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| 18 Pentecost 8 October, 2006 The Rev. Robert C. Granfeldt |
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Most weeks the first thing I do when I’m starting to work on what will, eventually,
become my sermon – the first resource I look at – is this magazine, called The Living
Church.
It’s an independent magazine of the Episcopal Church; kind of uneven in both it’s
editorial value and in the articles it publishes, but always interesting and always
entertaining – especially in the letters it prints!
But the thing I always check out, first, for my sermon, is this feature on page 4, each
week, called Sunday’s Readings. In Sunday’s Readings, the writer lists all the
readings for the next Sunday, gives an overview, and then comments on what he
sees as the theme or the core of the day’s Propers. Nothing profound really; a
commentary intended as just a little nudge to get the old brain working.
I find it helpful. But to be truthful, more often than not, it’s helpful in a kind of reverse
mode. That is, I seldom think the writer really got it right – and sometimes I find the
analysis offered downright silly! But it kicks off my thought processes.
This week, I found it not to be silly – just ‘way off base, and, actually, wrong-headed.
The writer finds the interest and basic theme of these lessons to be marriage. No
argument, there – the Old Testament Reading and the Gospel are straight out of the
Marriage Service Lections, after all.
But in his Commentary, the writer blows it, and not only does he blow it, he says
something that I find careless, at best; just plain wrong and misleading, at worst!
The lessons – especially the Old Testament Reading – are truly wonderful writings. In
fact, when I’m teaching – as well as preaching – scripture, the first two chapters of
the Bible – of which this reading is an important part – are my absolute favorites. As
those who were in The Rector’s Class, a few years ago, will tell you, we spent many
weeks studying just those two chapters – such wonderful fountains of knowledge
and inspiration are they, such wonderful sources of theological understanding.
The First Chapter of Genesis is the creation story we’re so familiar with: the six days
of Creation, beginning on the first day with the Creator God saying, “let there be
light,” and ending with,
So God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them.
And the Chapter, itself, ends with God pronouncing good all that he had done; all that
he had created. It is some of the most beautiful, profound, inspiring writing in the
whole Bible!
And then, believe it or not, chapter two starts all over again with a second, different
creation story! (If you don’t want to believe that, read the two chapters, yourself –
read them carefully, take note of what you’re reading, and you’ll see.) In this Second
Chapter, God has created a human being out of the clay – the dust of the earth, and
he has created a beautiful garden, with all the plants that grow, for his creation to
live in. But the human being is alone – and lonely – so God creates all of the animals
of the earth, looking for a companion for this human being, but with no luck. Finally,
God causes the person to fall into a deep sleep, and, taking a part of the sleeping
being, he forms a second being from it – and the beings God has created are, finally,
male and female – the human race.
And the man speaks that wonderful saying that begins, “This at last is bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh!” And the narrator exclaims, “Therefore a man leaves his
father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
So simple. So beautiful.
But then, the Living Church commentator messes it up. After commenting on these
few verses, he then seeks to put them in what he thinks is a proper perspective. He
writes,
The rest of scripture presents the relationships between human beings and
their God as tragically marked by violence, exploitation, severe disappointment,
and anguish. But there is also a deep and insistent memory of a pristine time that
the human race has lost, and longs to experience again.
What he’s saying is that these verses represent the very beginning of mankind’s
brief time in the Garden of Eden, before their – Adam and Eve’s – first sin – Original
Sin – and that humankind has ever since longed for life in the Garden, urged on by
the persistent’ racial memory of that brief, distant time!
The problem with this being that in speaking like this, he is literalizing something that
was never meant to be taken literally – something that stands on its own in its beauty
and its meaning, as a story about a time before time, a story of Shangri-La and
Camelot, of the Havens of Middle Earth and the enchanted Isle of Prospero, all rolled
into one!
And to reduce it to “a place” where human beings once lived, and that still exists in
their memories, is to reduce it to something less than it is – to something that is not
Eden – to lose the depth the beauty, the power the glory and the Truth of the tale!
I come back to a theme I haven’t visited for a while that great song sung by Sportin’
Life in Porgy and Bess: “it ain’t necessarily so. The things that you’re liable to read in
the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so!” And we shouldn’t treat them as if they were, as if
they were factual, because they were never meant to be!
If we were to suppose that Hamlet was about a spoiled, depressive Danish prince
who went over the edge in a conspiracy theory fixation on his father’s death and his
mother’s remarriage – and he and a bunch of others got killed because of it; that
Macbeth was just a semi-savage Scottish Highlander who was pushed into paranoia
and an early, violent death by an envious, ambitious, scheming, hormonal wife; or to
adopt that same sort of literalist and reductionist outlook toward any of the great
works of art that have informed and inspired and exalted so many, through the ages,
we would destroy all those great works, and reduce them to something akin to cheap
paperback tales!
And so it is with so much of the Bible.
As I’ve said so many times, the Bible is the richest literary collection the world has
ever known, with literally every type of literature yet invented, from eyewitness
histories, to moving love stories, to great short stories, to beautiful, even lush poetry
and anything else you can think of, and the most powerful in its depth, its glory, its
majesty and its beauty!
The literalizing of scripture – the literalizing, especially of this Scripture – is the kind
of idiotic misunderstanding that has half the country squabbling over science
textbooks that teach evolution – and overlooking the glorious beauty and real
meanings of the Book of Genesis!
So forget about that wonderful time in Eden; don’t think about how you wish you
could have lived, then; forget the nonsense.
But read the Book! Read it for yourself! Get a good translation – the Oxford Annotated
New Revised Standard Version is the one I use – and read it. Skip the genealogies
and the lists, for now – but read it, immerse yourself in it. Don’t try to memorize it. Let
it speak to you! Let it flow into your heart, your soul, your very bones! And let it
become part of you!
Let it work in you as it was intended to do. You’ll never regret it!
In his Name who creates, sustains and inspires us. Amen.
become my sermon – the first resource I look at – is this magazine, called The Living
Church.
It’s an independent magazine of the Episcopal Church; kind of uneven in both it’s
editorial value and in the articles it publishes, but always interesting and always
entertaining – especially in the letters it prints!
But the thing I always check out, first, for my sermon, is this feature on page 4, each
week, called Sunday’s Readings. In Sunday’s Readings, the writer lists all the
readings for the next Sunday, gives an overview, and then comments on what he
sees as the theme or the core of the day’s Propers. Nothing profound really; a
commentary intended as just a little nudge to get the old brain working.
I find it helpful. But to be truthful, more often than not, it’s helpful in a kind of reverse
mode. That is, I seldom think the writer really got it right – and sometimes I find the
analysis offered downright silly! But it kicks off my thought processes.
This week, I found it not to be silly – just ‘way off base, and, actually, wrong-headed.
The writer finds the interest and basic theme of these lessons to be marriage. No
argument, there – the Old Testament Reading and the Gospel are straight out of the
Marriage Service Lections, after all.
But in his Commentary, the writer blows it, and not only does he blow it, he says
something that I find careless, at best; just plain wrong and misleading, at worst!
The lessons – especially the Old Testament Reading – are truly wonderful writings. In
fact, when I’m teaching – as well as preaching – scripture, the first two chapters of
the Bible – of which this reading is an important part – are my absolute favorites. As
those who were in The Rector’s Class, a few years ago, will tell you, we spent many
weeks studying just those two chapters – such wonderful fountains of knowledge
and inspiration are they, such wonderful sources of theological understanding.
The First Chapter of Genesis is the creation story we’re so familiar with: the six days
of Creation, beginning on the first day with the Creator God saying, “let there be
light,” and ending with,
So God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them.
And the Chapter, itself, ends with God pronouncing good all that he had done; all that
he had created. It is some of the most beautiful, profound, inspiring writing in the
whole Bible!
And then, believe it or not, chapter two starts all over again with a second, different
creation story! (If you don’t want to believe that, read the two chapters, yourself –
read them carefully, take note of what you’re reading, and you’ll see.) In this Second
Chapter, God has created a human being out of the clay – the dust of the earth, and
he has created a beautiful garden, with all the plants that grow, for his creation to
live in. But the human being is alone – and lonely – so God creates all of the animals
of the earth, looking for a companion for this human being, but with no luck. Finally,
God causes the person to fall into a deep sleep, and, taking a part of the sleeping
being, he forms a second being from it – and the beings God has created are, finally,
male and female – the human race.
And the man speaks that wonderful saying that begins, “This at last is bone of my
bones and flesh of my flesh!” And the narrator exclaims, “Therefore a man leaves his
father and his mother and cleaves to his wife, and they become one flesh.”
So simple. So beautiful.
But then, the Living Church commentator messes it up. After commenting on these
few verses, he then seeks to put them in what he thinks is a proper perspective. He
writes,
The rest of scripture presents the relationships between human beings and
their God as tragically marked by violence, exploitation, severe disappointment,
and anguish. But there is also a deep and insistent memory of a pristine time that
the human race has lost, and longs to experience again.
What he’s saying is that these verses represent the very beginning of mankind’s
brief time in the Garden of Eden, before their – Adam and Eve’s – first sin – Original
Sin – and that humankind has ever since longed for life in the Garden, urged on by
the persistent’ racial memory of that brief, distant time!
The problem with this being that in speaking like this, he is literalizing something that
was never meant to be taken literally – something that stands on its own in its beauty
and its meaning, as a story about a time before time, a story of Shangri-La and
Camelot, of the Havens of Middle Earth and the enchanted Isle of Prospero, all rolled
into one!
And to reduce it to “a place” where human beings once lived, and that still exists in
their memories, is to reduce it to something less than it is – to something that is not
Eden – to lose the depth the beauty, the power the glory and the Truth of the tale!
I come back to a theme I haven’t visited for a while that great song sung by Sportin’
Life in Porgy and Bess: “it ain’t necessarily so. The things that you’re liable to read in
the Bible, they ain’t necessarily so!” And we shouldn’t treat them as if they were, as if
they were factual, because they were never meant to be!
If we were to suppose that Hamlet was about a spoiled, depressive Danish prince
who went over the edge in a conspiracy theory fixation on his father’s death and his
mother’s remarriage – and he and a bunch of others got killed because of it; that
Macbeth was just a semi-savage Scottish Highlander who was pushed into paranoia
and an early, violent death by an envious, ambitious, scheming, hormonal wife; or to
adopt that same sort of literalist and reductionist outlook toward any of the great
works of art that have informed and inspired and exalted so many, through the ages,
we would destroy all those great works, and reduce them to something akin to cheap
paperback tales!
And so it is with so much of the Bible.
As I’ve said so many times, the Bible is the richest literary collection the world has
ever known, with literally every type of literature yet invented, from eyewitness
histories, to moving love stories, to great short stories, to beautiful, even lush poetry
and anything else you can think of, and the most powerful in its depth, its glory, its
majesty and its beauty!
The literalizing of scripture – the literalizing, especially of this Scripture – is the kind
of idiotic misunderstanding that has half the country squabbling over science
textbooks that teach evolution – and overlooking the glorious beauty and real
meanings of the Book of Genesis!
So forget about that wonderful time in Eden; don’t think about how you wish you
could have lived, then; forget the nonsense.
But read the Book! Read it for yourself! Get a good translation – the Oxford Annotated
New Revised Standard Version is the one I use – and read it. Skip the genealogies
and the lists, for now – but read it, immerse yourself in it. Don’t try to memorize it. Let
it speak to you! Let it flow into your heart, your soul, your very bones! And let it
become part of you!
Let it work in you as it was intended to do. You’ll never regret it!
In his Name who creates, sustains and inspires us. Amen.
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| Calvary Episcopal Church, Rockdale |
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