And it ain't the Book of Discipline. The conversation that sticks most in my mind and heart this week was with the layman (a wonderful layman) who was our lay reader last Sunday. I did not use the lectionary last week, but chose as a part of speaking about the mothering love of God, to use Psalm 91. On Monday, this wonderful layman told me that he had a very hard time with that psalm, and reading it aloud, because it seemed to say that if you believe in God, then you will be protected...that your enemies will fall. He then told me and listed for me some historical cases where that did not happen. Instead of just listening and nodding, which some pastors near the end of their tenure might do, I opened my big mouth and first tried to state that ULTIMATELY we ARE protected by God's love--I even dared to explain some Benedicitine reading of the psalms, and how Kathleen Norris suggests we understand the enemy spoken about in so many as an INNER enemy, us fighting ourselves, etc, etc. He didn't buy it, and I felt that very familiar resentment I have felt that there are many leaders in the church here who are dismissive of specific scripture because it doesn't fit into what they believe is an acceptable understanding of who God is. I have failed to find a way to help folks to see that just because they don't understand the meaning of a scripture doesn't necessarilly mean that it doesn't have some meaning and something to say about who God is and thier own faith. I think Brueggemann and others talk about something called a canonical reading of scripture--that you simply take the bible as is, and then deal with the fact that there is a mystery involved that may require us to accept that there is a meaning there for us--not a literal meaning, which reduces the mystery out of it, but a meaning that requires us to go deeper into the mystery of God. I simply haven't found a way to get folks to see that just because they don't understand it, then it doens't have to be rejected. It is the modern understanding of faith that is the bigger issue--I don't understand how the resurrection can be true, therefore I reduce it to butterflies and ants that move rubber tree plants. One of the really promising things I hear in the emergent conversation is the invitation to trust of the mystery of it all, which requires at some point surrender. And I don't know how to get folks to go there who are overly cerebral in their faith--I've been trying for five years, and wish I had found some way to help that happen for more of the folks.
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