(Delivered to Berowra Uniting Church on 17 April 2005)
There has been a considerable amount of attention placed on the appropriate use of language over the past decade. Many people bemoan the loss of language amidst modern slang and the over-abundance of market buzzwords and meaningless psycho-babble. But that form of bemoaning has been with us for centuries. Language evolves and we should expect that some words will change their meaning and that some lose their currency to be replaced by others.
More significantly, we have seen a move towards the use of gender-neutral terms to avoid the implication that only males can achieve or participate in certain activities. So, for instance, we have chair-people instead of chairmen, supervisors instead of foremen, flight attendants instead of stewardesses.
I once had a maths teacher called Mr Chapman, who suggested that we call him Mr PersonPerson!
The English language does not deal very well with non-gender-specific personal pronouns. It’s OK for the plurals – they, them, their – but in our modern usage we are still trying to figure out how to restructure sentences to avoid the generic use of he, she, his and hers.
Within the church we have been re-thinking a lot of our religious language too. Most notably, whether to refer to God in purely masculine terms. I don’t know of anyone who thinks that God is literally a male, but it is still hard to remove that implication from the way I speak.
In the Uniting Church’s Insights magazine there has been recent articles suggesting that we need to be more aware of how our religious language sounds in the ears of an increasingly non-Christian society. How are people to make sense of “salvation”, “repentance”, and “being washed in the blood of the lamb”. The latest issue of Insights refers to two books on the topic.
Which brings us to the readings we heard from the Bible today.
Jesus says “I am the good shepherd”
And Ps 23 says “The Lord is my shepherd”
I’m sure there have been countless sermons on what it means to envisage Jesus as a shepherd. Back in 1984 I gave a sermon on these same Bible passages – quite embarrassing when I re-read it recently – outlining what it meant for us to be sheep.
Given the difference between sheep farmers today and a first-century shepherd, it takes some explanation to make this pastoral image meaningful. But it can be done.
But what about the image of “Lord”? Can that be explained today in a way that makes sense to un-churched ears, as well as portraying something accurate about God’s character?
Are appellations such as Lord, King, Almighty appropriate any more? Do they convey what we really intend about God and Jesus? Or are they simply archaic leftovers from a culture and a tradition that no longer has relevance?
I don’t think the title “Lord” does make sense any more without substantial explanation. That’s probably true of many words we hold dear. We will sing a hymn later with more “thy’s” and “leadeth’s” than you can poke a stick at – and to some people here today that will make the hymn a bit of a joke, if not such an annoying distraction that singing it involves no worship at all.
I’ll be a bit radical today and say that I don’t even think the word “Christian” conveys to most people the meaning we would want it to.
But back to the word “Lord” What connotations does “Lord” carry to modern Australian ears?
- We still have Lord Mayors
- We hear of English Lords, but typically see them as obsolete.
- You can be drunk as a lord
- You can lord it over someone
I did what all modern Australians would do – I looked up references to “Lord” on the Internet using Google. Here’s what I found:
- Lord of the Rings
- A paid add telling me that Jesus Christ is Lord of Canada
- Michael Flatley’s ‘Lord of the Dance’
- I was directed to ebay to see whether there was any “Lord” for sale
A dictionary I looked up said that a lord was “A man of high rank in a feudal society or in one that retains feudal forms and institutions”. Do we want the church to be seen in those terms?
Within these walls, we share some degree of commonality in terms of shared ideas and words. There is a certain feeling of familiarity and comfort in our traditional words. We feel at home with thinking of God and Jesus as Lord, in fact it gives a something of a satisfying, warm glow.
But we cannot expect people outside the church to hear the term “Lord” and feel that same warm glow. “Lord” to many is not just archaic, but dictatorial, too masculine, and oppressive. Do we want to promote a view of God as an English aristocrat, a feudal ruler, or an oppressive tyrant?
Or should we should stop using words like “Lord” to refer to God? That seems to me to be throwing the baby out with the bath-water. While we probably do want to avoid some of the connotations of “Lord”, but we can do that by being sure *we* understand what the title means when applied to God and being able to explain that to others.
So what *do* we mean by claiming that “the Lord is my shepherd” and “Jesus Christ is Lord”?
None of you will mistake me for a Hebrew or Greek scholar, and maybe you’ve heard this before, but I’d like to pass on a few comments about Biblical translation because it gives some useful insight into the choice of words in the English Bibles that we read today.
In the Old Testament, there are two main words translated as “Lord”. The first is a name rather than a title. It is the Tetragrammaton – the four Hebrew letters YHWH. This may have been pronounced Yahweh, but no-one really knows. The ancient Jews would not have spoken this word at all, because of the holiness of God’s name.
In Hebrew script, only the consonants are ever written. There were no written vowels, and so God’s name was written as simply the four letters YHWH. Since the Jews were not allowed to speak it, no-one any longer knows what vowels would have originally been inserted between the YHWH.
The other Hebrew word translated as “Lord” in the Old Testament is adonai. This is a more generic term for a lord, my lord, or perhaps even father.
Many English Bibles show the difference between these two terms by rendering Yahweh in small capitals – L-O-R-D – but just capitalising the first letter of adonai – L-o-r-d. There are also numerous verses in which these two words are used together. Some versions translate that combination as “the Lord God”, while others use “Sovereign Lord”.
Now the term “Jehovah” is an interesting one. Since YHWH is unpronounceable, it makes it difficult to have a public reading of the scriptures. Jewish practice is to read YHWH as adonai, that is, instead of using God’s name, they say “Lord” . But it has also become common to take the vowels from adonai and insert them into the YHWH, and that combination, when transliterated into English, gave us “Jehovah”.
In the Greek New Testament, there are also a couple of words translated to “Lord”, but the main one is “kurios”. This is certainly used to refer to God, but also has the more general meaning of a master or owner.
Kurios is frequently used as a title for Jesus, so we often see “the Lord Jesus” in the New Testament. But it is hard to be certain in what sense that term is applied. In some cases, perhaps it was meant only as a term of respect for Jesus’ earthly authority. In other cases it is much more clearly an acclamation of divinity. As we read a few weeks ago, after Thomas meets the risen Jesus, he declares “My Lord and my God!”.
What I find interesting in today’s readings is the juxtaposition of the term “Lord” with the term “shepherd”. The Lord – God himself – is my shepherd. And Jesus, whom Paul refers to as the image of the invisible God – God made visible – Jesus, is the Good Shepherd.
When we think of Jesus as Lord, the parable John relates in the Gospel reading prompts us to think of his Lordship in terms of the caring shepherd who knows each sheep personally. Not as a bullying authoritarian or an egotistical dictator, but as the gate to safety and as a guardian who would willingly die for us.
And note that this is not just a New Testament concept. The same idea is presented in Ps 23. The God of the Old Testament also wanted it to be known that his Lordship was displayed in acts of caring and kindness.
Where does that leave us as we try to maintain both the truths on which our faith is based, and some degree of relevance to those outside the Church? Seems to me that we do need to be careful with the terms we use and not assume that people will share our understanding of their meaning. In some cases we would communicate the Gospel far more effectively if we changed some of the words we use to present it. But it also seems to me that we should be prepared to explain why some words, such as “Lord”, are important to us.
To be the servant of the Lord is a strange concept in this culture of individualism. But it could be for us a prophetic concept, calling people out of their self-centredness to see that allegiance to a higher authority can be a bonus rather than a burden.
Many may think that swearing allegiance to a Lord leads to a form of slavery, but that depends on the nature of the Lord. If the Lord was one who understood our human condition with all its shame and frailties, who had walked where we walk, who wanted to shepherd us to the greenest pastures, and was willing to die to protect us from harm – if we could explain that to people, then there may be far less reluctance to becoming a follower of the Lord.
Benediction
Go, blessed with
- the goodness and mercy of God, our Father and Mother,
- the comfort and love of Jesus Christ,
- the insight and guidance of the Holy Spirit.