing us to the breaking of his
body and the spilling of his blood. The language of the Bible is full of
symbols showing us the reality of God’s love in Jesus Christ and his
promise of eternal life.
Some signs do no more than show us where the
nearest toilets are or which app to use on our phone.
Other symbols point to truths so astonishing and
inexpressible that we can spend a lifetime exploring
them and still not fully understand. Assailed by the
fl ood of images and icons with which modern life
presents us, it would be sad to miss the signs that
really are life-changing.
Signs and Symbols
St Chad’s Church, Linden Avenue, Woodseats
Church Offi ce: Linden Avenue, Sheffi eld S8 0GA
Tel: (0114) 274 5086
Rev Toby Hole, Vicar,
St Chad’s Church,
Woodseats
Page 3
email: offi ce@stchads.org
website: www.stchads.org