A Flawed Text

Luke 17:5-10

 

Last week we explored the importance of language and names, and the power inherent in both to embed ideas, common practices and standardised responses to situations and experiences.

 

Todays Gospel reading continues this idea, not so much in the reading itself, but in how we read it. Moreover, it challenges how we read the Bible itself and the impact we think it has on society and our lives. A close reading of the Bible may lead us to conclude what we thought we read, what we think it says, what we believe it gives us is in error.

 

As Christians we tend to read the Bible as Christians, moreover as post-enlightenment western rational Christians. This means we run the risk of reading back into the passages we open, the ideas and societal practices of a modern world into what is a localised, time specific ancient text replete with the ideas and practices of that age and place.

 

If we read the Bible as the literal word of God may interpret these difficult passages in such a way as they become normative, requiring obedience and acceptance as to such issues, placing us at odds with the modern sensibilities in areas as the place of women in the world and church, interfaith dialogue, gender equality and more.

 

If we read the Bible as a moral text designed to give rules for ethical and moral practice we will look for universal standards hidden within these difficult texts written for a particular time and place. They are not there.

 

If we read the Bible as a resource to empower our experience we may be challenge to compare our experience with what is written and come to an accommodation based on reason and practice, aware that this collection of texts speaks into our lives, not literally or morally, but as a flickering light in the dimness of our experience. As Paul writes, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

 

Today’s reading raises questions for modern Christians. The temptation with the lectionary reading is to talk about the question of faith in verses 5-6. This is a comfortable and relatively safe place to go. Rarely do you hear a sermon on the problematic passage that follows.

 

“The story assumes not only the acceptance of slavery, but an honour/shame social system in which honour is presumed to lie with the powerful while the subservient have no inherent dignity. This mindset now stands in stark contrast to the values expressed in documents such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights [UDHR], which asserts the dignity and worth of each and every human person.

 

These are the liberal values of contemporary secular Western societies, although they are often attacked by both Western Neo-Conservatives as well as by Two-Thirds World leaders who resent Western cultural and political domination. They are not biblical values, even if many people see them as vaguely Christian in character. They have more to do with the spirit of the Enlightenment than with traditional religious views of humanity and society.”[1]

 

We are challenged by Luke to understand Jesus as a Jewish man of his time, drawing on the accepted moral and ethical practices that normalised society and, in this case, accepting these for what they were. Jesus does not challenge slavery and neither does Paul, but appeals to the relationship between master and slave as demonstrated in this story as being commendable and appropriate.

 

There is no reward for doing your duty, for doing what is expected of you within a master slave relationship. Now we could spend time reading back into this passage the idea of God as master and human beings as slaves who are simple required to obey God their master without any sense of reward or an option to do otherwise. If we did what does this say about the character of God and the value of human beings? Are we worthless slaves under oath to a master, if so what’s the point? None of this sits well with our modern understanding of the inherent dignity of each person deserving respect and right relations?

 

As we have seen on many occasions, passages from the Old and New Testament seem to sit contrary to what we perceive to be the message of love we are told sits beneath each. The truth is that the Bible is a flawed text insofar as it assumes and promotes such things as slavery, demon possession, ethnic cleansing, racial superiority, a three-tiered universe, and the subordination of women. The Bible does not fit neatly with our cultural assumptions, as this week's Gospel reminds us. The immense spiritual value of the Bible may lie more in its capacity to empower our human quest than its ability to (re)solve our immediate challenges.[2]

 

Here is the importance of the Bible. It is to be read as a light into the dimness of our experience, not as the definitive word of God, a moral or ethical text or a historical text. It is a text written in a particular time and place which if read mystically, that is read in conjunction with our spiritual and life experience, speaks truth into our lives. To reduce the Bible by reading any other way reduces both its worth and its impact. Just as when it was written and spoke clearly to the experience of those who read it, when it is read today without the pre-condition that it fits our ideas it enlightens our way in mysterious and often counterintuitive ways.

 

The Bible is a spiritual or mystical text, to be explored with open hearts and minds so that it speaks its truth to each of us in ways we can hear, see and feel.

 

The fact that the Bible is flawed and seems to advocate values at odds with modern sensibilities, for me, speaks to its authenticity as a mystical text. It reflects its time and place, the people who wrote it were modern people of their time and Jesus was indeed an ordinary Palestinian Jew caught up in the ethos of his time.  The fact that this text is at odds with the enlightened understanding of human dignity we live with today speaks of the movement of the resurrected Christ, the Spirit who has continued the project Jesus began. We are not to be people of a static reading of the Bible, but engaged human beings we progress that project through the broadening of the thought and teachings of Jesus.

 

The challenge maybe, for us today, to revisit how we listen and hear the Bible as it is read in church or at home, and to look for the mystical leading of the spirit, uncovering the truth to lighten our way in the dimness of our faith. Amen

---

[1] Jenks

[2] Jenks

Reading the Bible - Fact or Myth?

Ephesians 6:10-20

How do we read the Bible? A silly question you may ask, but an important one if we are to find the truth that sits beneath the surface in this book of books. Do we read it literally from the translation we have in front of us? Is it the word of God that holds true at all times and in all places? Is it a book of fact verified and proven to accurate in all ways? Or is it something more or different altogether?

 

Reading the Bible literally is like looking at a painting and only seeing the picture sitting on the surface of the canvas. We see only what we see. If we only see the picture and don’t strive to se the meaning hidden in the picture, something of the perspective of the artist, their culture and philosophy, we will only ever see a painting we either like or don’t like, judged only on what is visible.

 

The Bible is more than literal words. It is more than what we read. We now know much in the Bible no longer holds true as verifiable fact or history. It is an amalgamation of events and history brought together to tell a story.

 

The Bible is a book of poetry, a lyrical book of metaphor and mythology, not myth as fairytale, but myth in it’s classical sense. It points to meaning without describing that meaning directly. It hints at the mystery of life and calls us to get in touch with what dwells below the surface. 

 

The Bible calls us back to mythology and symbolism, something we in the western world have discarded. We no longer engage with meaning making myth and it comes at a cost. Humans need poetry and myth to make meaning of their lives. When we ignore such it reappears in negative forms – mental health issues, violence, abuse etc. We spiritualise, medicalise, rationalise and ignore dreams, visions, insight and intuition. Our literal response is to normalise behaviour, thought and action so that we produce a flat one-dimensional world of proven fact and experience. Anything outside this is does not exist.

 

The Bible requires much more of us. It requires us to dive deep into its poetic style u to discover more. It requires us to dive deep in side ourselves to hear what the spirit is saying and to engage with the very forces ebbing and flowing in us, forceswe describe as good and evil, darkness and light, positive negative. It requires us to be open to a sphere of experience not visible in a literal world.

 

It also requires us to understand much of the writers purpose, who they are writing to and what they needed to hear. Paul and John write to the Ephesians, not to give them a book of practical advice as we read it – read you Bible, pray, live a moral life and accept Jesus as Lord – but to encourage them, telling them  the struggles they face aren’t personal and these struggles are shared with others.

 

Susan Hylen writes of this passage:

"While modern Christians are likely to have a view of heaven as a paradise in which no evil dwells, the writer of Ephesians is drawing on a different set of cultural assumptions, one in which a struggle between cosmic forces occurs within the heavenly realm. Christians, who already reign with Christ in some sense, are obligated to participate in this struggle."

Paul is writing from prison to a church of new followers struggling to find their way. John writes to the same group of people in his Gospel, people facing persecution from within and without the church. They have been betrayed and abandoned by friends and family, neighbours and social acquaintances because of their new found faith in Jesus the Christ.

 

What started out as a great epiphany, a moment of great joy was now fast becoming a nightmare. What they expected, a life of joy and the coming of the kingdom of God appeared further away than ever. It was hard, painful, and full of threat. They could die for their faith or at least be cut off from their Jewish heritage. Everything they knew no longer applied and they were cast out of the synagogue and society, as they knew it.  They were alone.

 

Paul writes some words of comfort and support: (vs10-13)

 

He recognises the difficulties they are facing for their faith. He understands the struggle it is for them to remain faithful as young Christians, wondering whether they got it totally wrong. Where is God? Where is this Jesusthe Christ? Where is the solidarity and support they thought would be there? What has happened to my friends and families? Is it really worth it to be a follower of JesustheChrist or should we just abandon it and go back to where we were?

 

Paul offers encouragement:

First, this is not just about you. This is an eternal battle, an eternal ebb & flow that continues in the heavens. It finds its form in the world in the shape of the  secular and religious leaders who are persecuting you for your beliefs, ostensibly for different reasons, but in fact because you challenge their power. Heaven is not a place where you can eat as much fairy floss as you like without getting cavities! It is a place where you continue to engage in the eternal battle.

 

In our modern world we think in terms of self. We perceive events and actions in terms of how they impact on or find their way out of ourselves. Paul reminds us, and the Ephesians, this is not the case. The world holds much more variety and mystery that that. It engages us in a story which is both uniquely ours and uniquely eternal and universal. We are engaged, not as the centre of the action, but as one of the many players in the eternal story.

 

Paul is encouraging them to stay engaged because they are an integral part of the biggest story possible and their struggles and difficulties with the powers active in the world has meaning and purpose. It has solidarity and belonging. It has the imprimatur of faith, hope and compassion found in faith in JesustheChrist.

 

Secondly, Paul intimates that this is not just the experience of new followers but all followers. He reminds them that he is in prison for his faith, and will probably die as a result. When John writes to the same church he holds up the example of Peter who had already been martyred for his faith.

 

Thirdly Paul is suggesting that they don’t have to be perfect. They will fail, slip, make mistakes, struggle with loyalty and get it wrong. But they are to do everything possible to maintain their faith right up to and including that terrible day, the day when their faith will be ultimately tested by the Romans or the religious leaders, the powers at work in this world. The suggestions made calls them into a deeper relationship with their faith where they will begin to understand another realm at work – the spirit realm and it is not to be feared.

 

We live in the Spirit.  Jesus was the embodiment of the spirit alive in the world – or at least that was how the man Jesus was seen. He was true, righteous, prophetic, and open to hear God in the world. He was filled with the Spirit, as we are, if we but understand that our real life is spirit not physical.

 

Reading the Bible requires us to delve below the surface of what we read, to understand it as mythology, the world of the Spirit. Like the Ephesians we are to avoid simply looking at what is happening in front of us or to us as the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Our lives are lived across the material and spiritual worlds and our experience has meaning in both realms. Once we let go of the literal we begin to grapple with the forces at work within and without, the ebb flow of spirituality sapping and energising us at the same time.

Gordon Graham in a reflection upon understanding art applicable to our understanding of Bible as poetry and myth, suggests that while art, and for us the Bible, speaks of a particular event or circumstance, they also speak to the general - the universal. The Bible collects characters and events and put them together to tell a story and even though those characters and events may never have happened as it is told. Art, which the Bible most certainly is poetically, 'may be imaginary through and through, but it can still enable us to look more sensitively at people, circumstances and relationships in our own experience. the question to be asked is not, 'Does this effectively capture the scene portrayed?' But 'does this make us see this sort of event or circumstance or group of people differently?"

 

It is challenging but it is the essence of our life. Amen.