I received an email yesterday - I won't say from whom as she hasn't given me permission - in which she was complaining about a senior cleric whom she thought (wrongly as it happened) that I might know.

He preached in their parish church yesterday morning on the day's gospel reading - The Parable of the Good Samaritan. Ian preached on the same subject here in Swallow, a nice undemanding sermon about being nice to our neighbours whatever their race, religion or sexuality.

The senior cleric however gave his congregation to understand that only someone as clever as he with a thorough knowledge of classical Greek could possibly begin to understand this 'superficially simple' parable.

Now forgive me if I am wrong, and those who have made a proper study of theology are free to correct me, but is not the whole purpose of a parable to simplify a difficult concept into a form that the young or poorly educated can easily understand? And would Our Lord in his earthly form as a carpenter from Nazareth have understood classical Greek, and, even if he did, would it have been his language of choice to a crowd of Galilean fishermen or even the Pharisee posing the original question?

Well, my correspondent is a relative so of course she waded in and took the cleric to task, not so much about this as about some matters specific to their parish upon which he had chosen to pontificate.