July 20, 2008

Glynn Cardy

Pentecost 10     Matthew 13:24-43

The power of spiritual story is to point to the presence of God among us.

The Commander of the Occupation troops said to the Mayor of the mountain village: “We are certain you are hiding a traitor in your village. Unless you give him up to us, we shall harass you and your people by every means in our power.”

The village was indeed hiding a man who seemed good and innocent and was loved by all. But what could the Mayor do now that the welfare of the whole village was threatened? Days of discussion in the Village Council led to no conclusion. So the Mayor finally came up with a solution. There is a Bible verse that said, “It is better than one man die and the nation be saved. [1]

So the Mayor handed over the innocent man to the Occupation Forces, begging to be pardoned. The man said there was nothing to pardon. H would not want to put the village in jeopardy. The man was cruelly tortured and finally put to death.

Twenty years later a prophet passed by that village, went up to the Mayor and said, “What did you do? That man was appointed by God to be the saviour of this country. And you gave him up to be tortured and killed.”

“What could I do?” pleaded the Mayor. “The priest and I looked at the Scriptures and acted accordingly.”

“That was your mistake,” said the prophet. “You looked at the Bible. You should have also looked into his eye. [2]

The role of spiritual stories is to invite us into awareness. Their role is not to prescribe the outcome of that invitation. Their role is to suggest, and then leave us to discover whether there is truth in it. Spiritual stories are not manuals for us to follow step by step, but guides that seek to set our imaginations free.

When the Bible is used as a rulebook that one should to follow religiously to achieve salvation it becomes a servant of fear. When the Bible is used as a guide pointing to but not prescribing the Holy it becomes a servant of love.

St John’s Gospel begins with the phrase: ‘the Word became flesh’. ‘The Word’ was neither an utterance of speech nor a jotting of a scribe. It was rather the Greek concept of a living divine spark [Logos] merged with the Hebrew concept of an anthropomorphized wisdom [Sophia]. The writer of the Fourth Gospel understood this divine wisdom to be uniquely manifested in Jesus.

The poet Edwin Muir [3] once coined the phrase ‘the Word made flesh here is made word again’. What some forms of Christianity have done, like the Calvinism that Muir was referring to, is to try to reduce the love of God in Jesus to words. Words have been used, often legal prescriptive words, to harness and contain the power of Jesus’ love. Words that in one context have given life in another become weapons of control.

Spiritual stories, like those contained in the Bible, are not of course written by God. They are written by pilgrims like us. Some stories endure through generations, and time and again valuably point to the presence of God. These stories come to be collectively labelled as ‘inspired’. Sometimes whole collections of stories, like the Bible, are so labelled.

Yet we need to be careful about how we use the word ‘inspired’. What might be inspirational for one person might be destructive for another. Even collective wisdom can in another time and culture be collective nonsense. Worse it can become a tool for fear, and fear’s child: oppression. There is no guarantee that so-called wise words will last the test of time.

The Bible is a collection of spiritual stories. Some ‘stories’ are poems, others are parables, others are theocratic history, or songs, or biography, or letters. Most of them talk about that human word ‘God’ and try to name how the spiritual is part of us.

Some of the biblical writings are hopelessly time-locked, irrelevant and potentially destructive. Texts that describe the role of children, wives, and slaves fall into this category. When for example someone reads Proverbs 31, titled ‘a good wife’, at a modern day wedding the most appropriate response is to smile. It has no relevance to our lives today, and hasn’t for centuries. When a woman though is forced by her husband, church or culture to conform to Proverbs 31 the Bible becomes an instrument of oppression.

Many of the biblical writings though seem to be able to transcend the time, culture, and context in which they were written to speak to our hearts today. They remind us to seek, celebrate, and share love. They remind us that we are not the centre of the universe and our tendency to inflate our importance gets in the way of love. They remind us that hospitality, generosity, gratitude, and the courage these values often require, are more important than unswervingly adhering to a moral code – even though that code might be contained in the Bible.

When we hear religious phrases like ‘The Bible is the Word of God’, ‘The Bible reveals God’s plan for our salvation’, and ‘The Bible contains all things necessary for our salvation’ – we need to be mindful of what the Church is not saying.

Firstly, we are not saying that God dictated the Bible or moved the pen of the authors. Rather after the words were written, sometimes long afterwards, communities of faith found the stories inspirational and wanted to preserve them.

Secondly, we are not saying that God is all-knowing. The idea God had foreseen all the bad choices of humankind and devised ways that the consequences could be rectified compromises human autonomy and free will and therefore our capacity to love and to heal.

Thirdly, we are not saying that God planned that Jesus would be born, live, die, and be resurrected in order to save humanity. The manifestation of God in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection was experienced and written about after 33 CE. For God to plan torture and death makes God a monster.

Fourthly, we are not saying that if one reads the Bible with an open mind the clear redemptive actions of God will be made plain. Unfortunately the Bible is frequently used as a weapon for the fearful to inflict their views upon the others and seek to protect themselves. This fear can be dressed up in convincing logic. At its best though the Bible invites us to look into the eyes of our neighbour and into our own hearts to find and experience the presence of God’s love.

There is much debate today, as there has been for centuries, over the meaning and interpretation of the Bible. Although it may sound simplistic I think there are basically two types of reader: those who see the Bible as a rulebook in order to live more right, and those who see the Bible as a heart guide in order to love more fully. When faced with the decision of the Mayor, priest, and Village Council frightened of the Occupation Forces it is usually the former, those who see the Bible as a book of rules, who can be blinded by it, and then seek to blind others with it. I hope and pray though that the Bible, that great Jewish and Christian treasury of spiritual stories, will always be read through the lens of our hearts and through the eyes of the world’s victims.

[1] John 18:14

[2] De Mello Song of the Bird p.57

[3] The Incarnate One by Edwin Muir