The Useful Ones

 

Daily Office Reading (Year One) 7-3-2021

Luke 23:32-43

The Useful Ones

I really went down the rabbit hole today!

I strayed from my usual process of lectio divina and ended up spending an hour on the internet, which started with a search for the Greek word for “crucify” — “stauróō,” derived from the word for ‘pole’ or ‘stake,’ but ended somewhere else altogether. The Latin word usually translated as “cross” is “crux,” which means "a tree, frame, or other wooden instruments of execution, on which criminals were impaled or hanged." (Wikipedia; ‘crux’)

The general theme of my reflection began by noticing common word usages that differ widely from the original meanings. My current favorite Bible translation, The Complete Jewish Bible, tries very hard to return to the original meanings of some of these words. It uses “immerse” for “baptize;” “execution stake” instead of “cross;” and “Gan-‘Eden” for “Paradise,” among many other alternative word choices. When I check the CJB against the Mounce Interlinear Greek, it is consistently the closest translation to the meaning of the Greek, of all the translations available to me.

Anyway, my internet researches into the crucifixion and the meanings of the Greek and Latin words led me to find an article which mentioned another odd difference, involving the word “Christian.” I was surprised to find that the earliest mentions of Christ-followers used the word “Chrestians” (χρηστιανος) not “Christians” (χριστιανος). There’s a lot of fuss-and-bother about the simple fact that the earliest mentions of the word (before the 5^th century) are always spelled “Chrestian.” There are way too many inferences drawn by various folks about the implications of this discrepancy, up to and including some arguments that it is evidence that Jesus never existed. I didn’t see much worth in any of these arguments, and they were not what I found so interesting. What really struck me was that “chrest” in Greek means “useful; good,” and so the term “Chrestians” means “the useful ones.” Strong’s Lexicon gave me this:

Chrest:

fit, fit for use, useful

virtuous, good

manageable

mild, pleasant (as opp. to harsh, hard sharp, bitter)

of things: more pleasant, of people, kind, benevolent

 

It was at this point that I felt that familiar sense of liminal connection that, to me, is the essence of Lectio Divina.

You see, a long time ago, I came to understand that my deepest purpose in life; my most rigorous intention and heartfelt hope, is that I might be ‘useful in a good way.’

This intention is one that I’ve held since I was a child, and it’s what led me to be professed in the Lindisfarne Community, to take the Buddhist Precepts, and to seek ordination as a deacon and priest within that community.

That’s why this odd little discrepancy in the spelling of “Christian” made me sit up and take notice. It was one of those ‘Aha!” moments that are also called ‘satori’ or ‘epiphany.’ It was a sideways jump into a numenal space; a ‘thin place’— that threshold awareness that simply can’t be described. Those of us who make a practice of leaning through those doorways know all-too-well how impossible it is to gather up our understandings into the basket of language.

It’s even more absurd when I realize that these understandings form the living core of what being “useful in a good way” means to me.

That means that somehow, somewhere, I have to find the words. The right words, the good words, the useful words. They don’t even have to be my own words, they might be someone else’s words that I dug up out of memory or intuition and quoted at the right time and place to make them useful.

And so I bring you some ancient words— words that my useful intuition, my benevolent memory, have pulled across that worn, familiar threshold one more time:

 

ELEVEN

 

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes that make it useful.

Therefore profit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.     

 

TAO TE CHING (Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English)