In
the TV drama, Angels in America a
character named Joe reflects on a small childhood obsession:
“I had a book of Bible stories when I
was a kid. There was a picture I’d look
at twenty times every day: Jacob wrestles with the angel. I don’t really remember the story, or why the
wrestling—just the picture. Jacob is
young and very strong. The angel is
a…beautiful man, with golden hair and wings, of course. I still dream about it.” And Joe concludes, “It’s me. In that struggle. Fierce, and unfair. The angel is not human, and it holds nothing
back, so could anyone human win? What
kind of fight is it? It’s not just. Losing means your soul thrown down in the
dust, your heart torn out from God’s. And
he concludes, But you can’t not lose.”
Friends,
when it comes to faith, there is a lot of wrestling involved.
Prayer? Wrestling.
Worship? Wrestling.
Scripture? Definite wrestling.
When
I think of some of the serious wrestling in my faith life, and maybe you can
commiserate, the angel I wrestle with is not the lovely, blond, beautiful angel
of Joe’s picture bible. It is more like
a huge, stinky, Mexican luchador,
with a mask on so I can’t see its face, and a little too much spandex for my
liking.
But
I have to say, scripture is one of the biggest wrestling matches I have, my
biggest luchador. It is ink on page
and while there are as many interpretations of it as there are stars in the
sky, there is something that makes this book…indeed, this Holy Book, a red
herring for many Christians. Don’t touch
it. Don’t change one jot or tittle. Take it word for word and even if you don’t
understand it, don’t question it.
Do
you wrestle with scripture? You know I
do, as you can already tell. There is so
much that I find offensive, hateful, misogynistic, racist, violent, un Christian (and unJewish, really)
unGod-like…in my interpretation. In my
understanding.
Today
my friends, I want to simply share with you one of the ways (and there are more
than one way) that I engage this wrestling match with difficult
scriptures. In the next few weeks we are
going to be encountering some scriptures in Genesis that are difficult for by
Torin and me, and likely you. And a lot
of this process is based on my particular interpretation of the Bible—the
10cent seminary word here is hermeneutic—my interpretation. It may not be your hermeneutic, and if not,
thank you for at least allowing a space to share with you my process. And yet, it may spark something for you. I hope so.
Just
like the angel of God who wrestled with Jacob, wrestling with scripture is a
holy act. It engages us, touches us,
makes us engage it, touch it. And no matter how we end up after wrestling
with it, as Joe in Angels in America,
you can’t not lose. Because you will be
transformed.
So
most of you know I don’t give point-by-point sermons. Point 1, point 2, point 3. Well, today I am giving myself grace to
deviate from that.
When
I think about wrestling with scripture, I see three phases: the preparatory
phase, the unearthing phase, and the application phase.
The
preparatory phrase is deeply spiritual for me.
When presented with a difficult scripture, I first note the feeling that
arises in me. Is it anger? Fear?
Disgust? Delight? Complete and
utter exhaustion.? I sit for a while and wrestle with that feeling, without
judgment. And really, we can give thanks
to these scriptures for calling something out within us to work with, to attend
to, to engage. Better a passionate
response, than no response.
After
I sit with those feelings, I note my assumptions. How have I heard this scripture before? What have been the sermons I’ve heard on
this? What is, for lack of better terms,
the conventional moral of the story.
What have I always been told this story “means”?
Then
after I get in touch with my initial reactions and assumptions, I pray. That might seem an obvious step, but this is
special prayer of clearing. I ask God to
clear what may be blocking me from hearing new word, not dismissing my feelings
or throwing them out the way. Not
denying what I like or dislike Not disregarding everything I have learned, but
to clear a path, or at least a space within my heart for a word of God to come
shining through in new ways.
Now
I don’t know if that is the easy part or the hard part, this preparation. It probably has to do with the state I’m in
emotionally, or the particular scripture I’m getting ready to wrestle
with. But the next part of my lucha-my
struggle-is quite different. This is
where I try to dig deeper into the text. The “unearthing” phase.
I
read the scripture again, reminding myself that this was not written by someone
like me, living in my time, shaped by the course of history and social
movements and wars and influential people and political decisions that have
shaped me. Honestly, the writers of
scripture have little to resemble us in many ways. So to jump to an easy conclusion about what
these people “really meant” about God is wrong. ( I don’t usually call things
so blatantly wrong, but this I will: to jump to an easy conclusion about what
these people “really meant” about God is wrong)
In
fact, the time span of all the books in the Bible cover thousands of years of
literature. Think about Barbara
Kingsolver and St. Augustine writing their experiences of God and put them into
a book and call it Holy and that’s about the extent and more so of what we’re
looking at in the Bible!
This
comes from the culture of the near east, with many micro-cultures within:
Hebrew, Syro-Phonecian, Roman,
Greek. This was written over two
thousand years ago in a predominately patriarchal culture. In this culture, because most scriptures were
written by men, lifting up men’s position, placing superiority of men over
women, speaking of God as man…this does not mean that is how God wants us to
live. It means these scriptures were
written in a time when society shaped itself around these social structures. It is how people saw their world in that time,
for good or for ill, and is bound to shape their interpretation and writing. It does not mean they are social structures
God wants for our time or for God’s kingdom.
Scripture
also has many genres. Some are
theological historical books, a retelling of history where the author tried to
see God’s hand at work in the shaping of their history: Exodus, 1 and 2 Kings,
1 and 2 Chronicles, these are theological histories. There are books of poetry: of course, the
psalms and the erotic and overlooked and underappreciated Song of Songs. There are books of the law such as Leviticus.
There are narratives: Genesis, the Gospels, Ruth, Esther, where the focus is on
the characters and the development of a plot and weaving in danger and suspense
and love and all that good stuff of a novel.
There are letters: Paul! There is
wisdom literature: the Book of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes. Apocalyptic literature: Revelations and
Daniel.
When
wrestling with scripture I must acknowledge the different types of literary
genres to help me read it. I don’t look
to take away from my reading of Maya Angelou’s poetry the same thing I would
take away from reading read a biography of Pope John Paul II or the political
works of Noam Chomsky. So I can’t
approach all the books of the bible with the same lens. I ask myself not just what is being conveyed, but how
is it being conveyed.
So
all this stuff is kind of heady. But another
way I like to unearth scripture is to approach it as if it were a prayer.
There
are many types of prayers and while you may not be able to name them, you have
certainly experienced them. Prayers of
praise, prayers of thanksgiving, prayers of affirmation, prayers of petition
and intercession-where we ask for help, prayers of confession. Often times the scriptures reflect some type
of sense of these prayers.
And
it is the prayer of confession that I have found helps me with some of the more
troubling scriptures. I can’t tell you
what an impression it made on me when in seminary a professor said “We can’t
always read scripture looking for direction or instruction. The stories weren’t all written with that
mind. Sometimes the stories are written
as confessions. Confessions of people
believing God was telling them to do something—kill, pillage, rape—and the
consequence show the folly of that.”
Sometimes
when approach difficult texts, I have to read them as confessions. I don’t do this as an apologetic or to dismiss
the gravity of the situation. But I
can’t look at all scripture as
prescriptions—telling me what to do—but sometimes I must read it as descriptions—showing us what people
tried to do, and showing us consequences.
And
finally, I read scripture with the belief that it is a living word. I believe
that the text itself grows in meaning as I engage with it. That I am changed, and in some way, the text
grows and changes as well, presenting itself to a new culture, with new
challenges and insights. I’ll explore
more next week these last few items: reading scripture confessionally and with
the belief in the living word …
Because
next week we will have a chance to practice this. Next week we are going to
look at Genesis 16:1-16, a text that I struggle with, and maybe you too. But we are going to begin the wrestling today
As we move into waiting worship, I am going to read that text and invite you
into the preparatory phase and I invite you to continue engaging with this text
throughout the week.
As
I read this scripture note what feelings arise in you. If you have heard this text before, consider
what you have heard about it, how you’ve heard it preached on before, what is a
moral? Or maybe, where does your mind
jump to conclusions? Note that and this
week, be in prayer for a clearing. That
God may bless those, but also gently make space for a new revelation.
Now Sarai, Abram’s
wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was
Hagar, and Sarai said to
Abram, ‘You see that the Lord has
prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I
shall obtain children by her.’ And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived for ten years in the
land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl,
and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and
when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, ‘May the wrong done
to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that
she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!’ But Abram said to Sarai, ‘Your slave-girl is
in your power; do to her as you please.’ Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and
she ran away from her.
The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in
the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur. And he said, ‘Hagar, slave-girl of Sarai,
where have you come from and where are you going?’ She said, ‘I am running away
from my mistress Sarai.’ The angel of the Lord
said to her, ‘Return to your mistress, and submit to her.’ The angel of the Lord also said to her, ‘I will so greatly multiply your
offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude.’ And the angel of the Lord said to her,
‘Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
you shall call him Ishmael,
for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.’
So she named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’ Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;
it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
‘Now you have conceived and shall bear a son;
you shall call him Ishmael,
for the Lord has given heed to your affliction.
He shall be a wild ass of a man,
with his hand against everyone,
and everyone’s hand against him;
and he shall live at odds with all his kin.’
So she named the Lord who spoke to her, ‘You are El-roi’; for she said, ‘Have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?’ Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi;
it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
Hagar bore Abram a
son; and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.
Abram was eighty-six
years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.
[Waiting Worship]
As we go into this
week of wrestling, receive this blessing from Carter Heyward:
May we realize that
God’s blessing upon us—that for which we have
wrestled, some of us for so long and so fiercely—is that we be empowered
to welcome and bless those who, like Jacob, indeed, like most of us,
do not deserve to be blessed.
May we sustain the
confidence and courage, the compassion and humor,wrestled, some of us for so long and so fiercely—is that we be empowered
to welcome and bless those who, like Jacob, indeed, like most of us,
do not deserve to be blessed.
to realize the sacred power in this stunning opportunity which is ours
today, and will be ours, forever.
(pause)
This blessing will not be taken from us.
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