May Your Kingdom Advent

Raise your hand if this was a familiar scene in your Sunday school/youth group: Sunday school teacher: "today we are going to personalize the Lord's Prayer. We are going to rewrite the Lord's Prayer in our own words!" If your hand is raised, you know this often results in groans and "really, this again?"

So bear with me while I take this exercise in a different direction. For the last two weeks, Elizabeth and I have been meeting with Rev. Samuel at the cathedral to learn the Lord's Prayer in Mandarin Chinese. We have decided to use these Chinese lessons primarily as a way to learn "liturgical Chinese." We hope this will enable us to better participate in the prayers during Sunday services.

As we were learning the proper way to say the Lord's Prayer (which involves a lot of admonishments to speak with a harder accent), I wrote down a direct translation of the Chinese into English, creating a new version of the personalized Lord's Prayer.

This is how it came out:

Our father in heaven
May your name be honored as holy
May your kingdom advent
May your will be obeyed on earth
like same be done in heaven

Every day we need and use drinking and eating, today give us
also we beg to forgive our sin (crime)
like the same we forgive the offenses we receive from the people.
Do not let us meet and see temptation (don't call us to meet temptation) (don't call temptation on us)

To save us to release from evil
because kingdom, power, and glory
all are yours from now to forever. Amen.

I was most interested in the word used for sin (or trespasses depending on your preference for English translation). In Mandarin, the word used for sin is the same word as crime. Therefore, whereas in English we distinguish between spiritual failings as sin and offenses against the law as crime, there no delineation in Mandarin. For someone to be called a sinner in Taiwan is to accuse them of being a criminal.

Imagine being a seeker and being called a sinner for the first time. It apparently is a common reaction that people will deny being sinful because they have not been adequately taught about the idea of spiritual sin v. governmental crime. No one wants to be called a criminal, right?

This lesson in sin/crime might prove very useful in our English Bible study. Since we are working through studies about the "unexpected Jesus" the idea of forgiveness for sin is quite prevalent. I am not sure what I think about the delineation between spiritual sin and crime. I haven't really thought at all about how we in the U.S. deal much more seriously (in terms of legal and physical punishment) to crime than to sin. Hmmm...

I was also very surprised when Rev. Samuel translated the line "may your kingdom advent." Much of our experience with the cathedral so far has been an introduction to a much more evangelical church than we have previously experienced. The cathedral is very involved in teaching Alpha courses, and has recently begun a campaign modeled after the Purpose Driven paradigm. They are even advertising for and promoting participation in the Franklin Graham festival at the end of October. Since the cathedral's population is largely composed of relatively new Christians whose knowledge of Christianity is largely based in non-denominational evangelical reading and teaching (think Joel Osteen), I was not expecting the word "advent" to pop up. However, this is apparently the best translation from Chinese to English of the phrase "may your kingdom come."

So maybe the church here is more connected into the liturgical tradition than I thought. Instead of having to explain the meaning of the word advent, they pray it every week.

Until next week, still praying for the advent of God's kingdom,

Seth