About This Week’s Epiphany Feature:
Ruth Anne is a lay, cross-cultural worker serving as the Old Testament exegetical and theological advisor for a small team who are translating the Holy Scriptures for the first time into the language of a minority people in Central Asia.
A Reflection from Ruth Anne:
Epiphany. The revelation of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles. Kings from the east bringing their gifts. Mary, pondering everything in her heart.
“And God said, 'Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food.' "(ESV)
I had read the first chapter of Genesis countless times in many languages, but I’d never paid much attention to this verse.If I didn’t have a gift for nit-picky editing, I wouldn’t have noticed the error in Tabitha’s draft translation: “Look, I have given you as food the seed of every plant that is on the face of the earth, and the fruit of every tree. You shall have them for food.”
We had already been on the phone for hours, painstakingly going over this chapter again. This was my first assignment as an Old Testament exegete and if in doubt– which was most of the time– I defaulted to reviewing everything. It was early morning for my family and church in North Carolina, but for Tabitha and our project coordinator it was late afternoon, and for me, even farther east, it was already evening. I was tired– tired of talking in Russian, tired of looking at the computer screen, and my attention was drifting.
“Actually it’s not the seeds that He gave them for food,” I explained, “it was all the plants that had seeds.”
There was a long silence as Tabitha worked this out in the Kimia language. I got distracted with something else and came back only when I heard her start talking again.
“This is wonderful! How thoughtful He is!” … Was she crying?!... “Look at this! He wasn’t just giving them food for that day, which they would eat and then it would be gone– He was giving them food which would reproduce through the seeds, and provide more and more food, for all their children and grandchildren!”
Five years earlier Tabitha had decided that along with caring for two special-needs children and a small mountain farm with her recovering-alcoholic husband, and the oppression of living with a mother-in-law who was involved in the occult, she wanted to translate the Scriptures into Kimia so that her grandchildren could read the Bible in their own language. Now for the first time, she was reading an accurate translation of Genesis 1:29 in the Kimia language, and she was crying.
Tabitha and many others from the East and the West are offering all kinds of expensive gifts to the Lord Jesus, and that is how the Word of God is being revealed to the Kimia and other Gentiles of Central Asia. May He be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth.
Ruth Anne invites us to pray the collect for The Second Sunday of Epiphany (BCP, p. 602):
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.