What do we mean by Church?

What do we mean by Church?

This was the subject of a recent lent group meeting I led. It might seem like a simple question with an obvious answer, but nothing could be further from the truth. Let's think first about some of the different meanings that we attach to the word;

1. The whole people of the Christian faith: "The Church of Christ, in every age..."(F. Pratt Green), "you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church" (Jesus).

2. A specific group of Christians: "Our church is growing", "I've been part of/going to this church for most of my life"

3. The people of the Christian faith in a particular place: (often coupled with the name of the denomination, the name of a saint and/or the type of area ): e.g. Somewhereton Methodist Church,  'Somewhereton Parish Church', 'Saint Somebody's Church of Somewhereton'

4. A specific denomination of Christians: e.g. Methodist Church, Anglican Church, Baptist Church, Pentecostal etc.

5. The gathering of Christians for the purpose of worship: "On Sunday I am going to Church"

6. The building in which Christians gather. "This church is a good example of neo-classical architecture", "the church roof needs repairs" 

7. The room or sanctuary within that building where worship is normally held: "Shall we have the meeting in the hall or the church?", "After a series of conversations in separate rooms we will gather again in the church for prayer."

8. The distinction between established and free church congregations: "Are you church or chapel?"

9. The leadership, clergy or governing body of the Christian community, either locally or globally: "The Church has decided...", "You are under the discipline of the church", "After many years working in business he decided to enter the Church"

• How many of these meanings do you use? 
• How many have you heard in conversation? 
• What meanings are missing from this list?

It's easy to differentiate between some usages of the word 'church', others may need some clarification; 

We can talk about local 'church' and global 'Church' - that's no problem. 

'The Baptist Church' is the part of the whole Church that call themselves Baptist. However if you are standing in a particular town and you say ' I like the Baptist Church', someone might think you mean the specific Baptist Church in their town as opposed to the Methodist or Anglican etc. rather than the Baptist Church globally or nationally. 

If we talk about Somewhereton Methodist Church, we know that we are talking about the congregation of Methodists in Somewhereton. However we might mean the building rather than the congregation.

'Church or chapel' could refer to buildings, but really it is a historic hangover from a time when the Church of England was seen as the proper church, and Methodists in particular were seen as for the lower/working classes. There are benefits for Methodists in being seen as the rebel, as sticking up for the working class, as not being the posh or established Church, but really it's an unhealthy and confusing distinction that in my opinion needs to be retired. Is this something you encounter much and how do you feel about it?

There are many other areas we could explore further, but I want to concentrate for a moment on the distinction between church as building and church as the people - and in particular the hidden dangers of maintaining the confusion within our language. Most Christians will tell you, if pressed for an answer, that the church is the people not the building, would you? Knowing that is one thing, but our language often betrays the truth that we are still confused about the issue. Our use of words also feeds our theology. We say the people are the Church, but we still talk about 'going to Church', we still talk about 'going home from church' at the 'end of church'.

Part of the confusion comes from the notion that the church is not just people, but the 'gathered people'. As we gather in a building so the building get's muddled with the notion of the gathering. There is a subtle but important difference between 'going to church' (by which we often mean worship) and 'going to the church' (by which we are more likely to mean going to the building).

Either way, the directional nature of our language implies that the community of believers only exists as the church when they are in the building.  If we mean the community of believers then it is not somewhere we can go, but something of which we are constantly a part. If we mean the community of believers then it is not somewhere we go, but something we are constantly a part of. When we speak of going to church It denies the missional, called out and sent out nature of the Church and it denies the importance of house groups, groups that meet in pubs, cafés, open fields and office buildings. When we speak of Church as the calling, sending, transforming community that engages with the deepest issues of the world - when we truly believe that to be the case, that deeper understanding of what Church is, makes the notion of 'going to' it nonsensical. 

There are some ironies about how we got to this place of confusion. The first irony is that the Greek word, Ekklesia, which we translate from the New Testament as church, literally means 'called out'. Yes, there is a notion of people being called to a gathering within that word, but the direction is 'out' - called out from our homes, called out from the mundane and the ordinary, called out to something special. The second irony is that the word 'church' doesn't originate from ekklesia itself but from another Greek word, 'kyriakos' - literally 'the lord's thing'. Some early communities of Christians started calling the places where they met kyriakos, which over time and translation into different languages became church. The translation of ekklesia to 'church' has not always been standard in English. Whilst, Wycliffe, Geneva, Douay and the KJV all translate ekklesia as 'church' or 'chirche', Tyndale, Coverdale and Bishop's translated as 'congregacion' or 'congregation'. There are more language questions to explore, like what 'words are used in the Old Testament for assemblies?' and 'what does synagogue mean?' but for now let me leave you with these more general questions;

• What effect does these language problems have on our discipleship as congregations?
• How does it affect the way that non Christians view 'the church'?
• What do you mean when you say church?
• What words might you use to clarify between building and people?
• Should we change the words we use and what different words might you choose?

A Fractal Translation of Ecclesiastes

Ecclesiastes 1:1-4 (A fractal translation)

1                 Ideas of Gatheress, a son of David - King in Jerusalem

2                 Fractal of fractals says Gatheress, fractal of fractals - the whole fractal.

3                 What is added to a human in the struggles they will struggle under the sun? 

4                 A generation walks and a generation arrives and the earth iterates to infinity.

The words above are the opening words from Ecclesiastes. Or rather they are a slightly cheeky translation of those first three verses. I have only translated the first four verses in this way so far, and I did it to see if it would work. But I think I need to explain why and in what ways this might hold up as a translation.

Ecclesiastes is peppered with the Hebrew word hevel (הֶבֶל), which is translated in different versions of the Bible as absurd, breath, bubble, enigmatic, fleeting, futility, meaningless, mist, nonsense, nothing, pointless, smoke, transient, useless, vanity and vapour. There may be more translations, but those are all I know. The reason for so many different translations is not because these are bad or confused translators, but because it's a really difficult word to pin down. Perhaps all together these words give a feel for the word hevel, but none quite get it right on their own. My take on hevel it is that the word refers to the fleeting transient nature of things. In this, the KJV and NRSV are technically fairly accurate when they use the word vanity, but whilst the KJV can be excused for its rather archaic take on the word vanity which now means something quite different, the NRSV has no such excuse and ends up being quite misleading in its choice.

Hevel is not about being absorbed by one's own beauty or the lack of it; it is not about extravagance or self indulgence. It is much gentler than that. The NIV's 'meaningless' does a quite a good job of updating 'vanity' to modern English, but like vanity, remains too harsh. Ironically, The Message translation offers us 'smoke', which is technically wrong; there is no suggestion of smoke in the original word, and yet it does the job it needs to do better than pretty much all the other translations of the word in modern English. Hevel, like smoke, is that which is here and then gone in a moment; ungraspable, uncatchable, gone!

In the Book of Ecclesiastes, the teacher is in some ways painting a bleak picture of a life without purpose, of a world where nothing we do has any lasting value. He, or perhaps she[1], delivers a damming blow to anyone who thinks that what they do, or who they are is significant, important or better than anything or anyone else. The teacher takes all of our works and achievements and grinds them to dust.

It is all too easy to see Ecclesiastes as a negative book, but it is honest and it creates a level (or hevel) playing field, it makes us equal in our insignificance, which is a great starting place from which to do all our theology. It also teaches us to enjoy and appreciate what we have, while we have it. I was recently talking to a friend who errs on the atheist side of agnostic. She talked to me about the self indulgence, the dissatisfaction and the angst she felt in searching for God and needing for a God to be there to validate her. There was for her a simple joy in letting that go, in enjoying who she is in this moment, in doing her best for others and not worrying about where it's all leading and what it all means. I think that to a great extent the writer of Ecclesiastes would commend her for her honesty and celebrate her capacity to enjoy what is good, and allow all that which is hevel to be hevel.

But the teacher does not let us go so easily. God is there in the text and meaning and purpose are present. They are all there gently and subtly, lurking beneath the surface. Above all the teacher doesn't remain with the tiny picture, the islands of happiness within an ocean of meaninglessness. Throughout the text there is a sense of the big picture, because there is a time for every purpose and because someday our islands of joy will be lost to that ocean. The teacher maintains that we don't know God's will, we don't know what happens to us when we die, but that God has a will is implicitly there within the text, there is a time for everything under the sun. A chosen time, a right time.

Like smoke, 'fractal' is the wrong word, but it does a particular and helpful job. To start with, it works grammatically in the proper context of the Hebrew sentence, allowing itself to be 'of' itself in a way that 'meaningless' can't and it can be 'whole' in a way that vanity can't; 'fractal of fractals - the whole fractal'. It calls to mind the other side of the teacher's narrative, the bigger picture. Fractals, like hevel are the same at every scale, they repeat to infinity and in spite of all manner of work done upon them and their displays of diverse beauty, their outcome and their origin remains the same. Under their complex and busy working surface, they are at heart simple in their essence, they reduce in concept to something with no substance at all, just an idea, a thought, an equation.

But unlike the meaningless, fleeting, vain, smoke of the usual translations, a fractal hevel is one that acknowledges the eternal interconnectedness of creation; an eternal nature that is there to be seen in the teacher's writings, if only we are sufficiently tuned in to see it. Generations come and go, but the entirety of creation remains, stays as it was and as it will be, ever changing, but unmoved.

Ecclesiastes 9:15 (NIV) says;                

Everything that happens has happened before,
and all that will be has already been
God does everything over and over again.

This theology of eternal return, as echoed in some far eastern religions, can be seen as a lifeless loop of unending purgatory, or if we are prepared to go where God is taking us, it can be a spiral, a helix, forever moving forward as on each turn of the circle we build in what was before, going somewhere new. Actually if we see the teacher's message in a fractal light it ceases to be about futility and becomes about the fact that you can't have the eternal without the fleeting moment and you can't be truly in the moment unless you embrace the eternal.

Fractal of fractals says Gatheress, fractal of fractals - the whole fractal.

---

[1] The word often translated as teacher (Ecclesiastes in the Greek - hence the name of the book) comes from the Hebrew word Qohelet, which is a feminine noun construct from the verb Qahal, which means to call. So Qohelet is a feminine noun for someone who calls or gathers people, for teaching or preaching. The word Qohelet is normally used in the Ecclesiastes in a male context, i.e. 'he said' etc, but there is one stray 'she said' in 7:27. On this basis I invented the word 'Gatheress' as an English equivalent of Qohelet.

Genesis 1:1 - 2:3

I recently put together a worship that focussed on human interaction with God through technology; all kinds of technology, not just the modern stuff. As part of this worship, I decided to take on a task I had been wanting to do for a while; to produce my own translation of Genesis 1:1-2:3, the first of the two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis.

I am no expert in Hebrew so I relied a lot on technology to help me do this and some of my translation choices may well be questioned by those in the know, but I have a specific agenda for my translation (as all translations do) and for the most part, the controversial choices were deliberate, rather than a result of my naivety in the field.

The specific intention of this translation is to give the reader a feel for some of the peculiarities of the Hebrew language, to hear some of the grammar and sentence construction as it is delivered in the original, to retain some of the peculiar poetry of the text and perhaps most importantly to get a sense of the creation story as a fluid torrent of action rather than the stilted and coldly segmented list of actions that it often becomes in English translations.

I have attempted to leave in ambiguities or even push towards seemingly incongruent interpretations of phrases or words, which on their own work poorly in English, but in the context of the whole story begin to paint an exciting and dynamic picture - "And God saw, that's good"

In addition I have skewed the emphasis of gender, but not without rules. In Hebrew everything has a gender, whether it is a person, species or inanimate object. Our historical tendency has been to translate objects and animals as neutral (it), God as masculine (he) and ignore any references to the feminine except in humans. This is not wrong, but it misses the way that the Hebrew language often pairs masculine and feminine in a way that helps create movement, drama and tension within the very grammar of the text. For example Adam the person from chapter 2-3 is also the name for the human race in chapter 1. Adam is masculine and singular, and yet God is heard to make 'them' male and female, this is in part because adam, the species is male in reflection of the female earth, adamah. Yet in verse Gen:1:26 we hear God making adam - in God's likeness, here God is the masculine and the image is feminine. My translation seeks to draw the feminine to our attention wherever possible and allow the masculine to go unnoticed except when it has a specific purpose to play. In particular, I have tried to avoid calling God 'he' as God is not human and therefore to translate as he is inconsistent with the traditional treatment of other non human nouns. This is intended partly as a counterbalance to other translations but also as a way of drawing out those hidden gender relationships within the grammar.

Genesis 1:1-2:3

1:1      In beginning, God created the skywaters and the earth

1:2      And the earth she was shapeless, empty and dark over the face of the deep

            And the breath of God, she fluttered over the face of the waters

1:3      And God said - be light, and light be

1:4      And God saw because the light was good

            And God separated between the light and the dark

1:5      And God called day towards the light and night towards the darkness

            And it was evening, and it was morning: Day one

1:6      And God said - be an open space between the waters

            And be separated choosing waters from waters

1:7      And God made the open space

            And chose the waters which were from beneath to the open space

            And chose the waters which were from above to the open space

            And it’s so.

1:8      And God called skywaters to the open space

            And it was evening, and it was morning: Second day

1:9      And God said - gather the waters from beneath the skywaters to one place

            And the dry land she will be seen

            And it's so.

1:10    And God called the earth to the dry land

            And to the gathered waters, called sea

1:11    And God said - sprout she the earth,

            Grass, seed sowing plants, produce trees bearing produce of their kind

            Which carry their seed on the earth

            And it’s so

1:12    And the earth she send out grass,

            Plants sowing seed of their kind and trees making produce

            Which carry the seed of their kind

            And God saw, that’s good

1:13    And it was evening, and it was morning: Third Day

1:14    And God said - be lights in the open space of the skywaters

            To separate between the day and the night

            And they were a sign for occasions, days and years

1:15    And the lights be in the open space of the skywaters

            To be light upon the earth

            And it’s so

1:16    And God made two great lights;

            The greater light for representing the day

            The lesser light for representing the night

            And the stars

1:17    And God gave them to the open space of the skywaters

            To cause light upon the earth

1:18    And to represent day and night

            And to separate between light and darkness

            And God saw, that’s good

1:19    And it was evening and it was morning: Fourth Day

1:20    And God said - the waters swarm with swarming things

            Living life forces

            And a flock fly over the earth

            Over the face of the open space of the skywaters

1:21    And God created the great sea monsters

            And each of she living, moving, life forces of their kind which swarm the waters

            And each winged flock of its kind

            And God saw, that’s good

1:22    And God welcomed them

            And said - produce and be many

            And fill the waters in the seas

            And the flocks were many above the earth

1:23    And it was evening, and it was morning: Fifth day

1:24    And God said - the earth send out living life forces of her kind,

            Beasts and crawlies and life on earth of each kind

            And it’s so

1:25    And God made life on earth of each kind

            And animals of each kind

            And crawlies of the womanearth of each kind

            And God saw, that’s good.

1:26    And God said - let us make man in our image, as our feminine reflection

            And they control, with fish, the sea

            And with flock, the skywaters

            And with the animals and with all the earth

            And with all the crawling crawlies on the earth

1:27    And God made the man in the image;

            In the image of God, created him;

            Male and female, created them

1:28    And God welcomed them

            And God said to them - produce and be many and fill the earth

            And bind and control with fish, the sea

            And with flock, the skywaters

            And with all the living crawlies on the earth

1:29    And God said - hey! I give to yous all plantlife to sow seed

            Which is on the face of all the earth

            And all the treelife which contains tree produce to sow seed,

            For yous it is for eating

1:30    And for all life of the earth

            And for all the flock of the skywaters

            And for all the crawlies on the earth

            Which contain the living life force;

            all green plantlife for eating

            And it’s so

1:31    And God saw all that was made.

            And hey, it’s very good

            And it was evening and it was morning: Sixth day

2:1      And the skywaters and the earth

            And all their gathered multitudes were complete.

2:2      And in the seventh day God completed the work that was done

            And in the seventh day, rested from all the work that was done

2:3      And God welcomed the seventh day and set it apart

            Because in it was rest from all the work of creating

            Which God had done

Jonah and some cows

Jonah is often seen as a story for children; particularly young children. But why do we consider this story of a defiant prophet with suicidal tendencies to be a good story for that age group? This morning I did a year 9 assembly at which I read a version of the story based on my own translation from the Hebrew. Perhaps even year 9 students are a little young for this story, but young people around the age of 13 are beginning to engage with some pretty complex emotions. So I endeavoured to adjust my translation for that age. I had already translated chapters 1, 3 and 4, but hadn't got round to translating the tricky poetry of chapter 2 (the bit with the fish) and I felt like I wanted to shift the emphasis away from whales and more towards the dark and sometimes surreal humour of the book. So I dealt with the fish chapter in one line and endeavoured to bring out some of the hidden humour of the rest of the text, I think it works. Anyway, here it is, see what you think...

 

Jonah

The Lord spoke Jonah son of Amitai, saying;

“Get up, go to Nineveh, the great city and call out to her (because the city was she), and because their evil has, how should I say, wafted up in front of me.”

So Jonah, obviously, decides to run away to Tarshish (the opposite direction from Nineveh) so that God wouldn’t be all up in his grill.  So he went down to Joppa and found a ship bound for Tarshish, Jonah hired her (for the boat was a she) and he went with her, and some sailors, to go to Tarshish to hide from the Lord and his big old face.
 

However, the Lord threw a great storm over the sea, and the ship, well she was working on a plan to get all smashed up on the rocks.

And the sailors were afraid and each man cried out to his own God and they threw the cargo from the ship to the sea to lighten the load. But Jonah went down to the belly of the ship and lay down and had a little sleep in her, like a little baby in the womb.
 

And the captain came down and visited him and said to him “what is with you sleepy head? Get up and call out to your God, then perhaps God will think of us and we won’t be destroyed”

And each sailor said to his friend, let’s roll some dice and each number will represent a someone on the boat, and whoever’s name comes up is the person who is to blame for this storm. So they rolled the dice and Jonah’s number came up. Not a good lottery to win.
 

So they said to him “explain how this evil has landed on us, Who do you work for? Where are you from? What land do your people come from?”

And Jonah said to them “I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of the heavens, who made the soggy sea and the dry land.”

And the men feared with a fearsome fear and they said to him, “what have you done?” because they’d pretty much sussed out that he was running from God’s big old face,  and they’d sussed it out mainly because he’d told them that’s what he was doing.
 

So they said to him “what shall we do with you in order to make the sea hush his noisy face?” because the sea was a he, and because he was getting very stormy by now.

And Jonah said to them “Just chuck me in the sea, so that the sea will hush its face, I know this is all my fault, just chuck me in.”

Even so, the sailors tried to row the boat to safety, but they couldn’t because the storm was getting rougher all the time.
 

And so they cried out to the Lord, Jonah’s God this time, and they said please Lord do not let us perish with this man, and please don’t let his innocent blood be on our hands just because of what’s gone on between you and him.

So they picked up Jonah and threw him to the sea, and the sea… well he stood still from his raging.

And the men feared a great fear of the Lord, and they sacrificed a sacrifice to the Lord, and they vowed vows.

 

…So Jonah’s in the water, get’s swallowed by a fish, he sings a little sad song whilst he’s there about getting wrapped up in seaweed, and then the fish pukes him up on a beach.

 

Again the Lord spoke Jonah son of Amitai, saying;

“Get up and go to Nineveh, the great city and call out against her and call out the proclamation which I am speaking to you.

And Jonah got up and went to Nineveh according to the word of the Lord, and Nineveh was a big city, even to God, it would take you three days to walk around all its streets.
 

And so Jonah began to do a one day walk around the city, and he called out and said to them “yet forty days and Nineveh will be overthrown.”

And – massive surprise, the men of Nineveh actually trusted God, and they called a fast, and they all wore sackcloth to show they were very sorry, from the oldest to the youngest.

And the word reached the king of Nineveh, and he got up from his throne and he took off his fancy robe and put on sackcloth and he sat on some ashes to show how sorry he was.
 

And he had these words proclaimed across Nineveh “the man and the beast, the herd and the flock let them not eat anything let them not graze and let them not drink the waters. And the sackcloth will cover the man and the beast, and let them call out to God in strength and let each man turn from his way of evil, and from the violence which is in their hands. Who knows? God may turn and repent, he may turn from his burning anger and maybe we will not perish.”

And God did indeed notice that they had turned from their evil ways, and decided not to destroy them.
 

Which of course, to Jonah, was somehow a bad thing, a great evil, and he was full of anger. And he prayed to the Lord saying “please Lord, didn’t I say this would happen? That’s why I ran off to Tarshish; I knew that you’d be all kind and gracious and loyal to these people and not punish them for all the evil they’ve done. Why don’t you just take me now, I mean, what’s the point of my life? I’d be better off dead than alive.
 

And the Lord said “Ah, You’re angry are you? well good for you”

And Jonah went out of the city so that the city wouldn’t be all up in his grill, and he made a little shelter and he sat in her shade (for the shelter was a she) and he hid there so he couldn’t see what was going on in the city. 

And the Lord assigned a plant and to grow over Jonah to help shade his head from the hot sun and stop him being a miserable so and so. And Jonah rejoiced on account of the plant, with great rejoicing.
 

And then God assigned a worm in the rising dawn of the next day and she struck the plant, (for the worm was a she) and the plant withered.

And so it was with the rising of the sun that God assigned an easterly wind, and the sun beat down on Jonah’s head and he felt cross and miserable. And again he said “I’d be better off dead than alive.”
 

And God said to Jonah “Good for you, you are angry because of the plant, And good for me, I am angry until I see justice. You had pity on that plant, even though you didn’t do anything to make it grow, it came in the night and it went in the night.
 

Did you think I wouldn’t have pity on Nineveh, the City that even I thought was big; the city which had a population of over 12,000 people, people that didn’t know their left from their right before you turned up and gave them my word? ...And they’ve got cows!"