Monday morning, July 4th was my first shot at speaking to the whole college. I was given the opportunity to speak during the morning chapel service. Chapel services here are one hour but that is not a true sixty minutes. You see, everything is spoken in both English and Hindi. If it is spoken in Hindi, it is translated to English and vice versa. So my thirty minute time slot was really fifteen minutes. It has been a while since I spoke through an interpreter but it went pretty smoothly. It is all about knowing when to stop and when to continue your thought. These guys do it everyday. Sentence structure in Hindi is largely the reverse of English. So you have to finish a sentence for them to be able to adequately translate.If you are a part of Common Church in Boston you will know what I spoke about. If not, here is an overview. I spoke from the Book of James in the New Testament, the first chapter, and the twelfth verse. Here is a little background for those who are unfamiliar. The writer of the book of James is, you guessed it, James. Most scholars believe this James was the brother of Jesus. (Can you imagine growing up with Jesus as your older brother? Hide and seek would definitely not have been fair.) Anyways, when Jesus began his time of ministry his family felt ashamed that he was going around claiming to be a Messiah; the third chapter of the book of Mark actually records a time when his mother and his brothers came to take him back home. They were actually telling people not to pay any attention to him because he was crazy! My family has said that about me, but I am not the Messiah and they were probably right anyways. All that to say, that at one point James was ashamed to be associated with Jesus; but something in his life changed.
To make a long story short, he is eventually asked to be the leader of the Church in Jerusalem. He accepts. The challenge he must face is the persecution of Christians and the fear that many were living wit
h. Many were leaving Jerusalem to find safer cities to live in. It is to the church in Jerusalem and to the many that had fled he wrote his letter. Verse twelve, which was my main text, has three simple components which were the points of my talk. First James encourages the Christians to endure and persevere. When everyone else was fleeing for their lives James had committed to stay behind and care for and tend to the ones who decided to stay; so he was familiar with the idea of enduring. Second, James challenged the believers to stand when facing trials, like persecution. James was familiar with their hurt and difficulties, but he also knew the value of standing when it would be easier to cave under the pressure. In the last part of the twelfth verse James infuses his message with some hope. He wrote to some, perhaps fearful and nervous Christians, that when we endure and stand when facing difficult times, God acknowledges the effort and sacrifice, and gives us a crown.It is interesting to think of Jesus as growing up with brothers. To have a letter written by one of them makes for interesting reading. I received several compliments from students which was nice, the ones that I appreciated most were from the staff though, and I did get a few of those too.
The rest of the day was relatively quiet, I attended a couple of classes, I taught English in the afternoon. I did hear that one of the classes discussed my talk for a portion of their class time. I thought that was kind of cool.
Not sure when I will speak again in chapel, a few people have asked me. When I do I will likely continue my walk through James...
