Today we are simply continuing in the same line of thought as the past two days...more on the last word...by Brian Blount.
...as far as biblical ethics are concerned, for the peasants Mesters was talking about, there is no last word on biblical authority. Why? Because the authoritative words are linked to the contexts in which they are uttered. And since we're always changing, and our contexts are always changing, the words that interpret the whisper of God's Spirit in our time must necessarily be changing as well. God, you remember Jesus saying, is a god of the living, not the dead. But a last word is necessarily a dead word. It stops listening. It stops learning. It stops living! It just wants to be repeated over and over without being informed by anything about anything that has happened between the time of its first utterance and its purported final utterance now.
This does not say that the biblical word cannot speak to us and that we cannot hear the new life or begin to dance in a place that has yet to be a part of the old, old story. Rather, the word speaks with a new fullness. It was full and alive once before our day...and it must be today...without having to keep the word as though it has spoken all it could speak back centuries ago. I do not think that Blount is advocating a "situational" ethics that allows us to do as we want and only hear the words we would like to hear to suit our situation as we would want it. That would be idolatrous. We are really being invited to listen with new ears so that the life within the word will be a word that stirs up our hearts and brings the life of the Reign of God right into our hearts and thus our lives. Too often, it is easy for a group of people to come to the last word and make that word something so etched in stone and therefore so rigid that the wind of the Spirit must blow extra hard just to help people bend and bow and move a bit off their beaten path. When we view the word as the last word, I do not see how we are able to let ourselves walk with the word and be taken to new place, new insights, new vitality, new creation...that never, ever ends.
Connection: Take a walk...wander a bit...let your story find a place to hear the words of the scripture and let those words engage your walk in a real dialogue that is ready to unfold anew.
Word of Life, Come! Enter into the hearts of your people and engage us so that our wondering and wandering may be brought to new depths of experience and understanding. As your word lives, we all begin to come to life. Amen.
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