26 Pentecost,
Cp28, November 17, 2013
Isaiah 65:17-25 Ps. 98:
2 Thes. 3:6-13
Luke 21:5-19
As one who you know to be very hung up on
words and language, I am often disappointed by the misuse of language or the
ignorance of language or the rather lack of lyricism in how we use language in
our lives and more specifically how biblical language is misinterpreted in mode
and context and application.
One of my goals in life is to get people
understand the broad and deeply rich spectrum of language and word use. Language is perhaps the greatest truth of
human experience.
The Bible is a book of language; it is a book
of words that have derived from the experiences of people who struggled with
the common questions of humanity that pertain to life between cradle and the
grave, and the possible life beyond the grave.
I would ask that we understand genre and use
of language and not misapply in inappropriate ways the various applications of
language which function for our orientation in the great stories of humanity.
A mother who may comfort a fevered baby with
words like, “there, there little one; all will be better in the morning” could
be confronted by literalist, “Mom how can you speak such untruthful things; you
have no proof that all will be well in the morning.” And what would you say to such a literalist
before you smacked him in the mouth?
You would probably say, “You unfeeling idiot, do you not know a
discourse of comfort does not need to be infallible predictive scientific
discourse?”
This lack of language finesse accounts for
most biblical disputes by those who defend the Bible wrongly and by those who attack
Bible language wrongly as being something that is does not purport to be in its
use and function.
If the Bible can be called salvation history,
we could understand the word salvation to mean “health.” The function of the Bible in its origin and now
in its use is to be words of health for the community.
How were the words of the Bible readings,
words of health for people in their times of composition and how can they be
words of health for us today?
Words of health might include the functions
of education, comfort and pain management.
Words of comfort and pain management might not necessarily be literally
true, probable or even possible. The mom
who sings to a restless baby, “Hush little baby don’t say a word, momma’s goin’
to buy you a mockingbird.” Well, no
momma’s not going to buy a mockingbird; a mockingbird can be a teasing
mischievous noise maker. Momma’s trying
to create a rhyme to comfort a restless baby.
The Isaian prophet had some major comfort to
achieve within the community. The
comfort also included some major pain management and so the words of comfort
had to be downright analgesic. They had
to be escapism; they had to be fantastic.
And what were the conditions like that required analgesic words? Not just simply Tylenol words but they had to
provide the most effective pain-killers of all.
What conditions could call for such
escapism? The Isaian writer was implying
that the world was so bad that God needed to start all over with a new
creation. Jerusalem was so bad that a
new Jerusalem had to be built. The
Isaian writer was doing what we all do when we’re in pain; we generalize to the
entire universe. Well, if life is so
dreadful for me, it must also be for the entire universe. When life is really bad, we can want to be
somewhere else with a complete new discontinuity from the way things are. Denial is a form of pain management. These Isaian words are similar to John Lennon’s
song, Imagine: Denying words, utopian word, analgesic words.
What else was happening? The beasts had taken over the world. The lambs were getting eaten up by the
wolves; “O wouldn’t it be nice if wolves and lambs were friendly
playmates?” In a predator and prey
world, the predators were winning. Only
the extremely fit were surviving.
Wouldn’t it be nice if people could enjoy the labor of their own hands,
their own homes and gardens? Infant
mortality was staggeringly high. “O,
wouldn’t it be nice if young people lived to the very minimal age of one hundred.” There is an incredible amount of wishful
thinking in such analgesic discourse.
Such discourse may only be relevant when it is needed. (Take as directed). We should not criticize its use in the
situations when it is needed. On the
other hand, we have modern day literalists in America who live in a comparative
lap of luxury trying to literalize these Isaian words as an escapism future for
themselves. I would submit to you that
they misuse and misapply such language.
The
writer of the Gospel of Luke was also using words of health for comforting
people in beleaguered times. By the time
that the Gospel of Luke had come to its final textual edition, what had
happened in the world and in the lives of some of the followers of Jesus?
The Temple had been destroyed and all Jewish
sects, including the rabbinical sect of Jesus, had fled Jerusalem for safer
places. When you've been scattered and
your homes destroyed and Chernobylesque conditions prevail, you have to start
up elsewhere and you need to maintain community and identity. In a
time of crisis the conditions of vulnerability prevail. There is a power and leadership vacuum and
there are those to step up to try to give explanation for why things happen and
what should be done because of the crisis.
After the destruction of Jerusalem there was a leadership vacuum and pretenders
arose to fill that vacuum. People who
want to be leaders during a crisis try to give answers as to why the crisis
happened and how to get out of the crisis.
Some people will try to predict catastrophic outcomes. While others will say catastrophic and cataclysmic events will
continue to happen until the big one, the final one occurs.
The writer of Luke knew about conflict in various
communities; such conflict led to suffering.
Obviously the Roman authorities had power to persecute. On more local levels, members of various
Jewish sects and their synagogues had power to excommunicate and to let their theological
disagreements break out into actual community disciplinary actions and physical
punishment. When members of different
Jewish sects disagreed with each other, families could be divided. Former Sadducees, Pharisees, Zealots and
members of the community of John the Baptist who were persuaded about the
interpretation of Jesus as the messiah experienced the wrath of the members
of their former communities. The writer
of the Gospel of Luke knew about the inter-Judaic conflicts between the
different sects of Judaism. This writer
knew how passionately people could disagree with each other.
A particular discourse of comfort would
involve the risen Christ to be presented as an oracle of comfort for the
community. The risen Christ would have
known about the destruction of Jerusalem; he would have known about splintering
of Judaism into various communities. The
risen Christ as one who would have predicted all of this would be an oracle of
comfort to those who had to live through the devastations. We do not have to be literal about the words
of the Gospel of Luke to understand the truth function of words of
comfort. Words of comfort arise in the
form that is needed to sustain the community during difficult times and that is
the greater truth.
Words still function that way for us
today. I hope that you and I do not need
the powerful analgesic words for our lives today. I hope we can be generally pain free. What I would pray for us to become today are
words of comfort in our actions. The
United States Constitution is a document of comfort for disagreeing religious
people in that it does not permit people of different religious persuasion to
burn each other at the stake. It is a
more ideal language of comfort for our language to be the body language of love
and justice. What kind of language of
comfort is needed today in the Philippines?
In Viet Nam? The body language of
people delivering rescue teams and supplies from concerned people all over the
world. On the ground in the areas of
devastation, the people might need the
language of escape from their exigent distress even while the world tries to
mobilize the corporate body language of a world organizing to bring relief.
Whether the time of Isaiah or the time of
Luke, the language of comfort and analgesia is often needed. Such words are discourses of hope and we should
not despise such language, even as we should complement such language with the
body language of active justice, love and compassion.
This is the language of comfort that the
risen Christ inspires in us today. Let
us be people who receive comfort in all the ways that we can but let us
generate in all of the ways we can, a full language of hope, care, love,
justice, comfort and salvation today.
Amen.
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