Living Wittily

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.

 

Words as Couriers of Hope

Another way of thinking about the words I speak during Lent and beyond, would be to find ways of speaking that give sound and presence to the cardinal virtues - Hope, Love, Faith.

When I speak is hope enhanced, love confirmed, faith sustained?

So what about hope? Do my words encourage hearts and lift up heads and strengthen feeble knees?

Or, by something I say, casually or thoughtfully, is love kept faithful, set free and made more real?

And faith? Do words and sentences, comments and conversations, greetings and silent gestures, invite faith, instil trust, affirm worth?

But let's begin with hope. If ever the Christian witness needed to repristinate a word that has become obscured and vague; if ever a word was slipping towards the margins of our living like an almost lost memory; if ever a word was under siege from its opposites, pressured to the edges of personal experience and political priority, that word is hope.

No that isn't a counsel of despair, nor a surrender to the dark side. It is a recalling of Christian obedience to a faith where the deep seeds of hope are embedded in Calvary, that deep red soil where they propagate and rise in the flowers and fruits of Resurrection.  Resurrection hopefulness is our most powerful, sustainable energy source; and if so it should be evident in the way we look at the world and talk about it. The blazing radiance of resurrection should illuminate our words. So as a Lenten corrective to much that we feel and think and therefore say, here are two helpful voices:

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15.13)

Try memorising that, and saying it before you open the office door of a colleague and waste their day, or when sitting in the hardly moving traffic queue fuming at all this precious time in your life that is so frustratingly unproductive, or when life comes tumbling or rumbling towards us with the promise of yet more hassle. 

The antidote to which might be this poem by Denise Levertov, who knows the resurrection power of words, kindly spoken, courageously proclaimed, firmly stated, angrily shouted, gently whispered, hilariously shared, and as couriers of hope.

New Year Poem. 1981

I have a small grain of hope—
one small crystal that gleams
clear colors out of transparency.

I need more.

I break off a fragment
to send you.

Please take
this grain of a grain of hope
so that mine won’t shrink.

Please share your fragment
so that yours will grow.

Only so, by division,
will hope increase,

like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower
unless you distribute
the clustered roots, unlikely source—
clumsy and earth-covered—
of grace.

–Denise Levertov

Last summer, one of our roses (photo above) produced this Trinitarian reminder. For this and the next two posts it will be a reminder of the three cardonal virtues of Faith and Hope and Love.

 

Giving Up Empty Words for Lent

It's Ash Wednesday. Once again the annual give-upfest comes around. Need to eat less. Do more exercise. Reduce caffeine. Refuse chocolate. Prohibit clicking the Amazon shopping basket. Stop cheating in speed limits. Walk more and drive less. Keep tabs on food waste. Keep tabs on my own waist. Detox from the Internet.  I've just written a Lenten Decalogue. Ten new commandments to make life, me, the world, a little more this, a little less that.

I'm not going to try to keep any of them. Each one is valid, valuable and salutary. These I should be doing whether it's Lent or not. The fact I can so easily compile such a personally relevant checklist of virtues or their absence is evidence enough of my need for improvement.

And yet. Somehow this year I feel less interested in pulling out a few weeds, and more interested in replenishing the soil. Not so much interested in dealing with this or that bad habit, more challenged by the issue of the kind of person whose habits they are.

Which brings me to Jesus, believe it or not - but I'd prefer that you did believe it. Matthew 12.35-37 tends not to be amongst the more comforting words Jesus ever spoke.  My guess is we interpret them as hyperbole, a good natured warning phrased strongly for rhetorical effect. That is a category mistake. These words are spoken with an exacting exactness - Jesus means what he says. Seriously, Jesus is being serious.

³⁵ A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him. ³⁶ But I tell you that everyone will have to give account on the day of judgment for every empty word they have spoken. ³⁷ For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned.

So as I mentioned in a previous post on the Epistle of James, this Lent I am giving up words. Well at least giving up, so far as prayerulness and carefulness allow, empty words. Earlier today Professor Dana Greene left a comment here on Living Wittily. It relates to a post I did on Elizabeth Jennings and one of her poems. To show what words are and achieve in human relations when they are not empty, and to give an idea of a stewardship of words, here is one of a good number of poems in which she considers language, words and the therapeutic effect of good words spoken:

Hours and Words

There is a sense of sunlight where

warm messages and eager words

Are sent across the turning air,

Matins, Little Hours and Lauds,

 

When people talk and hope to teach

A happiness that they have found.

Here prayer finds a soil that is rich

and sets a singing underground.

 

Let there be silence that is full

of blossoming hints. When it is dark

Men's minds can link and their words fill

A saving boat that is God's ark.

 

O language is a precious thing

And ministers deep needs. It will

soothe the mind and softly sing

and echo forth when we are still.

 

As a Lenten discipline, what might it look like to cultivate a stewardship of words, develop a discipline of language, practice a care for speech as therapeutic. And perhaps above all, a recovery of the eloquence of silence, out of which comes our deepest thoughts and those words that have a lasting worth and legacy in the enriched lives of others.

The painting  by Raphael, Paul Preaching at the Areopagus, has its own message about the importance of the words we speak out of fullness of heart and the empty words we do better to refrain from speaking. Remembering we speak in the presence of the God in whom we live and move and have our being.