How Scripture Sounds to Me--It Whispers

            Imagine, for a moment, a school library. This isn’t just any library, though. It is, rather, a majestic Harry Potter, Hogwarts sort of library—a cavernous room in an old building with shining dark wooden tables and leaded stained-glass windows. Golden brass door knobs and chandeliers hang from the ceilings. And, here in this library, all is silent, except that . . .

. . . two teens, Malik and Jenna, are whispering to each other. Looking at them, I notice that Malik is looking at Jenna with great intensity, and that Jenna is blushing. I notice that as they whisper, back and forth, the students at the table behind them are trying to listen in. I also notice that the librarian is looking at them, and that he is on the cusp of shushing them.

Whispers Matter

In spite of how everything about the library screams, “quiet!” Malik and Jenna are whispering. Why?

Well . . .whispers matter, don’t they? Malik and Jenna whisper back and forth because what they have to say to each other is worth taking the risk to say—we whisper about important stuff that has to be heard, even if it is risky to do so. Alex and Jenna whisper to each other even though the Librarian might snap at them or even send them out. They whisper to each other because what they have to say is something they just have to get off of their chests, even if others are trying to listen in, and might gossip or laugh at them. We whisper when it really matters, when the situation is urgent and we can’t wait.

            And, whispers are intimate. Jenna’s blush suggests that Alex might be saying something very personal. Maybe he is asking her on a date. Maybe he is telling her that he doesn’t want to go a dance with her because he is, after all, gay. Maybe he is telling Jenna that her best friend is angry with her. Who knows? But whispers, almost by definition, are intimate. Even in an empty bedroom, with windows closed, and when no one but our lover is within miles of us, we whisper when we say, “I love you.” Whispers are intimate.

Whispers also demand attention. Malik and Jenna are not actually making a lot of noise as they whisper to each other. They don’t want others to hear, after all. But still, the librarian is irritated and wants to shush them. Malik and Jenna, just because they are whispering, demand attention. The kids at the next table want to overhear what they’re saying and so the strain to listen, too. A good teacher or preacher or politician knows how to shift gears from loud to conversational to just a whisper, so that everyone in the audience is sitting on the edge of their seats, trying to hear every word. There is an old African proverb that says the whisper of a pretty girl can be heard further than the roar of a lion—whispers, though quiet, demand attention.

Many whispers—not always, but not uncommonly—many whispers are subversive. In fact, what Malik really wants Jenna to do is cut their next class—Biology—so that they can go to Starbucks and study for their upcoming History test together. Now, Malik’s plan to skip class is against the rules. If the librarian hears of it, he will probably pass this information on to the Biology teacher. Jenna and Malik will get detentions. So, they whisper their plans to each other just because they are subversive. President Obama reminded us of how whispers can be  subversive in a campaign speech. “Yes we can. [These words were] whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail towards freedom through the darkest of nights. Yes we can.”

Whispers also tend to give voice to hard truths we do not want to hear, but should. I don’t know if this was the case with Malik and Jenna, mind you, unless the hard truth was Jenna’s objection to Malik’s plan, when Jenna said, “Malik we can’t, we’ll be caught, we’ll get a detention.” But Shel Silverstein has a good poem about how hard truths are often whispered. The poem, titled, “The Little Boy and the Old Man,” goes like this:

Said the little boy, Sometimes I drop my spoon.

Said the little old man, I do that too.

The little boy whispered, I wet my pants.

I do too, laughed the old man.

Said the little boy, I often cry.

The old man nodded. So do I.

But worst of all, said the boy, it seems

Grown-ups don't pay attention to me.

And he felt the warmth of a wrinkled old hand.

I know what you mean, said the little old man.

Hard truths are often whispered.

And finally, whispers are the best way to speak great truths. Malik insists, in his whisper to Jenna, that if they study together, they will pass. Not the greatest truth perhaps, but true enough. An old Rabbinic saying says that “Every blade of grass has an angel that bends over it and whispers, ‘Grow.’” It is a lovely image. I would amend that saying, however, so that it reads: “In scripture God bends over each of us, and whispers, ‘you are beloved.’”

            I began this message by describing a vast and beautiful library that nevertheless somehow, mysteriously, called attention to even the faintest whispers. The Bible is like that too. The Bible is a library of spiritual books in which, if we pay careful attention, we can hear the divine whisper of God.

            Scripture itself suggests as much. In 2 Peter 1, for example, the Apostle Peter (or whoever wrote this book) says, “You will do well to be attentive to [scripture] as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

            These ancient lamps were mere sputtering wicks floating in a bowl of olive oil. That’s why you had to be attentive to them. Unlike our modern electric flashlights or chqndeliers, these ancient lamps were dim, smoky affairs, just a whisper of struggling light, barely enough to see your feet and prevent you from stumbling in the dark. No much light at all.

            If there is a God, he or she has certainly not rearranged the stars in such a way as to leave no doubt about his or her existence or program. And in scripture, we have, at best, a dim light, Elijah’s “gentle whisper.” We might wish for more, but it’s all we have.

            But for all the reasons given above, the scriptural whisper is compelling. Because, you see . . .  from the Sermon on the Mount to the story of a mysterious resurrection, what God whispers matters most for life and hope. God’s whispers are meant for me, intimately, even as other people try to listen in. And yet, this whispering God demands my attention, my life, my all. This divine whisper is subversive too, calling me to act justly and to love mercy and to live humbly—no matter what our culture shouts about how it is really all about me, myself, and I. The divine whisper in scripture suggest that there are harder truths we need to understand about weaknesses and shortcomings if we are going to be all that we can be.

            But always, on nearly every page, in each of its many books (almost, at least), what the Bible whispers that matters most, the Bible’s greatest truth, is that since we are beloved, we can also love others.

            And when scripture’s whispering is done, that is enough for me.

Preaching "The Lion King" Instead of Scripture

         This coming Sunday I’m preaching The Lion King. Although we’ll read scripture during the service, a single image from The Lion King will serve as the sermon text. It’s the scene where Simba is lectured by his father, King Mufasa, for putting himself and his friend Nala in danger by disobeying him and visiting the Elephant Graveyard. While there, three hyenas almost manage to eat Simba and Nala for lunch. King Mufasa saves them in the nick of time. But he is angry that his son Simba has disobeyed him.

         Now, as Simba walks toward his father to receive his punishment, he puts his tiny paw into a huge footprint made by his father’s much larger paw. And that image, the naughty child’s paw in the magisterial father’s paw—that image is the sermon text.

Will Simba ever measure up? Will my preaching?

         This freedom is new for me. In seminary, I was taught that all sermons had scriptural texts. Not only that, it was the preacher’s unique job—something that he or she trained many years for—to get the interpretation of that text exactly right. There was a whole long process for doing so—I used to teach it, in seminary, the “hermeneutic spiral.” You read the text in Hebrew or Greek to make sure you catch interesting nuances not available in translation. Then you read the text in its immediate context, trying to discern how it fit into the passage it was found in. Then you compared it to similar texts in the Bible, in order to discern how it fit into its larger message. Then you fit the text into the larger “redemptive-historical” story of the Bible, the one where Jesus dies for everyone’s sins and is raised on the third day. All along the way you pretend to be able to bracket your own prejudices, hopes, dreams, and ignorance. And finally, you figure out how to state your conclusions in a way that is relevant for people who live today.

         All along the assumption is that all of scripture is divinely inspired, that there are no mistakes in it, that it all fits together like a puzzle (even if at first it didn’t seem to), that every tense change and verbal mood fluctuation was intentional and important, and that all of this is authoritative for all of life and so on.

         You get the picture.

         But what happens when you don’t buy these assumptions anymore? When you don’t think it is all “God-breathed,” that it is all coherent? What happens when you recognize that scripture is full of inconsistencies, that you often can’t get into the mind of the original author, and that if you could you’d find that it was probably just as confused, inconsistent, stubborn as you are? How do you preach when you think that the Bible’s attitude towards gays is hateful, towards adulterers is far too harsh, that its attitude to slavery has been too long forgiven, its mythology of end times too fantastic and inconsistent, and overall its message about God is more confused and various and anthropomorphic and incredible than most conservative Christians are allowed to think?

         And how do you preach when in spite of all this, you still love scripture and are amazed by what you find in it?

         I’m feeling my way here. When I joined the United Church of Canada, four years ago, it was as if someone left the gate open. At first I galloped out of the coral and just reveled in the feeling of not being tied up anymore, not being restrained.

         But after awhile, once you’re free, you have to ask yourself, “what next?” and “Where to?” and “to what end?” That’s where I am now.

         So I’ve put together a couple of ideas that are (loosely) guiding me. They’re not a systematic theology of preaching or anything like that. I’m guessing that some will take strong issue with them, and others might be able to add helpful comments. So here are ten thoughts on preaching the Lion King instead of scripture.

1. I don’t believe that scripture has a divine authority that I carry with me into the pulpit. Such a belief is pure hubris. I’m too aware of my own prejudices and predispositions to believe in such authority. And given how many different versions of the truth are preached in many different pulpits each Sunday, the notion that there is some sort of divine authority that attends such confusion is just short of ridiculous.
2. But I do believe there are big themes in scripture that are worth sharing from the pulpit: shalom, justice, love of neighbor, mercy, grace, hope, forgiveness. These tend to be the big moral (not historical or theological) themes that churches have always theoretically agreed on (but often failed to live up to).
3. The problem with focusing on morality is that preaching can easily devolve into badgering. I try to remember that the big themes of scripture are not merely a list of “to-dos” but a panorama of insight, hope, mystery, longing, and inspirational history. Sill, I find “not badgering” is hard to do.
4. Most of scripture’s big themes have corollaries in other religions and philosophies, as well as in literature and popular culture. These other sources often illuminate scripture, confirm its wisdom—but at other times, improve on scripture. These other sources are benchmarks that help preachers avoid going off into left field.
5. But then, I don’t always need to go to scripture to find a great starting place for addressing these big themes. Sermons on musicals like Les Miz and cartoons like Lion King and books like Wizard of Oz or the epigraphs in Wade Davis’ marvelous The Wayfinders are fun, interesting, surprising, attention-grabbing places that I’ve started sermons lately.
6. I no longer parse texts to within an inch of their life believing that by doing so I can somehow better understand what God really meant to say or what the intent of the original author was. When preachers do this they’re (usually inadvertently) making a show of their training to insist on some doctrine they’ve been taught or a prejudice they hold. Many of these doctrines are debatable, and few of these doctrines are agreed upon by multiple denominations. If some great truth depends on parsing a single text correctly, it probably isn’t a great truth. Or even a minor one.
7. Which isn’t to say that preachers ought to ignore texts, or not love scripture. Scripture is the deep source of our tradition, our shared ancient memory, the galaxy in which we spin. But read it whole and don’t focus on its jots and tittles.
8. Writing a sermon isn’t a science. It involves weighing and sorting many strands of evidence, many factors, many possibilities. I think of my sermons as “spiritual op-eds” relevant for living life today.
9. Preaching is as much about the hopes and fears, the dreams and struggles that congregants face as it is about anything that might serve as a text for your sermon. In fact, these emotions and daily realities can be sermon texts.
10. Preaching is more about finding our way today than recovering the ancient past.

         I’m pretty sure I know what my friends in Evangelical circles will think of such musings. But I might be surprised. I’d like to hear more about what my new, theologically liberal friends think. What insight would you add?

Is the Bible the Word of God? What Could that Mean?

I wish I had known my grandfather—my Opa—better.

He was a taciturn man, not given to much speech. My favorite memory of him is from Sunday mornings, after church. The whole clan—six kids, their spouses, and me, the oldest grandson, sitting on the floor—all of us would gather in Opa and Oma’s front room. It was only opened on Sundays. Opa would sit in the corner throne, his Morris Chair, and listen to his family talk religion and politics. Everyone played to him—everyone was looking for his nod and cryptic, “Ja, zo ist it.” But he never said much himself.

Still, Opa was a wise man. For example, a few years after World War II, when fear of the USSR was high, he decided to leave the Netherlands and move overseas. His employer, Atlanta Paper, offered him a job as manager of their new factory in Johannesburg, South Africa. He thought long and hard about it, but in the end—on the advice of a wise friend—he decided to move to Canada instead, where he (eventually) found work as a hospital janitor. Opa believed something was wrong in South Africa, and he backed that up by choosing entry-wage poverty in Canada over status and power in South Africa.

Opa also didn’t write. I half-remembered getting a letter from him while I was in college. My aunts and uncles didn’t believe me. So a few years ago I went through all the mail I received in college, looking for that Holy Grail of a letter. I couldn’t find it. Maybe I lost the letter. But I think I just remembered what I wanted to believe. He never wrote me. I really wish I knew more about him than I do.

Which gets us to the theme of this blog post. Some Christians say, “The Bible is the Word of God.” But, as with my Opa, the written record is actually pretty sparse. Just 66 short books—some only-page-long letters—that we call the Bible.

As a result, just as my memories of Opa are fleeting and fragile, so is our knowledge of God. We wish we knew more. So we turn to the Bible. Christians say it is, “God’s Word.” We hope it will be chock full of good stuff about God. But there is less of that than you might think, even according to the Bible’s own account.

The Bible does suggest that a tiny bit of what is inside comes straight from God’s hand or spoken words. God, according to the story in Exodus, personally carved the Ten Commandments on tablets of stone. The Bible says the laws in Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy were dictated by God to Moses. And if Jesus was God—or even just very close to God—then his words—if they have been correctly recalled by New Testament writers many years later, are at the very least, very Godly words.

But most of the Bible does not claim to be God’s actual speech. Most of it is the musings, experiences, wisdom, mysterious encounters, and the stories of people who were pretty sure that God was mysteriously in touch with them. In other words, the Bible is full of second-hand reporting by ancient people who, after Moses, were in touch with God mostly through dreams and visions. In fact, the Jewish scholar Richard Eliot Friedman argues, in his excellent book The Disappearance of God: A Divine Mystery, that God purposely ended his personal encounters—they’re called theophanies—God ended his personal encounters with Jews to force them to grow up, spiritually and morally.

Of course, when Evangelicals and others say that the Bible is the Word of God, what they really mean is that everything in the Bible is inspired by God, and has God’s stamp of approval. But does it, really? And what would that mean? Just for example (and there are many), the stories of God sending plagues upon innocent children, and upon Israelites for having a disobedient king—is that really believable as the sort of stuff a loving God would do? Is the story of Genesis—written to look like a true story about the past—really what we call history? What about all the New Testament promises—even by Jesus himself—that he is coming back “soon,” to judge the living and the dead. Is 2000 years later still “soon?”

And this is the crux, really. How much of God is really in the Bible? Enough to call it the Word of God, instead of “words about God?” Is every word in the Bible really divinely inspired? And what would that mean, anyway, if they were? That every word was dictated to the writer by God? That seems unlikely, given that the Greek, for example, in some of the New Testament, is laughably bad compared to the Greek of classical Greece, or even compared to other parts of the New Testament.

Maybe rather than arguing about how much of the Bible is actually from God, it would be better to pay attention to how seriously the Bible itself expects us to take it. And probably the favorite image used in the Bible to describe itself is the image of lamp light.

How seriously should we take the Bible? Well, in Psalm 119:105 we read, "Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” And perhaps with this very text in the back of his (or, less likely, her) mind, the author of 2 Peter 1:19-20 wrote, “so we have the prophetic message more fully confirmed. You will do well to be attentive to this as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.”

The standard Evangelical reading of such texts suggests that as light, scripture is glorious. As light, scripture banishes the dark. As light, it leaves humans without excuse when it comes to getting God right. There is, however, another and better way to read such texts.

Consider the Psalmist’s lamp. This is a lamp from the days when ancient Hebrew lights couldn’t match even our puny candles when it came to giving light. The lamp the Psalmist speaks of was dim, smoky, sputtering and fuelled by olive oil. Such lamps were a stopgap measure until daytime, and not a very good one at that. Enough light, perhaps, to put one foot before another on a path without breaking your neck, but not a light to see the scenery or wild animals or survive a strong wind. The Peter passage further suggests that the words of the prophets, by which is meant the Old Testament, are a stopgap sufficient—barely—but only until the “morning star,” rises—that is, until Jesus returns.

In sum, these two “light” texts, the first with its reference to an imperfect emergency light, and the second with reference to its weakness compared to the light of the Christ who will soon return (although he didn’t)—this juxtaposition certainly suggests that it is easy to claim far too much for the light of scripture, whether or not it is inspired by God in whole or part. The Bible is certainly not the sun in the daytime. It isn’t even a forty-watt bulb, or even a cellphone flashlight. The Bible describes its light as a flickering, as a barely-enough stopgap measure for knowing God.

Which gets me back to my grandfather. I wish I knew more about him. I wish I had taken the time when I was in college and seminary to visit him more often. I wish I had more personal letters from him.

But in the end, what really matters is the core that my Opa passed onto his kids, and also to me. His love for family. His moral core that led him, at great personal cost, to turn his back on a privileged life in South Africa. His love of learning and wisdom. His heart for justice and fairness. His courage as a participant in the anti-Nazi labour-union underground.

And so with the Bible. We could all wish for more God in it, more clarity, more assurance that this is actually all from God and all we need—wherever or however God is now. We might even assume, as I did about that non-existent letter from my grandfather, that there is a lot more of God in the collection of letters from the ancient past we call the Bible than there actually is.

But that’s not what the Bible says about itself. It is a flickering lamp. Enough to assure us we are beloved. Enough to inspire us to live for the same values that Jesus did. Enough for us to wonder and dream about a hopeful future on account of the stories of Jesus’ resurrection. Enough to remind us that the marginalized, the week, the poor, and the oppressed are God’s favorites. Not a lot to go on.

But a great core, and enough to absolutely transform our lives.