Acts 2.42-47; 23; 1 Peter 2.19-25; John 10.1-10
OF ALL the words that Christians use without reflecting about their significance, “Amen” is surely the most important and one of the most familiar. It is a word that Jesus himself uses repeatedly and emphatically. We think that we know what it means. But do we?
The first step towards establishing what it means is to look at how it is used. Modern worshippers use “Amen” as a conclusion to statements. We can describe this usage as “responsive”. The responsive “Amen” is a reaction (usually a corporate one) to sacred words and prayers. In scripture, from the first example (Numbers 5.22) to the last (Revelation 22.20), we find “Amen” used in this responsive way.
In the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible, almost all the examples of “Amen” are responsive. Occasionally, the word is repeated (as in that first example, Numbers 5.22; there are four other examples). I could find only one example of its being used instead as an introductory word (Jeremiah 28.6). In the epistles of the New Testament, the responsive usage is universal, from Romans to Jude. Revelation uses it mostly as a responsive word, but includes three examples of the introductory “Amen”. It also has a usage that is peculiarly its own, making “Amen” a divine name, or perhaps, rather, a title (3.14).
When it comes to the Gospels, there is no trace of any responsive “Amen”. Instead, “Amen” is used consistently in an introductory way, to initiate a pronouncement from the lips of Jesus himself. Matthew has 31 examples of Jesus’s saying “Amen I say to you”; Mark has 13; Luke has six. St John’s Gospel continues this distinctive use of “Amen” as an introductory word spoken by Jesus and addressed to his hearers, but with one vital change. He witnesses to an “Amen” that is doubled. In his Gospel, Jesus declares, “Amen, amen I say to you,” 25 times. That doubled “Amen” appears twice in this Gospel for Easter 4 (in verses 1 and 7).
This usage of “Amen” is, together with the doubling of it, not always detectable in English translations. The NRSV and NIV turn it into “very truly”. The RSV goes for “truly, truly”), and the AV goes for “verily, verily”. The New Jerusalem Bible plumps for “in all truth”. Only Douay-Rheims, a 16th-century translation, leaves the words as they are: “Amen, amen.”
Scholars are agreed that “Amen” combines elements of affirmation that words that have been spoken — or, in the case of Jesus, words that he himself is about to utter — are trustworthy and reliable. But we knew that anyway. We learned it from the time of our earliest experiences of worship, from being taught to join in with prayers and, eventually, from daring to pray for ourselves.
Now we need to factor in the context of John 10.1-10. It is part of a conversation between Jesus and some Pharisees. His first doubled “Amen” is a warning: none but he is to be trusted within the sheepfold. Perhaps it is not surprising that those Pharisees do not understand what he means here. They are unlikely to see themselves as a potential threat to the flock. But Jesus is persistent. He explains his warning, that the flock “will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers”.
John refers to Jesus’s words (10.6) as a paroimia, or “proverb”. Though it looks straightforward to us, the Pharisees find it puzzlingly figurative. Further attempts to communicate the message, outside the lection’s scope, are equally unsuccessful (10.19-21) — even though they stir an echo of a beloved psalm, set for this Sunday: “The Lord is my shepherd” (23.1). By the time Jesus comes to describe his role as the protecting gate of the sheepfold, that psalm has been used in worship for perhaps a thousand years. But, in the words of another, much later, proverb, “There are none so deaf as them that will not hear.”
I have said before how devoutly I wish that we might keep the word “Amen” in the original language, when it is spoken by Jesus. It no more needs translating than a responsive “Amen” does in, say, Romans 15.33 or 1 Peter 4.11. Equally regrettable is resistance to repeating the word “Amen”, as Jesus does in John’s Gospel; for this distinctive usage, if we retain it, unites our prayers with the exact same words as the Lord is declaring to us.
