Isaiah 51:1-6 Psalm 138
Translation from one language and one culture in another time is sometimes very challenging, and sometimes it is impossible to translate exact meanings.
I once heard a lecture by a Wycliffe Bible translator, a group committed to translating the Bible into all of the languages in the world.
And she mentioned a translation problem. She was translating the Bible into a Polynesian language in a remote culture that had no access with the rest of the world. So, here was the problem. How does one translate lamb or Lamb of God into a culture that has no sheep or lambs or even cows? The translation solution was to go to their word for "pig" because they only had pigs that would correspond to the function of lamb in Hebrew Scriptures. And how ironic and anti-kosher was that? Behold the "pig" of God? One can appreciate the translation dilemmas.
The Gospel writers had similar problems. They had to translate oral traditions that arose in the Aramaic language of Jesus into other languages and at a much later period in different locations to many different people who had no knowledge or connection with the Palestinian situation in the lifetime of Jesus.
What did the writer of Matthew know? He knew that the gathering around Jesus had grown into a Movement which initially tried to convince the members of synagogue that Jesus as the Messiah was the new teaching of Judaism. This failed; the Jesus Movement was separated from the synagogues and became house gatherings, and there would have been multiple house gatherings in cities like Rome, and so the word ekklesia or church became the word of choice. It had dual meanings; it meant "called out of," which is what followers of Jesus felt, but it also was a political term for geographical district in a city, what we might call a "ward." Ironically, churches use the words parish and congregation for designating their gatherings and the LDS refer to their local gatherings as "wards."
What else did the Matthew writer know? The writer knew that Jerusalem had been destroyed and that the Jesus Movement had become stealthily spreading into the cities of the Roman Empire. The writer knew that Peter and Paul had become prominent leaders in the churches in Rome and that they had died martyr's deaths in times of Roman persecution. What would be more expressive of the gates of hell than facing the persecution of a cruel tyrant Nero, who supposedly fiddled while Rome burned and blamed it on the Christians. Did the Jesus Movement die after the death of Jesus? No. Did the Christian Church Movement die after Peter and Paul were martyred in Rome. No. Did the gates of hell prevail against the church? No.
This is what the writer of the Gospel of Matthew knew. This writer knew like St. Paul, the experience of the Risen Christ through the awareness of the Holy Spirit. This writer knew that the presentation of Peter as a disciple in the school of Jesus was a learning method for all initiates within the Christian communities. Through experience, each Christian comes to make the same confession of Peter. "For me, Jesus, you are the Messiah, God's anointed and you are the son of the living God." Not like the son of a dead Caesar who was called son of a god, a dead god.
And for each student like Peter to come to make the confession about Jesus, therein is found not just the foundation of the church but the continuation of the church even to the city of Rome, and even Nero as the agent of the devil could not stand against the continuing success of the church.
Can we appreciate how the writer of Matthew connected his knowledge of the success of the church under the leadership of Paul and Peter to their encounter with Jesus Christ.
St. Paul believed that identity with the death and resurrection Christ gave a person the power of being a living sacrifice. What does being a living sacrifice mean? It means the experience of an interior power to die to unworthy selfishness and allow for the grace of ministry to enter one's life. One ministers to other when one can "check one's ego at the door." With the life of being living sacrifices, what happens in the community? The orchestra of Christian gifts; prophecy, exhorting, teaching, generosity, leadership, diligence, compassion and cheerfulness. How does the orchestration of Christian community happen? It happens because people with encounters of the Risen Christ learn how to be "living sacrifices." How can I continue to life in positive and serving way without dying? By identifying with the power to cease to live selfishly and receive the power to live with generosity and acceptance of the equal value of the ministry of all within the fellowship.
Will the gates of hell prevail against the church of St. Mary's-in-the-Valley? Will the pandemic? No they won't. Why? Because we will continue to live in our confession of Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God, who makes us alive, here and now.
Let us continue to find ways to be "living sacrifices," totally alive because of the cheerful compassion we've learned from Christ. Amen.
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