Once a month I join the B’mont duffers in a ‘men’s bible study (and lunch).’ We’ve been stepping through the letter to the Ephesians, yesterday looking at the fourth chapter. Following New Testament Ray’s example, I’ve adopted a basic approach to it: provide necessary historical info then ask ‘whaddya hear?’ and ‘whaddya gonna do with what you’ve heard?’ It’s a pretty cool approach–’specially considering the amount of time I used to put in preparing seminary-type lectures–and I’m freer to jump in as one of the participants with my own take and questions about it.

‘Course I still have to prepare a bit, so on a whim spent a couple of hours Saturday reading the chapter in Greek. Well, actually reading it in my Greek ‘interlinear’ which has the English meanings printed exactly below the Greek text, to hell with English grammatical sense. I know just enough Greek to catch a sense of what’s happening in the translation, though not enough to ask ‘where is the bathroom?’ But I think it’s good to swim in foreign waters, as it were, being reminded that this stuff was spoken in a culture on the other side of the world 2000 years ago. Among other things this means that translation is a living process, equal parts scholarship, artistry, dialogue, and faith. And sometimes the results are funky, even in the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) I use exclusively as holy writ. I was caught by these verses:

Now this I affirm and insist on in the Lord: you must no longer live as the Gentiles live, in the futility of their minds. They are darkened in their understanding, alienated from the life of God because of their ignorance and hardness of heart. They have lost all sensitivity and have abandoned themselves to licentiousness, greedy to practice every kind of impurity.

They have ‘lost all sensitivity’? What’s this–group therapy? They are ‘greedy to practice’? What the hell’s that? When I read stuff like that, I get a whiff of funky translation and on checking sure enough was proven right. Here’s what it really says: τινες ἀπηλγηκότες ἑαυτοὺς παρέδωκαν τῇ ἀσελγείᾳ εἰς ἐργασίαν ἀκαθαρσίας πάσης ἐνπλεονεξίᾳ. And everybody thinks it’s all about sex. Ha!

I took my questions to the duffers’ discussion–what’s this ’sensitivity’ business about?–and got exactly the silence anticipated, given the ‘insensitive licentiousness’ so many of us practiced in the good old days before lifetime commitments (dabblin’ around, as it were). So I read the Greek interlinear literal: who having put away remorse gave themselves to lewdness for practice of every impurity with (in) greediness. Geezers harrumphing–’well that’s a big difference! having put away remorse. Means a different thing. . . .Yup, yup, yup.’ In East Texas sensitivity blows, but we sure can understand remorse (being the topic, I’m pretty sure, of nearly every country-western song ever written, a la the Statler Brothers’ plaintiff ‘I’m sorry you had to be the one to say I’m sorry to me’). Not much discussion required there, so we knocked the funky translation about greed around a little bit–greedy lewdness? lewd greediness? what the hell?

I respect these guys enough to actually want to know what they hear in my sermons, so asked them about my, oh, probably weekly references to the poor and what came to their mind. ‘Panhandlers’ was the immediate and unanimous response. In fact, it was the exclusive response, though they support very active food pantry type of work and as well are involved with the global fair trade efforts. The knowledge of poverty was there, but the only face it wears are street bums. So we had to do a brief introduction to reality, the working poor, and then the systemic nature of poverty, including ‘who speaks for the poor when laws are passed?’ And that was kind of the show-stopper, ’cause we’d run out of time, though I did get a brief coda in on our ‘lobbying’ office in D.C., who are charged with doing exactly that (http://www.elca.org/Our-Faith-In-Action/Justice/Advocacy/Advocacy-Ministries.aspx). And now I also gotta think about how to incarnate the real poor in sermons. Rats. Stereotypes are a bitch to correct.

I woke up Monday morning still bothered by the funky translation so called Obe Wan Marlin who knows all things Greek, Chinese, and experiential, given his many many many years but he wasn’t in. I snagged New Testament Ray up there in Chicago just before he was headed to class who did a quick trip through his lexicon about the word funkily known as either ‘remorse’ or ‘insensitivity’ and he added ‘callousness’; which got me to firing off about ‘callous greed and self-indulgence, let us consider the fuckheads of finance who not only crashed the system but even now are getting higher bonuses than last year’s record and the health insurance corporations.’ We commiserated, but he had to get to class so wound things up with one of those classic NT Raylogisms: ‘if you turn your back to the things about which God is concerned God turns his back on you and you are left alone, driven by your own passions.’ Oh, right: without the spectacles of God you can’t see beyond your own bubble. And thusly enbubbled you are the helpless servant of fear and greed–the economists have at least that much right.

So it’s the vision thing: where are you going to look? At Sunday’s study the duffers said the whole God thing is lived out horizontally in our connections to others: God points to where we should look. My own comment was that I become more and more aware that I will take only human relationships with me into eternity.

Nifty as the duffers are, we’re still in East Texas, bubba, and the crowds weren’t exactly high-fivin’ it over the Nobel Peace Prize being awarded to President Obama, with my guns n flags n Rush brothers whining ‘what has he done to deserve it?’ Which actually is a good question, though I have my doubts about the utility of a rational answer, but went searching for one anyways, and discovered that the Nobel Committee is unrepentant in acknowledging it as a political statement: it’s a peace award, whaddya expect? Peace is intrinsically political. Oh, and the award is only given to living people who in the committee’s estimation have had the most impact in working to bring peace to the world during the year. Obama has changed the way the world talks, with his ‘politics of decency and mutual respect’ as I’ve heard it put.

It’s the vision thing, with which as a preacher I am very cool, and as a citizen I rejoice after the rank pornography–the remorseless licentiousness of greed and war-making that has been the vision of politics since the beginning of this century. We have been led through a vision of filth, so, yeah, gimme decency and mutual respect among nations and their politicians. And then we can deal with aberrant behavior.

Of course the irony is that at this moment the Noble Peace Prize award-winner is considering sending another 40,000 troops to Afghanistan.

Still the vision awaits its time. How shall we live it?

Larry