Holy Bible in Syriac
This is the earliest translation of the gospels into Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. Portions of the Old Testament were written in Aramaic and there are Aramaic phrases in the New Testament. John Sumwalt officiated at a wedding between a Syrian Orthodox man and a United Methodist woman in which the scriptures were read in both Arabic & English. (Courtesy Photo)
Special to United Methodist Insight | June 25, 2025
It was a most remarkable wedding.
Vanessa grew up in our United Methodist congregation. Marwan was a native of Damascus and a Syrian Orthodox Christian. The Syrian Orthodox Church traces its origin to the first Christian churches in Antioch. Its liturgy, the oldest in Christendom, is based on the Syriac language, a dialect of Aramaic that was spoken by Jesus.
Marwan and Vanessa are both physicians and many their guests were colleagues, most of them also Syrian Christians, along with several Muslim friends from the local medical college.
I had never seen so many doctors together in one place. Marwan joked before the wedding that it took seven doctors to tie his tie. At the wedding reception the Syrian men carried Marwan on their shoulders around the Hyatt Ballroom in downtown Milwaukee. The Syrian women chanted ancient reminders about treating his bride kindly and declaring what they would do to him if he did not.
Vanessa's grandfather, Floyd, 98 years old, and a Presbyterian pastor for 68 years, co-officiated. The scriptures were read by Vanessa's stepfather, Jim, a longtime member and liturgist in our church, and by Nidal, one of Marwan's friends. They read one passage from the Hebrew scripture and two from the New Testament.
First Jim read in English and then Nidal read the same words in Arabic, also a language derived from Aramaic. It gave me chills to think that it was likely the first time that something close to the language of Jesus had been heard in our little suburban church in New Berlin, Wisconsin.
Jim and Nidal read from the third chapter of Colossians, a passage that begins just after the reminder that those being renewed in Christ are "... no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!"
“As God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
I heard these sacred words in a new way that day. Looking out at the smiling faces of Vanessa and Marwan's Christian and Muslim friends it struck me that I could not tell which was which.
This memorable wedding occurred before the Syrian Civil War began in 2011. It is likely that some of the people I met on that joyful day are among some 618,000 people who died in the conflict, the 14 million who were displaced and the 6.7 million refugees, many of whom still suffer from poverty and hunger.
I weep now as I remember the homily I preached at Vanessa and Marwan’s wedding and as bombs are falling over the Middle East again. I celebrated the fact that we are all children of Abraham, and I told the story of an event that occurred in Damascus when Marwan was a child.
This personal story by Professor Kenneth Morgan appeared in a letter to the editor in The New York Times on January 30, 1991, during the Persian Gulf War.
“Once in Damascus years ago, while strolling on a street called Straight – wondering whether it is truly the most ancient street in the world that has served continuously as a marketplace – I watched as a man who was riding slowly through the crowd on a bicycle with a basket of oranges precariously balanced on the handlebars, was bumped by a porter so bent with a heavy burden that he had not seen him. The burden dropped, the oranges were scattered, and a bitter altercation broke out between the two men.
“After an angry exchange of shouted insults, as the bicyclist moved toward the porter with a clenched fist, a tattered little man slipped from the crowd, took the raised fist in his hand, and kissed it. A murmur of approval ran through the watchers, the antagonists relaxed; then people began picking up oranges and the little man drifted away.”
Professor Kenneth W. Morgan of Colgate University wrote, "I have remembered that as a caring act, an act of devotion by a man who might have been a Syrian Muslim, a Syrian Jew, or a Syrian Christian."
In a letter giving me permission to publish the story my book, “Lectionary Stories,” in 1992, Professor Morgan wrote: "My reaction sometime later to the episode on the street called Straight was regret that I wasn't enough of a Christian to have thought of kissing the fist myself."
John Sumwalt
The Rev. John Sumwalt is a retired pastor and the author “Vision Stories: True Accounts of Visions, Angels, & Healing Miracles.” johnsumwalt@gmail.com.