Thursday 20 December 2007

To prevent an extra long quote yesterday, I'm simply continuing the thought with today's piece by Brian Blount.



So the words his and him become just as important as the words justification and cross. Mess with either one and you're messing equally with the faith. So the words "slaves obey your masters" or "women be silent in church" must be equal to the words "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers and sisters, are liars." So the words "their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another" become as important as "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is not longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus". Every word, no matter how it's tied to its context, must be the last word, or faith itself is somehow challenged.

There must be a way to look at Scripture and make some decisions about what is now the living word among us. We must be able to take a look at the whole story of God's faithfulness and the life it created within a world like ours where divisions rule and there is always a scapegoat on which we can throw our problems and fears. We will still wrestle with some passages. In fact I would pray that we would wrestle. It is in the conversations and dialogues that we may be able to say we give more weight to one passage over another. As Blount suggests, there will be those words that are dead for us. Then again, there will those words that are living and because of that create new life within the realm of God's gracious Reign. Not every word is as important as another. The Scripture is not a book of potions that must be said correctly or it doesn't work for us. And yet, from those living words, people in every time are introduced to life beyond our wants and demands. A living word continues to crack us open to both receive this blessed story of our God in all God's faithfulness and then to have that living word come to life among us.

Connection: The next time you look at Scripture, what is the living word you can hear...what is the Good News that liberates, forgives, renews, recreates? Then again...what sounds and appears to be quite dead for us today.

Living Word, the breath of your Spirit shakes us. We hear it and we are encountered by life that is so rich it is like something new and grand and tremendously healing. Guide us so that we may be fed by this word that brings life. Amen.