First Presbyterian Church
Exegetical Joy
Sermon for February 12, 2006
by Pastor Susan Barnes

Children's time: Did you ever have to unlearn something in order to do it right? I went skiing for the first time in twenty years yesterday, and I had to learn a new way to ski. When I was little, and learned to ski in New Hampshire, I was taught to crouch down on my turns. Now, I find out, I'm supposed to stand up almost straight. When I stood up straight, it was a lot easier for me to turn. But I couldn't remember to stand up straight, even though turning was easier when I did. The whole time going down the hill, I said, “Stand up, stand up, stand up.”

Can you tell me of a time when you had to learn something new? (The kids said long division and riding a horse).

Our old testament story is about a general who didn't want to do a new thing because it was too easy. He thought he was so big and important, he needed a challenge. Our story from the history of Kings comes during great famine and political weakness in Israel. The country to the northeast, Aram, was doing quite well. You can follow along on page 336. Listen for the word of God as it is found in 2 Kings 5:1-14.

1 Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the LORD had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy.

2 Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman's wife. 3 She said to her mistress, "If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy."

4 So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said.

5 And the king of Aram said, "Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel." He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments.

6 He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, "When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy."

7 When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, "Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me."

8 But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, "Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel."

9 So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha's house.

10 Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, "Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean."

11 But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, "I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the LORD his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! 12 Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?" He turned and went away in a rage.

13 But his servants approached and said to him, "Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, 'Wash, and be clean' ?"

14 So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean.

This ends our reading from 2 Kings. We read from the New Revised Standard Version, and they used the word leprosy, but I think a better translation is just “a skin disease.” It wasn't like the illness we know of as leprosy today. You can see that the skin disease wasn't debilitating; it didn't keep Naaman from being able to travel, or talk to his servants. The word cure is different from the world clean. Cure means not to have the disease, and clean means to be officially contamination free – safe to be around socially and religiously. Generally priests had to certify people being clean.

Our psalm reading is found on page 505. It is a complaint as well as a praise psalm. Listen for the word of God as we read it together from Psalm 30.

1 A Psalm. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David. I will extol you, O LORD, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me.

2 O LORD my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me.

3 O LORD, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.

4 Sing praises to the LORD, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.

5 For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

6 As for me, I said in my prosperity, "I shall never be moved."

7 By your favor, O LORD, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

8 To you, O LORD, I cried, and to the LORD I made supplication:

9 "What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness?

10 Hear, O LORD, and be gracious to me! O LORD, be my helper!"

11 You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

12 so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

This ends our reading of the psalm. Let's listen to the choir interpret this.

Anthem

Our gospel reading is from the gospel of Mark, still in the first action-packed chapter. You can follow along on pages 35-36 of your pew Bibles, although we'll be using my translation. Jesus has been preaching in the synagogues in Galilee and casting out demons. Listen for the word of God as it is found in Mark 1:40-45.

40. And a leper came to him begging and saying to him, “If you would choose to, you could make me clean.

41 And becoming angry, he stretched out his hand, touched him, and said, “I so choose, be made clean.”

42 And immediately the leprosy went out of him and he was made clean.

43 And immediately yelling at him, he threw him out and said to him, “See that you say nothing to no one, but show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleaning what Moses commanded as a witness for them.”

45 But going out, he began to preach many things and spread the word around so that he could no more publicly enter the city.

This ends our reading from God's word. May the same spirit who inspired it interpret it to us this morning.

I remember being a child and sitting in the pew in church and hearing my pastor talking about what a Hebrew word meant. I didn't remember the word, but I remembered the idea that the Bible was written in another language, one I didn't know, and that one English word wasn't enough to translate it. Wow, I thought. Wouldn't it be great to be able to read the Bible in Hebrew and Greek.

And it is great to be able to do that. The word for critically interpreting a text is called ‘exegesis.' I love exegesis. Part of my exegetical process is looking at the old testament text in Hebrew and the new testament text in Greek. I'm not very efficient; translating takes me a long time, and I check nearly every word of every verse in my lexicon because I never was able to remember my vocabulary well. I am very slow. But it gives me great joy to be able to ask, “I think this word means this; what English word can I use to translate it best for this congregation?” So that's why this sermon is called exegetical joy. I know some of you want to know what makes me happy and this is one of those things.

The English language changes over time, and sometimes we have to make up new words because we can't find one that means what we want to say. Comedian Rich Hall made up some words he called ‘sniglets' to fill the void. Here's a few old sniglets.

Animalanche (noun) When you kick your stuffed animals in your sleep and they fall all over you or the floor.   

Aquadextrous – ( adjective) Possessing the ability to turn the bathtub faucet on and off with your toes.

Beelzebug (noun): Satan in the form of a mosquito that gets into your bedroom at 3 in the morning and cannot be cast out.

Flopcorn (noun) The unpopped kernels at the bottom of the bowl.

I just learned the word “truthiness.” There's a comedy show called “The Colbert Report” that makes fun of media and politics. The host is all about “Truthiness.” It's a word he made up that means “a devotion to information that he wishes were true even if it's not.” He said, “I'm not a fan of facts. You see, facts can change, but my opinion will never change, not matter what the facts are.” 1

I've met a Christian who seems more devoted to the truthiness of the Bible than the truth. She considered the King James the only real Bible. I was surprised, because the King James Version was based on just one twelfth-century manuscript. We have other more accurate translations available to us now. The language of the KJV is old and familiar and lovely, and sometimes it's appropriate to use, but not for exegesis.

The church through history knew that there were varying manuscripts, and that's why they relied heavily on church tradition. If God guided the church completely, then people could trust the church's familiar interpretation of a text more than they could trust a newly discovered document, even if the document was much older than the text they had. Sometimes this attitude prevented new manuscripts from being accepted for publication.

There's a lot going on in those six verses in Mark. But I'm guessing the part that surprised you the most is that Jesus was angry at the leper and threw him out. What is that doing in the Bible? Those of us who have seen Jesus movies are used to Jesus always being serene and holy. Who does Mark think he is, writing about Jesus being angry? Those of you following along in your pew Bibles will notice that your Bibles say “moved with pity” with a little ‘c' footnote saying “other ancient authorities read anger.”

Who are those other ancient authorities, you might wonder, and what are they doing making Jesus angry? Shouldn't Jesus be glad he can heal sick people? Shouldn't he feel compassion?

We have lots of ancient authorities, some on papyrus, some on vellum, some on scrolls, some on single pages, and some on small pieces of single pages, all housed in different libraries around the world. Some manuscripts are older, some are more reliable, some are more complete, and some are more familiar. The oldest fragment of the new testament we have comes from the second century, about 125 ce. We don't have any first century texts, just copies of first century texts.

I have to confess that when I do my translating, I don't often look at the textual variations. If you look at the cover of the bulletin, you'll see why.

I put two Bible pages on the cover. The big page is from the Hebrew Bible, what Christians sometimes call the old testament. It's filled with unrecognizable letters. I used it like a frame for the little page. If you look at the bottom of the Hebrew page, you'll see about eight lines of footnotes. Those are all textual variations, citing which manuscript has which word. Hebrew has a lot of variations because the language is written with just consonants. The vowels are the little dots underneath the letters; the vowels were added much more recently. Without the vowels, the only way you'd know if the word was sip, soup, soap, or sap was from the context or from remembering hearing the scripture read in worship.

The page in the middle is from the Greek new testament. On the top of the page you'll see the number 91 on the left and the words Kata Mapkon in the middle and the numbers 1.32-41 on the right.

91 is easy, that's the page number. ‘Kata mapkon' is really ‘kata markon.' That letter is a rho, not a p. It means ‘according to Mark.' 1.32-41 means that the page covers chapter 1, verses 32 to 41. If you look in the text, you can recognize the number 32 at the beginning of the first full paragraph because that's verse 32. Looking the rest of the way and you can see 33, 34, and then 35 at the beginning of the second paragraph, then 36, 37, 38, and then 39 at the beginning of the last paragraph, and 40, and then 41 on the bottom line.

The 23 lines after that, in the small print, cover all the textual variations in those ten verses. That's why I don't check the variations every time.

Much of the time, the textual variations don't amount to much. ‘This papyrus omits the word if,' ‘that codex lacks “and he said.”'

But other times, the differences are significant. In our pew bibles, there are footnotes that mark variations that some group of scholars has agreed are important.

The reason I paid attention to this one is I read a book that talked about this very text. It's called Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman. It was such a fun book to read. If you want to borrow my copy, you can. The title is a little misleading; it implies that scribes were deliberately altering Jesus' words for their own purposes.

There was no mass conspiracy, although that would make for a more exciting book. There was some resistance to newly discovered documents some of the time, but other times there's a feeding frenzy among scholars about getting a look at a newly found manuscript.

The early copies of the gospels and epistles were made by church members who did it because they knew the documents needed to be copied, not because they were professional scribes. So sometimes these volunteers made mistakes in copying – leaving out a word or a phrase because it duplicated one they had just written, like leaving out one of the lines of ‘Happy birthday to you.' Or they misread the document they were copying, or they wrote a word that was similar sounding but with different meanings, like writing ‘scene' for ‘seen.' Sometimes they would change a word to make its meaning clearer. That leads to the translating principle “the most difficult reading is probably the earliest.” A scribe wouldn't change a clear word to a confusing one, but the other way around.

So that's why other ancient authorities read ‘anger' in Mark 1:41.

All this doesn't answer the question: Why was Jesus angry? Was Jesus angry that there was leprosy in the world? Was he angry that disease exists? Was he angry that he was interrupted in his important work by a leper? Was this really a story about casting out a demon, and all the manuscripts we have omitted that detail? Was he angry because he was supposed to be teaching, not performing flamboyant miracles to entertain the crowds? Was he angry that he made the leper clean, but he had to follow a silly law and show himself to a priest so he could be pronounced officially clean and able to socialize with other officially clean people? There's lots of speculation. It fascinates me.

Here's how I interpret Jesus' anger. I know sometimes my first reaction to suffering is anger. I am angry that there is sickness in the world, angry it has afflicted someone I care for, and even angry that the person I care for dares to be sick so that I am reminded that there is suffering in the world. It's not compassion I feel first, but anger. It could be that's what's going on with Jesus.

The gospels of Matthew and Luke tell about Jesus healing a leper, but they don't say Jesus was angry. They don't talk about Jesus' feelings at all.

I think Mark did because Mark was interested in showing Jesus as a real human being, with real feelings. Early Christians argued about whether Jesus was an actual man, or a divine being, or both. Presbyterians believe he was both; our brief statement of faith says, “We trust in Jesus Christ, fully human, fully God.”

To me, to say Jesus is fully human means that his way is possible for us human beings. We can welcome and accept people the way Jesus did; we can challenge burdensome religious traditions and uphold the spirit of God's law. We can worship God in spirit and in truth. The truth will make us free. If I focus just on Jesus being divine, well, I know I'm not divine, so why even try to follow Jesus?

So we have this very human Jesus in Mark, doing something divine – healing and making clean, even though he is angry. His feelings about the leprosy or the man don't stop him from his work of healing. It makes me think of doctors and nurses, who help people regardless of their personal feelings about their patients; their job is to care for their patients' health, and so that's what they do.

When I was ordained to be a minister of the word and Sacrament, I promised to fulfill my office in obedience to Jesus Christ under the authority of Scripture. And so I feel called to look at the scripture, to figure out what the scripture says to me, and what the spirit is leading me to say to the congregation.

For some people, I know that any version other than the King James Bible in English is unholy and scary. The word of God is the KJV. But looking at Greek and Hebrew doesn't scare me; it might confuse me, but it doesn't scare me. I trust the Bible as God's word revealed to us; I trust that the spirit is going to work in me as I prepare my sermons. But that doesn't mean that I am infallible; it just means I'm trying to tell the truth as best I can. But sometimes our best intentions go awry, and I think it's important to admit when that happens. Part of telling the truth about the Bible is knowing where manuscripts differ. I trust that the spirit inspired the people writing the Bible, and I trust that the spirit inspires us when we read it, whether we're language scholars or lay people.

After I read Misquoting Jesus, I looked at the cover. The background of the cover looked like a kind of ancient writing I had never seen before. I expected it to be Greek, since the book was mostly about new testament manuscripts. Then I turned the book upside down, and saw that it was Hebrew. I wondered what was upside-down Hebrew doing on the cover of a book about Greek manuscripts? So I e-mailed the author and asked him about it. He wrote me back “The publisher's goofed, but I thought it was pretty cool.  A scribal error!” 2

The Bible is a great book, in all its translations. I believe it tells the truth about God, and about who we are and what we're supposed to be doing and why. Our job is to care for the people God has placed in our life, even when it's inconvenient, even when we're angry or tired or busy. That's what God calls us to do, and God's call is unmistakable, no footnotes or exegesis are needed. Amen.

1 Peyser, Marc, “The Truthiness Teller,” Newsweek, 2-13-06, p. 52.

2 Ehrman, Bart D. personal communication 2-6-06.