FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
September 19, 2004
Scripture: Psalm 119:89-112; II Timothy 2:8-10, 3:14-17
I.
As we continue to focus our September sermons on what it means to worship God within the context of our theme: “Christ at the Center: Called to Worship, Work and Witness,” it is good for us to remember what the Presbyterian Book of Order says about the Bible:
And so it is, Sunday after Sunday as we gather here in this sacred place, that our order of service leads us to the moment when we read from the Biblical texts and say “This is the Word of the Lord – thanks be to God!”, followed by the sermon.
The task of the preacher, then, is to lift up and explore those ancient and holy words to the glory of the Lord; to proclaim the life, death and resurrection of Jesus – who is the word made flesh, come to dwell among us (John 1:14); to interpret what the Bible says and what it means; and to encourage people to live their lives according to the gospel of the One whom we call the Christ.
That is a tall order for every preacher, and there are some weeks when it all seems to work out better than others. A little boy, watching his father prepare a sermon, noticed that he was feverishly writing and every now and then erasing the words on a yellow legal pad. The boy asked “Dad, how do you know what to say on Sunday?” The father answered, “Well, I pray about it and God helps to give me the words to preach.” The boy thought a moment and replied, “Then why do you keep crossing so much of it out?”
Well, that’s the reality for most preachers who seek to be faithful in their proclamation of God’s Word. Some Biblical passages are clear and straightforward enough, but other texts are tough and complex and can be interpreted in different ways. In the midst of that struggle each week, I confess there are days when I wish it was as simple as the bumper sticker which reads: “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it!”
The truth is, for nearly 2000 years, the church in all of its worship, work, witness and tradition has existed under the authority of scripture. But we Christians have not always been on the same page, and that is also the case with the many different translations of the Bible.
In the worship of this congregation, we use the Revised Standard Version, published in 1952. From time to time, some of our pastors and guest preachers read from the New Revised Standard Version which came out in 1990. Other Christians prefer the New English Bible or the Jerusalem Bible, the New American Bible or the Living Bible paraphrased, The Message translated by Eugene Peterson or the New International Version edited by Bruce Wilkinson, to name just a few.
But long before all of those more recent translations were made available, there was one Bible which was widely accepted as the standard by most churches and denominations. And although it was published in the 17th century, some Christians have said and actually believed that “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.”
II.
This past summer at Chautauqua, in preparation for today’s sermon, I read a book entitled “God’s Secretaries: the Making of the King James Bible.” It was written in 2003 by an Englishman named Adam Nicholson, who did a great deal of research to uncover a truly remarkable story.
When Queen Elizabeth died in the spring of 1603, King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. Elizabeth’s motto had been “Simper Eadem” – “Always the Same,” but the young new king made his motto “Beati Pacifici,” “Blessed are the Peacemakers,” for he fully intended to establish a reign of peace throughout all of Britain and with other nations.
One year later, in 1604, King James summoned together a group of religious leaders who gathered at the palace in Hampton Court. The purpose of the meeting was for the king to call them into unity and to heal the divisions that had wreaked havoc across the kingdom between Anglicans, Puritans, Catholics, English Calvinists and Scottish Presbyterians.
And it was there and then, 400 years ago, that the concept of a new Bible translation was born, replete with the hope that both the process and the final product would draw all Christians together as never before.
The king, working through Richard Bancroft, his newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, created a large committee of 54 clerics and scholars who met in six groups of nine each in Oxford, Cambridge and Westminster. Using the familiar “Bishops Bible” and “The Geneva Bible,” both of which drew from an earlier English translation by William Tyndale, the committee members were given some basic guidelines and commissioned to translate the original Hebrew and Greek texts, together with their Latin manuscripts, into the exquisite Shakespearean language of 17th century England.
Seven years passed until the task was completed, and in 1611, the King James Version of the Bible was printed and published. It took another fifty years for that translation to become the established Bible throughout Great Britain, and there were a few glitches in some of the editions, including the so-called “Wicked Bible” in 1631, which failed to put the word “not” in Exodus 20:14, rendering the verse to read Thou shalt commit adultery – which as you might have guessed was quickly corrected!
And that is a brief summary of the story about the King James Bible as told by the author of “God’s Secretaries,” Adam Nicholson. I commend this book to you, not only because it describes in fascinating detail how those translators collaborated together and were guided by God’s divine providence, but also because Nicholson provides us with an historical framework in which this magnificent Biblical masterpiece was created.
Remember: King James intended to use this Bible to unite his people and to promote peace among the nations. However, as Nicholson sadly reminds us, those dreams did not come true:
“The 17th century would witness a civil war, in which a higher proportion of the British population was killed than in any war before or since…Attempts at imposing unity of belief or government stimulated only anarchy, violence and revolt. Scotland continued to loathe the very idea of a Bishop and was affronted by the semi-papist horrors of the Book of Common Prayer…In Ireland, native Catholics, treated as animals, were brutally replaced by incoming Scots and English settlers, and a mutually murderous history began which has lasted into the 21st century.
James’ dream of a unified and peaceful realm…was perhaps a fantasy too far. The whole of Europe had been convulsed by violence and change since the 1530’s with wars that would continue into the 1640’s…Almost the only remnant of the dream (of peace and unity), like a peace of flotsam after the tide had passed, was and is the King James Bible.
Its great and majestic beauty, a conscious heightening of the Word of God, is a window on that moment of optimism in which the light of understanding and the majesty of God could be united into a text to which the nation as a whole – Puritan and prelate, court and country, simple and educated – could subscribe.” (Page 63 from the book “God’s Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible” by Adam Nicholson, Harper Collins Publishers, 2003)
III.
So it was then, and in many ways, so it still is today. As Christians who adhere to the Presbyterian and Reformed Tradition, we believe in the authority of the Bible. Once again, as our Book of Order states, “Insofar as Christ’s will for the church is set forth in scripture, it is to be obeyed” (G-1.0100).
And just as King James envisioned, when we acknowledge that Christ is the center of our lives and affirm the core message of God’s Holy Word, we can and we will be united in our common faith and drawn together as brothers and sisters in the Lord.
So I encourage all the members of this church, together with our visitors and broadcast audience, to read the Bible every day, to reflect on what God’s Holy Word has to say to you, and to join with other Christians in Bible study classes and small groups as together we seek to grow in our faith and to meditate on “The Word of the Lord.”
The old Westminster Confession of Faith, adopted by the Scottish General Assembly in 1647, describes it this way:
“All things in scripture are not alike plain in themselves, nor alike clear unto all; yet those things which are necessary to be known, believed and observed, for salvation, are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other, that not only the learned, but the unlearned, in a due use of the ordinary means, may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” (Book of Order, from The Westminster Confession of Faith, page 127)
In other words, there are truths in the Bible which for Christians are non-negotiable, including the sovereignty, love, forgiveness and grace of God, and the gift of salvation through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. To be sure, there are more core beliefs which we could add to that list, but with the time we have left, I want to ask you the question: What are we to do when we disagree about other passages and sections of scripture which do not have easy or simple answers?
I’m thinking now about war and peace, which has been debated and often turned divisive in the Christian Church for 2000 years. There are words in the Bible which justify war and other words in the Bible which call for peace. So how are we going to talk about Iraq and Afghanistan, about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Holy Land, and how can we as Christians live in peace and learn to relate with people who belong to other faiths?
There are words in the Bible which rejoice in God’s blessings of prosperity and hope. But there are also words in the Bible which refer to poverty and our human struggle with despair. How are we going to talk about the growing gap between the rich and the poor, not only in other parts of the world, but right here in America?
And there are faithful Christians who have read the same Biblical texts about morality and human sexuality, but who have fallen into division about what those texts actually say and mean. And nearly every mainline Protestant denomination in America is struggling now to find a way to discern God’s will for a future that is yet unseen. So how re we going to talk and pray together about those issues?
CONCLUSION
If we believe, as the Apostle Paul wrote to Timothy, that the word of God is not fettered (II Timothy 2:9), but rather open to everyone with the power to set us free; and if we agree, as Paul declared that all scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, reproof, correction and training in righteousness, that we can be made complete and equipped for every good work (II Timothy 3:16-17), then it seems to me that we in this church need to open the Bible, read and reflect upon what it says, and open ourselves to a deeper conversation about the meaning of these texts as they relate to the difficult and divisive issues of our day.
The fact is that “God’s Secretaries” – those people who were inspired to write the Hebrew Scriptures and the Christian New Testament, their work is done. Those who have translated the texts into the Bible versions which we read and study today – their work goes on. Now we are the ones, called as “God’s Interpreters,” to discern and to learn what the words mean and to follow their instruction according to God’s will.
And lest any of us might be anxious or afraid, then listen again to the words which the psalmist wrote long ago, words from the Bible which speak to us still today: Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path (Psalm 119:105). With a promise like that, surely we can trust in the Lord to show us the way.
In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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