The Bishop of the Arctic

In three years of study at Trinity College, Bristol, I remember only one of the weekly sermons and one of the stories that visiting preachers told.

I'm not saying you have to remember every sermon, any more than you have to remember every meal you've eaten, but it is a sign.

Anyway, here is the story. It doesn't come from the memorable sermon.

We had a visit one week from the Bishop of the Arctic. Apparently he came every few years to the college, in the hope of recruiting missionary volunteers. The first Christian missionaries to the Arctic had come from Bristol, and the mitred one liked to keep up the links - and the tradition, if possible.

He told us a story about how those first missionaries were trying to translate the New Testament into the local language. But when they came to chapter twenty of John's Gospel, they hit a problem. In that chapter, the risen Jesus appears to his friends, and it takes a while for them to cotton on. When they do, it says (in modern English), 'Then the disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.'

Now where's the problem in that? Simply this: the local lingo had no word for 'joy'.

So the Christian translator was on the lookout for examples of joy in the indigenous culture. One day he saw a hunter come back from an expedition with the dogs. The hunter fed the dogs with some meat, and they duly tucked in.

Observing the huskies at their feast, the translator thought, "Now there is an example of joy," and so he asked what the word was for what he was witnessing.

As a result, that first translation of the New Testament read at that crucial point, 'Then the disciples wagged their tails when they saw the Lord.'

Sadly some of us in the Christian family still have no word for joy - at least, not when we're functioning 'religiously'. Coming into an act of worship we flick a switch marked 'reverence', which observers more accurately call 'misery'.

Of course God is holy; of course God is not to be trifled with; of course. But if joy never penetrates our deepest existence, have we really met Jesus?

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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration.