‘Understanding’, a sermon preached in King’s College Chapel, Sunday 7 May 2017 by Richard Noble based on Ecclesiastes 10.16-20 and Matthew 19.30-20.16
May the spoken and written word lead us to understand Jesus, the living Word and the light of the World. Amen.
What is it about The King James Bible that has left such an indelible impression on our language? Such as:
‘Sound doctrine’; ‘The blind leading the blind’; ‘The left hand not knowing what the right is doing’; ‘Seeing the light’; ‘Old wives tales’; ‘A little bird told me’.
These six phrases, apart from the last, are taken from the index in my book, The Writing on the Wall, Everyday Phrases from the King James Bible 1. They are among nearly five hundred and sixty on its website and relate to 'understanding' 2. Everyone knows what they mean, but few realise sayings like 'old wives tales' come from the Bible. As for the little bird, it features in the last verse of this morning's Old Testament lesson from Ecclesiastes, with a warning to be careful what you say about people:
Curse not the king, no not in thy thought; and curse not the rich in thy
bedchamber: for a bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath
wings shall tell the matter.
The King James Bible, or Authorised Version is still used today, as here in Chapel. Over 400 years ago the King had his Bible distributed throughout the land. The impact on our language and culture has been phenomenal.
The first phrase on my list, sound doctrine, comes at the beginning of Chapter 4, Paul's Second Letter to Timothy. The passage has two more such phrases, the quick and the dead and having itching ears.
I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.
We live in a world of fake news, post truth and sound bites where populism is driven by tweets and tabloid headlines. Moral values are ignored by the itching ears of today, eager to hear and possess the latest fads and gadgets, quick fixes and worldly successes. Worse still, the biblical foundations of our values are being swept away by the advance of secularism. Scientific materialism is undermining two thousand years of Christianity. Long-held doctrines of Christian tradition are under assault. The Bible is disappearing from our schools.
A few weeks ago, I was at a men's breakfast group of Christians, non-believers and enquirers. A self-professed atheist asked: Will the West become more secular and less believing as the gaps in our scientific knowledge are filled? If so, where will we find our compass for moral and ethical guidance?
In 2 Timothy, Paul warns of a day when scripture and sound doctrine will become mere fables. Against this has to be weighed the ethical progress summed up in the ideology of bodies like the United Nations. Some of the most powerful world influences for this global high ground have been the concepts of freedom, fairness, compassion and grace that are enshrined in the Christian Bible.
The soundness of Christian dogmas and doctrines is called into question when they meet head on with new understanding, based on scientific observation of the physical world. The triumph of Galileo's discoveries over the geocentric teaching of the Church was a famous historical example. Sound doctrine is a perceptual term. Atheists, agnostics and secularists seem to have their own creeds which even verge on being religions themselves:
There is no god.
If there is a god, he or she is unknowable.
Religion should be independent of state, justice and government.
Moral and other choices should be made solely with regard to the well-being of this present life. Everyone has a right to fairness and democracy.
But, and this is a big but, what about the quick and the dead? Materialists have little to say about the living virtues of beauty, goodness and spirituality; forgiveness, compassion and sacrificial love; or anything about an expectation of life after death.
The language of the Bible overflows with metaphors, vivid parables and meaningful stories that contrast good with bad, righteous intentions with evil, and forgiveness with revenge. The Hebrew language of the Old Testament is itself a figurative language, richly able to express these abstract notions. When King James asked his translators to make a word for word rendering into English, this imagery came across into our language and left its imprint. I believe the multitude of everyday phrases derived from the Bible is living testimony to its spiritual riches.
Can rationalism and Christian spirituality ever find common ground? In every age, conscientious study of the Bible seems to unearth ever deeper layers of understanding. Similarly, the enquiries and discoveries of science seem to take us ever closer to an explanation of physical existence. Yet for science, the identity of a prime mover seems for ever elusive. For religion, a convincing intellectual argument for the existence of God seems beyond grasp. Some scientific theories seem like leaps of faith, with little prospect of ever being demonstrated by measurement. Is it at this point that some scientists cross the line into religious belief and discover the riches of the Bible, that God in the person of Jesus is knowable? Some nuclear physicists, astrophysicists and even genome scientists have done this 3.
A wonder of the Bible is the deeper understanding of its figurative language and meaningful stories, as they are interpreted anew in each generation. In the New Testament lesson, you heard five more colloquial phrases: the last shall be first, and the first last; the eleventh hour; many be called, but few chosen; the heat of the day; and evil eye. Can fresh understanding be uncovered in this parable of Jesus?
Many years ago I worked in Liverpool where memories of the hiring pens for dock labourers were still raw, a situation not unlike that portrayed in the parable. Wages were pitiful and, if not picked, a worker would return to his family empty handed. This could go on for days while the family starved.
Commentaries on this parable vary widely, depending on cultural backgrounds. It is set in the Middle East where little has changed and according to a recent book Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes4 similar scenes persist to this day. The penny refers to 'The Wage' , a basic day's pay. An employer would have an agent to do his hiring and firing who would know the manpower needed. By midday, with the sun at its hottest, any left unhired would have dispersed, unless desperate for work. At the day's end those hired first would receive The Wage and go home. Others would be paid for hours worked. Any going home empty handed would be a desperate disappointment to their hungry family.
In this story, the owner himself does the hiring and makes four more journeys, even in the heat of the day, to see if any are left unemployed. On his first return he selects some of them, pledging to pay only 'what is right' , leaving the rest to be taken on by someone else. He repeats this process twice more before returning yet again, at the eleventh hour, to check if anyone's left. Surprised, he asks why they are standing around with nothing to do. They reply sadly that nobody wants them. The owner doesn't say: "Here, take this to feed your hungry family" but gives them work, the one thing that will boost their self-esteem. He invites them into his vineyard with no promise of payment other than 'whatsoever is right'.
At the time of reckoning when the day's work is over, the owner takes the distinguished title 'Lord of the vineyard'. Jesus' teaching is rich in metaphors of vineyard, vine, its fruit, and pruning. The resonance of this title is unmistakable. A new character enters the story, his steward, who is instructed to pay each man The Wage. The order of payment is reversed and the labourers who worked through the heat of the day watch resentfully as the tail-enders each receive The Wage, in full.
This parable has less to do with worldly justice and everything to do with the compassionate grace of the Lord of the Vineyard who himself, with sacrificial love, worked through the heat of the day to seek out those in need. It also has much to say about the evil eye, or bad attitude, of those who thought they could earn their way to favour. This parable's context is the question "What must I do to inherit eternal life in the Kingdom of heaven". Readers of the Bible are left, with God's Spirit as guide, to reach their own understanding.
The Bible is my own mainstay and I have the privilege of doing Bible study with men in prison. Sometimes a man will say that being sent to prison, and finding Jesus there, was the best thing that had ever happened. The last becomes first.
Amen.
- Noble, Richard, The Writing on the Wall, Everyday Phrases from the King James Bible (Sacristy Press 2015) pp 100-104 www.sacristy.co.uk
- The Writing on the Wall: www.thewritingonthewall.org.uk KJV Sayings: www.kjvsayings
- e.g. Nuclear physicist: John Charlton Polkinghorne, (1930–) wikipedia (John Polkinghorne) Astrophysicist: Hugh Ross (1945–) wikipedia (Hugh Ross, astrophysicist) Genome scientist: Francis Collins (1950–) wikipedia (Francis Collins)
- Bailey, Kenneth E, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes, Cultural Studies in the Gospels (SPCK 2008) pp 355-364 spckpublishing.co.uk www.ivpres