Scripture and Prayer

I write today in response to a query from a good friend about my purpose in offering a Bible study on scripture and homosexuality (in particular) and about my overall understanding of the place of scripture in spiritual discernment, vis-a-vis the many other ways spiritual seekers experience the presence and guidance of the Divine. Joy puts it best when she summarizes that scripture and prayer (in words and in action) are profoundly related and necessary to each other, both in confirming and in conforming (transforming) human experience of the divine.

As an ordained pastor, I am accountable to scriptural authority - but the interpretive latitude of that mandate embraces tradition, reason, and experience in what amounts to an understanding of ongoing inspiration, at least in practice (if not officially). Of course, in the church, the latitude is considerably more vast - given what many pundits call scriptural illiteracy in the church (among laity and clergy, to be blunt). That illiteracy accounts for our flocking around such spurious projects as "The Prayer of Jabez" or "Your Best Life Now".

As I continue to grow in faith, especially in the wake of Divinity School, I experience scripture in the way I have been taught that an icon functions in prayer, as a spiritual catalyst or window through which we can (though by no means always do) experience greater clarity of understanding of God's presence, will and Way. I have come to understand that scriptural authority is not inherent in itself, but lies in its appropriation in the faith community that gathers around it to confirm their experience of the Holy in every generation and to reinforce the Spirit's call to live for God and others.

Different people will understand scriptural authority (and it's place in Christian discernment) in different ways - as the scriptures themselves amply attest. My purpose in offering an examination of scriptural passages traditionally used in the church to justify discrimination and abuse of homosexual persons is to demonstrate one way to resolve an apparent conflict between scriptural discernment (an apparent divine justification of punishment of homosexual people) and human experience (the fruit of faithfulness and love expressed in the lives of homosexual persons). I do not believe there is any conflict - traditional interpretations of scripture notwithstanding.

I am well aware that there may be no receptive audience for what I have to say. On the one hand, those Christians who hold to a more traditional (they might claim that it is more "literal") understanding of scriptural interpretation and authority certainly argue that my interpretation is de facto liberal revisionism in order to reconcile scripture to the higher authority (for me, they might argue) of human reason and experience. On the other hand, someone who holds a far more nuanced understanding of scriptural authority and interpetation might see my project as an anachronistic gloss on a hopelessly time-bound document that has little contemporary relevance either for religious or philosophical seekers of Truth. I prayed long and hard about scrapping the entire project for those reasons. But in the end, I felt I needed to speak my mind, not so much for the defense of scriptural authority, but as a testimony and thanksgiving of how scripture functions in my life as a means of discernment and experience of the reality of the divine in the human community (past and present).

Given my profession as a scholar of scripture and a theologian, I suppose my passion for this project should come as no surprise. I grew up in a tradition that valued scripture as the sine qua non of spiritual discernment, and I continue to experience God's presence in it's profound testimony. Though I no longer understand scriptural inspiration in a magical way (i.e., divine dictation), I value more than I can say the power of scripture to draw me into conversation with a community that spans six millennia and more of companions in this spiritual journey that is life. These include nomads, prophets, poets, kings, beggars, lepers, messiahs, disciples, governors, soldiers, revolutionaries, farmers and fishers, shepherds, prostitutes, children and their parents. They are not dead to me. Their testimony (both implicit and "literal") interprets my life and experience just as I am compelled to interpret its mysterious meanings (sometimes a different facet with each fresh reading), and calls me far beyond the boundaries of myself - to experience something that begins to take the shape of what we (too casually, more often than not) refer to as God.

I am a student of literature, and the scriptures are certainly great literature. But I have inherited, for better or worse, a tradition of interpretation and a community that has gathered and gathered around this collection (canon) as a vessel for understanding God's ways among the human community. Their relevance or authority in every generation comes from our engagement not so much with the words but with the community that gathered around those words in many ages and times. We ratify their authority and ability to "lead us into all Truth" not a priori, because they are the Holy writings, but because more and more of us experience their power to interpret our experience (of prayer and of life) as related by love to one another and to God. For some, this happens on a surface level that I am tempted to dismiss as naive and immature. At moments of better clarity, I realize that even in this apparent disparity, God's grace meets each of us at our point of need and receptivity.