Living Wittily

Thoughts on Election Day: Letting the Bible Get a Word in Edgeways

Recently I have been reflecting on big words. Not multisyllabic latinisms, gnostic jargon, nor bespoke neologisms, but words that are spacious, deep and and wide. Words that can have far reaching effects, whether in their expansiveness out into the world as transformative signals of hope, or in their intense inwardness as words of intellectual and spiritual and moral renewal towards a life more human, hopeful and holy. Indeed these three words would be good examples of what I mean by big words; human, hope, holy. But save them for another time.

This morning I woke up early. Not to my knowledge caused by a guilty conscience, more an honest and difficult to silence anxiety, low grade but persistent, and requiring some thought to accompany that first mug of tea! And as I thought about what was worrying me I went looking for words that might be placed on the other side of the anxiety versus serenity scales. Like most people, I'm weary of the ratcheted, wretched rhetoric of politicians telling us this is the most important General Election in generations. The normalising of exaggerated claims and approval seeking promises, the studied nastiness of personal attack as political tactic, the joyless anger of the power hungry, and the drip drip of dishonest dire predictions if we vote otherwise, have created an inner insomnia for those of us who refuse to allow our consciences to be lulled into sleepy complacency.

So I went looking for some big words to answer those pavlov laced promises, to rebuke the waves of abusive rhetoric, to contradict the urge to fear and anger. One of the benefits of reading the Bible, is knowing where to find the big words. And I mean reading the Bible, not saying we read it; I mean reading the Bible by letting the text get a word in edgeways so that it can speak big words into our small minds and narrow hearts; I mean reading the Bible so that the Word becomes a corrective of all those other words we speak, hear, repeat and throw around in political debate. I knew exactly where to find the big words I needed, to re-align my mind, to reconfigure my conscience, to reorientate my heart.

He has shown you O Man, what is good,

and what does the Lord require of you,

but to act justly,

and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.  (Micah 6.8)

Big words those, justice, mercy and humility. They are far reaching out into the world of people and relationships, politics and economics, culture and identity. And they are deeply penetrating into the mind, conscience and heart of those who will hear them and allow them to do their transformative work, first in inner disposition, then in outward action. Because these words are not abstract concepts to be debated, they are commands of God as to what is required of us human beings.

So on the day of the General Election, awake early by a nagging anxiety, I have taken recourse to some of the big words that come with the force of divine command into our world of human affairs. Together they make an interesting grid to take the measure of all those promises and policies; they are criteria of judgement that quality control the claims and counter claims of those who seek our yes to their right to govern; and they are unashamedly moral in their demands and requirement. These are not words that tolerate the tactics of division, the hurting of the vulnerable, the undervaluing of the poor, the manipulation of power to accumulate more at the expense of others. These are big words, words redolent of holiness, replete with judgement, relentless in their requirement. And for those who read the Bible, and I mean those who read it with the intention of obeying it, they come with an authority that relativises every other. They are the words that sustain the common good. They are either every politician's nightmare, scary in their demands, or their night-light showing where the door to life is.

God of goodness, justice and mercy,

We shouldn't need to ask what is required of us.

Is injustice so hard to see, so easy to live with?

Has the absence of mercy become tolerable?

Is humility a step too far for our pride?

 

Forgive us for tolerating the slippage

from your requirement to our convenience;

the slippage from justice to injustice,

from mercy to couldn't care-lessness,

from humility to self-protective pride.

 

Show us again what is good,

how to act justly, love mercy,

and walk humbly with our God.

Amen

 

 

Gethsemane and Our IPhones.

Gethsemane was the dark night of Jesus' soul. Fear and anxiety distilled into dread. "He who knew no sin became sin that we might become in him the righteousness of God."

So why use a cartoon to illustrate an incident so dripping with anguish? Because sometimes the superficial and trivial helps us finally 'get it'. Jesus needed faithful companionship, unselfish attentiveness, comfort and reassurance that he wasn't alone.

The iphone and tablet are becoming the equivalent of self-concerned complacency. The gift of a person's presence is spurned for a digital screen, its glow preferred to the face of a friend.

Caring for the Words and the Text of the New Testament.

We all have our idiosyncracies. From food preferences to the clothes we wear, from the TV programmes that do it for us, to those that we have never watched  - and could conceive of no circumstances that might persuade us ever to watch them. Idiosyncracies make our world an interesting, colourful diverse and exciting place to be. It's those infinitely variable human differences that make us who we are, those personal interests and odd enthusiasms, that story that is only and can only be ours, and that only we can tell, the characteristics and quirks that give us our individiuality, uniqueness and definition as the specific, different person we are.

So if I say I am fascinated by the history of New Testament research, I am referring to one of my idiosyncracies. An enthusiasm limited in its clientele, a minority interest group even in the rarefied world of New Testament scholarship, but for me one of the most exciting areas of study I've lived in for decades. It goes back to one book; The History of the Interpretation of the New Testament, by Stepehn Neil. I spent a summer holiday in 1984 reading that book from cover to cover along with Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and the biography of Temple Gairdner of Cairo. Who he? That will be another post.

Stephen Neil's book reads like a novel, a biography and a history all in one. It was updated in a Second Edition by N T Wright, and now covers the history of New Testament scholarship up to 1986. Recently a mammoth 3 volume History of New Testament Research from the 18th to the end of the 20th Century was completed by William Baird, and I've just started to read it. Baird is yet another example of scholars who go to heroic lengths in their quest for understanding of the text, and the history, interpretation, reception and influence of the New Testament over 2000 years of reflection, study, understanding and misunderstanding. These volumes trace the fascinating mixture of literary detective work, historical synthesis, biography, textual analysis, academic politics, and colliding theological presuppositions, philosophical assumptions and scientific theorising of around 300 years of intense study. All to make sense of 28 documents the length of a medium sized paperback, written around 2000 years ago by a variety of people and communities of no great moment then, but of vast significance for subsequent human history.

If you want to know what's so fascinating about this stuff let me recommend Sisters of Sinai, by Janet Martin Soskice as a good place to start. It tells of two sisters from Kilbarchan ( In Victorian times a wee Scottish village with weaving mills) who had ambitions to learn and travel. They visited Mount Sinai monastery, discovered ancient New Testament manuscripts and codices, learned several Oriental languages in order to translate them, and contributed significantly to the science of textual criticism and the search for the earliest witnesses to the biblical text.In doing all this they had to take on the male bastions of academia who had little patience and less respect for the accomplishments of these women.

How scholars establish the reliability of the text of the New testament is a mixture of tedium and inspiration, it requires disciplined sifting of textual minutiae and instinctive genius for language, demands a scrupulous weighing evidence and imaginative but historically plausible reconstructing of context and provenance. During this period of Lent when I'm thinking about words, how they are used, the search for a responsible stewardship of words, and why we should care for words like conservators and curators of meaning. I reflect on the countless scholars, the millions of hours of study, the adventures and the heartache, the passion of the quest and the disciplines of intellectual integrity and humility before a text that no scholar can own, possess or control. And I'm grateful for such holy industry. At least in this sense, of careful attention to words that are life changing, Lent is a time to re-read the New Testament, wth a care for what it says.

 

How Many Bibles Do You Need?

I've just bought a new Bible. It isn't that I've worn the other one out completely - it's still serviceable enough. I've had it since 1992. So, why buy another Bible? How many Bibles does someone need for goodness sake?

Come to think it, that question could be interesting if we drop the rhetorical flourish and simply ask;

How many Bibles do I need for goodness sake,for the sake of goodness, that is, before I get the point, in order to begin to be transformed by words that are life giving, or to be touched by grace that is heart changing, or troubled by stories that are conscience building, and grabbed and graced by good news that is mindset changing?

The answer is one,

just one, if it's read faithfully, angrily, routinely, in perplexity, expectantly, reverently, honestly, even guiltily

just one, if it's held prayerfully and pondered slowly for guidance or grabbed desperately  and ransacked for, well, guidance too

just one, to be read falteringly with broken heart, or joyfully with soaring thoughts, or in the confusion, fatigue, boredom and frightening array of options that is life at high speed in high definition at a too high price

just one, to find answers which might not be there, or in search of the right questions which we might just discover

just one, to look for some comfort and love in our sorrows, or to remember again why laughter is a way of thanking God twice for the same blessing

just one, to find guidance, wisdom, mercy, judgement and grace, gifts already there for the finding and each of them underwritten by the promise of God

just one, because a hungry traveller needs one good meal at one good inn to make the next miles possible.

Yes one Bible is enough, if it shows sufficient signs of use. Years ago, one of Scotland's more spectacular Baptist preachers, in a wee corrugated iron church in Lanrkshire, Scotland, demonstrated, with stunning unintended improvisation, the cost and consequences of using and abusing a Bible for a lifetime.

He was lampooning the thought that a Bible should be kept in its box, treated with reverence and deference so that from one year to the next it kept its pristine appearance in keeping with its sacred status.  When he preached that morning he held up his own Bible, and waved it wildly as he thundered and threatened about the tragedy of the unread, under-used over-protected gilt edged Bibles he believed were languishing in drawers and cupboards all over the town. Then he loosened his grip on his Bible, and was left holding the covers as a veritable blizzard of pages began to fall from the raised pulpit, and wafted with sacramental slowness, left to right, like sacred text snowflakes, settling on the choir seats, the floor and occasionally brushing the heads of the few choir members within range.

He never faltered. Forty years later, having taught homiletics and biblical studies, philosophy and systematic and pastoral theology, and preached over 3000 sermons myself, I still remember the hairs on the back of my neck being raised, by those slow motion india paper pages, loose-leaves of testimony to a Bible that had seen better days, but which had sustained and nurtured and given life and passion and purpose to this man's story.

How many Bibles do you need? For all practical purposes, just one.

Good News for Modern Man - or Good News for Post-Modern Persons?

I recently spent a while reading the Good News Bible. It isn't a translation I often use, to be honest I think it lacks a couple of dimensions that are important to me in the Bible I read. Now this is going to sound at best pedantic, and at worst pompous, but it matters to me that the Bible I read retains a sense of mystery, that the words are precisely not the simplest most familiar words in our language. It matters that the literary skill and spiritual subtlety and intellectual dynamism of the texts are not drained off in the interests of in your face this is what it means. The Bible has depth as well as breadth, mystery as well as meaning, requires rich texture rather than thin fabric. This collection of literary texts ranges from poetry to story, prayers to curses, lament to love song, parable to philosophy, from gospel to history, biography to theology. It is the Word of God for goodness sake.

Now all that said. I remember the sheer joy as a new Christian when I bought my first Good News for Modern Man New Testament at a Christian Endeavour Convention. Come on, if that doesn't place me in the rocking 60's what does!! I read it through like a novel, it helped make sense of some passages that puzzled me in my recently bought black leather, zip fastening Authorized Version. For a while I read them in tandem, and liked some bits of one and preferred some bits of the other.

Eventually through the kindness of a Faith Mission pilgrim called Margaret, I was given a wide margin RSV the size of a paving stone! That became my desk Bible and I still love it, use it, but decline to lug it into the pulpit the way I used to. However by the 1970's the NIV was becoming the translation of choice for evangelicals. I have often been troubled by the idea of a translation suitable for evangelicals, or catholics, or any other denominated tradition - a translation stands or falls on its accuracy and faithfulness to the text, not on whether translational decisions coincide with preconceived ideas of what a text means.

Still, for years I've read and preached from the NIV, though mostly now I use the NRSV for a whole lot of reasons. I do wonder how many now use the Good News Bible. I wonder too, if the desire to be contemporary, to reduce the Bible to the language of 'modern man' is a self defeating exercise because the language of the 60's is 50 years ago now. And I shudder at what a translation called the Good News for Post-Modern Persons might read like....

I was reading the Good News Bible because I miss the pictures. Those line drawings by the Swiss artist Annie Vallotton are amongst the most evocative, suggestive, funny, moving and subtle delineations of biblical text of any I know. I wouldn't be without them; sometimes they are the best exegetical comments I can find.

I was reading Malachi, and the dancing figure illustrating the sun rising as God's blessing on a world promised a different future, is just the right fit of mood, hilarity and faith. Go find a Good News Bible and look at it - then flick through and have a look again at the work of this brilliant felt tip pen exegete.

The picture is of Vallotton on tour in the United States in 1966. She died on December 28, 2013 at the age of 98. I hope she was often told that her drawing s have been a means of grace, and windows into sacred text.

Interpretation of scripture has to be biographical. Jurgen Moltmann again.

Jurgen Moltmann has a wee gem of an essay in his book Experiences in Theology. 'Trinitarian Hermeneutics of 'holy scripture'' is a thoughtful statement on what makes writings 'holy scripture' for the Church, and how these scriptures are most fully and faithfully understood within the story of the Triune God.  "The New Testament talks about God by proclaiming in narrative the relationships of the Father the Son and the Spirit, which are relationships of fellowship,  and are open to the world."

In that one sentence Moltman brings into dynamic relationship with the Triune God, the triune realities of Scripture, Church and Mission. Much 'missional' theology and practice tends to look to Scripture primarily as its mandate and defining source. As I read Moltmann here and elsewhere, I wonder if he is saying something much more about mission, and about Scripture. The interpretation of Scripture is at its most 'missional' when the hermeneutic lens used is the living witness of a community that embodies Scripture in a way that recalls, re-presents and effectively demonstrates the subject of Scripture - Jesus Christ.

Now I concede that I may be over-reading Moltmann here, but if so it is a trajectory that would still be consistent with his theology. He goes on to reflect on the christological finality, the once for all-ness, of God's revelation and the witness of Scripture.

Then he says this: "What God brings into the world through Christ is life. God the Spirit is the source, wellspring of life - life that is healed, freed, full, indestructible and eternal. Christ himself is the resurrection and the life in person. Those who believe in him will live even though they die, because to them life has been made manifest. They experience it with their senses. So the sending of the Spirit is at the same time the sending of life. From this we can conclude that a 'spiritual interpretation of scripture' has to be a biographical interpretation. Through the ways in which we express our lives we interpret the scriptural texts we live with....The book of the Bible is interpreted by our lived lives, for it is the 'book of life'....The sending of the Spirit (missio Dei) awakens life and multifarious movements of revival and healing. So life is the true interpreter. (146)

Moltmann then explores briefly what life is, what enhances and what diminishes life, what furthers life and what hinders it. He wants the church to work out what in the texts furthers life, and through the texts subject to critique whatever is hostile to life and offers 8 guidelines - here is number 7

What furthers life is, first and last, whatever makes Christ present, Christ who is the resurrection and the life in person; for in and with Christ the kingdom of eternal life is present, and the kingdom overcomes.

Much of what Moltmann is arguing here is rooted in I John 1.1-4, Hebrews 1, John 1. The Trinitarian hermeneutic takes hold of Scripture in the light of the narrative  of the relationships between Father, Son and Spirit, as these are revealed in the Gospel story of Jesus. The overarching theme of this story is life, 'the word of life', the one who said 'I am the life' and who promised 'I have come that you might have life to the full', and whose ministry is enabled by the Spirit of life who takes of the things of Jesus and makes them known; the one in whom was life, and the life was the light of all people, this One, is the one who gives eternal life, and calls each person to a living out of the Truth of the one who said 'I am the Life'. In which case Moltmann perhaps helps us to understand more deeply a 'missional' view of Scripture - which is to read scripture in the light of the life of God in Christ, and live as an embodied, related, community of fellowship that is the church, the Body of Christ.

Retro RSV New Testament and Psalms - The Joy of Sacred Text

When I quote the Bible from memory I always quote the RSV. I became a follower of Jesus in the late 1960's just at the time when the Good News for Modern Man New Testament was published. The non inclusive title showed how un-modern it was. A year or two later it graduated into The Good News Bible. By then I had been reading and studying the Bible for some years in the RSV, and some of its phrases, verses and chapters had become part of my newly furnished mind and increasing store of Bible knowledge and discourse.

Neither the Good News Bible, nor its paraphrased rival The Living Bible ever displaced the RSV as the translation which spoke most convincingly to me with that combination of strangeness and familiarity that always creates the right balance of inner tension and attention when we read a sacred text for daily food. When the NIV came along, and Evangelical christians hailed it as an 'evangelical translation', it took me some years to concede that a preacher's translational preference is not a matter only of personal taste and experience. The text familiar to those amongst whom we live and move and preach our sermons becomes the preferred text for all kinds of practical and pastoral reasons more important than the personal. So for much of my  ministry I've preached from the NIV. Then came the New RSV, with its inclusive language, updated vocabulary and widespread adoption as the translation of preference for many Christian communities and denominations - but my sense is that the NRSV has little foothold amongst Evangelical Christians, and the NIV remains the default translation.

Now, for study purposes, I use the NRSV and NIV together and with my leather bound not small RSV to hand - years of continuous reading make it still the most familiar text. Nevertheless. Regularly I dive into my King James Version ordination Bible and immerse myself in a language strange, familiar and beautiful, in those places where it is still unrivalled as the repository of sacred text rendered memorable and mysterious. Psalms, Isaiah, Genesis, John, Romans, the Parables, - how on earth did a committee produce a masterpiece? The question is mainly rhetorical - to try to answer you have to begin with the plagiarism of Tyndale's translation, woven into page after page with never a footnote acknowledgement!

This narrative of Jim and his Bibles is by way of saying I recently bought myself a new RSV New Testament and Psalms. Now be careful. I didn't say a New Revised Standard Version New Testament and Psalms; but a new Revised Standard Version and Psalms. I mean the RSV not the NRSV.The picture at the top is of my new RSV and Psalms. Compact, portable, beautifully made, very clear and readable print, high quality paper, two ribbon markers, gilt edged. Come on - this is a real New Testament, a sacred book that by appearance and handling says - 'I'm not an Argos catalogue; |'m not a PDF; I'm not an airport paperback; I'm not the cheapest in a 3 for 2 offer; I'm not a Kindle; I'm not a niche market ploy; I'm the real thing - strange, potent, holy. Go on. Risk it. Open me!'

Every 4 months I complete a daily reading pattern, working through the four Gospels and the book of Psalms. I'll say more about that soon in another post. This new RSV is now a daily companion for that journey.

Erasmus and the New Testament

A new intellectual biography of Erasmus by Anthony Levi is scheduled from Yale University Press in October. Erasmus is one of the most significant figures in European intellectual history. Roland Bainton's biography is still a great read, though dated in all kinds of ways. Erasmus' big argument with Luther on the freedom or bondage of the human will was one of the key controversies in early Reformation theology. A Christian anthropology still has to wrestle with the mystery, even the enigma of human freedom as a defining feature of a Christian anthropology.

But Erasmus' love for the Greek New Testament, even allowing for the textual limitations of his work, remains one of the great recovery projects of the Renaissance and of the history of biblical interpretation. Erasmus was passionate about going back to origins, recovering texts overgrown with diversities of later interpretations. And his motivation for doing so was deeply spiritual, theological and intellectual, and each of these was a strand in the conviction that texts have both an integrity to uphold and vulnerability to hijack. Here are Erasmus' words which are celebrated reminders of the extraordinary freedom he won for those who want to read the Bible for themselves.  

Christ wishes his mysteries published as openly as possible.

I would that even the lowliest women read the gospels and the Pauline epistles.

I would that they were translated into all languages…

I would that the farmer sing some portion of them at the plough,

the weaver hum some parts of them  to the movement of his shuttle,

the traveller lighten the weariness of the journey with stories of this kind.

A Philosophical Theology of Prayer.

I don't enjoy many books about prayer. That doesn't mean there aren't any good ones, just that I'm not sure one ever helped me to pray more, or better. I'd rather have a book of prayers that have been composed, written and prayed in language rich with those human experiences out of which prayer erupts, or is dragged, or writes itself in word and emotion that is the human heart seeking encounter with the heart of God.

When a renowned philosopher whose works on Theism are mind stretchingly challenging decides to explore the basis of Christian prayer, then I don't expect another how to manual, nor another here's my experience, it was great and I'd like you to have it too bestseller. Which is good - because this book is quite different. Owen is unafraid of the theological and philosophical questions raised by our praying - telling God what God already knows, asking for what is in our own interests, establishing any causal connection between our praying and whatever happens that we perceive as an answer to prayer. The main thrust of the book is that prayer is best, perhaps only, understood, in the light of our doctrine of God and our theological conception of what a human being is, and what the relations between God and humanity are, should be and perhaps must be.

I learned so much from this book - The Basis of Christian Prayer, H P Owen (Regent College Pubblishing). Not about how to pray but about what prayer is, about the One to whom prayer is offered, and about the relational interchange that takes place between God and those who dare, and who desire, to address the God who first addresses us. "Prayer validates a personal, as against a non personal view of God. In prayer we address God as Thou." A page later (p.111) Owen quotes a most moving prayer of Anselm, from the Proslogion:

O God, I pray, let me know and love you

so that I may rejoice in you.

And if I cannot in this life fully,

let me advance day by day

until the point of fullness comes.

Let knowledge of you progress in me here,

and be made full there.

Let love for you grow in me here,

and be made full there,

so that here my joy may be great with expectancy

while there being full in realisation.

If there is such a thing as an eschatological spirituality, Then Anselm has gifted to the church a prayer that holds the Christian heart in that creative tension between now and then, here and there, Thou - and I.

Durer's Praying Hands (above) suffers from over-exposure on Christian kitsch products fro m wall plaques to plastic models. But in the original etching the artist combines beauty with beseeching, peace with tension, surrender and expectancy - and few images are more evocative of our humanity than our hands, with which we make and caress, hold and relinquish, clench and open, embrace or exclude. To lift up holy hands in prayer, is therefore no straightforward spiritual exercise.

Advent Enthusiasms and Idiosyncrasies (1)

My favourite soprano singer is Jessye Norman. Ever since I heard her sing the Sanctus from Gounod's St Cecilia Mass (20 years ago), I've listened, learned and been renewed by that magnificent voice. That double CD is now scratched and looks its age.

I've just bought her double CD, Christmastide for the Aberdeen - Paisley weekly jaunt. So instead of Abba, Mozart, John Denver, Thomas Tallis, Mary Chapin Carpenter,and various other voices I'll play several CD's I've now bought for Advent. The Jessye Norman one begins with O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Sung with slow, deliberate enunciation, like a prayer quietly passionate and long in the saying. It builds towards a crescendo of longing, orchestra and voices demanding to be heard, and above it all the clear confident cry, no longer quietly desperate but sure in its rejoicing, "Emmanuel will come to you, O Israel". 

If it is to be faithful to its own mission and message, then this year the Church, more than any other institution, more than any other source of wisdom or authority, and more confidently than any marketing agency cleverly luring customers, - the Church should speak, live, embody, sing, pray, share, demonstrate, the truth by which it lives. "Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel." Whatever else our culture currently lacks, joy, hope and trust are in highly significant deficit.

The question haunts me - how does believing God comes to us in Jesus Christ make me act differently from my neighbours?

If in Jesus the love and mercy of God have come, and if Christmas brings a message of peace on earth and goodwill amongst all peoples, then why in the name of Jesus do I buy into the gloom and anxiety of a global economy on the critical list?

What listening to Jessye Norman's rendering of O Come, O Come Emmanuel does is question our culture's default position on what matters most. And it lifts my eyes beyond the Euro zone, to the economy of heaven, and the call to live with hopeful joy and trustful peace, not because that makes problems go away, but because it looks with clearer vision at the God who comes near.

The painting is The Annunciation, by Fra Angelico. It is replete with biblical clues, it is a masterpiece of reverenced mystery. It is a painting of God at work invading and interrupting with urgency and demand - awaiting that "Yes" that allows the Word to become flesh.