The Heart of Scripture
23 October 2011 Proper 25A
Beijing China
Deuteronomy 34:1-12; Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17; 1 Thessalonians 2:1-8; Matthew 22:34-46
When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. "Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?" He said to him, "`You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them this question: "What do you think of the Messiah? Whose son is he?" They said to him, "The son of David." He said to them, "How is it then that David by the Spirit calls him Lord, saying,`The Lord [God} said to my lord, "Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet"'? If David thus calls him lord, how can he be his son?" No one was able to give him an answer, nor from that day did anyone dare to ask him any more questions. (Matt 22:34-46)
God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen
I once was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic in a Washington DC rush hour behind a dirty pickup truck with West Virginia tags that prominently displayed the bumper sticker, “GOD SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETTLES IT.” At the time I was a Ph.D. student at the Catholic University of America in Biblical Languages and Literatures, wrestling on a daily basis with the difficulties and intricacies of figuring our what various passages of the Bible meant when written, and, more difficultly, how they could be applied to us today. At the end of the hour behind that truck, staring at that bumper sticker and thinking about what it assumed, what it implied, and what the owner of the truck meant by putting it there, I have to admit that what had been on my part a mild intellectual disdain for and amusement at fundamentalist approaches to scripture, religion, and society had morphed into a visceral rejection of all that fundamentalism at any time stands for. I say this by way of full disclosure, since today’s homily is about how we interpret scripture.
You have to be struck by the great variety of material that is found in what we call the Holy Bible. There are legal codes. There is religious history and the retelling of legends (sometimes multiple retellings of varying forms of the same story). There are chapters of genealogical tables of kings long dead, as well as legends about the earth's and race's origins. In the Psalms, you find poems clearly meant to be recited in rituals. There are also personal laments and prayers. There are stories—stories of noble people following God at great sacrifice, but more often, of typical ordinary people whose behavior falls far below what passes as “niceness” today. There is even an erotic poem, albeit one that the compilers of the collection later took to be religious allegory, the Song of Solomon. The Bible is a loose collection of books, not a unified work by a single author. And it was written and assembled over a period spanning about a thousand years.
The morality and faith expressed in differing parts of this hugely diverse collection also varies widely. Frankly, we can on occasion be shocked at what we sometimes find there, even apart from the evil deeds narrated and clearly condemned by the narrator.
In the Old Testament, the holding of women and children as chattel to be used as one chooses is seen as normal and acceptable to some biblical writers. Genocide is portrayed as “holy” war required by God. Polygamy and concubinage by the forebears and great kings of Israel and Judah are seen in some texts as signs of prosperity and power—evidence of God’s favor. Other texts preach xenophobia and exclusion, if not outright hatred, of foreigners. The New Testament is not itself innocent here: some of its passages teach as a standard the subordination of women and slaves, and see both groups as chattels in part of a God-ordained order. There are those six “clobber” passages—in both the Hebrew and the Christian Testaments—that are used as proof texts against homosexuals, though they themselves probably do not speak to the issue directly themselves. Some of the four Gospels seem to seek to paper over Roman responsibility for the death of Jesus by blaming this example of the most Roman form of execution on the Jewish religious authorities; one even seems to apply this blame it to all subsequent Jews and another seems to say that Jews as a group have the Devil as their father. None of these texts are examples of our best values at work.
Even in the Psalter, the poetic collection we Christians tend to see as devotional and use in our morning and evening prayers, contains some pretty harsh stuff. Psalm 137 says, O Babylon, you devastator! Happy shall he be who pays you back with what you have done to us! Happy shall he be who takes your babies and dashes them against the rock!” (vv 8-9). And each time I hear the exquisite Psalm 23, the Lord is my shepherd, I am jolted by the mean-spiritedness of the line “you spread a banquet table before me—while my enemies have to stand there and watch it! Na!”
But there are moments of bliss and ecstasy in this collection as well, and great moments of unswerving and unsparing moral clarity, in both Testaments. The very fact that some of the biblical authors clearly condemn the values held by others of them is evidence for me of God’s work in the world, and in God’s hand production of this collection of ancient writings. Throughout the biblical record, there is trust in a God who acts and approaches his people at whatever pathetic level they may be. There is hope in ultimate intervention by this God to change what is wrong in the world, and make things right.
The Gospels tell the story of what they see as God’s definitive act to do this: the life, death, and bodily reappearance of Jesus. Jesus’ teachings in the Gospels routinely condemn fear and hatred of the foreign, legalism and the use of religion to oppress others, and tell again and again of a loving God who pours out his love and grace upon all, regardless of their condition or origin.
Some sayings, passages, or teachings in the Bible, though perhaps originally intended to express what the author thought was God’s will, are within the context of the whole collection clearly preserved as bad examples, or reassurance that even God’s people can be seriously flawed.
Others, in contrast, show with great clarity what God’s intention is: the parables of Jesus, the profound hope of the second half of the book of Isaiah, the stories of grace, love, and faith—like Ruth, or Job—within the larger context of human tragedy and horror. The stories of scripture, and the great variety of emotions expressed in the poetry of the Bible, tell us that it is O.K. to be human, but not O.K. to refuse to listen to God’s call to be something better than we are.
Some sayings, passages, or teachings in the Bible, though perhaps originally intended to express what the author thought was God’s will, are within the context of the whole collection clearly preserved as bad examples, or reassurance that even God’s people can be seriously flawed.
Others, in contrast, show with great clarity what God’s intention is: the parables of Jesus, the profound hope of the second half of the book of Isaiah, the stories of grace, love, and faith—like Ruth, or Job—within the larger context of human tragedy and horror. The stories of scripture, and the great variety of emotions expressed in the poetry of the Bible, tell us that it is O.K. to be human, but not O.K. to refuse to listen to God’s call to be something better than we are.
The Bible, in its complex, mixed-up, variety, thus often tells us stories of change in human beings. Sometimes the change is immediate, like Saint Paul on the road to Damascus, sometimes a gradual process, like the gradual historical effects of God’s interaction with his people over time in terms of their belief systems.
One of the foundational principles of Anglicanism (found in the Thirty-Nine Articles) is that all that is necessary for our salvation is to be found in the Bible. Another is that we cannot claim that something is an essential point of our faith without being able to demonstrate it plainly from the Bible. Another is the idea that despite its differences and disharmonies, Holy Scripture when read as a whole contains an underlying harmony and coherence. It is here where all things necessary for salvation are to be found, presumably.
I agree with all these affirmations.
It is important to not push these principles further than what they actually claim, for the writers of the Articles deliberately limited these affirmations. There were puritans and radical reformers around who claimed that all truth is to be found in the Bible (not just what is necessary for salvation), and that if something is not to be found in the Bible, it is to be rejected. There were defenders of Rome who argued that the basis of faith is only to be found in the teaching authority and traditions of the Church, whether set forth in the Bible or not. But the English reformers took the middle ground, and placed their trust in the Bible within the larger framework of the “tripod” of sources of Anglican faith: scripture, tradition, and reason informed by experience. To go further than they did and argue that all truth is to be found in, and only in the Bible, or that there is no error at all to be found within the Bible, is to risk bibliolatry, one of the great besetting sins of the popular Christianity of our age that styles itself as “evangelical.”
When we read the whole of this baggy, loose, and at times contradictory collection called the Holy Bible, it becomes clear that it impossible to say that each and every statement in scripture reflects God’s will for us. It also is clear that there are many, many truths and important points of fact that are not to be found anywhere in the Bible at all.
This is an important observation when it comes to scientific knowledge. To quote an old saw about the Bible and Galileo, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” The same principle applies, mutatis mutandis, to cosmology, physics, biology, and the origin of species.
This is an important observation when it comes to scientific knowledge. To quote an old saw about the Bible and Galileo, “The Bible teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” The same principle applies, mutatis mutandis, to cosmology, physics, biology, and the origin of species.
All protestants, like the writers of the Thirty-nine Articles, tend to say that true doctrine can only be established by proving it from the Bible.
Careful reading of the Bible and Church history, however, suggest that the problem is more basic. Because of the diversity of the Bible, you can prove almost anything from it if you are interested in just trotting out proof texts. Witness the huge variety of denominations claiming to base their teaching in the Bible and contradicting each other at one time or another on almost every single point of doctrine.
Careful reading of the Bible and Church history, however, suggest that the problem is more basic. Because of the diversity of the Bible, you can prove almost anything from it if you are interested in just trotting out proof texts. Witness the huge variety of denominations claiming to base their teaching in the Bible and contradicting each other at one time or another on almost every single point of doctrine.
Today’s Gospel talks to these issues of Biblical diversity, authority, and interpretation probably better than any other passage of scripture, though it rarely is cited when the issues actually arise.
Impressed that Jesus has silenced their own opponents the Sadducees, the Pharisees send a student of the Law to ask an important question of Law, what later rabbis would call a question of halakhah. They want to get a read of what drives the man, and how he reasons about scripture. They ask him a question they would often ask each other, “Of all the 613 commandments in the Torah, (365 'Thou shalt not's' and 248 'Thou shalt's’), which is the most important? What is the heart of the Law? What should we use as a first principle of interpretation so that we can prioritize and order all this mass of teachings in the Law?”
The initial answer Jesus gives is not all that unusual. He quotes from the Shema‘ , the credo of Judaism that is recited every morning and evening in prayers: “ Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your might” that is, “you shall be faithful to him with all your will, life, and might.” Other rabbis had also pointed to this central passage as the heart of the Law. Jesus says that this is “the first, the most important commandment.”
But then Jesus, without being asked, adds, “and a second commandment is just like this first one: `You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments depend the entire body of scripture.”
He is quoting an obscure portion of the Leviticus Holiness Code, “You shall not take vengeance against, nor bear any grudge against your kinspeople, but you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself: I am the LORD” (Leviticus 19:18).
We often don’t realize that this juxtaposition was first made by Jesus, something completely new. We do this because Luke places this second part of Jesus’ answer also on the lips of the young lawyer seeking to justify himself in order to suss out just how Jesus understands the term “neighbor.” (The story of the Good Samaritan is the answer.) Though a generation later rabbis were to identify what we would call the golden rule as the heart of the Law, they do not quote Leviticus 19 as the heart of Law, link its use of the verb "love" with the use of the verb "love" in the Shema', and say that this second commandment is "just like" the first.
Jesus puts these two commandments on par with each other, and in so doing bridges a great divide in the tradition of the Hebrew scriptures.
Walther Bruggemann, in his magisterial Theology of the Old Testament, points out that throughout the Hebrew scriptures, one finds two great thematic threads. On the one side, there is the holiness of God, the separateness of God, calling for a striving for purity and ritual holiness by God’s people, for being special and set aside for God’s service. “You shall be holy for I am holy,” we read in Leviticus, and there follows hundreds of detailed rules setting boundaries and defining categories to help achieve holiness. On the other side there is striving for justice, for treating people, especially the marginalized, decently and fairly.
The two themes often seem in opposition. The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness. The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need. For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like: “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.” “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.” For the priests and teachers of halakhic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.” “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.” “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.”
Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish. But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies. On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.
The two themes often seem in opposition. The priests and the Law tend to talk a lot about purity and holiness. The prophets tend to talk about dealing with others justly, especially those most in need. For Samuel, Amos, Isaiah, Micah and others God says things like: “I expect obedience, not sacrifice.” “I hate your sacrifices because you mistreat the widow and the orphan.” “All I really ask of you is to treat the poor fairly, and to walk humbly with me.” For the priests and teachers of halakhic law, however, God say things like, “You will be Holy for I am Holy, says the Lord.” “You shall not pollute the land with impurity, or I will destroy you.” “You shall drive out pollution from among your midst and separate yourself from uncleanness.”
Bruggemann says that the two traditions are both important and mutually corrective. The boundaries established by the Law are what define and preserve the People of God, and allow ethical monotheism to flourish. But if holiness is not tempered with the call for social justice, it becomes empty ritual, a mode of oppression, and dies. On the other hand, calls for social justice in the absence of an authentic call to holiness rapidly degenerate into the most obvious self-serving form of interest-group politics.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus says the heart of scripture is both faithfulness to a holy God and taking care of one’s fellow human beings. And he uses a text right from the middle of the Holiness code itself (Lev. 19) to counterbalance the over-emphasis that he saw being placed on holiness at the expense of justice.
It is very important to note that in the Gospels, whenever social justice is placed in conflict with ritual purity and Jesus is asked to decide between them, in every single case he opts for social justice. For him, justice trumps purity and holiness in this sense every time.
Martin Luther talked about the need for a “canon within the canon,” when it comes to interpreting the Bible and applying it to people in present circumstances. What he means by this is that we need a sense of what books and passages, what ideas and themes, should be given priority in interpreting the whole so that we can sort out and make sense of such inharmonious, if not downright contradictory doctrine and ethics that one finds in the Bible. Luther never would have argued this had he believed simply that all parts of the Bible were equally God’s word. He believed the “canon within the canon” to be the Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, apart from works, a choice clearly informed by his argument with Rome and the sellers of indulgences. He felt so strongly about this that he dropped the Epistle of James, with its stress on works, from his canon of the New Testament.
Jesus’ use of these two passages as the heart of scripture shows he too believed in a canon within the canon.
Though he believed that we should live not by bread alone, but “by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth,” he also knew that scripture could be abused, and that parts of scripture were not as useful in identifying God’s will as others. He is constantly going up against Sadducees, Pharisees, and lawyers who quote scripture at him to prove points he knows are wrong. Usually he quotes other passages, often obscure passages that reveal attitudes and feelings about the universality of the loving kindness of God, to correct these claims of “GOD SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETTLES IT.”
Though he believed that we should live not by bread alone, but “by every word that proceeds from God’s mouth,” he also knew that scripture could be abused, and that parts of scripture were not as useful in identifying God’s will as others. He is constantly going up against Sadducees, Pharisees, and lawyers who quote scripture at him to prove points he knows are wrong. Usually he quotes other passages, often obscure passages that reveal attitudes and feelings about the universality of the loving kindness of God, to correct these claims of “GOD SAID IT, I BELIEVE IT, AND THAT SETTLES IT.”
Jesus’ use of “love your neighbor as yourself” as on par with “love God” as the true canon within the canon, as the heart of scripture by which all other scripture must be understood, means several important things about how we must understand and use scripture.
An approach to scripture that legalistically beats up on people is not warranted, but rather an approach that aims at serving our fellows. In the great passage on scripture in 2 Timothy often quoted by fundamentalists, the very same point is made. Note the pragmatic and pastoral rather than dogmatic and legal approach to scripture: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, since you know from whom you have learned them. From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in justice. This is so that a person who is God’s own may be up to the task, ready for every good deed” (2 Timothy 3:14-16).
An approach to scripture that legalistically beats up on people is not warranted, but rather an approach that aims at serving our fellows. In the great passage on scripture in 2 Timothy often quoted by fundamentalists, the very same point is made. Note the pragmatic and pastoral rather than dogmatic and legal approach to scripture: “You, however, continue in the things you have learned and become convinced of, since you know from whom you have learned them. From childhood you have known the sacred writings which are able to give you the wisdom that leads to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. All Scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, reproof, correction, and training in justice. This is so that a person who is God’s own may be up to the task, ready for every good deed” (2 Timothy 3:14-16).
After giving placing the commandment to love one's neighbors as on par with the commandment to love God, Jesus then underscores his approach to scripture by asking the Pharisees a very inconvenient question. They both believe that David was the author of the Psalms, and Jesus contrasts the commonly held believe that the coming ideal king who would set things right was a "son of David" with the fact that the Psalter itself refers to the ideal king as "my lord." Jesus' point is that there are contradictions and inconsistencies right within scripture as we traditionally understand scripture. The authority and mystery of scripture is too great to be reduced to legal casuistry, pedantry, or "clobber" passages. It has to be liberated by the canon within the canon he has proposed, love of God and love of neighbor.
Love of a holy but gracious God, love of neighbors, whether like or unlike us—this core of scripture that Jesus saw should also be the core of scripture for us. We should judge the use and interperetation of scriptural passages by whether they advance justice and fairness, the inclusion of the excluded in God’s love. We should interpret all passages in light of this. For Jesus himself is the Word of God, and he is the standard by which our interpretation or application of Scripture must be judged.
Friends, let me tell you that I believe that the Bible is a reliable guide for our faith and life. It is God's word, written down. But it is not God's words themselves. And understanding it well, and applying it well in our lives is not a simple matter at all. Scripture is not so much God’s thoughts written down, as they are the field notes of God’s people over the ages. As such, it is a treasure and must be a guide.
It is in this sense of the Bible as a work of the believing community inspired and led by God, despite weakness and occasional detours, that we can affirm our faith as based in the Bible. We, the Church, are the believing community that produced and is also the product of the Bible. Only when we take as the heart of scripture the need to love God and love our neighbor does the book begin to cohere and serve as a guide for faith and life. It is in this sense that we can affirm with the English reformers that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation, and are not self-contradictory.
It is in this sense of the Bible as a work of the believing community inspired and led by God, despite weakness and occasional detours, that we can affirm our faith as based in the Bible. We, the Church, are the believing community that produced and is also the product of the Bible. Only when we take as the heart of scripture the need to love God and love our neighbor does the book begin to cohere and serve as a guide for faith and life. It is in this sense that we can affirm with the English reformers that the Holy Scriptures contain all things necessary for salvation, and are not self-contradictory.
May we all increase of study of scripture and its use in our prayer life. Pray morning and evening prayer, with all its reading of scripture. Pick up a commentary on a book of scripture that presents a new view and perspective for you, and read it closely. Let the Bible form you and mold you. But do not worship it or make foolish mistakes about what it is and what it is not.
In the name of Christ, Amen.
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