SUMMER READS ISSUE 2021 CRIER 2021 - Issue No

SUMMER READS ISSUE 2021 CRIER 2021 - Issue No. 6 The First Church in Marlborough, (Congregational), UCC 37 High Street, Marlborough, Massachusetts www.firstchurchmarlborough.org

Dear Saints of God at First Church,

As usual we are sending your way our fourth annual “Summer Reads” issue of the Crier. It comes together by me collecting throughout the year articles I found worth reading – in the hope that when you are on the beach, in your backyard, or in a mountain lodge, you might want to peruse them. Would love you to drop me a note about them!

The first one is about the virtue of forgiveness and the second a book review about a small Christian pacifist sect that migrated in the early 20th Century to Canada. It is all about the way of Christian living. We tend to forget, but the word “Christian” was initially a slur – the early followers of Christ called themselves “People of the way.” What then, is our “way” calling us to do? How shall we live to give witness to our faith?

The third article is about the joys – and pitfalls of translating the Bible. You may not know this, but as late as in the 1950’s, Bible translations were a subject of great controversies and not just in the United States. The article is long but do read it! It is not just well written, but it will also help you understand why I sometimes tell you in my sermons about the quirks in Hebrew or Greek.

Finally, the last one is by a UCC pastor who discovered the beauty of church buildings and a rich theological legacy they carry. Given the pandemic, and that some of you have not been inside our meetinghouse for over 16 months, I think you may be able to relate. And in that spirit, I’d like to whet your appetite and tell you that after I get back from my holiday I will preach a short four- Sunday sermon series on OUR stained glass windows, and how they relate to our Christian faith.

I hope you all have a great summer! Please do come to our 5:30PM Vespers services and listen to our great summer preachers, and by God’s grace I shall see you in August!

Yours in Christ, Pastor Kaz

1 INSIDE THIS ISSUE JULY & AUGUST SERVICES ARE AT Thanks, Prayers, Special Summer Hours 2 5:30PM IN THE SANCTUARY Theology 3 (join us in person or via Facebook live stream) UCC Roots, Justice ~ Book Review 5 Translating the Bible 6 July 4 Sunday Worship 5:30pm A Sweet Sanctuary 11 Guest Preacher Domenik Ackermann Diaconate, Women’s Fellowship 14 July 11 Sunday Worship 5:30pm Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann Confirmation/Sunday School, Help July 18 Sunday Worship 5:30pm Wanted, Our Father’s Table 15 Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann July 25 Sunday Worship 5:30pm NOTES OF THANKS Guest Preacher Nathan Leach Aug 1 Sunday Worship 5:30pm The Hollis family would like to thank all of Guest Preacher Rev. Jon Wortmann our church family for their prayers, cards, Aug 8 Sunday Worship 5:30pm-Pastor Kaz calls and visits during Gary’s four years with cancer. We have felt your love for Gary and it (we return to 10:00am Worship Sept 5th) will always be with us. We want to especially thank Pastor Kaz and the Deacons for their OUR PRAYERS support. Your love has given us strength. The loss of our dear friend and life long church The Hollis Family member, Gary Hollis deeply hurt the hearts of ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ all of us, and his larger than life presence at Thank you from Hedy Berry for your kind First Church will be missed by all. Our prayers cards and calls after the passing of her son of healing and love go out to the Hollis family Mark. Special thanks to Pastor Kaz for his and all of Gary’s friends. support.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Our prayers to Liz Mahoney on the June 16th Dear First Church Members, passing of her beloved husband Michael from I write to you with deep appreciation for complications of Frontal Temporal Dementia. considering me for the Alice Blakeley Scholar- ship. The members of First Church have con- sistently given to me very generously. It was PASTOR KAZ VACATION in the very walls of your church that I fell in Pastor Kaz will be away on vacation from love with playing the organ and started my July 1st through August 6th. career. It was in the very walls of your church that I had my first opportunity to work as a CHURCH OFFICE CLOSURE church musician and began to tap into my po- Office will be closed from tential. Since August of 2020, I have had the July 1st through July 20th. Sue will be check- pleasure of working as the organist and choir- master at Enfield Congregational Church in ing the phones during this time period. Enfield, CT. I would never be here today with- Reopens on July 21st & 28th Hours 9am—3pm out the opportunities that were given to me at August Hours First Church in Marlborough. With this sum Tuesdays 9am-3pm & Wednesdays 8am-2pm of money, I plan to continue my studies of Music Education at UMass Amherst. As I PASTORAL CARE head into my third year of undergrad, I will For any personal concerns, illnesses, deaths or face many licensure tests such as the Music to arrange homebound Communion: and literacy MTELs. This money will un- doubtedly relieve some of the extracurricular July 1 through July 13 expenses that will arise in the coming school Contact Rev. Sarah Hubbell at 978-460-3275 year. I thank you again for your generosity July 14 through August 6 and support as I continue my education. I Rev. Kate Carlisle at 502-797-1554 hope to be able to come back to Marlborough After August 6 soon to say thank you in person. Pastor Kaz (203-781-6372) All my thanks, Timothy Goliger 2 THEOLOGY

CHRISTIAN PEACEMAKING AND THE ROLE OF FORGIVENESS Reprinted from The Christian Century ~ April 10, 2021 by Johnathan C. Richardson

As I have watched the political skies shift since the election, I’ve had the nagging feeling that there is something that Christians are not saying, or not saying loudly enough. We affirm and proclaim the importance of justice, but are we falling short of our full witness? Christians engaged in justice work must first and foremost be peacemakers. But Christian peacemaking begins with forgiveness. Forgiveness is essential to being the church, being in the world but not of it. It is also essential that we bring this witness to the public sphere. Justice seeking alone, without a Christian orientation to peacemaking, will not be sufficient. But before forgiveness can do its peacemaking work, it must first be rescued from definitions that make it irrelevant. There is a passage in Between the World and Me where Ta-Nehisi Coates remembers the funeral of his classmate Prince Jones, who was killed by a police officer. Sitting in Rankin Chapel on the campus of Howard University, under the stained-glass gaze of former dean Howard Thurman, Coates confesses, “I have always felt great distance from the grieving rituals of my people.” Coates attributes his inability to connect with Christian grieving rituals to his rejection of Chris- tian understandings of forgiveness. Forgiveness is not something he is able to offer, so he feels that he stands apart from what is happening in that chapel. “The need to forgive the officer [who killed Prince] would not have moved me,” he writes. “I knew that Prince was not killed by a single officer so much as he was murdered by his country and all the fears that have marked it from birth.” For Coates, this makes forgiveness of the killer “irrelevant.” Nor can he bring himself to ascribe any higher purpose to Prince’s death. He can mourn, yes, but not with trust that Prince’s death served some yet-to-be-seen purpose. Forgiveness and purpose are two things he attributes to Christian grief, on display in the chapel, and he rejects both. Coates’s description of his thoughts and experiences in that chapel moved me, in part because I too have met my limit for understanding and acceptance at the funerals of two men whose murders came at the hands of this country’s beliefs and fears. My friends Derek and Wayne were killed by the same system that produced the police officer who killed Prince. Derek Jackson was killed by a drug addict. Wayne Simpson was shot outside his father’s ice cream shop. While neither was killed by a police officer, both were killed by a system that puts Black bodies at risk and weaponizes their very existence. A few years before Between the World and Me came out, Coates expressed his problem with ultimate purpose in an essay in the Atlantic. “I don’t believe the arc of the universe bends towards justice,” he wrote. “I don’t even believe in an arc. I believe in chaos.” If anything good will be done, he argued, it will be done by humans. “I think that those of us who reject divinity, who understand that there is no order, there is no arc, that we are night travelers on a great tundra, that stars can’t guide us, will understand that the only work that will matter, will be the work done by us.” Forgiveness, as Coates understood it in the chapel, is irrelevant because it appears as an isolated incident in a universe that moves toward chaos, not justice. If by forgiveness we mean that we initiate some action in our own hearts to forget what this country has done to Black bodies and why, then I agree with Coates: such forgiveness is meaningless. But unlike Coates, I do not reject the notion of a Christian God. Indeed I believe that the church has something of radical significance to offer amid the circumstances in which we find ourselves, amid the continual mourning for Black people killed by systems of violence. From my perspective, Coates’s particular brand of atheism does not allow us to be as radical as we need to be in addressing the violence. What transforms the Christian understanding of forgiveness is its role in the larger and more significant project of peacemaking. With the help of Stanley Hauerwas, I learned that Coates’s rejection of forgiveness as a viable social ethic is actually shared by some Christians. In a 1985 essay for the jour- nal The Furrow titled “Peacemaking: The Virtue of the Church,” Hauerwas writes that Christians have frequently dismissed Jesus’ account of forgiveness in Matthew 18:15–20, either because they find it im- practical or because they believe that “we are better off waiting for some conflicts to die through the passage of time.” Forgiveness, so understood, might be perceived as meaningless. But Hauerwas argues that a robust form of forgiveness as a Christian practice presupposes that “peacemaking is that quality of life and practices engendered by a community that knows it lives as a forgiven people.” It occurred to me that this is what Coates missed as he sat alienated in Rankin Chapel. Continued on next page 3 Jones’s mother and others grieving with her were doing so not only as Black people but also as people who are forgiven. Christianity is a religion rooted in historical claims about Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection. Therefore, Christian peacemakers cannot deny history or forget it. Specifically, they cannot forget the history that sends police “into ghettos armed with the same self-generated fears that compelled the people who think they are white to flee the cities and into the Dream,” as Coates writes. This history and its deepest realities are at the center of Christian peacemaking. Peace can only come with a true ac- counting of history. Forgiveness, in a Christian account, is one of the ways that Christians enter into engagement—one might even say conflict—with their enemies. Nonviolent protests are an excellent example of this engagement. This conflict is not an attempt to annihilate the enemy. That too would be a form of forgetting. Forgiveness is not a denial of history: it looks directly at the need for forgiveness and engages directly those who have committed and perpetuated social, political, systemic, and personal evils. In Christian peacemaking, the offering of forgiveness is also an indictment. For example, it exposes the lies inherent in the deaths of Jones, Jackson, and Simpson. They were not killed, as the lies go, because police officers were keeping the peace, or because addiction is a form of moral failure, or because putting Black people behind bars makes us safe. The Christian practice of peacemaking makes clear that an egregious sin has been committed— not only against one individual but also against Black people as a community and against the social fabric itself. Forgiveness makes these sins visible. Christian peacemaking asserts that these crimes are not how things should be. They are not “natural.” They are outside the realm of peace that God showed us through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christians use forgiveness to assert the power and possibility of another way of being in relation with one another—one that has redemption and recon- ciliation at its root. Christian forgiveness exposes as unnatural the murders of Jones, Jackson, and Simp- son as well as the history, beliefs, and fears that ultimately formed their killers. It provides an alternative account of human relation. Forgiveness, in this sense, is not irrelevant; it is a means of revelation. Coates’s assertion of the meaninglessness of Jones’s death is not as powerful a statement. At the same time, a Christian account of forgiveness can join with Coates’s own in exposing the absurdity of the circumstances that led him to believe that Prince’s death was meaningless. Once we have acknowledged the true nature of the crime that has been committed, once we have not only made that crime visible but also named it as unnatural, our understanding of peacemaking shifts from the work of potentially heroic individuals to the work of ordinary humans who are themselves forgiven. When the ordinary people in Rankin Chapel evoked forgiveness, they were not talking about their emotions in relation to what happened to Jones or their decision not to remember it. They were acknowl- edging that the social fabric is in a state of disrepair, that humans are wounded and broken as well as blind. The powerful proclamation of Christian peacemaking is that we do more than recognize our common brokenness. We expose brokenness as contrary to the condition of humanity, and we work to witness to the true condition. This makes sense to a people whose redemption and salvation are not an idea but a person. Thus the enemy is invited into the work of peace as a friend who is also forgiven. Christians are able to love our enemy in this way because our enemy does not define us. We are both defined by God. Furthermore, a forgiven people understands that they cannot heal history all on their own. We can’t make it right. Coates says he believes that the only work that matters will be the work that humans do, but as a forgiven people, we know that we do not have it within ourselves to make everything turn out all right. We do not conceive of history as a human achievement; we submit to the notion that we are not only divinely contingent and determined but also known and loved. This offers hope, and it is perhaps the best reason that Christian peacemaking principles need more room on the public stage, especially in our current climate. Christian forgiveness as a social ethic offers something that society cannot get without the witness of the church. You do not necessarily need the church or religion to participate in acts of justice. An appeal to the rule of law and the language of individual rights may be enough to move the needle of the American democratic republic toward a more just society. It cannot, however, move the needle toward a more beloved one. A people consecrated to the work of peacemaking lives into the answer that is beyond human achievement. The practice of Christian forgiveness by a forgiven people offers a distinctive witness the world cannot do without. Copyright © 2021 by the Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the June 2, 2021 issue of the Christian Cen- tury. Subscriptions: $65/yr. from P. O. Box 429, Congers, NY 10920–0429. (800) 208-4097. christiancentury.org

UCC ROOTS ~ REMEMBERING OUR ROOTS Anton T. Boisen and Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) Pastoral education for American clergy changed dramatically during the 20th century. Theo- logical seminaries had been shaped by Biblical scholars and liturgical traditions focused on scholarship. However, the most important changes in theological education were shaped by a man named Anton Theophilus Boisen (October 1876–1965). Boisen was born in Indiana, he graduated and taught at Indiana University, he studied at Union Theological Seminary, he explored forestry at Yale University, was ordained as a Presbyteri- an pastor, and did rural church work in a midwestern Congregational Church. He referred to himself as a “Presbygationalist.” During his ministry, and World War I, Boisen suffered several psychot- ic episodes, and felt a religious calling to bring religion and medicine closer together. Eventually he became a hospital chaplain; and for a time he taught at Chicago Theological Seminary Mental illness, according to Boisen, represented “a crisis brought about by a failure to grow into higher social loyalties, including loyalty to God.” Mental illness was purposive, and it could be cured by the power of religion. “Crisis situations often create possibilities that involve religious “quickening.” “All true life is social life.” “It is life-together.” It is “being-with” and “being-for” the other. In the1930s, Boisen joined with medical and theological leaders to form the “Council for the Clinical Training of Theological Students”--exposing students to extended relationships with people suffering illness and crisis, mainly in mental hospitals. He believed that some mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, could be interpreted as one's attempts to solve "problems of the soul". Later, he argued that mental illness is a crisis brought about by the failure to grow into higher social loyalties, especially including loyalty to God. Today, thousands of seminarians from diverse religious traditions have been shaped by Boi- sen’s views of pastoral care. Ministers and church leaders regularly insist that Clinical Pastoral Edu- cation (CPE) provides essential training to shape ordained ministry. Contributor: Barbara Brown Zikmund JUSTICE ~ BOOK REVIEW The granddaughter of a Doukhobor peace activist traces her family’s history of protest Vera Maloff explores her grandfather's struggles to honour his pacifist beliefs in this memoir By Albina Retyunskikh (Reprinted from Broadview)

Vera Maloff remembers a painting from her childhood: men throw guns into a raging bonfire ringed by community members singing prayers. The scene commemorates a day in June 1895 when the Russian Doukhobors burned their weapons, renouncing war and compulsory service in the czar’s army. Persecuted by the Russian government for their devout pacifism, over 8,000 Doukhobors migrated from Russia to Canada in 1899, settling in what is now known as Saskatchewan. They hoped Canada would be a safe haven for them; for many, it was not. It didn’t take long for the majority of Doukhobors to lose their land in Saskatchewan. They wanted to live communally, but the Canadian government insisted on individual ownership of home- steads. When it cancelled their land rights in 1907, thousands moved west to British Columbia, and this is where Maloff grew up, on the sunny side of the Kootenay River in Thrums, B.C. In Our Backs Warmed by the Sun: Memories of a Doukhobor Life, Maloff explores her family’s history, focusing especially on her grandfather Peter (“Pete”) Maloff, who was active in the peace move- ment. Through manuscripts, newspaper articles and interviews with loved ones, she retraces her grandfather’s life, showing readers what it felt like to stand up for your values when it was the least convenient thing to do. Pete Maloff fiercely believed that all people were created equal, regardless of race or status. Like many Doukhobors, he protested against funding wars with taxpayers’ money, ab- stained from alcohol and drugs, and was a vegetarian. Doukhobors also embraced the belief that God lives within each one of us, rejecting the institutional church and clergy. Continued on next page 5 Initially, Pete was sympathetic to the Sons of Freedom, a radical Doukhobor sect known for nude protests. “If you will take everything from us, and do not let us live by our beliefs, then take our clothes also,” they argued. (When he later objected to their campaign of bombings and burnings, he became the victim of arson himself.) In 1929 and again in 1932, Pete was sent to Oakalla Prison near Burnaby, B.C., for leading protests. His wife and her parents were sentenced to three years for public indecency in 1932 and impris- oned in Piers Island, B.C. Pete’s children also faced repercussions. The author’s elderly mother, Leeza (a loving Russian nickname for Elizabeth), recalls with poignant details the pain and loneliness she felt at the B.C. Indus- trial School for Girls in Vancouver in 1932 while her parents were in prison. She was one of 350 Dou- khobor children who were displaced in orphanages, institutions and foster homes for a year. (Another wave of family separations happened in the 1950s, when the children of the Sons of Freedom were forced to attend residential school in New Denver, B.C.) In 1940, Pete Maloff did more jail time for refusing to register for the Second World War. The penalty for non-registration was three months in prison, but he was sentenced to several terms; after a release, he’d be out for a week before police would arrest and jail him again. He was beaten by a war- den. Finally, he was sent to Blewett, B.C., on house arrest for three years, far from his family and community. Despite imprisonment, Pete Maloff never failed to honour his pacifist beliefs. Addressing the Rotary Club in Trail, B.C., during the global volatility of 1968, he asked: “Do we think to overcome this worldwide crisis by using the same old outworn methods: bigger armies, navies, air force, hydrogen bombs, poison gases and all our other confused values? I myself doubt it. I stand for creative intelli- gence which is distinctly distilled in the unchanging truth of that one cosmic law: ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill.’” Vera Maloff is proud of her grandfather’s legacy in Canada. “Perhaps here, as Doukhobor peace seekers, we have contributed toward our communities,” she writes. “Pete Maloff strove to make a dif- ference.” Her memoir will inspire hope for a world where we can all choose peace. TRANSLATING THE BIBLE When A Word Is Worth A Thousand Complaints (and When It Isn’t)” Bible translation is about more than just technical accuracy. By ~ Jordan K. Monson

This article first appeared in the January/February 2021 issue of Christianity Today. Used by permission of Christianity Today, Carol Stream, IL 60188.

I reached for my headphones. Not the little white ones, but the massive half domes deep within my bag. A table away from me in the cramped café, two souls were projecting a conver- sation in volumes fit for a lecture hall. My hand stopped short. I found myself eavesdropping. And as I did, my annoyance melted into compassion. The woman sat leaning hard against the wall, as if the chair itself was not enough. She told of cancer and medical bankruptcy—the sort of life-unraveling events when body and fi- nances break at the same time. “Sometimes I wonder if God and Satan made a bet on me,” she sighed at the end of the story. Knowing it wasn’t my place to keep listening, I donned my headphones. But her words, I wonder if God and Satan made a bet on me, drained my focus. In Job 1, as our English translations currently have it, Satan walks into the heavenly court. God points out Job’s righteous- ness — that nobody on earth fears God and turns away from evil like him. Satan then Continued on next page 6 “answers that this is only because God has so blessed Job with riches and health. Take those things away from him, Satan says, and he’ll “curse you to your face.” “Very well, then,” God responds, “he is in your hands; but you must spare his life” (Job 2:5–6). Countless readers throughout history have read this passage and scratched their heads. Why would Satan be allowed to stand in the presence of Yahweh—and to challenge him? If Sa- tan can take away everything from Job, why shouldn’t he do the same to us? Do Satan and God make bets?

Speak of the Devil? Few contemporary Job commentaries—even conservative evangelical ones—think we should be translating the character in Job as “Satan.” Neither does The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (HALOT). The literature of Israel’s neighbors contains many stories in which sages in a king’s court offer wisdom. A common character appears: an “adversary,” “accuser,” or “challenger.” He hadn’t jumped the fence to get in, and he certainly was not an uninvited guest. He was an ad- viser in the gainful employment of the king—albeit with a job description a bit different than the other sages. Not unlike the role of some strategists and consultants today, the adversary’s job was to play out the plans of the king and poke holes in them to foresee possible failures. The point was to catch an error in the king’s court before it played out on the field, causing the king to lose face—or battles. And if all Israel’s neighbors had stories and characters like this, might not the Hebrews as well? The word for this and other accusers in the Old Testament is hassatan—the satan. It’s not a name but an office. Just like “the prophet” and “the warrior” are not names of specific people but biblical roles, so hassatan was a role that many different characters played depend- ing on the circumstance. Sometimes evil characters played the adversary. Sometimes righteous characters took up the role. In Numbers 22, an angel of the Lord played the satan against Balaam for the glory of God. In Job, then, that character is not the Devil but a “devil’s advocate.” He has no particular vendetta against Job. He’s not there because God might be prone to error, but so God can answer why the righteous praise him and do good. As McMaster Divinity College Old Testament professor August Konkel told me, “Treating hassatan as the Devil gives the perception of a dualism in which God and the Devil make equal claims on a person’s life and that sometimes the Devil wins.” What’s important in Job, he said, is “the concept of a holy and sovereign God in control of all events of our lives.” Nevertheless, translators (even the rabbis who translated the Old Testament into Greek) for thousands of years assumed that the term the satan was a reference to the Devil. So its “the” was removed and Satan got capitalized as a proper name. That’s understandable to a point. Those earlier translators were largely unaware of the common adversary role in ancient Near East courts. More bewildering is that today’s Job scholars who write in their commentaries that the accuser “is not the Devil” are the very same Job scholars on the translation committees for our most popular English Bible translations. And in those Bibles, the accuser remains Satan with a capital S. What in heaven is going on? One key reason is that translation committees are inherently conservative. “That’s sort of a deep impulse that we have,” said Mark Strauss, vice-chair of the Committee on Bible Translation, which is responsible for the New International Version. “The church has been the repository of truth for so long that it’s important to maintain that tradition.” Continued on next page 7 When dealing with the Word of God, we don’t want to recast lightly an interpretation the whole world has chosen since Jerome’s Vulgate when some scholars find a similar word in some Ugaritic manuscripts. So it requires a supermajority of a translation committee to change a previous edition’s translation. Even if the Job scholars on the committee agree, they have to convince scholars outside their specialty to vote their way. This means changes that go against tradition don’t happen often. When they do, they can be a very big deal.

Bibles and blowtorches After three and a half centuries with the King James Version, the hype over a new Eng- lish translation in 1952 was palpable. Many were arguing that the Revised Standard Version (RSV) would unite English-speaking Protestants and Catholics with a Bible in contemporary language. Instead, the translation intensely angered many Christians. The battle centered on one of the most famous texts in Scripture, Isaiah 7:14: “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel” (emphases added throughout). Both the Virgin Birth and the Incarnation are foreshadowed in this verse written so many centuries before Jesus. But in the RSV, the verse reads: “Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanu-el.” Scandal seized the country. Polemics flew from the presses in tract, pamphlet, and book form. A pastor took a blowtorch to the RSV and mailed its ashen remains to Bruce Metzger, the senior translator. The RSV was labeled a “Communist Bible,” and the Un-American Activities Committee of the US House of Representatives investigated members of the translation committee for Communist ties. The US Air Force even warned against using the RSV in a 1960 training manual, due to its supposed Communist commitments. But the translation young woman wasn’t wrong. Technically, it’s as correct as virgin. The Hebrew word alma represents a sexually mature but unmarried woman—with the clear cultural expectation that she would be a virgin. As Asbury Seminary’s John N. Oswalt put it, the closest word in English might be maiden. But welcome to the translator’s dilem- ma: Maiden isn’t a word you’d pick if you’re going for contemporary idioms. So you have to err on one side or the other: young woman or virgin. As Southern Baptist Seminary’s John D. W. Watts said, one is wrong by being too broad and the other is wrong by being too narrow. That Jesus was born of a virgin is core Christian doctrine. But the sign Isaiah more immediately promised King Ahaz was that a woman would name a child Immanuel, not that there would be a virgin birth in the eighth century B.C. For many readers, omitting that one word was enough to see the RSV as denying the su- pernatural. Bible publishers took away a different kind of lesson. Translation committees “walk a fine line,” said John Walton, professor of Old Testament at Wheaton College. “Evangelical translations are committed to good scholarship, but they also have the challenge of marketing. If the translation departs too obviously from tradition, people will write it off as ‘radical’ or ‘liberal’ and won’t buy it, in which case all the publisher’s efforts, money, and good intentions go to waste.” So now, many Bible translation committees employ not only Bible scholars at the table but market-end professionals, whose primary concern is reception. Not all translation committees do this. The New International Version’s committee, for example, does not. “No publisher sits with us. They have no influence over what we put in the text,” said Douglas Moo, professor at Wheaton College and chair of the NIV’s Committee on Continued on next page 8 Bible Translation (CBT). This allows translators to maintain scholarly independence from market pressures. But whether or not market professionals sit at the translation table, the market has a way of making its opinions known.

Yesterday’s today’s version In an effort to translate Scripture in the way modern English uses gendered language, the CBT created Today’s New International Version (TNIV) in 2002. Where the original Greek addressed the Christian church by saying “brothers,” they translated “brothers and sisters.” Where the RSV has “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law,” the TNIV has “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Rom 3:28). These kinds of changes better reflect how the original hearers and readers of Scripture would have understood those terms. The translators were lambasted for it. They were boycotted. They were accused of creating a gender-neutral Bible. Absolutely not, the NIV committee responded, saying it was a “gender accurate” translation. The Southern Baptists had, by the turn of the millennium, largely adopted the NIV in most of their churches. But with this news, they embarked on a translation of their own. Al- bert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, promoted the Holman Chris- tian Standard Bible (HCSB) as one that would allow the Southern Baptist Convention to “have a major translation we can control.” After boycotts and bad press, the sales of the TNIV were so dismal that it was withdrawn from publication. The market had been heard. Which is not to say that the TNIV didn’t have problems. For example, “For what son is not disciplined by his father?” in Hebrews 12:7 became “For what children are not disciplined by their parents?”—messing with the image of God as one and God as Father. In 2011, the NIV translation committee published a revised version that updated a few sticking points like that verse in Hebrews (it’s now “For what children are not disciplined by their father?”) but kept many of the decisions behind the TNIV. This time, the uproar was much quieter. Some critics had been won over. Others had moved on, to other fights or other translations. But the tide had also turned. Gender-accurate translations were becoming the norm. They are becoming tradition. In fact, although the Southern Baptists’ HCSB was born in part to counter the agenda they accused the TNIV of employing, its most recent version, the Christian Standard Bible (CSB), made many of the same decisions that the NIV’s translators did in 2011. And when detractors within the denomination criticized those decisions, Southern Baptist leaders’ response that the CSB is “gender accurate” rather than “gender neutral” sounded familiar.

Theology versus exegesis Translation is complicated. Words in one language often do not have a singular perfect equivalent in another. To address this, translators have been careful to choose the closest words and phrases. When confusion is possible, they sometimes add a footnote. When that is not enough, study Bible notes can further clarify the text. But these bring their own troubles. In 2009, for the first time in its history, a study Bible won the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s Christian Book of the Year award. Crossway’s ESV Study Bible sold so fast they couldn’t keep it stocked. And if you open that bestseller to the Gospel of Luke, you’ll find world-class scholarship represented in the study notes below the text. But the man who authored many of the notes is not credited as a Luke contributor. Continued on next page 9 Robert Stein is now 85 and retired after years as a New Testament professor at Bethel Seminary and Southern Seminary. He says that Thomas Schreiner, his colleague and the editor in charge of the ESV’s New Testament study notes, accepted his notes for Luke and passed them along to the ESV Study Bible’s general editor, Wayne Grudem. Stein says he was sur- prised later to see that Grudem, who is well known for his systematic theology textbook but is not a scholar of the synoptic Gospels, had made several significant insertions and edits. Stein told me he was “disturbed” by what he received. The edited and inserted notes were in Stein’s name, but he said he found them “not true to the Bible.” Stein, Grudem’s former boss at Beth- el Seminary, wrote an eight-page letter about the changes. Some were minor or stylistic, but some were deal breakers. “This cannot stand . . . this is simply not true,” he said. “You’ve changed the meaning, and it is no longer true to the text.” Systematic theologians and Bible scholars have long butted heads in academies across the theological spectrum. But Stein has contributed to other study Bibles and interdisciplinary efforts and says he had never been overruled like this. His efforts at further discussion were rebuffed. “I sense that [Grudem’s] dogmatic theology ruled over the exegesis of the text,” he said. “I dedicated myself to the study of the Bible, to be true to the text no matter what.” In a statement, Grudem said that the ESV Study Bible notes are “the result of modifications and additions suggested by at least seven different editors. It is the general policy of Crossway Books not to engage in a public discussion of specific editorial decisions.” Stein says he wrote to those other editors: “I will not let you use my name.” He asked where to send his check back. But they told him to keep it, saying they would like to keep his study notes, edits and all. They would remove his name as a Luke contributor but credit him in a general list of New Testa- ment consultants, where his name appears to this day. Stein agreed to the compromise because he believed that his notes, even with Grudem’s edits, would still be better than most others they could find for the job. He wasn’t alone in his experience. August Konkel’s commentary on Job specifically states that the accuser character in Job 1 “is not the Devil.” The ESV Study Bible notes exactly the opposite, even though Konkel is credited as one of the authors. “My experience in doing study notes for the English Standard Version was very negative,” Konkel told me in a letter. “They not only completely re-wrote what I said, but what they supplied is simply linguistically indefensible.” Konkel did eventually sign off on the notes, despite his disagreement with the changes.

The voice of the dead Bible publishers see their work as careful stewardship of the Word of God. They also know it is big business. The NIV has sold over 400 million copies worldwide since its inception. And it likely never would have been born if it weren’t for the RSV’s translation of young woman instead of virgin. Many of those 400 million Bible sales would have gone to the RSV if not for that one word. Most profits from Bible sales go back into Bible translation, research, and mission work. Nobody’s translating the Bible to line their pockets. But the market still matters. And translators don’t only have to consider the market. They also have to consider the past. “Any translation that ignores tradition is a fool,” said Bill Mounce, author of a popular series of biblical Greek textbooks. The scholars who translate our Bibles are aware of their place in history. They don’t break with tradition lightly. As renowned Hebrew scholar Bruce Waltke told me, “The voice of the dead has to be heard.” But what if the dead were wrong? Pre- vious eras had only fractions of the research and resources we have now. They couldn’t deci- pher the languages of almost any of the Hebrews’ neighbors. They were often dependent on a translation instead of the original languages. They rarely or never traveled to the biblical lands where the events took place. And archaeology as we now know it has only existed for Continued on next page 10

about 200 years. We want to avoid assuming newer understandings are always better understandings, but it’s hard not to wonder—if they had access to the evidence we have, what would their voices say?

Godly adversaries The CBT’s Douglas Moo often tells people, “There are two things nobody wants to know: How sausages are made and how Bibles are translated.” Even though we know the Bible comes to us in translation, it’s nicer to think that every aspect of the book we hold has de- scended directly from the heavens. It’s uncomfortable to remember that the scholars who com- pile, analyze, and translate that text are not infallible. It may be even more troubling to think of the market forces, bias, and reader response that play a role, even though we remember choosing and buying the book in our hands. Learning of the dissension and infighting is dis- heartening, even as we know that the best translations are often the result of iron sharpening iron. But this much is sure: The scholars who translate our Bibles love God and love Scrip- ture. “Every Bible translator I know is driven by a passion for God’s Word and a desire to get it right,” Mark Strauss wrote to me. The only reason we’re even aware of these issues is because of the embarrassment of riches we enjoy. “No other book from the ancient world comes close to the Bible’s reliability in terms of its textual transmission and the accuracy of its translation,” Strauss said. Waltke assured me that all major Christian translations are faithful. None lead the church into heresy, he said, and all lead to the Cross. When we pull our Bibles off the shelf, we hold in our hands the collected brilliance of more than two millennia of faithful and hard-fought biblical scholarship. And we can trust it. But that doesn’t mean the work is done. Jordan K. Monson is a PhD student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, a former Bible translation consultant in São Tomé and Príncipe, and the pastor of Capital City Church in St. Paul, Minnesota.

A SWEET SANCTUARY

WHAT IS A BEAUTIFUL CHURCH BUILDING FOR? What my bad sermons made bland, our sanctuary made sweet.

Reprinted from The Christian Century ~ By: Zen Hess, May 24, 2021

In the summer of 1903, a newspaper headline boasted of what would become my congregation’s building: “Plans Are Here: They Show the German Reformed Church to Be Fine.” A year later, as the building neared completion, another newspaper article celebrated the new structure for “adding beauty and refinement to this part of the city.” More than a hundred years later, college students from the local university came to shoot a short film in our building. When I opened one of the roller doors to our sanctuary, one student’s delight was audible: “Oh my.” The newspapers were right: this was an enduringly lovely structure. But what is the purpose of all that beauty? I did not grow up in a churchgoing family. For the first years of my life in Christ, I worshiped and served in relatively uninteresting church buildings: a simple and deteriorating Brethren building and a lumber warehouse turned evangelical worship space. Continued on next page

11 But in a providential plot twist, just as my wife and I were about to get married, the lumber warehouse caught fire—a Pentecost-worthy sermon illustration. We needed a place to make our vows. We found a church and asked about using it for our wedding. As the pastor showed us the building, he said, “There really is such a thing as sacred space.” We intuited that he was right. Several years later, I was serving that same church as pastor. I began using elements of the sanctuary as illustrations in my sermons. One Sunday, I translated the German phrase on one of our central stained-glass windows: Ich bin das brot des lebens. “I am the bread of life.” These words appear on an open Bible framed by a grape cluster and wheat stalks, reminding everyone that the heart of worship is encountering Christ in scripture and communion. “Thank you for pointing that out,” a congregant said in the exit line that day. “I’d never thought to ask what those words meant.” I was astonished. It had not occurred to me that people might not know that our space’s decor was deeply meaningful. More than a century earlier, the sanctuary’s fineness had been a point of pride for the congregation. But my congregant’s confession raised a new question for me as well: What is our building beautiful for? It wasn’t a crudely utilitarian question but a theological one. How does God use the beauty of our sanctuary in the work of sanctifying his people? Contemporary artist Makoto Fujimura suggests that artists help us with deep questions “by presenting an expansive vision of life that reveals beauty in ever-wider zones.” This idea is particularly rel- evant for faithfully composed sanctuaries. In a more literal sense than Fujimura perhaps intended, the Georgia pine ceilings in our sanctuary are perfectly symmetrical, with arched beams creating a visual effect that makes the world feel larger. It’s a room that urges you to imagine life with God as an abun- dant life. If a small, dark room used for solitary confinement depletes the soul—even causing physical damage to the brain—then a sanctuary does the opposite: it expands the soul. Our sanctuary, and thousands of others, are spaces where it feels almost obligatory, as Calvin says, to “raise our minds upward and seek Him in heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father.” In this way, God uses the beauty of a place to open our minds and hearts for an encounter with something beyond us, something holy or sacred. The work of sanctification, however, requires a step beyond openness. If God uses beauty for transformative purposes, then beauty must change us. Ellen Davis observes that in the Old Testament, the only material creations that receive extended, detailed descriptions are the tabernacle and the temple, communal places of worship: A sanctuary has a kind of creative capacity of its own. Specifically, it has the capacity to shape the people who spend time there, to form them (us) as believers. . . . The sanctuary itself deepens religious experience and insight. The physical space that we inhabit as worshippers may itself contribute to our awareness of new possibilities for living in the presence of and to the glory of God. Davis suggests that sacred spaces form people. The tabernacle and temple formed worshipers by greeting them day after day with images and smells and sounds that caused their hearts and minds to dwell on God’s presence and commands. Sacred spaces impose upon our habits of mind and processes of understanding by echoing heavenly beauty into our imaginations. The world within a sanctuary shapes the way we understand the world outside it and the way we act in it. The way a beautiful place shapes us is a one-two punch. The beauty of the place captivates our imaginations, which softens us to whatever the beautiful thing may teach us. This is common human experience, isn’t it? A person who smells a wonderful aroma pauses and asks, “What’s cooking?” A bril- liant line in a song leads the listener to wonder what the song is about. Beauty is a catalyst, drawing our mind, spirit, and heart to attend to that which our body encounters. The church has long known the power of beauty to draw people to dwell on divine truths and actions. Inattention to beauty, on the other hand, can cause even a true and good thing to become less compelling. Fujimura again: “A lack of attention to beauty in presenting a truth hampers its appeal and adoption.” Take, for example, the gorgeous rose window on the southern wall of our church, in which the “burning sun with golden beam” often causes the vivid red and purple of Jesus’ robe to explode with brilliance. Its placement and design suggest it teaches us something about Christ’s ascension. This doctrine is fundamental to many significant elements of Christian theology and practice: the church, prayer, mission, and eschatology, to name a few. Yet the minor role Christ’s ascension plays in the Gospel nar- ratives leaves it overshadowed by his death and resurrection. For many Christians, the ascension may seem abstract and even secondary to more important matters. Continued on next page 12 Every detail I have studied in the sanctuary has some biblical root. From a tedious detail about the temple’s design to the irresistible story of Christ walking on the water, our building is an imaginative commentary on the scriptures. What books and bad sermons have mostly made bland for my congregants, the sanctuary makes sweet. The beauty of our rose window, however, makes the doctrine more appealing, and its presence in our place of worship anchors Christ’s high priestly role in our doxological imagination. With Jesus just over our shoulders, we are taught that he keeps watch over our worship, as well as our coming and going. The beauty of this window draws the grandeur of Christ’s ascension—perhaps understated in the Gospels and implicit in the Epistles—into focus in a unique and formative way. As my congregant’s confession reveals, however, students may need a tutor to understand the teacher. Even if its beauty opens our hearts to God in a unique way, the strange language, symbolism, and imagery are not always intuitive. Fortunately, I found my congregation was wide open to exploring the familiar aspects of our sanctuary. In the summer of 2019, I put together an interactive workshop in which we discussed the architec- ture and artistic elements of our building. Nearly half of our congregation showed up—a surprising turn- out after our first two workshops on other subjects drew only a handful of people. Children asked questions, congregants beamed as long-loved relics became newly meaningful, and I realized just how con- nected everyone felt to our shared space. Judging by the way people busily wrote on the handouts—something they never do during my sermons!—they were eager to learn from the building and grapple with the beauty they enjoyed every week. I am confident that many who gathered for that workshop became more attuned to the aesthetics at work around them on Sunday mornings, creating a deeper engagement in worship. So it’s no wonder that my congregants, like many the world over, felt such a deep sense of loss when COVID-19 exiled us from our sacred places. Like having to move from a beloved home without warning, the thrust into an unknown way of worshiping was an alienation that forced us to ponder questions we thought we’d already answered. What is worship? How do we pray together? What does the communion of saints mean? On the first Sunday after suspending in-person services, I came to the sanctuary to keep vigil and sit beneath the comforting image of Christ ascended above all principalities and powers. I did it for myself and for my congregation, many of whom I knew longed to be in that place in the comfort of the beautiful ordinary. I quickly realized that I would need to let go of the idea that worship could carry on normally. For all that is possible in the age of digital content creation, digital spaces are inherently smaller and thinner than physical spaces shared with physically present people. How can a room with 50-foot ceilings have the same effect on a 13-inch screen? The goal could not be to keep things as normal as possible, because things were not normal. As I asked what we could do in this new strange season of worshiping in exile, I found that the sanctuary’s beauty, which had shaped our understanding of worship, could still guide us. Worshiping in our sanctuary taught us that God encounters us through our whole being, not just in words spoken during worship. So, on Sunday mornings, I invited congregants to throw open their windows or light a candle. I wanted them to realize that worship was not happening on the screen but all around. Our sanctuary is thoughtful in its small details and in the way that every part flows together to create a breathtaking whole. Initially our worship videos felt choppy, one part abruptly moving to the next. As we acquired skill in composing them, we began to implement techniques that made them more cohe- sive—with help from Lester Ruth’s edited volume about the flow of ancient worship. The book reminds us that liturgy is not a list of items to do and check off. Rather, our communal prayer should flow together, imitating the unbroken praise of heavenly worship. Simple decisions, like lengthening a piano intro and putting it quietly under the conclusion of a prayer, bind these actions together and allow digital worship to feel less like a slideshow and more like a prayerful journey together. The pews offer another example. We take them for granted, but they imply that whatever we do in the sanctuary requires many different people; congregational worship needs a congregation. So, we in- cluded as many people as we could in every service. From time to time, we utilized elements from the sanctuary because, pastorally, they offered comfort and a familiar foothold. We could not re-create the sanctuary on the screen, but we could follow the instincts we acquired from weekly worship in our particular space.

Continued on next page 13 During the summer and fall we worshiped together outside. Then, after a month of indoor worship, COVID-19 surged and we returned to virtual-only worship. This time around, we explored new possibilities and pushed ourselves again and again: How does our sanctuary teach us to worship? And how might we present the truth beautifully to our congregation and the visitors exiled with us? During the Babylonian exile, there was always an urge to return to Jerusalem, to worship again in the comfort of the temple. But the prophets began to shift the focus from the temple itself to the purpose of the temple in God’s work of making the people holy. They taught that God does not exist for sacred spaces; sacred spaces exist to open us to an encounter with God and teach us to live with God in ways that will sustain our faith beyond their walls. The temple became an integral part of the Christian imagi-nation, as the people came to understand themselves as the temple of God, both as individuals and as the holy catholic church. The beauty of the place is absorbed by and reflected in the people. At the cornerstone ceremony for our building, in 1903, a former pastor of St. Pete’s encouraged the congregation, saying, “May you, members of St. Peter’s church, finish this temple and also build a spiritual house in which God may dwell. Build on the cornerstone of Jesus Christ. God must be that divine architect.” I like to think the work we’ve done during the pandemic is part of finishing the temple that is our sanctuary. Only time will tell whether what we built in our digital services created a context in which my beloved congregation encountered the divine architect. I am, nonetheless, comforted once again by the rose window on our southern wall, in which Christ is ascended above the congregation, reminding us that he watches over his church, leading her into beautifying worship in whatever season and whatever sanctuary they gather.

Copyright © 2021 by the Christian Century. Reprinted by permission from the June 2, 2021 issue of the Christian Century. Subscriptions: $65/yr. from P. O. Box 429, Congers, NY 10920–0429. (800) 208-4097. christiancentury.org

WOMEN’S FELLOWSHIP

Women’s Fellowship has continued to gather most months during this unusual past year. Beginning in June 2020, the ladies held outdoor socially distant gatherings in the church parking lot through Novem- ber. After a break during the colder months, Women’s Fellowship resumed gathering in March of 2021. In April, we met in the church to make and fill 20 May Baskets to deliver to church shut-ins. In June, we held a lunch banquet at the church, which was enjoyed by 15 members! Looking ahead to September, the Fellowship plans to begin a more normal year of meetings in the church on the 2nd Tuesday of the month and we will return to evening meetings at that time. To start the planning process, we will meet Tuesday, July 13th at noon. Everyone is welcome to come and bring your lunch and ideas for programs and activities for next year. Having lost four fund-raising events during the pandemic (three rummage sales and a Meeting House Fair) we also plan to bring back our fund raising in the fall. The Rummage Sale will be October 1-2. We will have more information about drop-off times at a later date. The Meeting House Fair will be held November 20th. Please “save the date” for these two important events. Submitted by: Laura Lane ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~` Women’s Fellowship annually awards a scholarship to students studying for the ministry. It is with great pleasure and pride that the Women’s Fellowship has been able to present Russ Goliger with a $1,000 scholarship. As Russ follows his dream of becoming a minister we couldn’t be more pleased that we could be there for him. Submitted by: Women’s Fellowship Scholarship Committee.

DIACONATE The Diaconate simply wants to honor the memory of our beloved and faithful member Gary Hollis. As we recently met for the first time in person in over a year, we could feel his presence and warm smile among us. We are happy to be hosting summer services during the evenings for July and August with a full return in September including special services and celebrations of our faith. Be well this summer. Submitted by: Jenn Burgos 14 CONFIRMATION & SUNDAY SCHOOL As we bring this session of Sunday School to a close, I want to extend my thanks and appreciation to all of you. In a year that brought a lot of change, it also brought innovation, and although it was challenging at times, you embraced it. Our Sunday School classes continued strong throughout the year on Zoom where we continued learning about the love of God through stories, songs, crafts, and discussion. We definitely missed our friends that couldn't make it and understand that Zoom fatigue is real. If all goes as planned, we are looking forward to being back in person in the Fall!! A special thanks to Lynette Biggs, Anita Stetson, and Sky Donovan, our amazing Sunday School teachers this year. Thank you Sue Pellerin for printing our monthly handouts for Sunday School as well as supporting all of our side projects. And, of course, Thank you Pastor Kaz, for sharing your calling with us . Our new class of confirmands started in the fall and met monthly throughout the year. Dur- ing our last class the students shared their research of reformed church's throughout the world. We discussed churches in Kenya, India, Wales, Sri Lanka, and France to name a few. As COVID re- strictions have loosened, we are looking forward to increased outings and in-person opportunities to pair with the class discussions that we have been having. Thank you to everyone that participated in the food drives to support the Marlborough Com- munity Cupboard. Our church community donated an excess of 1,600 pounds of food and personal hygiene items! We also delivered two car loads of gently-used housewares and soft goods to Fresh Start Furniture Bank. Every little bit helps and we look forward to continuing these community projects in the coming year. Submitted by: Melissa Purnell

HELP WANTED FOR NURSERY CARE PERSON

The Sunday School has an open nursery position beginning in September 2021 as Ashley will not be returning after many years with us. This is a paid position, every Sunday morning from September through Children’s Sunday in June, with opportunities for extra shifts during Holy Week, etc. The right candidate will need to have experience working with young children and be comfortable man- aging multiple children, ages 3 months to 4 years. Child CPR and First Aid certification is preferred, and you will need to be CORI’d. Please email Melissa Purnell for further details or to express inter- est at [email protected].

OUR FATHER’S TABLE The evening of June 17th we gave out 40 meals to our guests. Thank you to Nancy Libby, Mary Lambert and Janice Brailey and helping me with this ministry. Mary filled the rolls with ham salad while Janice filled others with the chicken salad (all homemade) and put them into sandwich bags. Nancy helped with putting meals into bags to hand out to our guests. The meal consisted of our sandwiches, chips, cookies, granola bars and a bottle of water.

Thank you as well to Pauline and Max Wills for providing the granola bars.

We enjoyed talking with our guests and helping them by providing a meal—they were very grateful. We look forward to our next Outreach dinner on August 19th. Please contact me if you’d like to join in!

God bless all, Carol MacEwen 15 JULY AND AUGUST First Church in Marlborough SUNDAY WORSHIP AT 5:30PM IN-PERSON & LIVE STREAMED (Congregational) United Church of Christ CHURCH OFFICE PHONE: 37 High Street 508-485-6297 Marlborough, MA 01752-2344 CHURCH EMAIL: [email protected]

CHURCH WEBSITE: www.firstchurchmarlborough.org