... a fond farewell ... not so fast. 1 Corinthians 16.

As we've traveled through the New Testament together this year, whenever we reach the end of longish book like 1 Corinthians, I tend to think about the last blog entry like some of the early travelogues that filled local television time when I was growing up. Most of them were really hokey, not much more than a cut above home movies. Of course some shows rose above the typical ones and were the precursors to "Nature," and "Globe Trekker," and "The Discovery Channel."

But the early, local shows typically ended like this. "And so, as the sun sinks slowly into the west, we bid a fond farewell to the lovely island nation of (___ fill in the blank ____)." So how about this for the start of the blog entry for today:

And so, as we turn the last page of Paul's letter to the church in Corinth, we bid a fond farewell to that quirky group who fussed over hair and meat, and sued one another, was soft on sinning brothers and hard on outsiders, and rebellious toward Paul in general. Tomorrow we'll visit ... Corinth again. That's kind of fun.

The other thought that usually strikes me at the end of the letters, is how much these really are letters. "Say hi to Fred. Rosy and her niece are well and wish they could see you. Blessings to one and all." In Paul's case he adds a curse for those who don't love the Lord, so that's a bit unusual, although not for his day -- blessings and curses went hand in hand, so to speak.

I'd like to leave this letter, and the Corinthians for today, with Paul's thought expressed at the very end of the letter. It comes immediately after the curse. "Our Lord, Come!" (v.16:22b). Most of us have Bibles with some amount of footnotes, and so we read that this is a transliteration of an Aramaic phrase. A transliteration is not a translation, but a representation of letters or words from one language, in the corresponding characters of another alphabet. The Word of the Day in the right column uses transliteration to represent the Greek words in English letters. In this case, the Greek letters would be transliterated into English like this: marana tha. That's the sound of the Greek, which in turn is the sound of the Aramaic. In our English Bibles it's translated as above, "Our Lord, Come!"

But if you look closely at two words and combine them -- it's maranatha. I recognize that. Maranatha! Hippies, Jesus freaks, contemporary worship music, agape feasts.

Interestingly enough, the Greek words could possibly also be a transliteration of maran atha, which in Aramaic means something like "Our Lord has come!" Both are true, and wouldn't it be interesting if Paul dictated the Greek to reflect both the past arrival and future coming of Jesus.

And as we bid a fond farewell to the Corinthians, "may love be with you in Christ Jesus."