Sermon for October 11th, 2015
Psalm 42:1-11
1As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God. 2My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? 3My tears have been my food day and night, while people say to me continually, “Where is your God?” 4These things I remember, as I pour out my soul: how I went with the throng, and led them in procession to the house of God, with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival. 5Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help 6and my God. My soul is cast down within me; therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and of Hermon, from Mount Mizar. 7Deep calls to deep at the thunder of your cataracts; all your waves and your billows have gone over me. 8By day the Lord commands his steadfast love, and at night his song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. 9I say to God, my rock, “Why have you forgotten me? Why must I walk about mournfully because the enemy oppresses me?” 10As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, “Where is your God?” 11Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my God.
The Reformation: Ad Fontes
After waking up one morning, a woman told her husband, “I just had a dream that you gave me the most beautiful diamond necklace. What do you think it means?”
The husband thought about it for a moment, smiled, and said, “You'll know tonight.”
The woman could hardly think of anything else all day and she couldn't wait to see her husband again that evening. When he finally came home, he took a small package out of his briefcase and gave it to his wife. Delighted, she opened it excitedly to find a book entitled… "The Meaning of Dreams."
I hope you're just as excited this month as we study the meaning of three historic mottos of the Presbyterian Church, as well as the scriptures and people that inspired them.
Last week we studied the longest of the three: Ecclesia reformata, semper reformanda secundum verbum Dei (The church reformed and always being reformed according to the word of God). Today we look at the shortest of the three, just two words in Latin: Ad fontes. In English, it translates as "To the sources" or more literally "To the fountains."
To understand what that means, however, we turn to todays scripture passage from Psalm 42. The first verse reads, in English, "As a deer longs for flowing streams, so my soul longs for you, O God." But the medieval Latin translation of the Bible, the one most familiar to our 16th century reformers, instead of "for flowing streams" would have read "ad fontes aquarum" or "to the sources of the water." As the deer is drawn to the sources of the water, so my soul is drawn to you, God.
The idea here (at least in the Latin translation and in the thought of the reformers) is that the deer is drawn not just to any water, but to the source of the water, the origin of the water, the place where the water is the most pure, clean, free flowing and consistent. In the same way, we are drawn to God--not just any instance of God, but specifically to the source of our knowledge and understanding of God, which is the scriptures.
But not just any scriptures, either. The sources of the scriptures are the ancient manuscripts that were copied by scribes and passed down from generation to generation, first in their original languages of Hebrew and Greek, and then eventually translated into Latin, the language of the medieval western church.
"But one thing the facts cry out, and it can be clear, as they say, even to a blind man, that often through the translator’s clumsiness or inattention the Greek has been wrongly rendered; often the true and genuine reading has been corrupted by ignorant scribes, which we see happen every day, or altered by scribes who are half-taught and half-asleep." --Erasmus
