how to approach the Bible

My rector is brilliant.

The Old Testament lectionary a week ago Sunday had some troubling language from the book of 1 Samuel: “The next day an evil spirit from God rushed upon Saul…”

In her sermon she asked if anyone had a favorite recipe from their grandmother. She turned to a pair of sisters who had raised their hands and asked what their favorite recipe was from their grandmother. They responded that it was salmon patties. Pastor Kathleen said, “I bet the recipe contains bread crumbs, right?” The sisters said that it did. Pastor Kathleen said, “Now if you go to the store and buy a box breadcrumbs then take it home and start eating the breadcrumbs straight out of the box, that’s not the same as eating a salmon patty, is it?”

That, she said, is what it’s like to base your understanding of the Bible on a single verse. People do it, she told us, but it doesn’t work.

As I said, brilliant.

excommunicating ourselves

Sunday’s Gospel lectionary reading was the story about the king who sends out invitations to a wedding banquet for his son. Everyone has more important things to do so they don’t bother to show up. The king has them all killed and their towns burned, and then has his servants go “into the main streets, and invite everyone [they] find to the wedding banquet.” When the king finds one guest not dressed in the appropriate attire he tells his servants to “bind him hand and foot, and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

That’s Matthew. Matthew 22:1-14, to be exact. I have issues with Matthew. You’ve seen me complain about the harshness of many passages in Matthew before. But, still, the text is there, so how do we deal with this passage?

As for the first part, suffice it to say that in the ancient Near East blowing off a king when invited to a wedding banquet is probably not an effective survival strategy. The end of the passage is more troubling to me, but we can make sense of it. Bishop Mary made the point three years ago when she preached during her visitation when I reaffirmed my baptismal vows and officially became part of St. John the Divine. Fr. Phil made the same point Sunday. At weddings in that culture and time the host handed out wedding garments to all of the guests. So this fellow obviously walked right past the guy handing out the wedding garments. Not wise.

We excommunicate ourselves. Fr. Phil said:

God does not excommunicate people from the divine kingdom; God can’t because it would mean that something would exist outside of God.  Only members of God’s creation can live in the illusion that they don’t live within God’s kingdom and hereby excommunicate themselves from God’s great world.

The irony is that I nearly excommunicated myself, at least for one day, on Sunday. I looked at the server schedule and saw the names of the two sisters signed up for acolytes. That meant that their dad would be there using his smart phone to video tape his daughters during the opening procession. That always annoys the heck out of me.  Dammit Jim, this is a worship service, not a Christmas pageant! I almost skipped church that day. In the end, the privilege of receiving the Bread and Wine outweighed the dad’s annoying, not disruptive I remind myself, but simply annoying, behavior.

Oh, and one other thing. Fr. Phil pointed out that the reason wedding garments were handed out was “to insure that all of the guests had the appearance of equal standing at the party. The wedding garments were like a uniform of equality indicating that all guests had equal standing in the eyes of the host.”

I don’t think I need to explain the obvious in terms of what that says about God’s relationship to me versus God’s relationship to that dad. Enough said.

Seeing Jesus as…

The Gospel lectionary reading for last Sunday was Luke 20:27-38. It is the story of the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection, challenging Jesus on the law of Levirate marriage. To quote Father Phil, “If a married man died without children, his brother was obligated to marry the widow to have a child that would be designated as his dead brother’s offspring.” The Sadducees asked if a woman’s husband died and left her childless, as did his six brothers, who would be her husband at the resurrection? You know the story. Jesus responds that at the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage. But I love the context Father Phil provides. He says,

The Sadducees are presented as sort of Harvard trained lawyers who are going to take this Matlock-like country bumpkin rabbi Jesus to the intellectual woodshed.

I told Fr. Phil after the service that I had never heard Jesus compared to Matlock before. He agreed that it might be a first.

It reminds me, though, that we do see Jesus through our own lens.

I believe it was one of the Great Courses lectures I was listening to, and I believe that the lecturer was taking a shot at the members of the Jesus Seminar, saying that there were those who viewed Jesus as the witty university faculty lounge lizard colleague.

So if that, why not Jesus as an Andy Griffith-type character? Probably not Peter Falk/Columbo. But, yes, perhaps Andy Griffith/Matlock.

We do create Jesus in our own image.