Monday 3 December 2007

Brian Blount continues to write about the last word on Biblical authority with a look at interpretation within the community of the African American Slave.



...they realized that human beings interpreted (God's) story and put God's holy Word into their own contextually influenced human words. So when the slave owners talked about the Bible saying that slaves ought to obey their masters, the slaves resisted not just the slave owners but the biblical words and the biblical authors themselves.

Here's a wonderful piece by Howard Thurman about his grandmother's outlook on scripture.

"My regular chore was to do all the reading for my grandmother - she could neither read nor write... With a feeling of great temerity I asked her one day why it was that she would not let me read any of the Pauline letters... 'During the days of slavery," she said, "the master's minister would occasionally hold services for the slaves....Always the white minister used as his text something from Paul. At least three or four times a year he used as a text: 'Slaves be obedient to them that are your masters..., as unto Christ.' Then he would go on to show how, if we were good and happy slaves, God would bless us. I promised my Make that if I ever learned to read and if freedom ever came, I would not read that part of the Bible."

Here is an illiterate woman who knows instinctively that a last word is too dead a word to keep living for her.



It seems as though we can come to the point when the word is not a living word. It is dead. It is meaningless. It is offensive. It is offensive not merely to the hearer, but to the essence of the Scripture. I would offer the comment that the Good News is not able to be heard because something other than the Good News is being offered up to the people. People can hear the absence of Good News. It is lifeless and it reflects the present life context rather than the expansiveness of the Reign of God. When this kind of word is given power over any of us, it does not create life. I would say that it resists new life - if not trying to completely kill it off. What is particularly powerful about the story of Thurman's grandmother is that the "word" served as a prostitute that could be owned by the master and therefore serve the master rather than create a community of the true Master of the Reign of God that continues to cause life - new life - to spring up even when the status quo attempts to rest on last words.



Connection: We have all heard these "last words" and we know how they halt life. We probably all have friends or relatives who have been slammed by such a word and have, like Thurman's grandmother, resisted its perpetuation. May we be so bold to walk through the day within such an empowering freedom.



By your Word, O God, we come to face our own lives with an openness that invites us to question what is being said. Within those questions, our conversations with you are allowed to blossom and grown because we are not merely individuals reciting the word rather than living it. For you Word, we give you thanks and ask for your encouraging Spirit to open our minds and hearts to you alone. Amen.