BIBLE 101, Part 3: Reading the Bible as Story

Deuteronomy 26:1-10a; Luke 14:1-24

June 21, 2009 – Rev. Jerry Duggins

Were Adam and Eve originally created from the dust of the earth as a single being and only later separated into male and female as Genesis 2 tells us? Or were they from the beginning male and female, each made in the image of God as Genesis 1 tells us? Was Jesus’ birth celebrated by wise men from the East as recorded by Matthew or by shepherds as Luke tells it? Were Mary and Joseph already residents of Bethlehem at the time of Jesus’ birth and later move to Nazareth as Matthew tells it? Or did a census bring them from Nazareth to Bethlehem for the birth as in Luke’s version? Did the holy family flee to Egypt or simply return home to Nazareth?

The Bible tells a lot of stories, and occasionally tells the same story in different ways. In fact some critics of the Bible take this “telling stories” in its euphemistic sense of “telling lies.” Certainly many of the apparent contradictions can be explained in terms of different writers emphasizing different parts of the story, but not all of them. Even where there are no contradictions, the Bible does misrepresent the “facts.” How often it does so is difficult, if not impossible to say.

I mention this in beginning this morning because I believe that our obsession with facts frequently gets in the way of hearing the truths within the Bible. Instead of asking why the story is told this way, some perform all kinds of mental gymnastics to explain away the contradiction and in doing so cover up the truth that speaks to our lives.

The concern for consistency throughout the Bible has been formalized in the doctrine of the inerrancy of scripture and it is a doctrine that distracts us from hearing the truths behind biblical stories and in one sense disguises the very nature of the Bible. It is time for the church to “get over” this compulsion to make the Bible a perfect book that reflects a perfect God. Such a book and such a God have little to say to imperfect people.

But let us be fair to fundamentalists. They did not invent this doctrine in a vacuum, but in reaction to a scathing attack on the Bible beginning in the 17^th century from liberals, who were no less obsessed by facts and consistencies. Reimarus, Straus (David not Johann or Levi), and other scholars claimed that the Bible couldn’t be true because of the internal contradictions, the historical and scientific errors, in short because it got a lot of facts wrong. Eventually liberals became less strident about these contradictions and toward the end of the 19^th century began working toward reading the Bible in its historical context. Archaeology began to have a place in biblical criticism. Interpretive tools such as form criticism, redaction criticism and canonical criticism began to flourish, and most of it rooted in what came to be called the historical-critical method. It wasn’t entirely about recovering the facts behind the Bible, but in its most extreme proponents, it could hide the message of the Bible as well as any inerrantist. And on one level, it too, represented a denial of the very nature of the Bible.

Take the two creation stories at the beginning of Genesis. If we look at these texts from the perspective of the scientist, we can save them if we give them a metaphorical reading, seeing each day of creation as representing many years or thinking of the dust as the building blocks of life. Neither story corresponds very well with the facts of life as science has come to know it. Indeed, some scientists reject the Bible because they see it as rejecting the theory of evolution (though expecting it to comment on a theory developed 2000 years later seems like asking a bit much).

If we look at these stories from the perspective of the inerrantist, we would be inclined to see the story of creation from dust as a more detailed description of the Genesis 1 version. In either case we miss the balance intended by the two stories. The first story emphasizes the bond between God and humanity, and highlights the qualities of men and women being united in God. Both reflect the character of God in life. The second story balances the first by emphasizing the bond between humanity and the earth, and highlights the separateness of men and women. The two stories together remind us of our connection to both God and the earth, an observation and a theme that runs throughout the Bible. Chapter three of Genesis will remind us of our tendency to forget both of these truths. We get this if we read them as story.

The Bible is neither fact nor fiction, though it contains both. Its content and nature reflect the content and nature of life. As we tell stories to make sense of life, so the Bible tells stories to elucidate and interpret life’s meaning. The Bible contains all the ambiguities and uncertainties that we experience in life. There are within its pages stories: stories about families, communities and nations, travel stories, love stories, war stories, funny stories, lost and found stories. It has drama, adventure, romance, tragedy and comedy. There is Jonah, the reluctant prophet, Isaac the foolish patriarch and Balaam with his talking donkey. Even in Job, a book about suffering, there are his friends who are supposedly wise, yet talk on for chapters, something a wise man would never do. In all this the Bible tells the human story alongside the story of God.

It’s not that facts don’t matter, that science is irrelevant, or that history can’t be unearthed in the pages of the Bible, but matters such as these really address academic questions, not the burning questions on our hearts. The Bible is through and through, from beginning to end a book of stories. Even when a story isn’t being told, there’s a story assumed, hidden beneath the text. Given this truth about the Bible, it’s surprising that only recently have biblical scholars developed interpretive methods related to the rhetoric and narrative flow of a text.

So, when you read your Bible, read it not as a textbook, but as a story. Read all of it as story. It doesn’t matter that Noah couldn’t possibly have gathered two of every animal throughout the earth. There’s a truth in the story. Ask not, “Could it really have happened this way?” but “Why is it told this way? What point is the story teller trying to make?” Ask, “Where am I in the story? Are there similar stories elsewhere in the Bible? In my life?” Ask, “What are the issues the characters are dealing with? Where is the tension? Is there a resolution?” Ask, “What is the story saying about people? About society? About God?”

For texts that aren’t in story form, you may want to ask, “What’s the story behind the text?”

There are multiple stories in and behind both texts that we read earlier. There is a completely accidental though not surprising connection between the texts in that both concern themselves with food; accidental because I did not intend to pick out two food stories to talk about, but not surprising because the Bible does seem to have a fascination with stories involving food. Having pointed this out, let me remind us that the Bible is neither a cook book nor a diet guide, though it may have something to say about healthy eating. No, food gets a lot of mention because food is not just essential for life, but provides the occasion for gathering in community and forms the context for how we relate to one another both as individuals and in groups. We use food to say who our friends are, and who are not. We use food to exercise power over others and as a claim to a certain kind of social status. We’ll see these things more in the second story.

The story of Deuteronomy is set in the context of the time when the people of Israel, descendents of Abraham and Sarah, are about to enter the “promised land.” Chapter 26 offers instructions for what the people are to do after they take possession of the land and the harvest comes in. It basically introduces a ritual that is somewhat like our saying grace before meals, except this takes place before an entire season, not a single meal. It is a way of acknowledging God’s provision for our sustenance.

As a ritual, it may seem rather routine, but the story within the routine is riveting, capturing the immense importance of this event for the people. As they bring their offering of first fruits before the altar they begin by saying, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….” This is Abraham. This short phrase reminds them that Abraham, from a settled existence, had been called to leave his home in Ur and travel to a land he didn’t know. He spent his whole life wandering that land, the land which his descendents were about to enter. This word “wandering” reminds them that they too had spent the last forty years wandering a wilderness.

Why did Abraham leave the peace and security of home to wander about, living in tents? In hearing the call of God to leave, did he have the sense that there was more to life than the comforts of home? We aren’t told, but isn’t it a powerful part of the story that here the people are poised to enter the land in which Abraham wandered and to make a home of it? To put food on the table that grew from their own fields: what a powerful feeling that must have been to a people who had never known a home!

This ritual celebrates homecoming, but it also reminds them what they found away from home, what they found in the wilderness. Away from home, Abraham found a potent faith. He found that God could and would bless him even in his old age. Away from home, in the wilderness, his descendants encountered a God who could do mighty wonders, who would listen to their cries of distress, rescue them from their taskmasters, and feed them in the desert.

There are many stories of leave-taking and home-coming in the Bible. There are stories of wilderness wanderings. There’s probably about as much history in them as in our own “family stories.” But then we don’t tell these stories to remember what happened. We tell them to remember who we are.

We have many stories of leave-taking, home-coming and wilderness wanderings in our lives and communities. When we read the Bible, the trick is to find the points of intersection. There is a danger of reading into the Bible what we want it to say, so there are some cautions to follow; but mostly some honesty and integrity about one’s own life will steer a person clear of the major pitfalls.

Two questions strike me as fundamental in our reading of scripture: the first, “What’s the story being told here?” and the second, “What’s that story got to do with the story I’m currently writing with my life?”

Look at this series of stories from Luke 14. The matter couldn’t be more straightforward. In the first Jesus heals a man after having a discussion about whether it’s lawful to heal on the Sabbath or not. Clearly, the people of the house where Jesus has gone for supper regard this practice as questionable. Rules have become more important than the welfare of others. Do we not in our gatherings have a way we do things? What would we do when faced with the choice between following the rules and lending assistance? The right decision seems obvious, but is it always so with our sacred rules?

In the second story Jesus notices people taking places of honor at the table and he tells a story about two people, one overestimating his position in the gathering and one underestimating his position. We may not be able to identify with the story as he describes it, but surely we know people who have done these things. Indeed, we have sometimes overestimated our importance and other times underestimated it. There are some personal stories there, I’m sure. But we shouldn’t forget the larger story here, that Jesus is having dinner with the religious leaders of his day. This problem of arrogance and humility seems particularly appropriate within the religious communities of our world.

But these two stories are only lead-ins for the main event: a banquet in the kingdom of God. It seems that those who “have” are not interested in attending this silly old banquet, so the master vows to fill it with the poor, the lame, the crippled and the blind, and worse than this, to fill it with commoners, those who spend their time in the roads and lanes.

This story is called a parable and Jesus told a lot of them. They are in one sense entirely fictional and yet his audience can plainly recognize themselves in the story, and for the most part, we too recognize ourselves. But again reading parables requires honesty with oneself. We are sometimes apt to forget, that as proper church folk, our place is among the Pharisees, not the poor and the lame. We are the ones who know the rules and abide by them. We criticize others who flaut them or are just ignorant of them. We know ourselves to be headed for the kingdom - we are, after all, the church, the body of Christ, the provisional kingdom of God on earth, if you will. We take the seats of honor and tell the needy that they can wait a day. What’s one day, really?

There are stories that we could tell about our own church, our own dinners. What if we actually entertained Jesus at one of them? What would he have to say to us? What story would he tell? Yes, there are stories of overestimating our worth, of exaggerating the value of the way we do things. There are stories where the distractions of life have prevented our attendance to the things of God. They are as different and as many as the number of people who have gathered here over the years.

That is why we have to ask: “What does this story have to do with the story I’m currently writing with my life?” Whose story line will you follow when you finish with the text? Will you hear the challenge to the Pharisees and consider a different line? Can we return to our roots and remember that once we were the poor, the blind and the lame? Can we remember that once we cried to God from our distress and God answered? Can we remember that we came from wandering in the wilderness with no place to rest our head, no food to place on our table? That story fills the Bible, and is part and parcel of our lives; but can we remember to tell it? Can we remember to offer to God the first fruits of our labor from the ground that God has given us?

We are inextricably and ineffably bound to God and to one another. That’s the story told by the Bible, cover to cover; and it’s the story in our lives. Reading the Bible is all about getting those stories lined up properly. It’s the task in which many scholars try to assist us, but it is a task to which we are called with or without their help. The people of the Bible struggled to understand the presence of God in their lives. They could not put it into some philosophical system. They had no scientific formulas, nor the tools of the modern historian. All they could do was tell stories. Yes, they developed laws and proverbs and teachings and sayings; but even these were and are about the stories. If there is anything in the Bible that is timeless, it is the stories. Those who take an interest in them and in their own story will find much food for thought, or perhaps I should say, food to live by. Amen.