Chrestos: useful

Things happen, don't they. Some go unnoticed, some are noticed, some are notable. On the website Wordsmith.org, Anu Garg publishes A.Word.A.Day, today's word being chrestomathy, a collection of selected literary works. Etymologically, chrestomathy is from Greek chrestos (useful) and manthanein (to learn). 

Contemplating, I don't see how I can work chrestomathy into a sermon to impress the congregation. But even if I could I would not, because dropping peculiar words to impress has the opposite effect of causing listeners' minds to wander off wondering "what the hell does that word mean, and who the hell is he trying to impress?" such that the speaker not only has lost his audience, who miss a sentence or two, a paragraph or two, and maybe the entire rest of the sermon; but also has irritated them, turning them hostile to his entire message, which is not the idea of the thing in the first place.  

Once I knew a preacher, an Episcopal priest, it's not me, who ran his sermon transcript through the analyzer that was part of his word processor, to make sure he didn't say anything above fourth grade level. Well then, alrighty then, the secret is out, see what we are taught in seminary to think of you?

But I'm still with Anu Garg. Today's word sourcing reminds me that I read somewhere, maybe during theological seminary - - which, it being forty years ago, might indicate that my mind is still able to hold onto things - - that early on, the Greek-speaking Romans who were suspicious and hostile toward the newly spreading Christian movement, said they preached and worshiped someone named Chrestos instead of the gods of the empire, and would not light a candle or toss a pinch of incense to Caesar. 

Not knowing what this new religion was all about, they thought Chrestos (χρηστος) instead of Christos (χριστος), just a vowel sound off, which would have been an easy misunderstanding. And, seriously, they may have wondered in what way this Chrestos figure was useful, and even if maybe he had been a slave. So, Chrestos (useful) which calls to mind Paul's letter to Philemon in which he discusses Philemon's escaped slave Onesimus (Ὀνήσιμος), a common slave name that meant Useful, and Paul cleverly does a play on words saying this slave who had been ἄχρηστον (aChreston, not useful, useless) has become εὔχρηστον (EuChreston, good useful, very useful), in fact so very useful to Paul, and Paul teasingly extends that to make Onesimus useful to Philemon, and, most persuasively in Paul's agenda, useful to Christ. 

Folks who know the Letter to Philemon know that Paul was dead serious in his agenda to cajole Philemon, or indeed shame him if necessary, into setting Onesimus free and sending him back to help Paul, instead of exercising his, Philemon's, right as slave owner to whip the escaped slave to death if he wished. As with all of Paul's letters, except for 1 Corinthians that led to 2 Corinthians, we have no idea how it turned out between Paul and Philemon, and Philemon and Onesimus, and Paul and Onesimus, but we want to believe that Philemon did as Paul asked him. And we like the tradition that this one Onesimus is one and the same who some years later became bishop of Ephesus and in the Eastern Church is lauded as a saint.

Pic: Enviva Line's Yangtze Happiness 590x92 arriving to load wood pellets for Studstrup, Denmark. I'll be glad when the scaffolding is gone and I can use my Xmas telescope to view and photograph ships closer and more detail. 

T+