Some of you may scoff, but one of the things I really miss about being a seminary student is the all the reading from my coursework and being in a communinity where you didn't have to work as hard to introduce and discuss such topics as post-modern atonement theology or hermeneutics or gender identity in the Pauline Epistles. Not that my current congregation is completely disinterested in these things, far from it. It's just that it takes a little longer for us all to understand each other. That, and the folks I serve tend to be more intrested in such trifles as their families and their children, you know, those small matters (BTW, this is sarcasm).
Perhaps it's just as simple as missing my friends and having to actually work like real people in the real world.
In any case, I was reminded of what I was missing this week as my denomination, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) gathered for its bi-annual General Assembly this past week in Orlando, FL. It was a GREAT week for as many reasons as you can think of. On a personal level, I was able to catch up with some of my great friends from school and even meet some new friends as well. But more than that, it was a great assembly because, after so many years of trying, our denomination has officially taken a great big step in becoming a people of grace and welcome to ALL people, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity! For those of us who were there, the moment that the resolution (GA 1327) passed was an unforgettable milestone in the life of of our denomination! I, along with many others, was actually crying tears of joy!
However, the resolution was not unanimously passed. Indeed there was some opposition from those who wanted to avoid a fight on the assembly floor as well as those who strongly belive that God regards homosexuality as sinful and incompatable with the teachings of God's revealed word in scripture.
And then I remembered something I read in a book by Glen Martin, a New Testament Scholar who has taught at both Duke and Yale Divinity Schools. In the introduction to his book, Sex and the Single Savior, he talks about beginning a class on hermeneutics, the act of textual interpetation, by opening a Bible and simply asking the students if they hear anything. Does the text actually speak like one of those Hallmark cards that you open and you hear someone singing 'Happy Birthday' or something like that?
Do you hear anything?
No. The only way that the Bible speaks to us is in the act of either reading the text for ourselves (a potentially dangerous activity) or hearing the text read aloud to us by someone (historically a male clergy person) who actually knows how to read. And within that sensory event, we hear the text, any text really, filtered with our own individual and communal experiences. The Bible cannot be read objectivly, that is an any absolute sense. We hear the text differently because we are different from each other. I will most definitely understand the text differently from you as we hear the same scripture spoken during worship. Our life's experiences shape how we each respond to what the text says.
However, I don't want this to be understood as saying in the same breath that any interpretation is a valid one. Because all interpretation is necessarily incomplete, which is why the church, the community that interprets the text together is so important. Hopefully being in community with other readers of the text prevents us from believing that our own way of reading is THE way.
I would also add something else...because even communities of faith can be wrong about how they interpret the text. Indeed, any one who has seen the Westboro Baptist folks picketing at a funeral in protest against gay marriage knows that communities can often do great harm in the misguided belief that they are "right."
As I was waiting line to speak at the assembly, I re-realized that there are no hard and fast rules when it comes to understanding God via the Bible. The words, 'I am that I am' speak of a God who asks us to love and embrace the mysterious and the paradoxical, the mystery of the incarnation, the mystery of a suffering Messiah, and the mystery of love itself.
As the resolution itself was discussed, there were at least twice as many people lined up to argue for passage of the resolution than those lined up to argue for the opposite view. Thankfully, ultimately, I did not get a chance to speak. Anything I would have said or read would have paled in comparison to the love and support that we were all apart of that day. It was and is a love that is most surely of God. It is a love that is beyond what we can read, but as I stood around and saw all of God's people striving to support each other and be the church, I knew that God was with us and that the Bible, as beautiful and terrifying as it is, can only point us to this reality, the reality of a God who loves ALL of creation!
