"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Thursday, 10 July 2008 | |||
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Hearing and Bearing | |||
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The lectionary is a wonderful instrument for aiding deep and
thoughtful reading of Scripture in public worship. Yet it is not perfect.
Last Sunday, July 6, it left out, according to a bias against violent
passages identified by one of my seminary professors years ago, Jesus'
condemnation of towns in Galilee. This week, July 13, the reading from
Matthew 13:1-23 leaves out the harsh and difficult verses 10-17. It
makes it appear the skipped verses are nothing more than a parenthesis
interrupting the flow of Jesus telling the parable and offering an
interpretation. What's missed in that kind of reading is that the parable
and its interpretation are actually about the material from Isaiah
6:9-10 that is quoted in the omitted verses. The parable of the sower is
about hearing the Gospel Word of the Kingdom in such a way that it grows
and bears fruit. Isaiah and Jesus warn against superficial hearing of the
Word that ultimately bears no fruit. In his recent wonderful book on the parables, Klyne Snodgrass says the parable makes three significant points: 1) The kingdom of God is a kingdom of the Word; "it involves a proclamation about God and God's purposes and actions." 2) The kingdom challenges us to perceive it clearly and reorient our lives around it. 3) "The kingdom is presently at work and is established partly as people respond with believing obedience and inhabit the world created by the proclamation." Klyne says this about point 1: "Language creates a world, and the proclamation of the kingdom makes a new reality available." I might quibble with an extreme application of the notion that "language creates a world," wanting to maintain that it's only wholly true for the language God speaks, as it is in the case of the kingdom proclamation. Nonetheless, well-chosen language does allow us to perceive the reality which exists. Thus I wonder about the commonly understood task of the preacher to re-state the Biblical word in updated, common language, using new images, etc. Maybe our task is as much or more to invite listeners to hear and understand the language of God's Word as it is and let that Biblical language reshape their understanding of reality. Instead of recasting the message into forms called for by today's language, our goal is more to recast today's lives into forms called for by the language of the message. Otherwise, it might very well be true that we will be "ever hearing but never understanding." | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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