Sunday’s Readings: 4th Sunday of Easter

Acts 2.42-47; 23; 1 Peter 2.19-25; John 10.1-10

OF ALL the words that Christians use without reflecting about their significance, “Amen” is unquestionably an important and one of the crucial familiar. It is a word that Jesus himself uses repeatedly and emphatically. We think that we all know what it means. But can we?

The first step towards establishing what it means is to have a look at the way it is used. Modern worshippers use “Amen” as a conclusion to statements. We can describe this usage as “responsive”. The responsive “Amen” is a response (often a company one) to sacred words and prayers. In scripture, from the primary example (Numbers 5.22) to the last (Revelation 22.20), we discover “Amen” utilized in this responsive way.

In the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, just about all the examples of “Amen” are responsive. Occasionally, the word is repeated (as in that first example, Numbers 5.22; there are 4 other examples). I could find just one example of its getting used as a substitute as an introductory word (Jeremiah 28.6). In the epistles of the New Testament, the responsive usage is universal, from Romans to Jude. Revelation uses it mostly as a responsive word, but includes three examples of the introductory “Amen”. It also has a usage that’s peculiarly its own, making “Amen” a divine name, or perhaps, reasonably, a title (3.14).

When it involves the Gospels, there isn’t any trace of any responsive “Amen”. Instead, “Amen” is used consistently in an introductory way, to initiate a pronouncement from the lips of Jesus himself. Matthew has 31 examples of Jesus’s saying “Amen I say to you”; Mark has 13; Luke has six. St John’s Gospel continues this distinctive use of “Amen” as an introductory word spoken by Jesus and addressed to his hearers, but with one vital change. He witnesses to an “Amen” that’s doubled. In his Gospel, Jesus declares, “Amen, amen I say to you,” 25 times. That doubled “Amen” appears twice on this Gospel for Easter 4 (in verses 1 and seven).

This usage of “Amen” is, along with the doubling of it, not all the time detectable in English translations. The NRSV and NIV turn it into “very truly”. The RSV goes for “truly, truly”), and the AV goes for “verily, verily”. The New Jerusalem Bible plumps for “in all truth”. Only Douay-Rheims, a Sixteenth-century translation, leaves the words as they’re: “Amen, amen.”

Scholars are agreed that “Amen” combines elements of affirmation that words which have been spoken — or, within the case of Jesus, words that he himself is about to utter — are trustworthy and reliable. But we knew that anyway. We learned it from the time of our earliest experiences of worship, from being taught to affix in with prayers and, eventually, from daring to hope for ourselves.

Now we want to consider the context of John 10.1-10. It is an element of a conversation between Jesus and a few Pharisees. His first doubled “Amen” is a warning: none but he’s to be trusted throughout the sheepfold. Perhaps it will not be surprising that those Pharisees don’t understand what he means here. They are unlikely to see themselves as a possible threat to the flock. But Jesus is persistent. He explains his warning, that the flock “is not going to follow a stranger, but they may run from him because they have no idea the voice of strangers”.

John refers to Jesus’s words (10.6) as a paroimia, or “proverb”. Though it looks straightforward to us, the Pharisees find it puzzlingly figurative. Further attempts to speak the message, outside the lection’s scope, are equally unsuccessful (10.19-21) — despite the fact that they stir an echo of a beloved psalm, set for this Sunday: “The Lord is my shepherd” (23.1). By the time Jesus comes to explain his role as the protective gate of the sheepfold, that psalm has been utilized in worship for perhaps a thousand years. But, within the words of one other, much later, proverb, “There are none so deaf as them that is not going to hear.”

I actually have said before how devoutly I wish that we would keep the word “Amen” in the unique language, when it’s spoken by Jesus. It no more needs translating than a responsive “Amen” does in, say, Romans 15.33 or 1 Peter 4.11. Equally regrettable is resistance to repeating the word “Amen”, as Jesus does in John’s Gospel; for this distinctive usage, if we retain it, unites our prayers with the very same words because the Lord is declaring to us.