The Transliteration of Souls
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The Small Catechism exhorts us to “fear, love, and trust in God above all things.” Since the day of judgment is coming, it will serve us well to learn this lesson now, so that our fear, love, and trust brings him glory not only on that great and glorious day but also in these earthly days. In the meanwhile, may we be his messengers who fly about the globe, proclaiming the eternal gospel of salvation.
Prayer
Sovereign God, we pray for the Holy Spirit to continue to reform the church of Christ. Keep it in the true faith; restore, correct, and inspire its teachings; and embolden it to bear witness to the life-giving message of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection; through your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen.
We too often think of angels as beings who are hidden from our senses. We typically think of them as supernatural beings whom we cannot see or hear or touch. And angels are indeed supernatural beings. But that is not all they are.
The word we read as angel in the New Testament is not a translated word. It is instead, transliterated. It is taken from the original language, in this case Greek, and and carried across into the language of other literature. One example of a transliterated word is “baptize.” Literally, the word means to dip into or under. Symbolically, it means to kill in order to make alive. Paul makes this clear in Romans 6:3.
“Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” ()
If publishers wanted to be literal, they would have said, “Don’t you know that all of us who have been dipped into Christ Jesus were dipped into his death.” It just doesn’t carry the same spiritual idea, does it? So, the English translators removed the “o” ending on the Greek word baptizo and added the English “e” ending, creating through transliteration, a brand knew English word. Baptizo becomes “baptize.”
ending in baptizo and added the English “e” ending.
The New Testament Greek word under consideration in our First Reading today is angelos. The word means “messenger” but again Perhaps it is simply too difficult to come up with a new English word that carries the weight and substance of a heavenly being that we cannot imagine. So again, translators of the New Testament removed the Greek os ending on angelos and left the word as AHN-GUL, or as we say in English: “angel.”
One wonders whether these transliterations are a good idea. I suppose that they sometimes are. But in the case of angel, I more often prefer the literal translation of “messenger.” For this is what those angels who are sent to earth are meant to be. They are sent with God’s message. Consider the angels who were heard on high, sweetly singing over the plain. They were sent with the message of God.
“And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!’” ()
Or consider another angel who visited the earth earlier, calling upon a maiden named Mary. Gabriel was sent with a message:
“You have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” ()
Angels are messengers of God, sent to earth to convey his message. They do not have to be what we consider angelic beings. Earlier in Revelation, am angel, a messenger if you will, was sent to John with a message from Jesus Christ. He tells John to write to the angels of each of seven churches. Did you know that individual churches have angels? Did you know that your church has at least one angel? Now there would be no need for an angel to receive a letter dictated by an angel to an apostle. These angels of the churches must have been something other than a heavenly being, if they needed to receive a written communique from John that they were then to be read to their churches.
Remember that “angel” means “messenger.” Who is the messenger at your church? Who is the one God has sent to you with his message.
Mention each pastor present.
Name all of the pastors present.
Now it may come as quite a shock to you to find out here on this Reformation Sunday that your pastor is an angel. Yet that is indeed what your pastor is: someone whom God has given a message to be proclaimed to you.
Human beings, not just spiritual beings, may be angels. So we ought to take the writer of Hebrews admonition seriously:
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.” ()
My wife Susan encountered an angel back in 1974 at Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. He was sitting outside the Student Union and had been sent with a message of encouragement for that Freshman. Susan told me that she had spoken with an angel. Some time later, she was startled to see that her angel was at a service we attended together, discovering that he was the pastor at a church on the other side of town.
Luther was an angel. He was a messenger sent from God with a message for the world. That message changed everything. Through it, communications was changed. One-eighth of the human race is Protestant. Public education became normal because of the schools Luther started or encouraged. Luther also helped Germans…speak German. In translating the Greek New Testament into common German in eleven weeks, he not only gave them the Scriptures, he gave them a readable that normalized the language for the whole people. Even the modern notion of individuality was influenced because Luther was available to be God’s angel.
Eric Metaxas writes in his newest biography, Martin Luther: The Man Who Rediscovered God and Changed the World, “The quintessentially modern idea of the individual was as unthinkable before Luther as is color in a world of black and white. And the more recent ideas of pluralism, religious liberty, self-government, and liberty all entered history through the door that Luther opened.”
Luther, God’s angel, influenced and changed a great many things. But the greatest thing he did was help us understand—indeed, help us to see the truth of it in God’s own Word—that Christians are not saved by their good works or their religion or their piety or by a perfect, sinless life. Instead...
“The righteous shall live by faith.” ()
I really hesitate to say it, since I know them just well enough, but this is why your pastor too, is an angel. Your pastor has been sent with a message, the same message Luther was entrusted with. Our pastors are not alone—or at least they shouldn’t be alone. For all Christians are meant to be angels. Everyone who believes has been transliterated from someone dead in his sins into a reborn being, full of new life in Christ. What could you call such a person but an angel! We have been reborn in our baptism into Christ’s death, and then sent into the world “with an eternal gospel to proclaim.”
Just as all who believe a considered saints, all Christians are meant to be angels. We are have been transliterated from people dead in their sins into a reborn people, full of new life in Christ. We have been reborn into the baptism of Christ, sent into the world “with an eternal gospel to proclaim.”
If you think Luther changed Germany, Europe, and the world, think how God would remake North Carolina, the USA, indeed, the whole world, if we all took seriously our calling to an angelic, transliterated status. We have been given a message, an eternal message. Go and tell!