It's a book I first wrote back in 2015 and self-published for the devotional use of my little congregation. THE PRAYER OF UNWANTING, as it's now called, recenters the Lord's Prayer as part of a personal prayer life. As the prayer that Jesus explicitly taught, it pushes back against our tendency to approach the Creator with requests for power and prosperity. It gets us out of our individual and collective solipsisms, which is kinda sorta a prerequisite for being a disciple of Jesus.
As nearly ten years had passed since I wrote the first draft, I had some significant reworking to do, which is why it's helpful to have a competent and thoughtful editor. Dated references were removed or changed. Flagrant errors of reasoning or continuity were corrected.
One of those reworkings was a little unexpected. Ever since I was an undergrad majoring in religious studies at the University of Virginia o-so-many-moons ago, my go-to Bible translation has been the New Revised Standard Version. It was my jam during my M.Div. and D.Min. studies. It's the translation in my pulpit, and in the pew-racks of my little church. I've commended the HarperCollins NRSV Study Bible to numerous folks.
The NRSV was reworked in Twenty Twenty Two, and became the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition.
Some of those changes were trivial, and many are entirely comprehensible. But some of the updating seemed less a matter of improvements in linguistic scholarship and new textual resources, and more a matter of taste and nodding to contemporary culture.
Of more significance to my book on the Lord's Prayer: among the changes in the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition was a rewording of the teaching of that prayer in the sermon on the Mount. I had an entire chapter dedicated to reflecting on the underlying meaning of "hallowed be thy name," with a focus on the word "hallowed." I'd used the NRSV for all scriptural quotations throughout the book, which presented something of a problem.
In both Matthew 6 and Luke 11, it no longer used the word "hallowed," replacing it with the more awkward phrasing "Let your name be revered as holy." Clumsy though it might be, "be revered as holy" is a conceptually accurate effort to transpose the Greek Ἁγιασθήτω into English. It means the same thing, even if multiple words are used where once there was but one, so it's not a question of mucking with the meaning.
Rather, I shall surmise, it's because the word "hallowed" is slightly archaic, something we don't say often in day-to-day conversation. That's a point I reflect upon at length in the chapter, and a fair observation.
But then again, it's part of the prayer as it's PRAYED IN THE LITURGIES OF ALMOST EVERY ENGLISH SPEAKING CHURCH IN THE WORLD...sorry, all caps got stuck there for a moment. And there's just no way anyone could figure out the meaning of an uncommon English word they're unfamiliar with, after all. Oy gevalt.
As it was, it blew a giant hole in that entire chapter. I had a choice, then. I could reconceptualize and rewrite it because the translation that I'd used had been changed to no evident purpose.
Or I could simply change the translation I used.
With some regret, I chose the latter. For consistency, I then systematically updated all of the scripture references in my manuscript to the New International Version, which is a perfectly valid and scholarly translation.
Not a big deal, in this cut-and-paste era. No harm, no foul, and I still use the NRSVue on regular occasion.
But it did get me to thinking: If in our faith we called to live out a discrete culture that does not conform to the expectations of broken and fractious humanity...must our choice of language be axiomatically governed by that which ain't the Beloved Community?
And why would we expect contemporary discourse to have words for that which is holy?
We have those words. And learning unfamiliar words isn't a chore. It's good for mind and soul.