Translating the Tradition
Sermons from St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church - and more here on Substack
“Translating the Tradition” has been a podcast centred around making the sermons delivered at St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church (in Vancouver, BC) available online since May 11, 2017. As I wrote at the time,
Since I have been asked to create a podcast to share my sermons, here’s my attempt to start one. And since any podcast needs a name, I am borrowing a line from my mission statement for St. John of Shanghai Orthodox Church. Our mission is to incarnate and translate the apostolic tradition, so I suppose a part of my job can be characterized as “Translating the Tradition.”
The name and the mission statement were chosen because “translation” embodies pretty much as perfectly as possible what we do in paradosis, the Greek word usually translated “tradition”, and which the Apostle Paul uses as both a verb and a noun in I Corinthians 11:2, which, literally translated, might be rendered, “Now I praise you, brethren, that you remember me in all things and keep the traditions as I traditioned them to you.” Tradition, as a thing, is something handed on, handed over, handed down—or, as an action, is the act of handing over, like a baton in a relay race, that which you are “traditioning”.
But of course, as you are handing something down through the centuries, or handing something over from one culture to another, a translation process becomes necessary: and, just as a translator must find words in the target language that convey as accurately as possible what was stated in the original language, so Christians, as “translators” of the apostolic tradition, must know and understand both what was originally intended and then do our best to enact and communicate that in our own language and time and culture.
This process of translation is also what is being done prophetically every Sunday in the sermon: the task of the preacher is to take texts and practices that are centuries—even millenia—old, often from a different language and culture, and then faithfully translate them for those present here and now, in terms comprehensible in our own language and culture.
But, of course, if Christianity isn’t just a set of beliefs, but is rather a whole way of life, then there’s a lot more to translating the Christian tradition than just preaching about it. Or even writing about it, which is a large part of what I intend to do here on Substack. Ultimately, what we are called to do—our ultimate work of translation—is to enact and embody the Tradition, the teachings and the way of life handed down to us from Christ by the apostles through what has been lived out and taught for centuries in Christ’s body, the Church.
What I intend to do here, besides continue the tradition of posting the Sunday sermons (and other homilies) from St. John’s that I think it might be helpful to share, is to continue and extend this work of translating the tradition a bit more in every way that Substack and the internet make possible. My hope is that some may find some of what is posted here helpful as they seek to engage with and understand the ancient apostolic tradition that is the Way of Life taught by the Word of God made flesh and entrusted to those who faithfully embody Him here on this earth.
One technical matter… The “Translating the Tradition” podcast has apparently been going long enough now that it has managed to break the RSS feed that the software on the St. John’s church website was able to produce. As a result, the current contents of this Substack version of the podcast only go back to 2023. As I have time, I hope to fill out the “back catalogue” and thus (hopefully) repair the podcast and get all the published “episodes” back online again, but that’s a not-insignificant project in and of itself, which won’t be terribly high-priority. All the past (and present) episodes of the podcast, for anyone interested in what has been said in the now-very-far-distant-past, should be available on the St. John’s church website at www.stjohnofshanghai.org.
