Sermons

Sun, Jun 14, 2020

Lost in translation?

Series:Sermons
Duration:13 mins 9 secs

In a radio interview this week… 

the Prime Minister asserted, “there was no slavery in Australia”.

He has since made a qualified correction…

but only after an ‘argumentation’ of historians called him out.

Yes, slavery was legally abolished in the British Empire in eighteen hundred and seven.

But what do you call the practice of removing Aboriginal children from their families…

and sending them to work as farm labourers…

or house servants…

for which they received no meaningful wage…

and under conditions in which they had no control over their lives or bodies?

What do you call it when Pacific Islanders were coaxed into boarding ships…

or, in many cases, kidnapped…

and transported to Queensland to work in the sugar industry…

never to see their families again?

As one commentator put it, “Blackbirding, stolen wages, indentured service, indentured labour are all words that have been used to avoid the harsh bite” of the term, ‘slavery’.

 

How we choose to describe something reflects a range of values and agendas.

Our language choices reflect values and sensibilities…

and betray our sense of power and privilege…

even our politics.

All of that is also true when it comes to translating from one language into another.

Indeed, we speak of the “politics of translation”.

Given that a particular word in any language has a range of nuances and meanings…

which one we choose to use when we translate into another language…

will reflect our biases and assumptions…

and can even end up being an imposition upon the word.

Nowhere is that more true––

I would argue––

than when we come to translate the letters of Paul…

and especially his letter to the Romans.

This is arguably the worst translated––

and the most poorly interpreted––

work in the Bible.

For a start, the first half of Romans is written in a particular literary style…

which involves a back-and-forth dialogue…

between the author and an imaginary opponent.

In the case of Romans, Paul is arguing with a proud, zealous, conservative Israelite…

who is opposed to the inclusion of Gentiles in the church…

and considers them inferior.

Given that Paul was using this argumentative style…

he actually disagrees with much of what he writes…

and is endeavouring to refute it.

The problem is, ancient Greek has no punctuation.

So, we can’t see when he’s quoting.

He’s doing it, for example, in the second to last verse of our reading this morning.

So, even our reading is…

primary…

intended as a rejoinder or a rebuttal to this imaginary Israelite…

who was convinced of his ‘right standing’ with God…

and boasted of it.

And that’s why Paul’s response…

here…

is to suggest that we can only boast in the sufferings we endure for our faith…

and the hope of God’s glory, or honour, being revealed.

And while, I think, that has relevance…

especially for those Christians, today, who are wont to see themselves as “saved”…

and everyone else who doesn’t share their beliefs or “lifestyle” as destined for hell…

I don’t really want to go into that.

The real problem for us––

with our reading this morning––

is how Paul’s Greek has been translated and interpreted.

So much of this language has been shaped and determined by the Reformation––

by people like Luther and Calvin––

reflecting their issues and their politics…

rather than what Paul was actually trying to say.

And, in particular, they failed to understand the relationship between God and Israel.

What the Reformers did… 

was interpret all of the language of the Hebrew Law as if it were legal language––

shaped by sixteenth-century European legal thinking.

As such, we get God as a harsh, impartial judge…

seeking to impose penalties on a criminally disobedient people.

That is how they understood “sin”.

That is why they saw Jesus’ death as a vicarious punishment.

That is why they thought that what humanity needed was ‘justification’.

But that’s not how the Law operated for Israel.

A closer analogy…

is to think of the relationship between God and Israel as a marriage…

and the Law as the ‘marriage contract’.

There were expectations, from both sides––

even legal expectations.

But that wasn’t the dominant ethos.

And being faithful to the ‘marriage contract’ wasn’t a way to create a relationship––

let alone get the other party to love you––

it was how you responded to the other’s love.

It was how you committed to live because you were in this relationship.

So, rather than our translation––  

which says, “Since we are justified by faith”––

it should read, “Since we have a restored relationship by means of faithfulness”.

Paul’s argument is that the relationship between God and humanity…

which was strained––

even broken––

because of our unfaithfulness…

has been healed because of Christ’s faithfulness.

It wasn’t that Jesus died in our place…

receiving the sentence that we deserved…

so that we are acquitted.

Rather, Jesus was faithful to the covenant––

in a way that Israel had not been––

and, in so doing, restored the relationship.

Paul’s response, then, is to exhort us: “Let us live in harmony and wholeness with God”––

which is what the term translated as “peace” meant in Hebrew thought.

 

Furthermore, Paul adds that it is through 

Jesus Christ that…

We have obtained access to this grace in which we stand”.

The Greek, however, is better rendered as…

“We have an audience [with God] and access to [God’s] grace, in which we now exist”.

Although Paul understood the relationship in personal rather than legal terms… 

that doesn’t mean he saw it as an equal relationship.

The underlying image of God, here, is of a king.

And not a modern-day, wimpy sort of king…

but an old-fashioned sort;

an oriental despot or a mediaeval potentate:

all-powerful;

to be respected, feared, and obeyed;

someone who was utterly unapproachable for the ordinary person.

The image of God is of a king whom no one would dare approach.

And what Paul is saying is that because Jesus was faithful to God…

he’s able to intercede for us;

he’s able to get us an audience with God;

he’s able to put in a good word for us…

so that we might be restored to the King’s favour;

that we might share in the King’s honour and glory…

and reap the benefits of his reign.

That, according to Paul, is what Jesus Christ has done.

That, according to Paul, is what the death of Christ meant.

Now, personally, I don’t find that a particularly helpful image.

It doesn’t sit well either culturally or theologically.

But it’s an image that would have made sense when Paul wrote…

and to the people to whom Paul wrote.

So… 

while I appreciate the thrust of Paul’s assertion––

namely, that we need to understand our relationship to God in personal terms…

and not as some sort of legal contract––

his image is, ultimately, unsatisfying.

 

And yet…

having said that… 

it’s a powerful corrective to the awful theology that we have inherited from the Reformers.

It’s a powerful corrective to the idea that God is an angry, vengeful judge…

who cannot be satisfied without someone dying—

without some sort of blood sacrifice.

It’s also a powerful corrective to the assumption that––

unless I believe Jesus died for me––

I’m going to hell…

or that God will never love me.

Nothing could be further from Paul’s thought!

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