Wednesday, November 30, 2011

St. Andrew the Apostle



Patron of St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Highland Park, Pittsburgh










(Greek: Ανδρέας, Andreas), called in the Orthodox tradition Protocletos, or the First-called, is a Christian Apostle and the elder brother of Saint Peter. The name "Andrew" (from Greek : ανδρεία, manhood, or valour), like other Greek names, appears to have been common among the Jews from the second or third century B.C. No Hebrew or Aramaic name is recorded for him.

The Bible records that St Andrew was a son of Jonah, or John, (Matthew 16:17; John 1:42). He was born in Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee (John 1:44). Both he and his brother Peter were fishermen by trade, hence the tradition that Jesus called them to be his disciples by saying that He will make them "fishers of men" (Greek: ἁλιείς ἀνθρώπων, halieis anthropon). At the beginning of Jesus' public life they occupied the same house at Capernaum (Mark 1:21, 29).

From the Gospel of John we learn that Andrew was a disciple of John the Baptist, whose testimony first led him and John the Evangelist to follow Jesus (John 1:35-40). Andrew at once recognized Jesus as the Messiah, and hastened to introduce Him to his brother(John 1:41). Thenceforth the two brothers were disciples of Christ. On a subsequent occasion, prior to the final call to the apostolate, they were called to a closer companionship, and then they left all things to follow Jesus (Luke 5:11; Matthew 4:19-20; Mark 1:17-18).


Click here to read more.


ALMIGHTY God, who didst give such grace unto thy holy Apostle Saint Andrew, that he readily obeyed the calling of thy Son Jesus Christ, and followed him without delay; Grant unto us all, that we, being called by thy holy Word, may forthwith give up ourselves obediently to fulfill thy holy commandments; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.



When the Apostles went forth to preach to the Nations, Andrew seems to have taken an important part, but unfortunately we have no certainty as to the extent or place of his labours. Eusebius (Church History III.1), relying, apparently, upon Origen, assigns Scythia as his mission field: Andras de [eilechen] ten Skythian; while St. Gregory of Nazianzus (Oration 33) mentions Epirus; St. Jerome (Ep. ad Marcell.) Achaia; and Theodoret (on Ps. cxvi) Hellas. Probably these various accounts are correct, for Nicephorus (H.E. II:39), relying upon early writers, states that Andrew preached in Cappadocia, Galatia, and Bithynia, then in the land of the anthropophagi and the Scythian deserts, afterwards in Byzantium itself, where he appointed St. Stachys as its first bishop, and finally in Thrace, Macedonia, Thessaly, and Achaia. It is generally agreed that he was crucified by order of the Roman Governor, Aegeas or Aegeates, at Patrae in Achaia, and that he was bound, not nailed, to the cross, in order to prolong his sufferings. The cross on which he suffered is commonly held to have been the decussate cross, now known as St. Andrew's, though the evidence for this view seems to be no older than the fourteenth century. His martyrdom took place during the reign of Nero, on 30 November, A.D. 60); and both the Latin and Greek Churches keep 30 November as his feast.









El Greco, St. Andrew, 1606











St. Andrew's relics were translated from Patrae to Constantinople, and deposited in the church of the Apostles there, about A.D. 357. When Constantinople was taken by the French, in the beginning of the thirteenth century, Cardinal Peter of Capua brought the relics to Italy and placed them in the cathedral of Amalfi, where most of them still remain. St. Andrew is honoured as their chief patron by Russia and Scotland.




Click here to read it all in The Catholic Encyclopedia

Sunday, November 27, 2011

Advent, 2011

Annunciation

Salvation to all that will is nigh;
That All, which always is all everywhere,
Which cannot sin, and yet all sins must bear,
Which cannot die, yet cannot choose but die,
Lo, faithful virgin, yields Himself to lie
In prison, in thy womb; and though He there
Can take no sin, nor thou give, yet He will wear,
Taken from thence, flesh, which death's force may try.
Ere by the spheres time was created, thou
Wast in His mind, who is thy Son and Brother;
Whom thou conceivst, conceived; yea thou art now
Thy Maker's maker, and thy Father's mother;
Thou hast light in dark, and shutst in little room,
Immensity cloistered in thy dear womb.

John Donne (1572-1631)

Advent Sunday, 2011

Mark 13: 24-37

Good morning, friends, and on this holiday weekend we would greet one another not simply with a “Happy Thanksgiving,” but with a “Happy New Year.”

Seems a little out of synch, I know. But we are all familiar with the fact that the calendar of the Church Year in our Christian family turns on a different cycle from the secular calendar, and this Advent Sunday is the springboard, new and renewing in the seasons of our lives, as we are launched once again into the great pattern and narrative of the Holy Story. We look across the Sundays of Advent to Christmas and Epiphany, Lent and Holy Week and Easter, Pentecost and Trinity Sunday out there on the far distant horizon.

With prayers always that as we move through this deeply familiar cycle and pattern and travel this long road together once again there will be this year and each year a deepening in our minds and our hearts of knowledge and spiritual understanding, an opportunity for each one of us to grow in grace and love, in tenderness of heart and holiness of life, a spirit of mercy and forgiveness, knowing Christ and making him known, and in hopeful expectation of what God has for us in this life and in the life to come.

Having said all that, we would just say this morning that “Happy New Year” may not be the most helpful or appropriate greeting for Advent Sunday. Perhaps with the background images of holiday festivities, parties, champagne, and swinging around the dance floor to the wonderful music of Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians. “Happy.”

I love all those things about New Year’s Eve, and then a New Year’s Day of football games on the television and pork and sauerkraut and all the traditional observances of that holiday. But Advent Sunday is different, as we hear the deep poetry of Archbishop Cranmer’s collect—in my opinion anyway one of the most elegant and graceful and beautiful sentences in all the literature of the English language. For more than 500 years this the theme and guiding motif of the New Year in our Anglican family: give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility.

So we’re shopping for presents and enjoying holiday parties and wonderful meals and fun wintertime family activities, which is all fine and good. But the Church here is inviting us to begin the year together in what I would call a deeper place and a more serious place. At a point of decision-making about the fundamental values and loyalties and commitments that shape our identity. Who we are, and whose we are, and how we live that out, in our minds and our hearts, by word and deed. Casting away the works of darkness. Turning to the Father. Receiving from him as a gift, a new garment, the armour of light.

As we have our Advent wreath before us in this season we have begun to hear one version of the meaning of each of the candles and each of the weeks of this season. But just to say that from ancient days the four great themes of this season are death and judgment, heaven and hell. Four Sundays, four candles of the wreath. Which perhaps will catch us by surprise for a moment. Not the kinds of things we are especially likely to think about while we’re standing in line with the kids waiting to visit Santa at the department store. “Happy New Year” indeed! But again this ancient message of the Church to say that these are the four great topics that are essential for us to consider as we prepare ourselves to celebrate the awesome and breathtaking and even terrifying mystery of the Nativity of our Lord, and the miracle of Incarnation.

It isn’t so much about sleigh bells and snowflakes. Not even about a beautiful Church building and a magnificent choir and all the traditional gatherings of family and friends. More about cutting to the chase. About moving past gimmicks and unrealities and illusions, self-deception, superficialities, any spirit of denial. Which we all have and own in abundance. Getting down to brass tacks. Ultimate concerns. Last things. To ask what we’re really here for, anyway. Not just the presenting circumstance. The easier rationale. Of hope, a hope that is founded on something real and substantial, that comes as a gift from the only one who can give this gift, and that comes to rest in a sincere and deep place in our heart.

Death and judgment, heaven and hell. The point isn’t to stir up some kind of anxiety, some fear that a heavily armed policeman is going to swoop down upon us to catch us, to hurt us. The point is instead that death has been overcome, that the judgment is given on our behalf, that the crisis of heaven and hell has become now for us the promise of life. Forgiveness, and healing, mercy and blessing and life eternal.

Not about anxiety, not about fear. But if it could be in this new year to bring up in us instead a sense of longing. To meet the one who comes with healing in his wings, light and life. The Desire of Nations—one of his great titles. To say as we turn to this new year that what aches in us and what weighs us down shall all be lifted up and transformed. That the God who in Christ has begun this new work will bring that work to completion in a way that is beyond our understanding, but not beyond our desiring, not beyond our hope.

About that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. Beware, keep alert; for you do not know when the time will come. It is like a man going on a journey, when he leaves home and puts his slaves in charge, each with his work, and commands the doorkeeper to be on the watch. Therefore, keep away—for you do not know when the master of the house will come . . . .


Happy New Year, then, for us all, this Advent Sunday. What we’re really here for. Not far ahead, the Traveler’s Inn, the Stable, the Baby in the Manger. The Angels singing. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. Once again this year, we’ll get there before we know it. Never quite ready, but excited nonetheless. Standing on tiptoes, looking forward.

Like the Shepherds rushing down from the surrounding hill country, to see this new thing that God has done. This new thing that changes everything.

Happy New Year indeed.

Walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Advent, 2011

A lovely meditation and overview of Advent, from the Archbishop of Canterbury.


Saturday, November 26, 2011

Advent, 2011

For a couple of years now I've posted this lovely poem by Jude Simpson as an introductory meditation for Advent.


Sunday, November 20, 2011

St. Andrew the Apostle

Patronal Festival: St. Andrew the Apostle (tr. from 11/30)
Deuteronomy 30: 11-14; Psalm 19: 1-6;
Romans 10: 8b-18; Matthew 4: 18-22


Good morning all, and grace and peace on this day. Especially a warm word of welcome to visitors and friends, and of course to our good friends once again this year of the Syria Highlanders Pipe and Drum Band. It is always just so enjoyable to have you with us, and we are very glad indeed that as you share in our ministry today we are able to share with you in your support of the Shriners’ Hospitals for Children. A great cause, and thank you for your creative and meaningful service on its behalf.

By custom going back at least a few decades the people of this parish have set aside the Sunday before the Thanksgiving holiday to observe our patonal festival, the Feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, moving or “translating” the observance from its official date on the calendar, November 30, to this Sunday. This our “name day,” then, and if on Whitsunday in the spring we observe the birthday of the Church, this day is one we can lift up for our own local celebration: bagpipes and cookies and a time of celebration that stands for me anyway as something of the gateway to the season ahead, with Thanksgiving and then Advent Sunday and all the way to Christmas and the New Year ahead . . . .

I guess I would say that we don’t have any record that I know of, any that our historian Marilyn Evert has shared with me, anyway, about the process of deliberation that our parochial ancestors may have engaged in, in the winter and spring of 1836 and 1837, as they prepared to leave their spiritual home and the warm embrace of Trinity Church and to venture out to the planting of a new congregation. There are obviously lots of candidates that might have been considered.






Why Andrew? Or so we might wonder. Back in the early part of the 19th century the descendants of the hard-scrabble Scotch-Irish farmers who had settled much of this region a generation or two earlier were still one of the dominant ethnic and cultural groups, of course—though by the 1830’s the population was beginning to have a much stronger Germanic bias. And in any event, those Scotch-Irish were mostly Presbyterians, not Episcopalians. But perhaps the selection of Scotland’s patron saint was a nod in that direction.

My own preference, though, is to think about Andrew more thematically than in terms of nationality or ethnicity. Who he was as a follower of Jesus, as we meet him in the New Testament. And there of course we get just a few stories. But stories that are quite compelling. This morning’s reading from St. Matthew gives us this glimpse of the beginning of Andrew’s life as a disciple, as he and his brother Simon Peter are called from their boats by Jesus with this great vocational promise, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

In the first chapter of St. John’s gospel there is another story in which it is Andrew who meets Jesus first, and who invites his brother to come to meet Jesus, saying “We have found the Messiah.” In John also a little further on in the sixth chapter there is the story of the time when Jesus was teaching and a great crowd had gathered in a deserted place, and we read there that it was Andrew who brought to Jesus the little boy who had in his knapsack the five loaves and two fish. From which, the great miracle of the Feeding of the Multitudes. Later too in the twelfth chapter it is Andrew to whom the inquiring Greeks first come, saying first to Philip that wonderful line, “Sir, we would see Jesus.” And then Philip goes to Andrew, and it is Andrew who then brings them all to Jesus.

And stepping away from scripture, there are these ancient traditions of Andrew, in the life of the Pentecost Church, traveling out as apostle and evangelist to Scythia, which is modern Kazakhstan and Russia. And then. Martyr, as we see by the traditional X-shaped cross on which he was crucified. Witness. So as our old friend St. Francis said, “Preach always. When necessary, use words.” Clearly Andrew was proficient as an evangelist both in word and deed.

I like to think myself that all this is what was somehow rumbling around in our ancestors’ minds as the question of a patron for a new parish in the rapidly growing and expanding city of Pittsburgh was being discussed. Vibrance and vitality, stretching to reach more with the Good News, to be witnesses, in words and in action, living signs of his presence in this expanding community.

In the 1880’s there was the foundation of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, which is the oldest mission and evangelism society in the Episcopal Church. And I know just in the past couple of weeks I’ve been thinking a good deal about the time I spent in ministry at St. Andrew’s Church in State College Pennsylvania. A parish that was founded by a chapter of the Brotherhood of St. Andrew at that time at St. John’s Church in Bellefont. And I wonder how many of the “St. Andrew’s” Churches you would find across the Episcopal Church founded in the 20th Century had a beginning in that way. Probably quite a few. St. Andrew got around, and he is in this way still moving around. In the days of the Pentecost Church, and back at the beginning of the 19th century, and here with us this morning.

The Psalm appointed for the Feast of St. Andrew, Caeli enarrant, it’s Latin title, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” A great line and theme for this day, as the pipers fill this place with song.

Andrew was always meeting people, connecting with people—family, friends, co-workers, fellow-travellers, complete strangers—and day by day what his gift seemed to be was that through him and his words and his life and service, there was for them good news. It wasn’t about Andrew. He’s never the star attraction, the one at center stage or in the spotlight. But in all these stories, to meet Andrew is to find your way to Jesus. To stand in his presence and to come to know him as Lord and Savior.

We’re our own quirky expression of that I think. We would aspire to be, in this time and place. Where Christ in his gracious presence blesses us with compassion and forgiveness, healing, grace and peace, and a vision of a future hope. In the end it wasn’t ever about St. Andrew, and of course in the end it isn’t about “St. Andrew’s,” either, but about the one we meet, who calls us into relationship and discipleship and to the beginning of a new life of faith.

A hundred and seventy-four years ago or so a brave and bold group of Christian missionary people set out to begin a new work here in this our City of Pittsburgh. Not to hide the light under the bushel basket, but to shine in a new way. To declare the glory of God and to fill the heavens with new voices, as our choir and we all of us continue to sing all these years later. And to extend that word of St. Andrean invitation that has rolled on down through the years and centuries. To say, “I have someone I want you to meet. He’s the one we’ve been waiting for.”

Sunday, November 13, 2011

Twenty Second after Pentecost: Baptism

Proper 28A2
Zeph. 1: 7, 12-18; Mt 25: 14-30
Baptism of Cole Alessandro West

A hint of winter in the early morning air, and the leaves mostly down, and the afternoon turning toward night earlier and earlier, and so all the signs of the year coming to an end. Almost as though the turn of the season is trying to echo thematically the weight of this season of the Church Year, which is informally named “Pre-Advent.” Before the wheel can begin its next upward arc, it all will need to complete the cycle and fall at last into the point of rest.

The lessons this morning look to the end. The Final Accounting. The Last Judgment. Dies Irae, the Day of Wrath. When the lights come on, and when there is no place left to hide, and when we are seen and known exactly as we are. No costumes, no make-up. Zephaniah talks about those who say to themselves that “the Lord will not do good, neither will he do evil.” He’s just going to leave us alone to do as we please. Well, we’ll see. Maybe, maybe not. Perhaps that echoed as we think about the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25. To think about how in our own sense of stewardship and accountability and trust we also may live in deep denial. In the fourteenth chapter of St. Luke Jesus says, “from him to whom much has been given, much will be expected.” Yet it does seem like we live all our lives, most of the time, as though that master will never return. As though there will be no last chapter to the story. As though we will be able to keep kicking the can down the road forever. It’s hard not to make some connections here to the horrible story out of Penn State in these last days.

As they say in the Twelve Step groups, “Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt.” It is a deep and broad river, and one we all do a fair amount of swimming in . . . . If you think he isn’t coming. Well, think again.

At least that is the perspective of the Prophet, persistently the word of scripture both Old Testament and New. A call to wake up, before it’s too late. To get our act together. To put our relationships in order. Relationships to one another and our relationship to God. With honesty and integrity. Walking the walk if we’re going to talk the talk. There is a day coming, says the prophet. There is a day coming, says Jesus in the parable, when the one who returns will call us in and take out our books and check the accounts. If there is a sense of urgency that we can feel in that.

The contrast for us is pretty dramatic. Fall turns toward winter and our thoughts turn toward last things, and then all at once there is a splash of water in the font and a prayer and a dab of spiced oil. And we are drawn especially here at St. Andrew’s to turn our eyes up over the High Altar to see that lovely window by Louis Comfort Tiffany, and to hear the words of Jesus. “Bring the children, don’t turn them away.” And to see him take them up into his arms and bless them. And to hear a promise in that, God’s promise, in Jesus.

I love the T.S. Eliot poem East Coker, part of the Four Quartets series, as it begins.

In my beginning is my end. In succession
Houses rise and fall, crumble, are extended
Are removed, destroyed, restored, or in their place
Is an open field, or a factory, or a by-pass.
Old stone to new building, old timber to new fires,
Old fires to ashes, and ashes to the earth.

And the last few lines:

Love is most nearly itself
When here and now cease to matter.
Old men ought to be explorers
Here or there does not matter
We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity
For a further union, a deeper communion
Through the dark cold and the empty desolation
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.

Can we hold it all in our minds? Contradiction and mystery. Beginnings, endings, all folded in on one another. Birth and death. Decay and renewal. And this morning, God bless him indeed: Cole West. What a mystery and contradiction he is. Each one of us are. Brother, son, grandson, nephew, cousin, new Christian life here today, mid-November and not just the end but in the end the beginning, and the journey to Bethlehem and already if we can hear them in the distance over the bagpipes of St. Andrew next Sunday, the angels singing to shepherds on the hillside about this new thing God has done. And already if we can hear them from here, in all that distance, the soldiers laughing and talking among themselves, without a care in the world, as they lift their hammers and begin to drive in the nails. Contradiction and mystery. Endings and beginnings.

As Jesus asked us to do. A splash of water and a prayer and a dab of spiced oil, and a November morning. May the whole story of our salvation open in our minds and rest in our hearts. Call us to an awareness of our brokenness, stir up in us our desire to repent and be reconciled, bring us to himself in all refreshment and renewal beyond all beginnings and all endings.

Walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

St. Andrew's Lecture, 2011

The Fourteenth Annual St. Andrew's Lecture was presented last evening by Dr. Philip Harrold, Associate Professor of Church History at Trinity School for Ministry in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. The audience for the Lecture this year--which was co-sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh--included a rich mix of parishioners of our East End Episcopal and Anglican Diocese congregations, clergy, and faculty and students from Trinity School for Ministry and the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. All to commemorate and celebrate the 400th Anniversary of the publication of the King James Version of the Holy Bible. The Lecture itself was fascinating, the questions that followed were thoughtful, and the reception afterwards was most enjoyable indeed. We expect that a video file of Dr. Harrold's lecture will be available via the St. Andrew's website, www.standrewspgh.org , in the next few weeks.

Englishing the Scriptures and Evangelizing the Nation:
The Theology of Translation in the King James Bible
by Philip Harrold, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Church History
Trinity School for Ministry, www.tsm.edu

St. Andrew’s Lecture, Friday, November 11, 2011
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Highland Park, Pittsburgh, PA
[this lecture will be published in a forthcoming volume of Trinity Journal for Theology & Ministry,
Trinity School for Ministry, Executive Editor: The Rev. Dr. Grant LeMarquand]



Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light…
[from the Preface to the Authorized (King James)
Version, 1611, par. 05]

This is perhaps the most quoted line from the Preface to the Authorized (King James) Version in its original 1611 debut. It is itself a window to the mind of the King James translators and their astonishing achievement—one that we continue to celebrate even in this 400th anniversary year. It is also a window to the ongoing task of translation and the many blessings and challenges this presents to Bible readers in our own day.

In terms of its reception, the King James Version is, by far, the most successful translation of the Scriptures in the modern era. It has been “authorized” as much by its popularity as any explicit sanction from the powers of church or state. It was practically the only Bible that English-speaking Protestants read from 1670 to 1885, and only after 1986 did another English translation—the New International Version—begin to edge it out. Even in today’s burgeoning market for modern English Bibles, the ‘good ol’ King James’ retains a venerable luster, its diction still dignified, if somewhat dusty, when heard in our solemn assemblies.

But what about that dustiness? We acknowledge, of course, that the singularity and sonority of the Authorized Version are no longer the claims to fame they once were. Numerous historians and literati have acknowledged, and in some cases mourned, the loss of the King James’ near universal status. No longer do we look to this text as the principal source of a common religious language—one that always seemed old and therefore reliable, uniquely deserving of God’s word. That is not my concern this evening, however. While its decline in status is itself a fascinating topic for discussion, its remarkable ascendency presents us with quite another range of issues that are equally pressing and provoking—especially concerning the nature of religious language and the challenges we always face in conveying what God has said.

In revisiting the Jacobean world, I hope to show you the kind of window that this text opened, in terms of its Englishing the Scriptures and evangelizing the nation —its theology and praxis of translation. In my view, the King James Bible’s achievement is best explained by tracing its distinctive clarity and richness to a non-naïve hermeneutics of trust. We need not venture far beyond the scriptural texts themselves to see this; I will focus most of our attention, in fact, on the Preface from which I have already quoted. Finally, because I am more a historian than a theologian, I will call very briefly upon two brilliant theologians for help: Rowan Williams and, of course, Bob Dylan.

Let’s begin by noting the urgency that surrounded the production and dissemination of English Bibles in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-centuries. It is well to remember that biblical scholarship, translation, and literacy were foundational to the Protestant Reformation. “[N]othing could be more important,” Adam Nicolson observes, “than a text which was both accurate and intelligible.” From the onset, English Protestants struggled to find a translation that everyone—Puritan and high churchman alike—could read in common and with confidence as true to the word of God. John Tyndale’s covert translation in the 1520s had been associated with the vernacular Bibles of peasant uprisings on the Continent or, closer to home, the machinations of troublesome weavers and wool merchants who had financed its printing and smuggling into England. No wonder it was banned, as all vernacular Bibles had been banned since the 1408 Constitutions of Oxford. Even loyal churchmen like John Colet, dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral-London, had been barred from preaching in 1513 for having translated the Lord’s Prayer into English.

Ironically, the first officially approved English Bible—the Matthew Bible, which Henry VIII endorsed in 1537—was largely Tyndale’s work. But like its successors, most especially the Puritan-sponsored Geneva Bible (some 20 years later), it contained copious study notes—over 2,000 in all!—with a scandalous Puritan slant. Not unlike today’s study Bibles, it told the reader how to interpret the biblical text, often in a way that was decidedly at odds with the sensibilities of the Anglican establishment. Ultimately, it was the marginalia, as much as the translations of particular words in the text, that sealed the fates of these early English Bibles.

The immediate recourse was to scale back on margin notes which, of course, raised questions concerning the locus of authoritative interpretation. Another maneuver was the publication of enormous folio-sized Bibles that were simply too big to carry around or too expensive for ordinary people to afford. This led to the appropriately named Great Bible in 1539, and, interestingly, this is how the King James Bible first appeared in 1611. In the intervening years, the Bishops Bible (1568) had been promulgated as the official English version for the Church of England, but it was decidedly royalist and anti-Puritan, beginning with the crowded frontispiece showing Queen Elizabeth and her hierarchy of bishops. It also happened to be chocked full of inaccuracies that embarrassed the Church and exasperated its Puritan critics, inspiring even more enthusiasm for the more refined, yet proscribed, Geneva Bible.

So, by the time of an unprecedented gathering of Puritans and Bishops at Hampton Court Palace in 1604, England was deeply unsettled regarding the prospect for an English Bible that could satisfy all sides in an increasingly fractious Church and literate public. Little wonder, then, that when a moderate Puritan scholar by the name of John Reynolds (president of Corpus Christi College-Oxford) proposed a new English translation, the Archbishop of Canterbury, John Bancroft immediately spoke in opposition: “If every man’s humor were followed,… there would be no end of translating,” he retorted. The king, still quite new to the English throne, responded more favorably, knowing that a new translation might serve his magisterial concerns for order and stability. A superior text might also displace, at long last, the Geneva Bible with its notes “very partial, untrue, seditious, and savoring too much of dangerous and traitorous conceits.”

Accordingly, James I expressed his wishes concerning the authorizing of a new English translation:

His Highness wished, that some especial pains should be taken in that behalf for one uniform translation… and this to be done by the best learned of both the Universities, after them to be reviewed by the Bishops, and the chief learned of the Church; from them to be presented to the Privy Council; and lastly to be ratified by his Royal authority; to be read in the whole Church, and no other.

Note the king’s expectations regarding the quality and scope of the work to be undertaken as well as the tight control required to pull it off. Premier scholars from the Universities and oversight of the whole of the Church’s hierarchy, the king’s council, and his own authority as royal governor were lined up to safeguard the project. In keeping with his personal motto, “blessed are the peacemakers,” James I envisioned a Bible that would unify, rather than divide, elevate, rather than succumb to the baser instincts of partiality in an age already ridden with “insistent individuality.” In satisfying a constituency that was torn between a penchant for the word and a fearful clinging to the power of symbol, James set in motion what would eventually become his only lasting achievement in the religious life of his people: a vernacular Bible for the whole English nation.

Englishing the Scriptures in the terms set forth by James I meant taking full advantage of the inherent fluidity of the language in order to evoke the grandeur of sacred writ and the legitimacy of a sacred office—the divinely appointed king. Everyone knew that the chief reason he found the Puritans’ Geneva Bible so repulsive was that it finessed the wording of certain passages in such a way as to accentuate the failings, especially the tyrannies, of rulers. The word ‘tyrant’ was, in fact, used more than 400 times where other terms for monarchs could have been used just as well. We have to remember that the king’s conceit was monumental: “If you will consider the attributes of God,” he later informed Parliament, “you shall see how they agree in the person of a king.” Not surprisingly, he expected his Bible to bless his crown, if only through the subtleties of word choices and phrasing.

But there was another side to the king that proved, in the end, to be of tremendous benefit to the work of translation. His personal interest in the Scriptures encompassed a deep appreciation for the power of language, especially religious language, to evoke the “sparkles of divinity” that he likewise claimed for himself. Thanks, in part, to the literary prowess of his chief translator and supremely loyal subject, Lancelot Andrewes, James’s Bible was driven by the idea of majesty. Adam Nicolson explains:

[The King James Bible’s] method and its voice are far more regal than demotic. Its archaic formulations, its consistent attention to a grand and heavily musical rhythm are the vehicles by which that majesty is infused into the body of the text. Its qualities are those of grace, stateliness, scale, power. There is no desire to please here; only a belief in the enormous and overwhelming divine authority, of which royal authority, ‘the powers that be’ as they translated the words of St. Paul, was an adjunct and extension.

Thus, from a royal ideology arose a literary strategy that aimed at dignity and richness. And, in the hands of the king’s translators, this Jacobean agenda was in some ways redeemed by painstaking attention to the power of well-chosen words and delicately crafted phrases. In the midst of their well-supervised endeavor emerged a theory and, indeed, a theology of translation that has inspired the ongoing work of translation to this day.

Before we proceed to that topic, however, we need to say something about the actual work of translation. Time does not permit me to explore the intricacies of the translation process—a complex project that spanned a period of two years and nine months, involving some fifty translators divided into six so-called “companies,” each taking on a portion of the biblical canon and following a letter of instruction with 15 “rules” drafted by the king himself. The instructions began with an insistence that the Bishops Bible serve as the normative text—“to be followed, and as little altered as the Truth of the Original [languages] will permit.” Any precedents derived from the ancient Fathers for word choices were also to be preserved. Certain “ecclesiastical words” like ‘church’ and ‘priest’ were to be preferred over Puritan innovations like ‘congregation’ or ‘elder.’ And, most conspicuously, margin notes were not permitted except to explain Hebrew or Greek words that had no immediate English equivalent. The word ‘circumlocution’ was used in reference to this literary operation—a word that, in the early seventeenth-century, referred to an interpretation that “set forth a thing more gorgeous, or else to hide it.” That is to say, “the words of this translation… could embrace both gorgeousness and ambiguity.” This, according to Nicolson, was “the heart of the new Bible as an irenicon, an organism that absorbed and integrated difference, that included ambiguity and by doing so established peace.”

Now let us turn to the theological implications of this project as they are laid out for us in the original Preface to the King James Bible. A moderate Puritan—a court Puritan, no less—by the name of Miles Smith was given the honor of writing the piece, “buoyant with enthusiasm and with a quality that can only be called grace.” Before serving on the First Oxford Company, which was assigned the Old Testament prophets, Smith had distinguished himself as a classical scholar and “orientalist” (fluent in ‘Chaldiac, Syriac, and Arabic’) while enjoying the benefices (endowments) of a prebendary at Exeter Cathedral and the rectory of Hartlebury in Worcestershire. He was also recruited to make the final revision of the Old Testament, a daunting task, no doubt, but one that he performed well enough to earn the favor of the king himself. The “gentle reader” addressed throughout the Preface is the English man and woman who share the king’s “zeal to promote the common good”—that opening phrase of the Preface that identifies so readily the civic function of the new Bible.

Smith’s Preface demonstrates, in fact, the literary via media of the project: avoiding the excessive “scrupulosity” that he himself attributed to fellow Puritans while, at the same time shunning the “obscurity of the papists.” There remains, however, a desire for clarity, on the one hand, and richness, on the other, and once we get past the language of commonweal we see this dual quest expressed in overtly evangelical terms. This can be illustrated in the three fundamentals of Smith’s theology of translation: the logic of illumination, the Spirit of the Word, and the sense of the words.

The Logic of Illumination

In his “praise of the Holy Scriptures,” Smith draws a kind of flowchart of derivations on which all work of translation depends: “But now what piety without truth? What truth (what saving truth) without the Word of God? What Word of God (whereof we may be sure) without the Scripture?” Did you catch that? Piety derives from saving truth which derives from the sure Word of God which derives or, in this instance, depends somehow on the Scriptures. We can assume, quite reasonably, that in the final link of this golden chain, Smith is thinking about the illumination of Scripture to the reader, not its inspiration. No Puritan, and certainly no Calvinist, would have subordinated God’s Word to written words (Scripture); that would, after all, undermine the authority of the Scriptures themselves. No, this is not a declaration of Scripture’s authority so much as it is a description of Scripture’s effects.

The logic inferred in this statement retraces what happens in the encounter between the reader and the biblical text. As we read the Scriptures, he says, we encounter saving truth in the sure Word of God. The results we call piety, for the “high and divine” words make us wise unto salvation, instruct us when we are ignorant, “bring us home” when we are “out of the way,” reform us when we are “out of order,” comfort us when in “heaviness,” “quicken us” when “dull,” and “inflame us’ when “cold.” These effects are evidence of the unique “perfection” we find in Scripture, and Smith is happy to turn to the early Fathers to amplify his point; Tertullian, Justin Martyr, Cyril of Jerusalem, and Saint Basil all bearing witness to the “fullness” of the biblical text. Smith’s gentle readers are reminded of the pantry of “wholesome food,” and the “physician’s shop” of remedies that awaits them as they turn to the life-giving and life-healing Word in the written words. Indeed, he declares, “happy is the man that delighteth in the Scripture, and thrice happy that meditateth in it day and night.”

The Spirit of the Word

This entire operation is, of course, a work of the Holy Spirit. It is crucial that Smith situate all aspects of reader response in a robustly Trinitarian framework. At this point, he weaves the always pressing issue of authority back into the picture:

The original thereof being from heaven, not from earth; the author being God, not man; the indicter, the Holy Spirit, not the wit of the Apostles or Prophets; the penmen such as were sanctified from the womb, and endued with a principal portion of God’s Spirit; the matter, verity, piety, purity, uprightness; the form, God’s Word, God’s testimony, God’s oracles, the Word of truth, the Word of salvation, etc., the effects, light of understanding, stableness of persuasion, repentance from dead works, newness of life, holiness, peace, joy in the Holy Ghost; lastly, the end and reward of the study thereof, fellowship with the saints, participation of the heavenly nature, fruition of an inheritance immortal, undefiled, and that never shall fade away . . .”

What a lively scene (!), moving from God’s authorship, the Word of truth and salvation coming down from heaven, and the Holy Spirit’s convicting and convincing activities—all of this applied initially to the microcosm of the reader, then opening out to the fellowship of the saints; and from the reader in time, to the reader’s participation in the Trinitarian life for all eternity.

Here is the “window” that translation opens—the window that lets in the same light that we associate with illumination:

Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel; that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water, even as Jacob rolled away the stone from the mouth of the well, by which means the flocks of Laban were watered.

The work of translation opens windows, breaks shells, removes covers, and rolls away stones that would deny us access to the light, the kernel, the holy place, and the well of God’s Word. It does so by extending the activity of the Holy Spirit into the particular languages we speak in everyday life—the “vulgar tongue,” as it was called in Smith’s day, or what today we would refer to as the ‘vernacular.’ “Indeed,” he observes, without translation into the vulgar tongue, the unlearned are but like children at Jacob’s well (which was deep) without a bucket, or something to draw with…”

The Sense of the Words

Given the logic of illumination and the Spirit of the Word, Smith asserts with confidence that it is indeed possible to “deliver the sense” of the Word of God in the particular words and phrases of vernacular language. He makes his case with a short and someone gritty history of translation. Remembering that the Greek Septuagint, despite its imperfections, was good enough for the apostles: “the Word of God being set forth in Greek, becometh hereby like a candle set upon a candlestick…” The seventy translators were not “prophets,” he insists; rather, they were mere “interpreters” who did many things well, “yet as men” they stumbled and fell through oversight, ignorance, by unwarranted addition and subtraction as they set about their task. Even so, the Apostles discerned the sense in the Greek translation “according to the truth of the Word, as the Spirit gave them utterance.” History lesson number one: the work of translation is actually a work of interpretation, and no interpretation is perfect due to the limits of the human condition. Nevertheless, the Spirit delivers the sense of the Word.

In the early church, new translations appeared, especially in Latin. The best work was marked by reliance on the “fountains” of the original Hebrew or Greek and a certain set of virtues associated with the task itself: “great learning, judgement, industry and faithfulness.” Jerome, of course, fit the profile nicely, but Smith is quick to note that the writer of the Vulgate was not the only translator in the Patristic era. John Chrysostom and Theodoret, and countless individuals working in Syria, Egypt, India, Persia, and Ethiopia—even the Venerable Bede in England—were busily turning out the Scriptures in vulgar tongues. Clearly the second lesson to learn from this history is that translating the Word of God into a mother tongue “is not a quaint conceit lately taken up…” Furthermore, the best work of translation has, from antiquity, always been done for evangelical purposes: to edify the unlearned “which hungered and thirsted after righteousness, and had souls to be saved.” Translators are after the sense of the Word that saves.

In the medieval period, Smith finds these lessons lost on a Roman Church that cared less for its children by depriving them of the “light of the Scripture.” Up to the present day, the papacy had required special licenses from local bishops and “Inquisitors” to read the Scriptures in English. Recalling such Roman tyrannies, Smith’s energetically Protestant side appears in a sudden burst of gratitude to James I for so graciously permitting the new Bible, especially with all previous translations so “maturely considered and examined.” And in that careful examination, it can be demonstrated—to the chagrin of the “Romanists” who refuse to hear and dare to burn the Word translated—that “the sense and meaning, as well as man’s weakness would enable,” has indeed expressed the Word by “the Spirit of grace.”

So the third and final lesson to learn from the history of translation is that God’s saving purposes will not be thwarted by those who shun the light of His Word. And of more immediate importance, the human fallibility evidenced even within “the house of God” is insufficient to impede the ongoing task of translation. For, as history has shown, “nothing is begun and perfected at the same time, and the later thoughts are thought to be the wiser: so if we building upon their foundation that went before us, and being holpen [sic] by their labors, do endeavor to make that better which they left so good; no man, we are sure, hath cause to mislike us; they, we persuade ourselves, if they were alive, would thank us.” In effect, Smith is expressing his confidence in the continual operation of the Holy Spirit such that an abiding “sense” of the Word can be discerned with ever increasing refinement. That is about as close to a self-congratulatory pat-on-the-back that we get as Smith concludes his historical argument.

* * *

We have seen how the logic of illumination, the Spirit of the word, and now the sense of the words constitutes the theology of translation that, according to Miles Smith, guided the work of the King James translators. I would now like to conclude with some thoughts on the ‘Englishing’ and the ‘evangelizing’ that accompanied this work. This also prompts some final reflections on the theory of translation that originated in this theology and its implications for you and I as gentle readers of the Bible today.

You will recall that clarity and richness were to be the hallmarks of the new translation. Given the limited use of margin notes, the text was itself to reflect what Smith calls a “variety” or “diversity of sense.” We have just learned that ‘sense’ was a profoundly spirited understanding of how the written words served the divine Word. But in the word-smithing of the translators, ‘delivering the sense’ also stood for a particular kind of literary technique. Instead of resorting to margins that prompted readers to dogmatize the Scriptures, Smith and his colleagues sought out words and phrases that evoked, where possible, a rich multivalence of meaning within the text. In a very practical way, this brought the burgeoning vocabulary of the English language into the service of communicating the sense of God’s Word. This was not an Englishing of the divine Word into ordinary, everyday prose, however, but the elevation of carefully selected vocabulary to a vitalizing level of sonority and dignity. As the translators, according to Nicolson, “plumbed and searched for the essence of the meaning,” they opened a window to majesty and multiple layers of meaning and signification.

Surprisingly, the King James Bible manifests this majesty through an economy of words and a rigorous attempt at literal or word-for-word translation. There is a “passionate exactness” to the word choices that had an aesthetic as well as a moral value that would satisfy a lingering demand in the Reformed tradition for “high fidelity reproduction.” But always the meticulous attention to word choices was governed by the sound(s) of the words and their visual evocations as much as their meaning. This meant that some words were chosen for their metaphorical value and, in fact, their ambiguity. Imagine a room of twelve- to fifteen divines all rattling off these words and phrases to audibly test their impact on fellow listeners. Such exercises, Nicolson concludes, were as much about euphony as accuracy—“if it sounds right, it is right.” If this can be properly called a literal approach to interpretation, it is certainly extraordinary in its attention to the atmospherics of words and what some might call the “dynamic equivalence” of metaphor.

Englishing the Scriptures was always, however, an evangelistic enterprise that had communal and, according to James I’s intentions, national implications. Smith is unflinching in his determination to produce a Bible that not only exercises the “wits,” and weans “the curious from loathing” the “plainness” of the text, but also “stirs up … devotion to crave the assistance of God’s Spirit by prayer.” In this regard, the “variety of translations” [within the new Bible] was profitable because it brought readers together as “brethren” in “conference” to “find out … the sense.” He imagines a communal hermeneutic—perhaps one that even widens to the scale of the nation. And it is a trusting and, indeed, trustworthy hermeneutic that achieves its coherence and discerns the “sense” with the necessary aid of the Holy Spirit. Ultimately, it is this sort of encounter with the Word that removes “the scales from our eyes, the veil from our hearts, opening our wits, that we may understand his Word, enabling our hearts, yea correcting our affections, that we may love it above gold and silver, yea that we may love it to the end.”

I promised that I would end with Rowan Williams and Bob Dylan. What, perhaps, is most remarkable about Miles Smith’s four-hundred year-old Preface to the King James Bible is how its aspirations continue to fire the imaginations of those committed to the ongoing work of translation. We live in an age that can seem both parched and flooded in its religious language. We bring to our texts—both sacred and profane—a penchant for intellectualization and analysis that can confuse what was clear or reduce what was rich. Think of those Dylan songs that beg some sort of direct experience:

Now I wish I could write you a melody so plain
That could hold you dear lady from going insane
That could ease you and cool you and cease the pain
Of your useless and pointless knowledge.
Smith’s vocabulary of deep wells and replenishing buckets of living water has a certain resonance about it. Certainly we live in an age when our “useless and pointless knowledge” often get in the way of meaning, of “delivering the sense” of the thing.

Rowan Williams speaks to this in his own lecture commemorating the King James achievement, and what he says about the work of translation is true, I think, for the faithful reading of Scripture in general. “To translate,” he says, “is to be taken up into the divine act of uncovering, deciphering the world, God’s ‘publishing’ of a readable text in which we can see both the meaning of what he has done and the present effects of it.” That is, indeed, the logic of illumination that Miles Smith assumed in concert with the Spirit of the Word, yielding the sense of the words. May that noble ambition be our own today as we, by God’s grace, we continue to English the Scriptures and evangelize the nations.

November 12, 2011

Holy Matrimony
Jessica Lynn Spaid and Timothy Edward Schweinberg
Canticles 2:10-13, 8:6-7; I Corinthians 13

Tim and Jessica, what I want to say first to you, and I know I’m speaking for all the family and friends gathered here this afternoon, is thank you. It is for us all, and for me personally, a privilege and a joy to be sharing this moment with you, to be with you as witnesses and as supporters and cheering fans as you exchange the vows and promises, the words, and the commitments of the heart, that will make you one in Christ, as husband and wife. It’s a great day! We’ve been thinking about it and planning for it and involved in all kinds of preparation for a while now, and when we started this date seemed a ways away—but now, time has flown by, and here we are. Congratulations to you, as I know the years of your friendship and deepening relationship have been rich in so many ways, and as I know that the story that is yet to be told of the life and family you will share as husband and wife will be a great one.

The lesson that you selected, first from the Old Testament book of Canticles, or the Song of Solomon, and then from St. Paul, First Corinthians 13, are wonderful and very appropriate readings for this day. The Song of Solomon is a love song, through and through, a poetic expression of the deepest passion and compassion of the human heart, as we know that in our deepest and most intimate relationships, and as we would understand through that, that we are for at least a brief moment in this world catching a glimpse of the deep love, the passion and the compassion, that is at the heart of God’s life, and that we are all ultimately destined for. This day, the commitments you bring, the words and promises, speak about who you are today, and also about who we are all destined to become, God’s hope and dream for each one of us since the beginning of the world.

Many waters cannot quench love, no flood can sweep it away; if a man were to offer for love the whole wealth of his house, it would be utterly scorned. The rarest thing of all, the most precious, the most fragile, the hardest to find and the easiest to lose, yet somehow also the most durable, the most patient, the most forgiving, the most welcoming. The mystery of a relationship that begins in a club listening to music and that evolves into friendship and then into love.

And First Corinthians 13, a letter St. Paul wrote to a Church whose members seem to have fallen into disunity, has become for generation after generation a kind of guide, or even we might say a recipe, for Christian living. It expresses a deep set of values rooted in the way Jesus lived his life. And it is meaningful for us in our Church life and public life together, and all our personal conduct, but then more intimately in our marriages and families. Patience. Kindness. Not envious or arrogant. Not resentful. But grounded in honesty and trust and a spirit of hopefulness. So wonderful to bring these forward on the day you begin your marriage.

Within the life of the Christian family we say that this day is for you a day of sacrament and vocation. A day when God begins to make something new out of you which is and will become an outward and visible sign of his grace and his love. And to be that, for each other, and for those who will be a part of your lives in the days and years to come, is a very high calling indeed.

In the Old Testament Book of Exodus there is one of my favorite stories, about a moment of life-changing experience, a “vocational” moment, in a way kind of like a wedding. Young Moses is working for his Father in Law, tending his sheep out in the wilderness, and one day he sees something off in the distance that looks strange to him. He moves closer and finally comes to this great big tree or bush that is on fire, fully engulfed in flames, burning and burning—but no matter how long it burns, it doesn’t burn out. He watches for a while, amazed at the sight, and then all at once a great, deep voice comes from the flame. (I like to think it was the voice of James Earl Jones.) “Take off your shoes, Moses, for the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” Holy Ground

We don’t actually have to take off our shoes here this afternoon. But I want to say that we might do so at least in our imaginations for a moment. Because the great reality here is that just as Moses at the Burning Bush came into the presence of God and discovered what the call on his life was that God had in mind for him, so here, for you. It was the beginning of a new chapter for Moses. A chapter in which he would play a key role in fulfilling the great plan that God had for his people. And so here, for you. “Take off your shoes. For the ground on which you are standing is holy ground.” May you know and experience that reality this afternoon, in this place, and in all the days you will share together in the years to come.

Friends, as Jessica and Tim now come forward to the altar to exchange the vows that will make them husband and wife, I would ask that we would all take a moment to bow our heads and in our thoughts and prayers ask God to bless and keep them always in his love.


Bruce Robison

Friday, November 11, 2011

St. Andrew's Lecture, 2011

Introductory Remarks: St. Andrew’s Lecture

It has become something of a custom for me to begin my opening remarks this way:

Dr. John Murray, of Duquesne University and the commission that crafted the Allegheny County Home Rule charter; Pittsburgh City Councilman and community activist Sala Udin; Dean of Trinity Episcopal Cathedral and co-founder of the Downtown Pittsburgh Partnership, the Very Rev. George Werner; WQED President George Miles; beloved Pittsburgh mayor, the Hon. Sophie Masloff; economist and writer, Linda Dickerson; director of the Mendelssohn Choir and Pittsburgh arts community leader, Dr. Robert Page; Judge and civic leader the Hon. Cynthia Baldwin; columnist Tony Norman; KDKA economics and political reporter Jon Delano; Church Historian Dr. Jeremy Bonner; Pittsburgh Urban League President Esther Bush. WQED documentary film maker Rick Sebak. That’s thirteen, and amazing!

Good evening, Ladies and Gentlemen, Friends, and Neighbors. My name is Bruce Robison. I’m rector of St. Andrew’s Church, and it is my great pleasure to welcome you to this Fourteenth Annual St. Andrew’s Lecture.

St. Andrew’s has been a part of the City of Pittsburgh and the Episcopal Church in Pennsylvania, first in the Episcopal Diocese of Pennsylvania at our founding in 1837 and in the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh since it was formed from Pennsylvania in 1867, so 172 years now, and it continues to be very much a part of our sense of identity and our mission and ministry to be a positive force for this neighborhood of Highland Park, where we’ve been since 1906, and for the Church in our diocese, our city and the whole region. The St. Andrew’s Lecture was founded to build on and extend that mission, as we have been proud to bring guests and speakers of note from our wider community to talk about life and work, to reflect on the past, to describe the issues of the present, and to say something as well about the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for us.

In any case, it has become a wide and varied and very gifted tradition, this lecture, and I’m glad we can build on it in such a positive way this evening. I would mention that the Lecture is funded entirely from special gifts, from the proceeds of our annual Summer Book Sale, and from contributions received in baskets at each Lecture. This evening’s lecture is also co-sponsored by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh, and we are very thankful for a generous grant as a part of that co-sponsorship. It is important to us in any event that the Lecture can continue to be a free event for the whole community, and I thus happily encourage you to be generous in leaving a Free Will Donation in one of the baskets at the door this evening.

As you leave your contribution, I would also encourage you to fill out and leave in the baskets as well the brief survey form included in this evening’s program, which helps us know who came and how you found out about the program. The incentive for returning the form this year, appropriate for our evening, is that we will be having a drawing over at the reception after the lecture to give away a number of brand new copies of the King James Version of the Holy Bible.

The evening and program are planned and hosted by our Adult Programs Committee, and if those members of the committee who are here would stand, I’d like among them all to acknowledge the special contribution of the Committee’s secretary, Peg Ghrist, who does so much of the organization and communication that this event requires. I also want to recognize and acknowledge my friend and colleague the Rev. Dr. Philip Wainwright, retired rector of St. Peter’s in Brentwood, who serves as Priest Associate here at St. Andrew’s and who was invited by Bishop Price and our Standing Committee to be the Prime Mover in arranging this event and in recruiting our speaker to focus our diocesan observance of the King James Version anniversary. Finally, I would acknowledge with great thanks as well the work of Jinny Fiske and so many of the St. Andrew’s Hospitality Team, who have prepared a gala reception for us over in Brooks Hall.

To say now a word about this evening’s lecture.

A lot has been written on this topic this year, and it’s interesting just to type King James Version Anniversary into a search engine and to see the great volume of recent material.

I read somewhere: "The last Harry Potter book is said to have sold about 44 million copies. Quite remarkable. But the Book whose first publication we note this evening is said to have sold, 6 Billion."

We also read that "It has been called one of the two greatest works of the English language, rivaled only by Shakespeare. For many, it is the only Bible they consider "authentic." It was seven years in the making, the work of a 54-member committee, but within 90 years it had come to be known simply as the Bible."

As we have said, this year marks the 400th anniversary of the printing of the King James Bible, a work of religious, political and linguistic force that continues to shape the thinking and vocabulary of much of the English-speaking world.

Perhaps many of us will know some of the story. Enough to have in mind the rich, dramatic context, social, political, theological, spiritual, of Reformation Era English life, and really the long span from the end of the 15th century all the way to the middle of the 17th. In the midst of all that, the story of the English Bible is one that can be for us both illuminating and inspiring.




A 1978 graduate of the Olivet Nazarene University in Illinois, the University of Kansas, The Denver Seminary in Colorado, and with Ph.D from the University of Chicago Divinity School, Dr. Philip Harrold is Associate Professor of Church History of our Trinity School for Ministry just downriver in Ambridge, having served previously in the faculty of the Winebrenner Theological Seminary in Findlay, Ohio.

Dr. Harrold’s publications and research interests show a fascinating breadth. His doctoral dissertation studied the history of secularization of higher eduction in the United States, but he travels highways and byways from the Patristic era to the present, and with a special interest in Wesleyan and Anglican subjects. In all that, with strong contemporary application to the concerns for mission of the Church today—and to quote him directly, “The question he finds especially intriguing is, ‘how do we read the past for the sake of the present?’ In other words, how do we actually put into practice the idea that the history of the Church is a vital resource for Christian wisdom in our own time and place?”

The title of Dr. Harrold’s presentation this evening, as you can see in our program, is “Englishing the Scriptures and Evangelizing the Nation: The Theology of Translation in the King James Bible.” Following his talk we will remain for a bit to invite a little dialog, and perhaps launch with some questions that will catapult us from the 17th century to the present--so if there are questions that occur to you along the way, please do your best to remember them at the end. And then of course again we’ll have an opportunity to chat with each other informally at the reception.

Please join me to welcome, Dr. Philip Harrold.

Click Here to Go to Lecture

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Veterans Day, 2011

John Christopherson, my grandmother's older brother, died in the Great War and is buried in England. His photograph in uniform, taken at the drug store in Stanley, Wisconsin, shortly before he departed, always had a place of honor on my grandmother's bedroom bureau. On this Veterans' Day, with deepest thanksgiving.







From the Office of the Suffragan Bishop for Chaplaincies of the Episcopal Church





A Prayer for Veterans Day

Governor of Nations, our Strength and Shield:
we give you thanks for the devotion and courage
of all those who have offered military service for this country:

For those who have fought for freedom; for those who laid down their lives for others;
for those who have borne suffering of mind or of body;
for those who have brought their best gifts to times of need.

On our behalf they have entered into danger,
endured separation from those they love,
labored long hours, and borne hardship in war and in peacetime.

Lift up by your mighty Presence those who are now at war;
encourage and heal those in hospitals
or mending their wounds at home;
guard those in any need or trouble;
hold safely in your hands all military families;
and bring the returning troops to joyful reunion
and tranquil life at home;

Give to us, your people, grateful hearts
and a united will to honor these men and women
and hold them always in our love and our prayers;
until your world is perfected in peace

through Jesus Christ our Savior.

This prayer may be used as a congregational litany with the following responses to each stanza:

1. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

2. We thank you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

3. We than you and praise you, our Strength and Shield!

4. Watch over and keep them, Blessed Savior.

5. Hear our prayer in His Name. Amen.


Compiled by the Rev. Jennifer Phillips, Vicar, St. Augustine’s Chapel, University of Rhode Island campus. Her prayers appear in supplemental liturgical materials for the Episcopal Church and in her books of prayers including “Simple Prayers for Complicated Lives.”


With thanksgiving and continued prayers for all those in our extended St. Andrew's parish family who have served in the uniform of our country, and for those who serve now.

Bruce Robison

Sunday, November 6, 2011

For All the Saints

Sunday after All Saints Day (A)
Rev. 7: 9-12; I John 3: 1-3; Mt 5: 1-12

Good morning indeed to all the Saints of God on this All Saints Sunday, which is always intended to be observed as a high festival day on the calendar of the Church Year—and especially of course for us here in this congregation, as we have for a number of years now brought together not just one day but a full week of amazing celebrations, with special services and recitals, and all coming together in such a magnificent way, and such a meaningful way, in this choral and orchestral service of the Holy Communion.

It is truly a blessing, and I know I speak for so many in expressing a word of thanks to all who have made this week and this morning possible. And I would especially say thank you to Pete Luley, who rides herd over all this week, to Tom Octave and his creative leadership both last Tuesday evening and this morning, to our Choir and Choristers, the recitalists, Ed Helgerman and the Liedertafel Thursday night, Nathan Carterette and Rowena Gutan on Friday evening, and of course to Joanne Luchsinger and our instrumentalists this morning of the Pittsburgh Festival Orchestra, Dr. George Knight and our Friends of Music, Jinny Fiske, Ken Williams, Becky Usner, everyone who assisted with the hospitality of our receptions, Joan Soulliere, Jen Palmer, Mary Pat Luley. Readers, ushers, acolytes, Altar Guild. The list just goes on and on and on, and I know even so I’m missing lots of people. Again, simply to express such gratitude for so many gifts shared so generously and abundantly.

I think it’s difficult to get much of a straight line on the theological context of our celebration and observance. A year ago or so a number of us read as our St. Andrew’s summer book a long study by Bishop N.T. Wright on what the scriptures and especially the New Testament have to tell us about the life of the world to come. Interesting, and challenging, pushing back against some of our own inherited imagery and personal reflections and opinions. Surprised sometimes to find that some of what we thought we knew from the scriptures weren't actually there at all. And surprised to find what was there instead. Which is important, though also somewhat disorienting I think.

On this day we seem to know what it’s about almost instinctively, even if it’s not all that easy to tease out the scholarly footnotes. All the Saints.

In a few places in the Hebrew and Greek Old Testament this idea of a special category of individuals, sometimes referencing both the living and the dead, other times a way specifically of talking about those who have died. Particularly martyrs, those who have endured suffering and painful death in heroic witness to their faith.

Those are the ones St. John the Divine sees in the part of his vision we’ve read this morning. And then more generally those who have been exemplars of Christian life and obedience, faith and virtues. They are like role models, then. Reminders of the fullness of life we saints are called and invited to share in through our baptism, through the great work of Christ. To know what forgiveness, repentance, grace, new life can be all about, and glimpses of them here and now. The Church Year and the calendar year coming to an end, and then with a turn of the wheel to begin anew. And this all about what and who inspires us, about how the wind fills our sails.

I know I sometimes think about this season comes around. A famous quotation from the Rev. Billy Graham from a few years ago. He said, “Someday you will read or hear that Billy Graham is dead. Don’t you believe a word of it. I shall be more alive than I am now. I will just have changed my address. I will have gone into the presence of God.”

In any event: we sing the song. They lived not only in ages past, there are hundreds of thousands still, the world is bright with the joyous saints who love to do Jesus’ will. You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea, for the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.


We don’t need a long sermon this morning. The music and the hymns do most of the good work that needs to be done, and perhaps if the imagery doesn’t all flow together into one consistent pattern, we will simply contain some messiness. The nature of human beings, how we think and feel and understand. If we will just turn to the right and to the left and take a good long look at one another. I know you all are such inspirations for me. My friends the Saints in this place. In prayer and in worship, lifting up voices in song all the way to the choirs of heaven. In silence, in spiritual reflection, in thoughtful study. In robust discussion. Witnesses of our Lord here in the East End of Pittsburgh, in Lima, Peru, now in these weeks sharing in the opportunity to rebuild the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Port au Prince, Haiti. In quiet and unnoticed acts of kindness and generosity, affection, friendship. The old year comes to an end, a new year about to dawn, and you inspire me. That we are privileged in these moments, imperfect as we are, to be vessels of God’s grace and goodness.

You know I love the line attributed to St. Francis: “Preach always; when necessary use words.” And that we would pause and thank each other for all the bright and beautiful sermons that get preached in and through this one small corner of the Christian family.

St. John the Divine sees the vision. “They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”

There it is, and there he is. At the center of that great choir of holy martyrs and sacred witnesses, the multitude that no one could number, from every nation, and it is all about Jesus. The fixed star, the beating heart of all there is in earth and heaven. Source of light and life. In his life and his death for us, there is forgiveness and healing, cleansing, comfort, and blessing, and a kind of triumphant victory that even John seems to find too great or too beautiful or too holy for words.

We catch a glimpse, in word and sacrament and in one another, all this communion of saints, past and present, and leaning forward with some anticipation for those we haven’t met yet, but who will be a part of our future. We sing, we pray. With open hands we receive and share the gift of his life, the Bread of Heaven, the Cup of Salvation. This is an invitation that we might hear and receive this morning. With open minds, open hearts. We catch a glimpse into the heart of this mystery, that the one we would see is always and only Jesus.

Bruce Robison