The Rev. Fred G. Garry - January 13, 2002
Text: Matthew 3 I had my cholesterol checked the other
day. I waited a week or so and called for the results. The receptionist
was polite and quick to go and speak to the doctor. When he was
back on the line he said, "Are you ready?" To this
I took a moment of pause thinking, what does he mean by ready?"
But then he said, "I mean ready to write, this all looks
fine." "Ready," I said. I believe he started with
triglycerides, then cholesterol, then good cholesterol, and then
something else I can't remember. After each one he would say,
that is normal or that is fine. But then he came to the last
one.
"On this last one, I have to admit
that I have no idea what these letters stand for. But I am sure
they are fine too. If there was something wrong there the doctor
would have mentioned it. But I really don't know what these letters
stand for." Since I had no interest in any of the others
beside cholesterol and since I had no idea what any of the other
meant as well I said, "thanks for the information"
and that was it.
Now before you chide me or the receptionist
and recommend I speak to the physician next time know this is
something we all do quite often. Things are said, words are passed,
a vague meaning is conveyed and we move on. There are times for
complete accuracy or for minute clarity, but quite often we go
without these. Some might call it the "ballpark" approach
or not fussing over details, but in Point of fact it is how we
work and more importantly how we speak.
We speak in words that are not always
clear. This is not to say all speech is vague, or that we cannot
demand and desire clarity in words. Yet no matter our desire
or demands, words are inherently unclear. Let me put that another
way, there is an inherent ambiguity to symbolic exchange conveyed
in contexts of communication. That wasn't very nice. We speak
in words that are not always clear.
I learned this well when I was reading
the Old Testament in Hebrew for the first time. We would come
to a passage and the dictionary or professor would say, "This
is a word we don't know what it means. We have a context and
can guess, but we really don't know." Fortunately most of
these words are in obscure passages describing buildings or places.
Yet just like the receptionist the scholars will say, "I
am not sure what this is, but I can guess."
Sometimes you don't have to guess. At
a recent session meeting we were going over the agenda for our
upcoming retreat. On the agenda was the "plenary."
One of the session members spoke up and said, "all right,
what does this word "plenary" mean?" Our conversation
was telling. I responded, "it means altogether or full."
"Well," the elder said, "why didn't you just say
that?"
Why? This is a great question and the
classic question of interpretation. Why did you choose this word
instead of that one? Why did you choose plenary instead of saying
full or altogether? The first answer would be a question of preference.
I delight in the plenary and find full or altogether each a bit
clumsy in sound and meaning. If you spend as much time with words
as I do you start to develop preferences. The second answer would
be one of condition. I have been conditioned to use words of
Latin origin as opposed to the more literal and graphic Germanic
ones.
Our language can be understood this way.
English can be explained as a battle or struggle between two
competing sources. The words we speak in our everyday have two
basic sources: Latin or Romance on the one hand, and Germanic
on the other. Now of course it is not always as neat as that,
but in point of fact it holds true more times than not. Inside
our speech and our words there is a struggle between the nuanced
and complex Latin and the simple and earthy German.
A great example of this would be the
word "hug", which is of Germanic origin, and the word
"embrace", which is of Latin origin. Now a hug is a
hug. How many of us have not heard a grandparent or a relative
say, "come over here and give me a hug?" While I would
assume that none of us have ever heard "come over here and
give me an embrace." The words are literally interchangeable,
but not really, not in real life. When you want a hug or give
a hug or receive a hug, you are getting wrapped arms and pressed
bodies. There is a sense of love and togetherness. I have heard
people say, "That was not a real hug. What is the matter?"
For a hug demands a kind of basic, earthy holding of one another.
Now embrace can be a hug. But it can
also be a whole series of other things. An embrace can be polite
where a hug cannot. Yet an embrace can be much deeper and filled
with meaning that a hug can't quite reach. When crew of the Carl
Vinson returns here, there will most likely be embracing and
maybe some hugging as well. The embracing is more complex and
profound, nuanced and powerful. If I were gone for months on
a ship that was placed in the midst of a great conflict I wouldn't
hug my wife and children upon returning; I would embrace them.
Embrace though has even more meanings.
You can embrace an idea; find something embracing; embrace yet
remain aloof; and so on. The point here is that a hug is a simple
idea whose synonym is not. Embrace is a complex notion that has
lots of possibilities. In our language and our speech, we can
say both. One leaves little room for doubt, the other demands
interpretation.
No where does this struggle come to the
fore more often than in the challenge of translating what was
spoken in other languages into English. Translation is always
a challenge, but from time to time it becomes a real sticky wicket.
Sometimes the challenge is cultural. By now we all know that
when President Kennedy expressed his solidarity to the people
of West Berlin by saying, "Ich bin ein Berliner," he
was in point saying, "I am a jelly role." Given the
fact that German wasn't his native tongue, the larger point was
kept. Sometimes the challenge is historical.. Words change in
meaning over. Listen to a teenager describe his or her day without
a keen understanding of the emerging adjectives they use and
you are lost.
Perhaps the most intriguing place I have
come across this was in a Danish word that Soren Kierkegaard
uses in writings. The work in Danish is saleighed. Now what exactly
does saleighed mean has been the struggle of his translators
and the scholars who have looked to this most dynamic of theologians
for answers. The best we can come to in English is to combine
some words. On the one side the word simply means happiness.
There is a kind of being right, good, pleasant, content: happy.
Yet on the other "saleighed" conveys a notion of all
importance, of profound connection to God, of faith. And when
you bring in the notion of faith for Kierkegaard you come to
passion.
For Kierkegaard faith meant passion,
living your live with a profound bent, a sense of unyielding
devotion, yet willingness to suffer. In English passion conveys
all these meaning because it is one of our Latin words. Passion
means to suffer with, to be intimately related to, to endure
yet endure with a purpose. Hence to be passionate about something
means you are devoted to something with a great conviction.
Saleighed though is not just devotion
and conviction; it is also the simply being happy. It is both
at the same time. Hence when we translate the word we need to
struggle in English by bringing together opposing tendencies
and say, happy passion. It sounds strange doesn't it? It should.
For we rarely mix the two strains of our language together. On
the whole we speak in simple terms, or we leave these aside and
speak with complex one. We speak of hugs or embraces, but not
both at the same time.
Saleighed though demands we put them
together if we are going to understand. In the same way, so does
the baptism of Jesus. The words recorded in Matthew transcend
a simple rendering, but are lost if we let them become too esoteric.
On the one hand Jesus goes to the river as a sinner. Although
without sin, we must never forget that he walked to the water
as one receiving forgiveness. There wasn't a separate line for
messiahs at the Jordan. All came for forgiveness and were washed
in the water. He came as a man like all the others, simple, humbly,
and without any restrictions. John tried to impose some sort
of complexity and Jesus stopped him. The complexity comes after
the baptism in the words from the heaven. "This is my son,
my beloved, in whom I am well pleased." With these words
the simple is challenged by the complex. Jesus is called "agapetos."
This means the one who is loved in a way that transcends a simple
definition. To be beloved, the beloved of God has a meaning and
possibility all its own.
Hence it is very difficult for us to
try to define or describe exactly what is happening at the baptism.
For is we stay with the simple notion of being freed from sin,
the notion of not feeling guilty (there is a good Germanic word),
we miss the complexity, the agapetos, the beloved of God. I believe
the best way to understand this passage is borrowing the Danish
word saleighed from Kierkegaard. At the baptism there is a moment
of happy passion. There is simple delight in freedom. Have you
ever felt set free from guilt? Have you ever lived a moment where
something that was wrong was made right? What a great moment
that is. It is a moment of simple pleasure and relief. How about
when you find out your fears were not realized? Something you
thought was terrible, turns out not to be so terrible after all.
Oh, the sweetness, the happiness. In the promise of baptism we
have this. In baptism we are made right with God. We are freed
and forgive. Our sins are washed away, again and again and again,
if only we would come to the water.
At baptism though there is also this
profound and complex notion of God's love. That when we come
out of the water we are not the same person we were before. We
have changed, we have become agapetos, a beloved with all the
complexity involved. Our lives 6 now have a "happy passion."
Do they? Does your life have a "happy
passion?" Is there a sense of saleighed? It is easy to have
one or the other. Truly, it is easy to find happiness. Simple
delights and pleasures abound in our world. And it is just as
easy to find something to be passionate about, to take with all
seriousness and devotion, to love with a passion. Yet, how often
do you really see these two combined? How many people do you
see with a happy passion? Do you see yourself that way?
Words are often confusing. Life can be
ambiguous and "Complex. What seems simple can often be less
than truly satisfying and what is truly satisfying can often
come with great hardship. Saleighed. At the Jordan we have a
picture not only I of Jesus, but of the life we are promised.
A life of simple freedom, freedom from guilt and shame; and,
a life of passion, a life of being beloved. You are the beloved
of God. You are the ones Christ says, this is one of mine, the
one I love. We are freed from guilt. Amen. Yet we are the beloved
of God. Amen and Amen. Saleighed.
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