I think I have now discovered the two, very best places in the entire world to engage in complex theological dialogue:
1) a hidden burger joint in a fancy midtown hotel with greasy fries and really cold beer
2) on the Q train from midtown to Brooklyn with its typical crowd of theater-returnees, drunk happy-hour-goers, lost tourists, and transient entertainers
Last week, I found myself in both places on a single night, with a conversation partner who actually made my brain ache with her clear and pointed questions. She didn’t beat around the bush: What am I supposed to do with stories like the rape of Tamar, or Paul’s injunction against women in ministry? How do I reconcile the awful bits? How do I avoid throwing the proverbial baby out with the bath water?
My first response rolled easily off my tongue: Well, you have to read the Bible with an understanding of its historical and theological context. Read commentary, use a study Bible, create a list of secondary resources that can offer additional enlightenment, I suggested.
Really? she answered, Is everyone supposed to have a PhD or something in order to ready the Bible? Does that make sense? Is it even possible? Because, if that’s true, you’ve made it pretty inaccessible to most people.
She is absolutely right. What happens when I insist (or a traditionally intellectual denomination makes it the norm) that Bible study can never really be just between the reader and the text- that there must always be an intermediary, either in the form of a teacher/scholar or a commentary? And who vets these intermediaries, anyway? Not all scholars and pastors are created equal. Some might even have the potential to wreak exponential havoc on the unsuspecting reader.
No wonder the Presbyterian Church and similar denominations are hemorrhaging members every year. We might as well return to the medieval era when the ‘common folks’ were barred access to the Bible, except as it was doled out at the discretion of the priests.
The beer may have loosened my tongue a little, but my companion kept me honest. I feel complicit in an apparatus that creates strata of access. The ‘simple’ people read the Bible all by itself and come to their own, uneducated conclusions. The ‘mature’ readers approach the Bible like detectives and archaeologists and snotty know-it-alls, dissecting Scripture until it is nothing but dust between the fingers. Is there an alternative? Because this is neither true nor acceptable.
“Our” tradition- progressive/liberal/intellectual Protestant- needs to experience a ‘come to Jesus’ moment about access to Scripture. We cannot continue to look down our noses on those who prefer to read their red-letter Bibles on the subway without the accompanying notations about textual irregularities or the ‘cultic ministrations and royal benefactions’ of King David’s monarchy.
There are as many ways to approach the Bible as there are people to read it. I like to read my Bible with a side of French fries and a commentary. That’s what works for me, and in all humility, I acknowledge that it’s not the only way, and it’s not even a ‘better’ way than any other. The structure I have created for myself works- and I know it works because it is self-perpetuating. The more I read, the more I want to read. I get stuck sometimes, and angry, and disheartened, and more often than not, I feel inspired, comforted, intrigued, and challenged.
But have I answered my conversation partner’s question? Where is the compromise position on Scriptural interpretation that values the text as it stands alone but finds vigor in the critique of scholars? Have I addressed the pain that can come from reading parts of the Bible that just don’t line up with our understanding of a loving and merciful God? Have I offered a middle path?
Anybody have the answer? I’ll meet you on the Q train and we’ll discuss…
On July 22nd, I offered a sermon based off of the text from 2 Samuel. There is so much to consider in the story of David, but I was intrigued by this particular passage. King David, before the beginning of his downfall (marked by his first glimpse of Bathsheba) can do no wrong. God has blessed him with popularity, military might and divine support. But when David suggests that he build a temple for God, the answer he receives is a firm ‘no.’ Perhaps this story founds its way into the Bible to suggest, retrospectively, why Solomon built the Temple and not David. But the message that rings so true cannot be contained by historical fidelity. God is the builder. And we are the stones.
If I’ve piqued your interest, read or listen: Extreme Home Makeover, preached July 22nd, 2012, by the Rev. Sarah McCaslin
I found this wonderful blog, entitled, This is What a Rabbi Looks Like. I asked its author if I might copy some of her posts here from time to time, in order that we might hear another voice. A voice that might echo our own reflections; and a voice that might lift something bright, shiny and new into our vision. With thanks to Leah Berkowitz for her permission! (Please take an extra moment to click on the YouTube video of Tovah Benjamin’s poetry. It is funny and poignant and wonderful.)
“We celebrate the festival of Shavuot by reading the Ten Commandments and the book of Ruth. Ruth’s story dovetails nicely with the holiday of Shavuot: It takes place during the barley harvest, the agricultural basis of this festival. It tells the story of a woman who accepts Judaism of her own accord, just as we commemorate our own acceptance of the Torah at Sinai.
Some suggest that the book of Ruth is read on Shavuot because Ruth’s narrative highlights the observance of several of the Torah’s laws. Ruth and her mother-in-law Naomi are saved from poverty by the laws of peah and leket, leaving behind the corners of our fields and the dropped grain of our harvest, so that the poor can glean them. Ruth meets her second husband, Boaz, by gleaning in his field.
Romantic as their night on the threshing floor may seem, this is not simply a marriage of love. As a childless widow, Ruth cannot inherit her husband’s property, and thus would have no choice but to return to her parents’ home, or roam around penniless, depending on the kindness of the stranger. But Boaz is what is known as a “redeeming kinsman.” By marrying Ruth, he performs the biblical duty of yibum, levirate marriage, marrying a relative’s childless widow, in order to bear children in her dead husband’s name, who can then inherit the land that she cannot.
Ruth, then, can be read as an idyllic tale of what happens when we follow the commandments of the Torah. Through Ruth’s love for Naomi, Boaz’s love for Ruth, and the observance of peah, leket and yibum, the women are saved from poverty and the ancestors of King David are born.
However, there is a dark underbelly to the themes of this story. While this is a tale that celebrates a woman’s boldness and her kindness, her perseverance and her loyalty, it is also a story grounded in the idea that a woman is worthless if she is not a wife or a mother.
Naomi says as much as she urges her daughters-in-law, Ruth and Orpah, to return to their families. “Turn back, my daughters! Why should you go with me? Have I any more sons in my body who might be husbands for you? . . . even if I were married tonight and I also bore sons, should you wait for them to grow up?” (Ruth 1: 10-13).
Naomi is referring to their prospects for levirate marriage, of which there are none. Ruth’s decision to stay with her mother-in-law would therefore have been perceived as irrational. As two childless widows, bound by their relationship to a man who no longer exists, they have nothing “of value” to offer one another.
Furthermore, Ruth and Naomi are consigned to this vulnerable position not because their husbands were poor, but because, as women, they cannot claim their husbands’ land as inheritance. The Torah tells us repeatedly to care for the stranger, the widow, and the orphan, because these are categories of people without property and without advocate, unable to care for themselves.
Later, Naomi advises her daughter-in-law on how to land Boaz as a husband, saying, “Daughter, I must seek a home for you, where you may be happy” (Ruth 3:1). Ruth then puts herself in the even more vulnerable position of coming to Boaz in the night and asking him to “cover” her with his garment, a symbol of care, protection and ownership.
Boaz agrees, though he first has to clear this with another potential redeemer, who has “first dibs” on Ruth and her husband’s land. The other redeemer wants the land, but not the woman who comes with it. So he is forced to turn both over to Boaz, who is next in line to marry Ruth and produce an heir.
Although this story has a happy ending, it is clear in this text that, while women have emotions and needs and even possibly good ideas, they are, essentially, property, something that can be transferred from one man to another, for the sole purpose of generating offspring.
This is probably not what you want to hear about the very text we are honoring this weekend. I share this with you so that we might learn to guard ourselves against the dangerous trend of using the Bible as a basis for our definitions of marriage and the treatment of women.
Our ancestors believed that the Bible was perfect, written by God and meant to be eternally relevant. The rabbis devoted their lives to using creative and logical means to connect the ancient text with their current concerns.
There are also those in our own world who would look to the Bible for guidance on how to build a just, or even a holy, society, and we count ourselves among them. There is a lot of material with which we can work. The stories of the Bible depict universal human emotions like grief, jealousy and love. Many of the laws of the Bible remind us of our responsibility to care for the vulnerable and protect the stranger.
But we must never forget that this text was written in a different time and place, an era in which the idea of women having agency and autonomy, and not merely being perceived as property or as an incubator for the next generation, was as bizarre as the idea of an automobile, or the Internet.
Most of mainstream society, even those who follow more conservative religious teachings, have found a way to adjust their beliefs and practices to include cars and computers. The equality of women should be no different.
And yet lawmakers, both at home and abroad have shown us that they have not completely shaken off the biblical notion that a woman is property of the men in her family or her community. They may couch this notion in some idyllic vision of a two-parent, middle-class home, with the woman as happy homemaker. But underlying it is the idea that a woman is still not quite on the same level as a man when it comes to making decisions about her body, her family, or her place in the workforce.
NARAL reports that, in 2011, 26 states enacted one or more anti-choice measures, twice as many as were enacted in 2010. This year, lawmakers on both the state and federal levels continue to enact legislation that limits access to both abortion services and the basic health care provided to women by institutions like Planned Parenthood. They have also taken steps backwards in protecting women—and minorities—from workplace discrimination and domestic abuse.
Our lawmakers deny that their actions are a “war on women” and instead try to engage us in “mommy wars” about women who choose not to work. But real freedom of choice still eludes many women, whether that choice is to work or not, to marry or not, or to have children or not. If a woman cannot make such choices without having to worry about consequences for her own health, education and financial stability, she isn’t really free, and she isn’t really choosing.
Not all lawmakers draw their ideology from the Bible, which by the way says nothing that promotes the cause of fetal personhood, monogamous heterosexual marriage, or stay-at-home moms. If these lawmakers want to claim the Bible as the source of their vision for a just society, they might think twice about making laws that harm the weak and the vulnerable. But just as in the book of Ruth, many still operate under the assumption that a woman is “less than,” and/or needs to be “controlled” by men who know better.
Many of our high school students are really into slam poetry, so I get a lot of videos of poets performing. I was particularly moved by a poem by Tova Benjamin, a teenage girl who left the Orthodox community. In it, she records a conversation between herself and the rabbi of her day school about going to college.
“And so I argued with the rabbi and said,
What if I don’t JUST want to have nine children?
And the rabbi stroked his long beard and said,
Would you have an envelope opener do anything
Other than open envelopes?”
And Tova answers, amidst a slew of other suggestions on how to use an envelope opener, “Yes. I would use my envelope opener to open up the packaged potential inside of me.”
Tova’s words made me realize that in the so-called “war on women,” we are no longer arguing about religious freedom or about when life begins or whether it is considered “work” to stay home and raise children. We are arguing about a woman’s right to be more than an envelope opener.
As we celebrate the grain harvest, we can use our envelope opener to separate the wheat from the chaff. As we celebrate the Torah, in all of its complexity, we can choose to leave behind the attitudes towards women that sent Ruth and Naomi wandering in the first place, and glean from this complicated text how loyalty, bravery, and kindness to strangers can bring about redemption.”
I am back in New York City after almost two weeks away. This was a monumental occasion, because as I think back over the past thirteen years of my residency in this crazy, fabulous city, I realize that it has been ten years since I spent more than two weeks away (for my incredible, life-changing journey to Mozambique and Malawi in the summer of 2002).
It was a relief to be gone, but I missed it every day. I missed the view of the water towers from my daugther’s bedroom; I missed my local coffee shop; I missed the church; I missed the Easter River as seen from the Manhattan Bridge; I missed the energy AND the attitude. But, boy, was I glad to be gone. Air-conditioned cars and houses. Cavernous malls. Vast and empty playgrounds. The neighborhood pool. The whole trip filled me with a sense of dissonance (I like this definition: a simultaneous combination of tones conventionally accepted as being in a state of unrest and needing completion).
I’ve also just completed the Book of Judges (I lower my eyes in shame…) and it is nothing if not filled with the discordant quality of our Scriptures. So I’m preaching on that this week in church, using one of the stories of King David that appear in our lectionary this summer, along with the story in Mark’s Gospel of Jesus’ return to his hometown of Nazareth. Expecting to be greeted with kindness, maybe even a little pride in a local boy ‘done good,’ his neighbors take offense at his wisdom and his healings. Talk about dissonance!
What about you? Have you encountered dissonance during this journey through the Bible, or in your faith journey more generally? Where have the unresolvable conflicts touched you? And how have you chosen to see your way through?
King Eglon (Judges 2:12-25) refigured as Jabba the Hut.
If you haven’t read this story yet, read it now! If I had ever read it before, I must have promptly forgotten it, though how anyone could forget a biblical story that includes hesitant servants not wanting to embarrass a king who is ‘relieving himself in the cool chamber’ is beyond me…
According to the Harper Collins Study Bible, “Israelite readers would enjoy this scatological humor at the expense of their enemies and their overweight king.”
Another blogger employs this image from Star Wars and retells the story with incredulity and props to the story’s hero, Ehud.
Because Joshua is a relatively short book, and because it is also relatively straightforward, it’s a great book to use for demonstrating your biblical prowess the next time you find yourself desiring to ‘show-off’ your newly attained biblical literacy for friends or distantly-related family members who think (rightly?) that progressive/liberal Christians are shockingly ill-equipped to discuss Scripture. I’m willing to admit, in this small company, that it’s a fair criticism. Our Sunday schools don’t require children to commit lengthy passages of Scripture to memory; we are not quizzed on the order of the books of the Bible (though I have a vague memory of learning the books of the New Testament to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy… Try it! It’s kind of fun); and we do not consider proof-texting an adequate formula for discerning (with Godly intention) the complexities of our shared life together.
Joshua can be fairly neatly divided into three acts: conquering the land (chs. 1-12), dividing the land (chs. 13-21), and warning about the future (chs. 22-24).
Though Joshua tells the story of Israel’s brutal conquest and wholesale slaughter of an indigenous people, it is an idealized, illusory story that is not supported by archaeological evidence. The story is told as an epic tale of nationhood for the purposes of creating a sense of shared national/religious identity among a loosely affiliated group of tribes.
In actual historical fact, Israel’s emergence in the land occurred over a long period, and, in fact, emerged from within the land of Canaan, rather than invading it from the outside.
A more accurate portrayal of Israel’s emergence as a nation would be one of peaceful pioneers settlings in new territory rather than brutal invaders wresting away another people’s homeland.
According to Nelson, “The book of Joshua actually appeared as a way of dealing with Israel’s persistently weak and vulnerable position, not as a celebration of its imperialistic triumph and dominance. The communities who wrote and read Joshua were constantly threatened by the loss of their land or dispossessed exiles hoping for its return… In other words, it was usually Israel who played the role of an indigenous people menaced by politically and technically superior foes.”
The books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings are often referred to as the Historical Books. According to Richard D. Nelson (who will be advising us for this segment of the journey), the Historical Books tell the story of Israel’s history in the land. This story begins with the invasion of Canaan (the first chapters of Joshua) and ends with the exile of the people of Judah from their land (the last chapters of 2 Kings).
But even calling these books ‘historical’ requires some careful context. Nelson suggestions three ways that these books differ from history as we presently understand it:
1) In contrast to modern history writing, the writing of these books was more of a corporate enterprise than an individual achievement… in other words, it was a group effort.
2) Unlike modern historians, these authors never seem to evaluate or weigh their sources… in other words, the operative principle for including certain data/facts seems to have been to include whatever information supported the theological point being made.
3) The system of causation operative in the Old Testament is centered on God and God’s will. Authors sought to persuade their readers to think a certain way about themselves and their relationship to God… in other words, cause and effect were understood very differently in ancient times.
So, we’re reading history, but a different kind of history. In other words, “even history writing that is thoroughly biased and largely wrong is not the same thing as fiction.”
Last week, I finally finished Deuteronomy, and it was bittersweet. Instead of plunging into Joshua, I’ve been meditating on what it’s meant to spend the past four months immersed in the Pentateuch. For one thing, I feel a sense of personal accomplishment, diminished only by the daily emails reminding me of how far behind I’ve gotten from my 365 day pace. The best I can, I try to delete the emails before the guilt grabs me, knowing that my determination is worth more than my speed. If it takes three years, it takes three years. I hope that those of you have stayed on target, or who are lagging behind less flagrantly, will forgive my tortoise-like expedition.
The completion of Deuteronomy has also provided me with an abstract sense of the wholeness of the Pentateuch/Torah/Books of Moses. If you quizzed me on what I’ve read, I’d be hesitant to make a wager on how I might score. I’ve absorbed some facts and juicy details, but more importantly, I think, I have ingested the rhythm of the entirety. As we’ve encountered in our reading, and in my imperfect commentary, wholeness cannot (especially in this circumstance) be synonymous with singularity or even consistency. But, I think I can feel the editorial urgency of the composition, if that makes any sense at all. The broadest message of who God is, who the people are, and how God and the people are in relationship, has been initiated. We’ve witnessed the ‘genesis’ of Creation; the ‘genesis’ of a people; and the ‘genesis’ of a journey. None of these things has happened easily, which provides a little comfort for me, because I’m not sure I could find a home in a religion that professed ‘ease’ as a founding characteristic. And then there are the major characters- the flawed heroes and heroines of the story. The preservation of a hero’s eccentricities and blatant disobediences was purposeful, and I am intrigued by the generations of editors who kept these stories as they are- ambigous, ambivalent, unsavory- because there is a deeper truth to be learned that way.
The end of Deuteronomy is dramatic. Moses (who lost his right to enter the Promised Land when he tried to steal a little extra glory at Meribah- Numbers 20:1-13), dies in the land of Moab after climbing to the peak of Mount Nebo to take in the sweeping panorama of the land God would provide for the people. Bittersweet, right?
And bittersweet for the reader who has also had to witness the violence and capriciousness of both God and humanity, set disjointedly alongside heartbreakingly tender passages of God’s love and mercy.
The last few chapters of Deuteronomy are chock-a-block with a bizaare assortment of laws, some of them so brutal that it would seem impossible to uncover any goodness in them at all. In bullet form, here are some of the verses that just demanded my attention:
Deut. 20:16-17- “of the towns of these people that the Lord your God is about to give you in estate, you shall let no breathing creature live. But you shall surely put them under the ban- the Hittite and the Amorite, the Canaanite and the Perizzite, the Hivite and the Jebusite, as the Lord your God has charged you.”
Ban is the military term to describe this total destruction. As one commentator offered, “It is hard to find any mitigation for the ferocity of this injunction to total destruction. The rabbis reinterpreted it, seeking to show that it was almost never strictly applicable. Since the archaeological evidence suggests that the ‘ban’ was never actually implemented, it seems to be the projection in legal imperative of a militant fantasy- but surely a dangerous fantasy.”
Deut. 21:18-21- “Should a man have a wayward and rebellious son, who does not heed his father’s voice and his mother’s voice, and they punish him and he does not heed them, his father and mother shall seize him and bring him out to the elders of his town and… All the people of his town shall stone him to death…”
According to the Babylonian Talmud (rabbinic interpretation, commentary and discussion of Scripture), “The wayward and rebellious son never existed and never will.” If this isn’t a convincing explanation of the text’s purpose and presence, then at least it may serve as proof of a history of discomfort by religious authorities over a particular passage. Perhaps there is some Scripture that is unredeemable.
Deut. 22:5- “There shall not be a man’s gear on a woman, and a man shall not wear a woman’s garment, for whoever does all these is an abhorrence of the Lord your God.”
Context is important! What might be “abhorrent about the practice of cross-dressing could be an association with pagan orgiastic activities or even with pagan magic…” Lifting difficult passages out of context is a dangerous activity- to be avoided at all costs.
Deut. 22:21- [regarding a husband’s claim that his wife was not a virgin when they married] “But if this thing be true, no signs of virginity were found for the young woman, they shall take the young woman out to the entrance of her father’s house and… stone her to death.”
Again, early interpretation by rabbis attempted to frame this injunction as so difficult to prove that it basically never happened. Cold comfort, I think, for such a brutal practice (no matter how rare it might have actually been).
Which passages demand your attention? And what have you discovered in the process?
Sometimes, because biblical stories are so familiar, I forget to wonder about their origins, or even to ask simple questions of their meaning. For instance, the Gospel stories of Jesus ‘cleansing the temple,’ overturning the tables of the moneychangers.
The story can be found, in various forms, in Mark 11:15-19; Matthew 21:10-17; and Luke 19:45-48.
From Mark’s Gospel:
Then they came to Jerusalem. And [Jesus} entered the temple and began to drive out those who were selling and those who were buying in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who sold doves; 16and he would not allow anyone to carry anything through the temple. 17He was teaching and saying, “Is it not written,
‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’?
But you have made it a den of robbers.”
18And when the chief priests and the scribes heard it, they kept looking for a way to kill him; for they were afraid of him, because the whole crowd was spellbound by his teaching. 19And when evening came, Jesus and his disciples went out of the city.
Now, by way of deeper understanding (which is what we are trying to achieve my reading the Bible in its entirety!)-
Deuteronomy 14:24-26:
But if, when the Lord your God has blessed you, the distance [to the central sanctuary] is so great that you are unable to transport [your grain/animal offerings], because the place where the Lord your God will choose to set his name is too far away from you, 25then you may turn it into money. With the money secure in hand, go to the place that the Lord your God will choose; 26spend the money for whatever you wish—oxen, sheep, wine, strong drink, or whatever you desire. And you shall eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your household rejoicing together.
The moneychangers, as Deuteronomy explains it, allowed worshippers from far distances to be a part of the Temple’s activities. They couldn’t be expected to carry bulls or loads of grains from far away, so a practice developed (authorized in Scripture)- animal/grain offerings would be converted to silver; travelers would carry bundles of silver weights to the central sanctuary, where they would convert the silver again into “either comestible animals or agricultural produce.” And then, they would “eat there in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your household rejoicing together.”
We can imagine that over time, the practice became corrupted by some, and it was this corruption that upset Jesus. Not the moneychangers in and of themselves, but the corruption of pure sanctuary worship for selfish purpose.
Does this explode your understanding of these Gospel stories? Does is it make you reconsider the complexities of Jesus’ relationship with the chief priests and the scribes? I hope so. It does for me. Truly. Deeply.
gather the folks. tell the stories. 