SILLY SIGNS

There’s a sign in a Paris hotel lobby: “Please leave your values at the front desk.”

And another in the restaurant: “Customers who find our waiting staff rude should see the manager.”

Mistranslations make what is genuine sound silly.

There’s a sign in a Greek hotel: “Visitors are expected to complain at the office between the hours of 9 and 11 daily.”

In a Japanese hotel: “You are invited to take advantage of the chambermaid.”

In an Egyptian hotel: “If you require room service, please open the door and shout room service.”

And outside a dry-cleaners in the USA: “Drop your pants here and you will receive prompt attention.”

Mistranslations make a genuine sign sound silly.

Signs are unusual, even miraculous, and in Hebrew the word miracle means both a sign and a wonder.

God is described in Deuteronomy 26:8 as having brought the Israelites out of Egypt: "with an outstretched arm and with signs and wonders".

But the Jewish Talmud recognizes these signs and wonders as ordinary when it says: “it is as wonderful to watch the support of a family for someone in trouble as it is to see the parting of the Red Sea.”

The fact that life exists at all is a sign and a wonder. The miracle of self-consciousness is that other animals have to be born and live and die, but as far as we know, none of them also have to be aware of it like us. And what is this awareness?

If we are empty of our own spirit, we can be filled with God's. And Jesus was sign and wonder, going around Galilee curing demoniacs, epileptics and paralytics, giving a teaching we now call the Beatitudes, which means Blessednesses – as in ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’.

These Blessednesses: ‘Blessed are the pure in heart,’ etc, were written in Greek, but Greek was not Jesus’ native tongue. So even though some people imagine him waking up one morning and getting out of bed to announce he was fully human and fully divine in one hypostatic union, he walked Galiliee before the Talmud, before Rabbinical Judaism, and before the Christian creeds.

So he would have dreamt in Aramaic, and thought and spoken in Aramaic, which can help us get behind the text a little.

In the New Testament, the Blessings open with the word ‘Makarios’, a Greek translation of the Hebrew word ‘Ashrei’, which in our modern English means: ‘firmly and deeply happy’, firm, as a house is firm.

So what we get is something like: ‘Firmly and deeply joyful are the peacemakers.’ Jesus is holding up a mirror to the world, he is reflecting reality to show us where happiness already is.

‘Blessed are the poor in spirit,’ is the only text to include the phrase: ‘poor in spirit’. Almost. Because it also appears in the Dead Sea scrolls, which helps give us the Aramaic idiom Jesus dreamt in. And once you leave this context, the idiom is difficult to translate. Maybe it’s a bit like the hotel signs again, or like trying to translate: ‘Bob’s your uncle’ or ‘That’s the bees knees’ into another language.

Because an Aramaic phrase which is something like: ‘Ashrei Nedav Sedic’ gets translated through Greek into English to become ‘Blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness.’

But biblical scholars like the one I met on a hot insect filled day above a cool calm sea of Galillee say re-applying the idiom of the Dead Sea scrolls would make it more like: ‘Deeply and firmly happy are those in whom the urgent desire for justice and salvation is so strong that they literally cannot sleep at night.’

They are pursued by that desire, until justice and salvation is spread across the earth, and the Kingdom of Heaven is brought down to earth.

This, of course, is less like a future state and more like holding up that mirror to the world which shows us where happiness already is, having nothing and being empty of everything but the potential of the Kingdom.

It’s so easy to turn the Kingdom of God into something it was never intended to be. I remember being at a service at theological college which was based on these Blessings, and one young man got up to do the prayers. He loudly invoked: “King Jesus” who he announced would destroy followers of other faiths.

But I just can’t imagine Jesus beginning the Lord’s prayer with “Our Jesus”, and announcing he had come to start a religion named after himself, or “live by the sword die by the sword” as early campaign propaganda on the way to later world domination.

The ten commandments for healthy living may begin ‘Thou Shalt Not’, but the Beatitudes are not even suggestions. They reflect on a reality which can still be ours today, empty and open to receive, nothing to claim or cling to and at odds with this world, but also a salt and light to it, like a sign which brings glory to God.

We Christians can be far too clear about what we are trusting. Really to have faith, really to trust in God requires not knowing, because when we know, we no longer need to reach out in trust, to receive the signs and the wonders.