I was walking through
the halls of a senior living facility in Belgium on my way to visit the elderly
father of a church member. Over the
speaker system came the chant “The whole world is watching, the whole world is
watch….” Then the musical group Chicago
transitioned into the song “Someday” from their Chicago Transit Authority album. One of the verses goes:
Would you look around you now
And tell me what you see
Faces full of hate and fear
Faces full of me
Do you feel the rumblings
As your head comes crumbling down
Do you know what I mean
And tell me what you see
Faces full of hate and fear
Faces full of me
Do you feel the rumblings
As your head comes crumbling down
Do you know what I mean
Run, you better, run you know
The End is getting near
Feel the wind of something hard
Come whistling past your ear
The End is getting near
Feel the wind of something hard
Come whistling past your ear
As I listened,
I wondered how many of the elderly Dutch-speaking residents knew the context of
this song. Some of them would have
understood the words they heard and been able to make sense of the sentences,
but I doubted they could glean the meaning of it all.
The chant was a recording of the protests
during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in late August of 1968. On April 4th of that year, Dr. Martin Luther King had been assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine motel in Memphis TN. His death sparked riots in more than 100 US cities, Chicago being one of them.
Robert Kennedy,
a candidate in the Democratic primary that year, had been assassinated on June 5th.
As the
Democratic Convention takes place, the country is still tense over these two assassinations
and is bitterly divided over the war in Vietnam. The current Democratic president Lyndon
Johnson, who had vigorously pursued the war, has announced that he will not
run for reelection. Within the
convention hall that week, the Democratic Party is deeply divided over its
stance on the war.
The song is
about this turbulent moment in American life.
I doubt that
even the elderly residents who understood English would have made this connection, thus the meaning of the introductory chant and the lyrics that follow
would have been lost on them. Understanding the literal meaning of the words would not have opened a door into the deeper message of the song for them.
Reading the
Bible is a bit like this. We may understand
the literal meaning of the words and get the gist of each sentence; but without
some knowledge of the author, the intended original audience, and the social,
political, economic, and literary context, much of the meaning is lost on
us. To read the Bible in a literally wooden
way without contemplating these broader questions diminishes the rich and
transformative message of the scriptures.
I know
Leviticus 19:19 forbids the wearing of clothing woven of two kinds of material,
yet I find poly-cotton blend shirts save me time ironing. An uninquisitive literal reading of Leviticus
would condemn me for this convenience. Is there something else going on in this text that would permit me to save some time at the ironing board?
What is the
attraction of a simplistic literal reading of scripture? It is easy, and we are lazy.
It takes a lot of effort to read large passages
of scripture, indeed whole books, and then set a particular passage in its
broader literary context. Proof texting
is attractive to those who want the Word of God to work like a Twitter feed.
The next step
beyond the literary context of a passage is the canonical context. The canonical context is the place of a
book within the broader landscape of the Bible. We take what Jesus said about the law in
Matthew’s Gospel, what Paul wrote about the law in Romans, and what James wrote
about the law in his letter and then filter all that through what Moses said in
Deuteronomy. Within this broader field
of reference, we discover a more maturely nuanced understanding.
A reader does
not need to go to seminary to have more than enough work for a lifetime of
Bible reading. The Bible itself will
keep us by simply immersing ourselves in all its diversity and grandeur.
If one is going
to teach a class or preach sermons, some good research books in the biblical
material can certainly enhance our work. (Can
we get extra credit for this? Moses
seems to imply this might be possible.
Paul seems to assert “no way,” and Jesus tells some great stories that
teach us not to be anxious about extra credit in any case.)
Reading the
Bible is serious work. An uninquisitive
uninformed wooden literalism sidesteps that hard work. The Bible is not for the lazy.
Jim
Kelsey
Executive
Minister—American Baptist Churches of New York State
