Category: The text as critic

Song of Songs: “the riddled journey towards mutuality….”

Recently listened to some of the tracks on this CD on Classic FM. My own copy arrived the other day. Captivating.

For myself? Not sure how to preach on Song of Songs in ways that would avoid a mass exit by those uneasy with the idea that love, physical, passionate, deliriously, intoxicatingly overwhelming love is itself a gift of God. Yes agape as indefatigable good will. And yes, phileo as faithful friendship. But eros? That too God's gift? Explicitly descriptive? Legitimate desire? Incurable infatuation with the other? The ache of delight and the joy of longing?

Yes. All of that, and here, in the love poetry of the Song of Songs, set to music by one of the finest contemporary composers and with a Welsh soprano soloist whose voice exults in the language and music of the heart's desire. No wonder this series of poems, found tucked between the gentle cynicism of Ecclesiastes and the great Isaianic trilogy of defiant trustful hope, has survived as a statement of what human love is when two people discover in each other a love that demands language at its best.

But even then language can fail. Sometimes the reality of human love doesn't live up to the language of love, while at other times our language describes fantasy in terms that make us discontented with the reality that love between fallible humans is. The truth is, human love is seldom unambiguous, unmixed blessing, pure in motive and selfless in gift. It is after all human. But where there is faithfulness and companionship, persistence as well as passion, patience as well as urgency, and giving as well as receiving, then something is being shaped that mirrors the love of God.

Christian spirituality has plundered this book for images of divine love, metaphors for the soul's love of God and Christ's love for the Church. From Bernard of Clairvaux's 86 sermons, to the intense intimacy of Samuel Rutherford's descriptions of Christ the Beloved, the Song of Songs has provided powerful descriptions of Christian devotion. But read at another level altogether, the level of human relationships in all their perplexities and passions, these poems provide a theology of human createdness and human creativity. "To the extent that [the Song of Songs] is about anything, it is especially about male and female expressions of love and intimacy, the communion of self with the other, and the riddled journey toward mutuality". (New Interpreter's Bible, Renita Weems on Song of Songs, Vol. V., page 423.

Here is a CD which is itself an exercise in biblical exegesis, and the hermeneutical principle which compels attention and invites some understanding, is the way the poems, and their musical performance, capture our all too human love and longing, for that which is beyond us, but not so far beyond that we are discouraged from reaching for it in persistent hopefulness.

13 May 2009
Tom Wright, New Testament Exegesis and music

Following the good conversations we had about music and exegesis on the Leonard Cohen post a couple of days ago, I came across this paragraph from one of my favourite books, The Interpretation of the New Testament, 1861-1986, Stephen Neill and Tom Wright (OUP, 1988).

"What is it that makes people go on studying the New Testament? Behind all the details of exegesis – of textual criticism, of historical and background studies, even of specific theological debates – the trained ear can hear a counterpoint so fascinating that it compels one to stay where one is and listen. Here, on the one hand, is the busy, running little melody of history: endless detail, constant variety, unexpected surprises, unpredictable people and events. Here, on the other hand, is the slower but richer theme of theology: a powerful sustained tune, taking its time, rising in majestic cadences to its own proper climax. To take another example, and perhaps an appropriate one, from J. S. bach (who after all deserves a place in a book on modern Western interpretation of the New Testament, and not only because of the association in one's mind with Albert Schweitzer), we might think of Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring. Either of the two themes would by itself be worthy of attention. The combination – the tensions as well as the harmonies – is, for those who stop to listen, utterly compelling." ( pages 439-40.)

1 May 2009
Texts Under Negotiation: Brueggemann and Exegetical Confidence

Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
     the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
     his understanding is unsearchable.
he gives power to the faint,
     and strengthens the powerless. (Isaiah 40 28-29)

I've read various commentaries on this passage, and learned much. Westermann, Childs, Seitz, Goldingay, and Brueggemann's own commentary. But just to prove that the best comment on Scripture text isn't always found in commentaries, here's Brueggemann in his book with the disconcerting title Text under Negotiation. The Bible and Postmodern Imagination. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1993) It is replete with theological insight expressed in pastorally alert terms, and earthed in text, church and world. My copy is split, and the loose pages make it more like a loose-leaf folder – but I don't want to buy another because this one is annotated. But it's still in print and it remains a significant and persuasive example of exegetical confidence in the capacities of biblical text to help us reconceive our world in the light of the Gospel. So here's his comment on that famous Isaiah 40 text, found on pages 35-6.

Creation not only works for the powerful, the mighty, and the knowledgeable. It works as well for the faint, the powerless, the hopeless and the worthless. It works by giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater. It works so that strength is renewed. It is creation that precludes wearniness and faintness, and invites walking, running and flying.

Evangelical concern may derivatively raise the issue of our terrible disorderedness that issues in unseemly anxiety and in inescapable fatigue. It is a good question to raise in a local parish; Why so driven, so insatiable, so restless? The answer, in this doxological tradition, is that our lives are driven because we are seriously at variance from God's gracious food-giving program.

And where there is a variance and a refusal to trust:
youth are faint and weary,
     the young are exhausted,
     and there is little liberated flying or exhilarated running. (Isaiah 40.30)

17 April 2009
Sisters of Sinai – best lecture I’ve heard in years!

On Thursday night last, Janet Soskice was all that you want in a philosophical theologian delivering a public lecture which is the story of two Ayrshire Victorian women and their extraordinary contribution to NT textual criticism. In their fifties they visited Mt Sinai Monastery and discovered a palimpsest on which were the faded words of the four Gospels, dating back much earlier than previously known texts, and representing a crucial comparative landmark for textual critics.

My
childhood was spent in Ayrshire. One of my side-interests is the
history of NT Interpretation. Biography is a favourite genre and an
important theological resource in its own right. My own subject fields
are theology and history of Christianity, but this was a masterclass in controlled erudition laced with gentle but telling humour. Add to these Soskice's gift
for telling a story and building a rounded biographical portrait of these two remarkable women,
and the obvious sub-stratum of assiduous research behind this lecture –
and it was indeed a very satisfying evening.

Sheila and I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I sent an email to say thank you to Dr Soskice for
telling this story, and recovering the contribution of two women to NT
scholarship. The work of excavating lives like these from a largely
male dominated history remains an important form of protest and balance
restoration in historiography, and perhaps particularly in the historiography of Church history. Even in the telling of the story of these two women, the academic jealousies of Victorian Cambridge, the in-fighting of male scholars claiming intellectual property rights over their original work, the appearance of Professor William Robertson Smith (one of the greatly wronged scholars in the collision of ideas that accompanied the demise of Victorian Scottish Calvinism thirled to the Westminster Confession) as their sponsor in establishing the importance of their find, all of it a tale of intrigue, amateur versus professional scholarship, and huge stakes. If this story is dramatised for TV it would be rivetting viewing – the book on which the lecture was based is now on sale. It's a dead cert holiday read for Sheila and I. The story of a key episode in NT scholarship that doesn't even get a footnote in the standard histories – unlike Tischendorff, they were women, and they didn't remove the codex – they photographed it onto glass slides and then returned to transcribe it. Oh, and by the way, these Irvine lassies (amateur scholars, indeed!), taught themselves Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, Egyptian, Syriac – and the Syriac was mastered in 9 months!

29 March 2009
Finally Comes the Poet: Brueggemann on Job

One of the long term benefits of conversation with Walter Brueggemann is the familiarity of surprise. That isn't an oxymoron. It's a promise. Those who read Brueggemann will find that his take on a text can seem at first odd and off centre – surprisingly so. And then you realise that the text he is exploring is itself odd and off-centre. Indeed texts that deal with God, human longing, a broken, angry or frightened world, are likely to be texts that don't easily fit our conceptual comfort zones.

Take for example the two or three pages on Job, when Brueggemann is dealing with God's response to the insistent human voice of faith. Last autumn I read the superb commentary on Job by Samuel Balentine – that was an education in exegesis, pastoral theology and literature-enriched reflection on human life as free and constrained, as tragedy and praise, as faith at the wild extremes of created experience. That great nugget masterpiece Job, attracts some of the most creative theological minds and sympathetic textual interpreters – including Brueggemann.

Amongst the comments of Brueggemann on Job, (I so wish he would write a commentary on that book), are several paragraphs where his concern is to point to an honest preaching of texts whose oddity defies neat categories, and whose purpose is to embrace the strangeness of texts which deal with the ultimacy of God for human life. So here is some of Brueggemann on Job (illustrated by one of William Blake's paintings – themselves eerie and profound commentary on Job):

"Job pushes his attack on God as far as a voice in israel dare push. In chapter 9 Job asserts not only that God is unrelaible, but is in fact a liar (20-22). Job never pushes to God's nonexistence, for then he would quit speaking and be reduced to silence. Muteness is practical atheism. Job keeps believing and speaking; he lives for the dispute. Likely that is why in ancient israel there are no atheists. The conversation of faith is the best action in town. Job is characteristic of Jewishness that finds dispute a viable, crucial form of faith. Job delineates his experience of negation, of God's absence and silence, of God's refusal to deal with his issues. Job yearns most for an anaswer, any answer, because he prefers harsh dialogue to an empty monologue.

….Faith if it is to survive knowingly and honestly, must live in an unjust world….Job learns that while the world may not be to his liking, the world will hold at its centre because it is God's world. The world does not rest in Job's virtue. In the end Job is released for yielding and submission, for trust and praise, and finally he is released for freedom to live."
(Finally Comes the Poet, 61, 62)

13 March 2009
Lord’s Prayer Fibonacci

Fib: a poem of
20 syllables in which the number of
syllables in each line is the total of the two previous lines – thus
1,1,2,3,5,8. You can of course continue upwards so that the next line
is 13, then 21, then 34 after which it gets too silly I think.

Fib poems are
based on the Fibonacci mathematical sequence.

This one could be better. But I still find the discipline of word control an effective way of clarifying some of the thoughts that come when praying the Lord's Prayer regularly, with eyes open to the world.

Hallowed be your name

Wait.

Pray.

Slowly.

"Our Father…."

Holy muttering.

Anamnesis. Daily reminder.

God's in His Heaven, and all's (far from) well with the world.

Pater noster. Bread for hunger, forgiven wrong, hearts resilient and set free.

Human life flourishing, name of God hallowed, the will of God who is Love lovingly lived. Let us pray, not for me, for us, "Our Father….."

7 March 2009
The Lord’s Prayer: Praying the Pronouns

Praying the Lord's prayer three times a day is a spiritual exercise. I don't mean that in the quietly grudging way that we sometimes refer to those spiritual disciplines and devotional habits that give shape and substance to our spirituality. I mean it more in the sense of knowing the day after unaccustomed exercise, that muscles I didn't know I had, actually and achingly exist.

Pronouns are an intriguing quality test of prayer. The first person plural is counter-balanced by the second person singular throughout the Lord's Prayer. So three times a day I'm forced to ask – excuse me, but who are the others whose presence turns my into our, and me into us? Who are the ones who gate-crash my prayer and turn I into we? The very first word of the Lord's Prayer displaces the ego, dismisses the singular, incorporates my individuality into something outside, beyond and more than me. To pray the Our Father is to be drawn into a life immeasurably richer than the inner life of the singular self.

In the same way the address to God is second person, but always the possessive "Your", never the direct address "You". It is God's name, God's kingdom, God's will – and the three petitionary verbs are said to God – give, forgive, deliver. And yet again the counter-balance – because the giving, the forgiving and the delivering are, to use the old fashioned words, asked usward.

So every time I pray this prayer, I utter the insistent reminder that I share my life with others – with family and friends, with colleagues and neighbours, with the community of faith to which I belong, with strangers and foreigners, with Western and Eastern, Northern and Southern, men and women, young and old, all colours, all languages, people of many faiths and no faith. Our Father – the plural means I pray as a member of a vast family of humanity. And this vast family needs daily bread, daily forgiveness, daily deliverance from those tests of humanity that are so strong they could destroy us. And the One we ask is Our Father, whose name is to be reverenced, whose will is to be done, whose Kingdom comes secretly, subversively, unexpectedly….but surely.

So I go on praying persistently, noting the pronouns, allowing them to become the heartbeat and pulse of the prayer. Our Father …your name…your kingdom…your will…give us…forgive us…lead us not… but deliver us…for yours is the Kingdom.

On a day when another wee boy's murder is national news, and child protection provision and overloaded social workers come under scrutiny yet again; when international cricketers are attacked and seven people, six policemen and a bus driver are killed; when Obama and Brown talk about how to prevent global meltdown without reconfiguring the model of global capitalism; on a day like this, I've said Our Father…give, forgive, deliver….for yours is the Kingdom. And done so as a follower of Jesus.

3 March 2009
Fix your eyes on Jesus………

The truth of Jesus frustrates the best intentions of the greatest artists.

No one tradition, no one perspective, no one theological construal, no one telling of the Gospel story, can hope to reduce to canvas or syntax, the reality of the one in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.

Fix your eyes on Jesus….consider him…. (Hebrews 12)

1 March 2009
The Lord’s Prayer: The difference between repetition and mere repetition

Simon and Tony in the comments on a previous post reflect a fairly pervasive resistance to the regular use of the Lord's Prayer, whether in Sunday by Sunday services, daily or even three times daily as private or personal prayer. Coming from a non-liturgical tradition, Baptists are almost inherently suspicious of anything that sounds like vain repetition. I hope you don't mind Simon and Tony, if I quote some of your words from your comments in order to explore them here:

"I sensed that she was suggesting the mere repetition of the words had value – something I instinctivly recoil against. (Simon)

"…fear of this prayer being a mindless mantra rather than an expression of a real desire to see God's kingdom come….. Perhaps, for some, constant repetition reduces Christ's words to meaningless mumbling. (Tony)

I think it's worth qualifying those hesitations, even subjecting them to some gentle criticism -as in fact Simon and Tony acknowledge in their comments. So these few observations are not so much directed at Tony and Simon's hesitations. Their comments provide an opportunity to say more about why I think regular use of the Lord's Prayer is an important and specific formative practice for those whose life goal is following after Jesus.

1. My experience of extempore prayer in many non liturgical services (in Baptist churches and other traditions) doesn't persuade me that they are a more spiritual, sincere or worthy offering in worship than prayers carefully crafted, formed into language that has beauty and rhythm, and read or spoken from memory. To speak from memory, or read from a text doesn't preclude the heart's responsive love to God nor the mind's thoughtful adoration. Conversely, extempore prayers can themselves become mere repetition of phrases and cliches shared in a particular evangelical sub-culture.

2. The Lord's Prayer in particular is placed in the Sermon on the Mount precisely in the context of contrast with mere repetition. A double irony is possible here. Either we refuse to use the Lord's Prayer lest it be mere repetition; or we use it unthinkingly and make it mere repetition. Both I believe misrepresent the meaning of Jesus' command – "after this manner pray ye….". To pray the Lord's Prayer regularly and meaningfully is nearer the stance of intentional obedience.

3. I trust the instinct of the early church where early on, daily praying of the Lord's Prayer was a formative practice.

"…this was a tradition maintained in the living liturgy of community worship (as the first person plural strongly suggests). Almost certainly, the early Christian disciples did not know this tradition only because they had heard it in some reading from a written document. They knew it because they prayed it, possibly on a daily basis." J D G Dunn, Jesus Remembered. Christianity in the Making, Vol. I, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), p. 227 (Italics orignial).

The phrase Dunn emphasises, "they knew it because they prayed it", along with that important clause earlier, "the living liturgy of community worship", (Baptists like me take note – liturgy can be living), surely provides sufficient safeguard against reciting the Lord's Prayer from an empty heart and bored mind.

4. I trust also the practice of the church catholic through the centuries, across the world. As a Baptist I belong to a tradition that honours scripture – but then ironically balks at repeating the words of Jesus because they are liturgically embedded. But surely in approaching God as a forgiven sinner who is a follower of Jesus, I also do so as a self- concerned, earth-bound, horizon limited, ethically challenged, trying to be hopeful human being. And at such a time I confess I am more helped by the Lord's Prayer than the ad hoc meanderings of many an extempore pray-er.

5. As a young christian I learned the Sermon on the Mount by heart. I can still recite chunks of it in the Authorised Version! Amongst the benefits of repetition and regularity in reciting Scripture, especially the Lord's Prayer, are the slow absorption into mind, heart, conscience and will, of those essential values that define our discipleship and the way of the Kingdom of God.

These are just some of the reasons why it's important not to devalue repetition of scripture and prayers by prefacing them with 'mere'. Nor is it the case that such repeated enunciation of prayer and praise need be meaningless – in any case, meaningless to whom? It's God who sees most clearly into the hearts of those who mumble prayers – and whatever residue of meaning and genuine longing is there, midst the mumbling, we can be sure will be noticed, and blessed.

28 February 2009
Lent and putting the Lord’s Prayer into practice

Our Father, who art in heaven,

Hallowed be your name.

                                                                 Reverence

Your Kingdom come,

your will be done

on earth as it is in
heaven.

                                                                 Obedience

Give us this day

our daily bread

                                                                 Trust

Forgive us our tresspasses

As we forgive those who tresspass against us

                                                                 Reconciliation

Lead us not into temptation

But deliver us from evil

                                                                 Resistance

For yours is the Kingdom,

the power and the glory,
forever

                                                                 Doxology

For several years now, from birthday to birthday, I take a passage of the Bible and try to find ways to weave it into the way I live throughout the coming year. I try to live with, and live, the text. This isn't done in a pretentious or self-help way I hope; but as a form of prayer rooted in Scripture text, and within which to practice a life of deliberate response to the grace and mercy of God.

This year I want to try to live the Lord's Prayer. I don't want to "practice praying" by praying more. I want to align my life with what I pray when I pray the Lord's Prayer. So I've tried to distil each petition into what I think is its core value, or principle of action. The terms used are convictions intended to guide attitude and action rather than sounding like the non-disruptive aspirations of the vaguely pious. Values, practised as virtues, shape character.

So what demonstrable difference would it make to pray the Lord's Prayer by practising it?

What would happen if I let this brief and condensed text shape daily practice and everyday action?

Would the Lord's Prayer said each day, – morning, noon and night, – so remind me daily of the values of Jesus, that slowly, incrementally but definitely, life would be shaped to text, and heart shaped to practice?

What these values are, how they are to be lived, the existing attitudes they call in question, the life habits they must convert, the new life they make possible, the relationships they change – it is all an experiment in prayer, not as praying but as living what is prayed. To pray without ceasing may only be possible if understood as the orientation and daily re-orientation of the whole life towards God

by reverence for the holy,

     by obedient practices,

          by daily trust,

               by intentional reconciliation,

                    by resistance to evil,

                         and all this framed by doxology.

25 February 2009