400 Years of the KJV

This year is the 400th anniversary of the printing of the King James Version of the Bible. Like so many other things in like there are the good things and there are the sad things to say about that version of the Bible.

There are the good things to be said about the KJV. It was a universally accepted version of the Bible for a very long time. The language and the writing were of such high quality that it encouraged literacy among all classes of people. The KJV was such a well done piece that many of the phrases and cliches of today are phrases right out of the translation. It shaped the way we talk and think. So many of the passages of scripture have become absolute traditions. In one place I worked, I read the Christmas narrative from a new translation and I was told in no uncertain terms that on Christmas eve the story had to be read from the King James Virgin. They wanted to hear that Mary and Joseph and the Baby were lying in the manager. Even if it was a crowded manager that is the way they wanted to hear the story.

Of course, that is also part of the bad results of 400 years of reading the scriptures from the same version. It has been familiar. The stories have no impact because we have heard them so often in the same way. And we have been told that familiarity breeds contempt. We have heard the stories so often in the same words that we dismiss them as old hat and outdated. That too is part of the down side. The language is dated and there are claims that younger people do not understand and do not know what many of the words mean.

One of the down sides of 400 years is that many people have heard the exact same words that they begin to believe that those are the very words of Jesus. My mother taught Latin in High School in Johnson City, Tenn. The state was engaged in a big debate as to whether or not to have devotions in school. So my mother decided to have her classes read the devotions every day from the Vulgate Bible. The Latin translation of the Bible. She said if they made a fuss she could always say it was her subject matter. Well, somebody made a fuss, but it was because she was using the Latin, and this parent wanted her child to read the Bible the way that Jesus said it. The way it was in the King James Version.

There are lots of other translations and paraphrases of the Bible available now. It is a great discipline and blessing to a person to read the Bible in a different version every year. Read it in a foreign language if you know one. The constant variety of translations help us to remember that the message is the important thing. The fundamentalist claim to a Bible that contains the very words of Jesus or God is a myth.

The King James Version has been a great blessing. It is one of the versions I would encourage everyone to read, but there are a lot of other versions now that help one get closer to the message and hope in the Scriptures.

It Does It For Me

We are all wonderfully and fitfully made creatures. Biology has never been an enemy of faith for me. The more I learn about how amazingly complex human bodies are, how incredibly complex every creature is, how fascinatingly mountains and river systems are, the more I accept the notion of an all wise creator. As some one suggested, "To believe that this amazing universe happened by chance from a big explosion is as believable as to believe that the Encyclopedia Britannica would be printed by an explosion in a print shop."

We humans are so amazing and so diverse. I think that is what makes People Watching one of the great activities for so many people. You can sit in the Mall and just be amazed at the differences in people. Tall, fat, lopsided, big ears, big hair, lots of tattoos, bushy eyebrows, and on and on, with no two looking the same.

Because we are so different it is not a surprise that we all have different ways of finding and responding to the Holy Deep, to the Mysterium Tremendous, to God, to the Wholly Other, to the Ultimate. Some people are touched by magnificent music. Some people want to sit in silence and be alone with the Alone. Some people become awaken by one of the special gifts of humans. Someone sent me a piece about the incredible gift of colors. We would see and some do live in black and white. Life would be possible without colors, but they are a great gift of joy and beauty. I remember a man who prayed and gave thanks for the taste of food because we would eat to survive even if food had no taste. But boy are we glad that foods taste different

One of the places that is constantly reminds me of the wonder of creation and forces me out of the temptation to narrow and make God small is the annual trip to the Beach. The Ocean has a way of reminding me about the vastness of creation and life. One of my first amazements was how in the world can we human people create enough garage to pollute that vast ocean. It looks so huge. The Ocean and the power of the waves drives home a lesson about how small and insignificant I am. The steady beat of the waves reminds me of what G.K. Chesterton said about God and our powers. Chesterton said when we play with our children and toss them up and they laugh and cry "Do it again!" We do it again until we become exhausted and have to stop. God does not get tired. Each day, Chesterton suggested, God says to the Sun, Do it again. And I think he says to the waves, Do it again. Do it again. Do it again.

Each of us is different and have our own places and our own times for meditation and worship. These private moments have to be brought to the community and shared at some point or we can drift into heresies and private religions. But the Ocean is always a good place for me to get a perspective on life. To jump start my theology. It does it for me.

Question to measure your faith journey

Evaluation is always good. Every program and activity needs to have a means by which it determines its progress. Usually in the church the two major criteria are money and members. Did the giving increase and did you have more members seem to be the easiest and most common criteria for measuring the faithful journey of a church.

But I would like to suggest five other questions which I think are more appropriate to ask about our life together in faith.

a. Has your attendance at church, has the worship where you go, have the materials you have been using for your devotional life, pushed you deeper into the mystery, the wonder and the majesty of God? Has that journey into the deeper wonder, amazement and holiness of God created as many questions for you as it has given you answers. God is the one in the Scripture that so often asks tough questions instead of giving simple answers. In Genesis God asks,"Where is your brother?" He asks Job, " Where were you when I created Leviathan?" The deeper we move into the love, forgiveness and mercy of God, the more our categories of justice and fairness disappear, leaving only questions.

b. Has you faithfulness in religious devotion given you a new freedom from all the petty little rules that life keeps trying to make us follow. "A man's indifference to minor matter is the measure of his real faith in Jesus Christ as the Savior." The more you find your life sustained and rooted in the wonder of Jesus Christ the less concerned and bound you are to all the little gods of life, like race, family, country, economics, and power. Jesus had a remarkable freedom from all of the laws the Sadducees and Pharisees kept want to bind him with. He met with a Samaritan woman at mid-day, he enjoyed children, he ate lunch with Zaccheus; he ate with sinners, he let a prostitute bath his feet with perfume. Our growth in Christ ought to be moving us more and more into a freedom from all other little petty gods and their rules

c. Has your participation in worship and your own devotional life expanded the circle of your compassion? If you are more and more coming closer and closer to God, are you sharing more and more of his love for all creation? Are you praying now for more people than you prayed for five years ago? If the love of God is moving through you more and more, are you sharing his love for more and more of his creation?

d. As that love of God for all creation begins to dominate your life and your vision of life, do you find yourself a little more able to consider the possibility that some of those "other people" just may be able to be forgiven by God? As you get carried along by the power of the Holy Spirit are you finding more tolerance for other people? more able to think of excuses and explanations for their sins in the same way you think of them for you own sins?

e. The last is a money question, but it is not whether your church has more, but whether or not you have discovered that you are more generous with what you have now that you were four years ago? Do you trust more that God's blessings will continue and that you can be more responsive and more generous with what you have? As we become rooted in the greatness of God, we become confident that God will bring fresh blessings new every morning and we don't have to hoard or grab more blessings than we need. There is no dying with the most toys in the Kingdom of God. A living and vibrant faith should be helping to make us more generous towards those who need our help.

These are some questions I would use to tell if the places I have been going and then things I have been doing as a disciple are really helping me move in the direction of God's love.

Whose Calendar?

Tomorrow will be Father's Day in the USA. For most children it presents a problem because they have no idea what to get their father, and they probably don't have enough money to get anything he wants that he does not have. I always felt badly about birthdays and Father's Day because I had already bought myself anything I wanted that was under $25.00. I also knew that they did not have even that much usually to buy me something. So Father's Day was a problem. It is a problem for lots of other people as well because some of us fathers are not very nice people, and some children do not even get to know their fathers.

But Father's Day, Mother's Day, 4th of July, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Valentine Day, and the list goes on are a problem for the faithful preacher and his congregation. How much do you let the civil calendar influence the life and teachings of the Christian community? How much authority do you give to the civil, commercial, and popular culture to determine the agenda of the worship experience of the People of God?

One of the very first meetings of a Commission on Ministry I attended as a new member of Presbytery was a real shocker to me. An older minister made the statement that he never found preaching very hard. He summarized it quickly: New Years - talk about new beginnings, Valentine Day - love, Spring - new life; Mother's Day - Mothers; Father's day - Fathers, 4th of July - loyalty; Labor Day - hard work. And he said you just have to say nice things about all of them and people love it.

And somehow the fact that he had never even come close to anything in the Bible or dealt with the question of sin, the necessity of forgiveness, the need for grace, the mystery of the Divine, the reality of doubt, the questions of why is there something and not nothing, what is the meaning of life, where do we go when we die, and the list goes on. He was happy. It was easy. The Congregation, he said, was happy, so what was the problem?

It was the adoption of the liturgical calendar and the lectionary in Presbyterian circles to try to combat the older gentleman's preaching program. It was an effort to substitute the calendar of the Church for the commercial calendar of the culture. So it is interesting in some places to hear and read the cry coming from younger preachers that we need to get away from the lectionary and become "more relevant" in our preaching. Which for them means more along the lines of the cultural calendar.

I can only speak for myself, but the congregation and the preacher who spends time talking about the dates on the secular calendar is a congregation and preacher I would stay away from. We are called to be in the world, but not of it. What better way to be "not of it" than to have our own agenda and our own calendar which moves to a whole different time frame?

NO EVIDENCE FOR IT

As I understand the Republican economy philosophy which they practiced under Reagan and Bush and would like to keep or increase, the idea is that you cut taxes on corporations and businesses, that would give them more profits and they would invest in new technology, they would hire new people, they would produce more products. You cut taxes on capital gains, dividends and the income of the wealth so that they would have more to invest in businesses, they would have more to buy more big ticket items, and they would hire more people to help them. That is how I have understood the philosophy. Give the rich people who are supposed to be the wiser and more productive members of society, as judged by their success in making money, and they will stimulate the economy.

The problems is that I do not see any evidence that it has worked as designed. How can you cut taxes to corporations when the 400 largest corporations in this country do not currently pay taxes? How can you claim that cutting taxes to businesses will create more jobs

when we were losing 700,000 jobs a month when President Bush left office? How can you can claim that these large corporations and businesses will benefit the country when the major financial institutions nearly destroyed the country with their speculations?

There is even less evidence that tax cuts for the very rich are invested in society and by that investment enrich the community. Trickle down was supposed to mean that the rich would get tax cuts and they would invest and the rest of society would be lifted up by the increased economic activity. The evidence, recognized by all sides, is that in the last ten to twenty years the rich have simply gotten richer, obtained and kept more and more of the wealth and the middle and lower classes have gotten poorer. The middle class is disappearing. We seem to be moving towards a 1 or 2 percent of the populations having 98% of the wealth of thee country and the 98% of the people living with 2% of the wealth. The way trickle down economy has always been presented this is not supposed to be the results.

The evidence does not seem to support the idea that making the rich richer will make the poor richer as well. It is a failed idea. It is an idea that is not consistent with the philosophy of democracy with its concern for all people to share the benefits equally. It is an economic theory that is contrary to most religious traditions of concern for all people and especially the needy and the poor. It is certainly not fulfilling the call for a shared economic sacrifice in these rough times. As a people we can do better than this.

SOCIAL ENGINERING

As I heard the story Newt Gingrich was on a TV program and he made some negative comments about Representative Ryan’s budget. He called it “social engineering.” That remark was so troubling to Rush Limbaugh that Rush called Newt on the phone. I saw the clip of the call. Rush demanded to know what Newt meant. “What is Social Engineering?” Newt Gingrich said that he was against any time Government tried to tell us what to do. Mr. Gingrich said he was opposed to Government involvement in our lives. He was opposed to Government involvement whether it was from the Liberal side or from the Conservative side. Social Engineering was where Government was trying to control our lives.

On this week-end where we remember those who have died in defense of this country, one has to wonder if they did not die in defense of social engineering. They were willing to give their lives to protect and defend the values and the system of government that we have. And what we have is a system of government that is built on the constant debate about social engineering. The bottom line is that we all want social engineering. We need social engineering. We could not be a society without social engineering. It is just that we have a variety of ideas of how that engineering should look like and be done.

Nobody is opposed to social engineering, government telling us how to behave, when it comes to driving on the highway. Somebody has to tell us all to stay on the “right side of the road.” We want somebody to check our medicines and make sure they are safe. We want somebody to inspect the restaurants and make sure they are healthy. When a beautiful 6 month old little girl gets beaten to death by the mother’s boy friend, there is a great cry that Social Services should have been there and taken the baby. There are just so many things that make our lives together better because Government is playing a major role in trying to protect us all.

But it is just as true that there are major areas where we have a great debate about where Government should be in our lives. Women believe that Government has no right to tell them what they can do with their bodies. There are millions who believe that Government should prevent women from having abortions. There are millions who believe that Government should ban tobacco and all forms of smoking. There is even a baseball executive who thinks chewing tobacco ought to be banned. There are millions of smokers who think that Government has no right to tell them if they can or cannot smoke. There are those who think that government, the school systems, ought to teach evolution. There are others who think government has no right to “impose” that system on them.

Social Engineering, government telling us how to live, is something that I think those who died defending this country would understand. They went and fought as the Government told them. They believed in this country enough to accept the orders of the Government. Social Engineering is the only way we can ever live together. And the great thing about this country is that we have a way to have a debate about how that engineering will look. Part of me thinks Social Engineering is what being a faithful person of religious conviction is all about... building a better society.

If Not Now, When?

There is a preacher who is convinced that the Rapture will be tomorrow. Well, who knows how many people have thought they knew the day and the time, and sat on mountains waiting for it to come? There are some interesting things about that expectation.

One it is only very recent in Christian history that the notion of Rapture and Thousand year reign and that whole schematic has been developed. There was a hope from the beginning of the Early church that Christ would come soon, but the diagrams and the plot line for how it would all turn out is only a couple of hundred years old.

Two, Jesus told us not to worry about when it would happen. Nobody knows and even Jesus said he did not know when God would complete creation and restore it and fulfill the dreams of a new creation: a new heaven and a new earth. So why waste a lot of time trying to do what Jesus told us not to do.

Three, Jesus seemed to me to talk a lot more about how we were to live with each other in this world. Sermon on the Mount, the sheep and the goats, the parables all talked about how we were to love God, love our neighbors and then be a part of the kingdom of God. In fact, the strange things is he talked more about our relation with money than he did almost anything else. He seemed to focus pretty heavily on this world's conduct.

Four, there seems to me that the notion of a "new heaven and a new earth" somehow suggests that we may not be "lifted up and taken away" from this earth as to be a part of that miracle which transforms and renews this earth. So that when Jesus comes we may meet him in the sky but that might be like greeting him on the donkey and we rally with him as he comes on down to earth and completes the creation story.

Five, Why would you imagine that you need to do something different if you are already living as faithfully as you can? If you are one who expects the Rapture, then you probably have been active and faithful in your Christian living, so why worry about it? It has been an abundant life in faith so far, and if Christ comes tomorrow, I expect it will be an abundant life in whatever way He wants to take it. Even So, Come, Lord, Jesus.