First Congregational Church at Auburn UCC, January 28, 2024
I Cor 8:1-13 — Now concerning food sacrificed to idols: we know that “all of us possess knowledge.” Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. 2 Anyone who claims to know something does not yet have the necessary knowledge, 3 but anyone who loves God is known by him.
Mark 1:21-28 — 21 They went to Capernaum, and when the Sabbath came, he entered the synagogue and taught. 22 They were astounded at his teaching, for he taught them as one having authority and not as the scribes. 23 Just then there was in their synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, 24 and he cried out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are, the Holy One of God.” 25 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be quiet and come out of him!” 26 And the unclean spirit, convulsing him and crying with a loud voice, came out of him. 27 They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” 28 At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
I bet I’m not the only person who once had a teacher who followed all the rules, all the time. And if you didn’t have that teacher, the chances are you met a cousin, maybe at the RMV, someone who seemed to think the point of the whole exercise was to see how many times they could send you back to “go” and make – oh, learning, perhaps, or getting that car registered, much less important than the rules that are supposed to protect the goal.
You know what I’m talking about?
This past week, in Bible study, we were talking about the truth that there can be more than one right way, or one right answer…. Now we started with trying to understand why different translations of the one Bible come out differently.
Here’s an example: In our New International Version, I Cor 13:13 reads “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”
The Message translation puts it this way: “But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.”
The New Revised Standard Version says: “And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”
The oldest translation I could find, the Tyndale translation from the 1400s says: “Now abideth fayth hope and love even these thre: but the chefe of these is love.”
And the King James Version says: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”
So, what the right translation? It depends on what you think is most important – what the ingredients are in your recipe for a good translation. It’s clear in this case that the underlying Greek is pretty simple – every one of the translations comes out saying there are 3 important virtues, and one of them is the most important.
But some of them are based on the idea that we should stick like glue to the King James translation – for them the missing secret sauce is tradition, even when that means the English is hard to understand – what’s that charity instead of love?
For some of them, the most important thing is to make the meaning clear to the reader, and if that means adding words (hope unswervingly, love extravagantly) then that’s what the translator does.
At their best, Bible translators try to find a middle point between sticking with the King James or making such deep changes that it feels like it’s been left behind. At their best, their options are clarified by their love – love for the Bible itself, love for the people – you and me — who will read the Bible.
It’s love that makes the translation work. It’s love that makes our recipe right. It’s understanding that the whole purpose of our lives is to live out God’s love here in our community.
Now this isn’t the kind of self-indulgent love that lets us do what we want, when we want it, as much as we can take in. That’s not love. That’s just taking the easy way out. The love God offers us is one that helps us learn the difference between right and wrong, to balance the needs of the individual and the community, to grow together so as to protect the weak and give the strong boundaries.
It’s love when we step away from assuming we know how someone else is, and believe them when they tell us their story.
It’s love when we actively work to move beyond the assumptions we were raised with, to move into the realities we’re experiencing today.
In our lesson from First Corinthians, the apostle Paul says that knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. Knowing things can and does help us feel good about ourselves, and knowing more about our world can change us — but it’s love that makes that happen. It’s love that changes “me” into “us” and makes our world better.
Let God’s love transform us. Live authentically. Love extravagantly. Be a disciple.
Amen.
© 2024, Virginia H. Child
To Believe is to Care. . . To Care is to Do 