Tuesday 27 November 2007

I find this quote to be a good follow-up to what Blount wrote in yesterday's devotion.



We're too often the not-yet-ready-for-prime-time pietists who equate faith with God to faith in the written words of human texts. Carlos Mesters makes the case provocatively when he talks about the poor Latin American peasants whose oppressed circumstances often motivate them to challenge the ethical exhortations of the biblical texts whenever those exhortations would perpetuate their oppression. So, Mesters writes, these "common people are putting the Bible in its proper place, the place where God intended it to be. They are putting it in second place. Life takes first place.



Therefore, God becomes flesh. That is not merely part of the storytelling. That is what God intends the word to be among us - alive. It become the life of the community. When that is the case, the text does not rule over us. We challenge it...just as we are challenged. Within that dialogue, words that are not life-giving will not be able to stand up within the conversation. That may be why words that are used to put people "in their place" are really words that are frightened to be a part of a dialogue. They are, in essence, afraid that they might be changed. A Good News word calls people out into the world to live boldly and not fear what might come when we bow and bend and lean and give up and give over and turn around and go forward and yet go backward. When the word brings life, we can never be sure where we will go prior to wrestling with the word as it is and how it is when we read it and share its fullness.



Connection: Life takes first place...and the word will be one help along the way to a life that is greater than what we anticipate. In the meantime, we struggle and share and keep living.



Living Word, when you challenge us with new life, it is so easy to run from that life by simply staying stuck within the words. We long for you to pull our lives from the page and set us leaping into a life that will shape this day. Amen.