Proper 17B Religious Speech
I have spent much of the past 14 days reacquainting myself
with the nature and meaning of scripture with assistance from Karen Armstrong’s
remarkable achievement, The Lost Art of Scripture: Rescuing the Sacred Texts
(Alfred Knopf, New York:2019) – a history of religious speech, specifically as
it has emerged from ancient Israel, India and China. Speech. The sacred texts
of most if not all civilizations are meant to be read aloud, chanted or sung in
a community setting or ritual. Our tendency to study a text quietly, as individuals,
and apply modern understandings of history and science to tease out the meaning
of a specific text flies in the face of how these scriptures were meant to be
experienced.
Sacred texts are understood to have “being” and life. They are
meant to transform life. “The Word of God is living and active!” [Heb 4:12] Sacred
Scriptures mean to lead us and inspire us to change and radical transformation
amidst the challenges and crises that surround us, to imagine what can be, and
to bind us together as a community. To do all of this they comment on past predicaments,
and then must be allowed to speak directly to current predicaments and crises. As
new crises arise, the narratives and myths are constantly revised to meet new
challenges. So, Sacred Scriptures are always a work in progress open to new
interpretation as necessary to address new circumstances. Scriptures,
narrative, myth and poetry, seek to help the listener to discover that which is
constant and essential to human life. It can be said that religious language,
indeed all language as metaphor, seeks to make life meaningful, and that thus
we create the world in which we live by means of speech.
For instance, the Song of Songs, sometimes called the Song
of Solomon, is a group of love poems, possibly gathered together in one book to
be recited or sung at weddings. It is portrayed as a conversation between a man
and a woman. In chapter 2 verses 8-13 the woman hears the man’s voice declare
that a recent crisis is coming to an end:
"Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away;
for now the winter is past,
the rain is over and gone.
The flowers appear on the earth;
the time of singing has come…”
Perhaps this declares an end to loneliness, but could also refer
to one of the periods of exile Israel experienced, or even a community’s sense
of abandonment by God. The Song of Songs has often been understood as a
conversation between God and God’s people, with God declaring undying love
despite all challenges of the present situation. Addressing the present, it would
be no stretch to think of the “winter” to be the ongoing threat of nuclear
winter, or the current Climate Crisis declaring that one day flowers will once
again flourish and our singing of hymns and songs to the God of all creation
will once again be heard throughout the land. Perhaps if we would sing the Song
of Songs, we would find ways to bind the world community together to seek ways
out of a crisis created largely out of our conspicuous consumption of fossil
fuels.
Then in Mark Chapter Seven we hear a dispute. After episodes
of feeding and healing large groups of people, Jesus and his now dozens of disciples
pause to share a meal with one another. Such meals are themselves sacred and
the foundation of Biblical religion. Some Pharisees seemingly travel all the way
from Jerusalem in the south to Galilee in the north to lodge a complaint: that
Jesus’s disciples do not wash their hands before meals “according to the
traditions of the elders?” Jesus recognizes this as a trick question right away
and calls them out as hypocrites – literally actors or posers.
Oh yeah! I will see you and raise you tenfold. He first
appeals to the prophet Isaiah, remembering that prophets were first and
foremost temple priests acting as social critics:
‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me;
in vain do they worship me,
teaching human precepts as doctrines.’
He concludes, “You abandon the commandments of God and hold
to human tradition.”
There was no commandment in all the 613 commandments in
Torah to wash hands before a meal (sorry, parents!). Most of Israel, including
the Sadducees in Jerusalem, did not wash hands before a meal. Jesus says you
just made that up. Furthermore, in verses strangely omitted by the lectionary,
he accuses them of not Honoring Thy Father and Mother by another clever practice
the Pharisees made up. Ouch! Finally, he wraps up by saying that nothing that
goes into the body defiles the body, but rather only that from within, from
within the human heart, do evil intentions come: “fornication, theft, murder,
adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride,
folly. All these evil things that come from us are what defile us and others.”
No amount of handwashing can change this.
His accuses the Pharisees of mishandling the sacred texts
and then simply make things up which contribute to evil intentions. That is,
listening to untrue and unfaithful speech like that which you and your fellow Pharisees
do is what damages human relations. We listen to the Word of God which is
living and true to guide us through the current unpleasantness of the corrupt
and corrupting military occupation by Rome along with the complicity of some of
our leaders in Jerusalem. He then retires to a house in the region of Tyre to
get away from it all, which of course is impossible, and leaves it to the crowd,
the Pharisees and all of us to ponder just what this episode is meant to tell
us.
For six days each day after an early morning run, I would
sit near the beach, watch the waves coming in and going out, the occasional pod
of dolphin diesel by, and modern-day Sun Worshipers standing with their smartphones
high in the air to take photos or video of the sunrise to assure themselves the
Sun once rose and might again. I would scribble a few notes and try to make
sense of what has been going on all around us in this time of the Pandemic.
Unwittingly, perhaps, or by divine inspiration, the last day at the beach I
penned what may be one way to apply Jesus’s response to our current predicament
and attendant crises:
Bethany
Beach Entry #5-6 08/17-19/2021
“I must down to the seas again…”
No “go” as Maesfield wrote it,
But as most have learnt it!
Yet, “go” we must it seems
As side by side down the beach
A Yoga class saluting the rising Sun
While fifty yards further
Beach Boot Camp makes it burn
Namaste vs grunts and shouts
Whilst most sit at the water’s edge
Quietly listen to the sound of the
Gently rolling waves
The running tide which cannot be denied
Clouds flying overhead
Each morning a low hanging
Line of small transparent clouds diesel by
The rising Sun
Like the pods of bottle-nosers
Who leap to our utter delight
Down to the seas
Makes us smile
Say “Good morning” to strangers
Nod to one another as we run
Opposing directions
On the boardwalk
We discover we are
Created to welcome
One another
The Other
This feels good, makes us smile
Until we allow the chattering class
Make us feel afraid of
One Another
Bash one another
Destroy one another
The Earth
And all its creatures
The seas remind us
To practice kindness
Joy
To stop each time we think
To bash someone
The Other
Stop
Reset
Be mindful
Grateful
Positive
Kind
We become
What we say and do
After spending
three or four hours each day this past week at the Franciscan Priory in
Ellicott City, I recall the words of St. Francis about preaching: “Preach the
Gospel at all times. When necessary, use words.” The language we use and the
things we do create the world we live in. Amen.
