Demystifying the Bible:
Reading with Progressive Lenses

Fourth Sunday in Lent • March 1, 2020 Reading: Psalm 119:97, 101-107
(NRSV or The Inclusive Bible)
Pastor Jeff Wells

This morning, we are embarking on a new adventure. Yes! Today, and over the next four Sundays, we will be working toward demystifying the Bible. Admittedly, that is a big and complex goal and cannot address all of its aspects in five weeks, but we will make a start. And in the process, we will provide some new progressive lenses through which we might continue to hear, see, and be shaped by the writings contained in the Bible in fresh, imaginative ways. 

Next Sunday, Pastor Alexis will introduce us to hermeneutics. Wait – Herman who? No, her-me-neu-tics. For Bible scholarship, that term means the study of the general principles of biblical interpretation. And exegesis is the actual practice of critical interpretation of Biblical texts using a variety of methods. She will introduce us to a wide set of lenses including womanist, feminist, and libertionist methods of interpretation. On March 15, we will explore the “Tree of Life” metaphor in the Book of Revelation with Dr. Amy Meverden, a professor of New Testament at Union Theological Seminary. The following week, I will be back in the pulpit to explore with you how we can read scripture devotionally, for deep spiritual connection with God, while maintaining the integrity of our progressive interpretation. Finally, on March 29, Rev. Dr. Althea Spencer Miller will join us to explore how to interpret the Bible with an anti-colonialist lens. She is a professor of New Testament at Drew Theological School and a Minister in Residence here at the Church of the Village. This is going to be a fantastic series. So, don’t miss any of these Sundays! 

This is a great book! I love this book. Oh, wait – not that one. That’s just the CliffsNotes summary. Don’t read that one. Read this one. I have read, studied, and wrestled with this book for a long time. I have read every word of it at least once and much of it many times. It is full of love – and hate. Parts of it can be confusing, contradictory, or violent. It is also chock full of God’s love for humanity and all creation. It is full of love, grace, and healing. I don’t recommend reading it only by yourself. Because it is so subject to misinterpretation, this is a book best read in the company of others who are wrestling with its meaning. 

I said I love this book, but that’s not correct. In spite of appearances, this is not actually a book. It is a whole library. And, it was composed over hundreds of years. It includes stories, poetry, wisdom, and historicized narratives. This collection of writings records how diverse peoples, over time and in a variety of geographical and cultural settings, tried to make sense of their relationship with God, with one another, and with all that they could perceive around them. This library, or parts of it, have influenced Israelite, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim communities around the world for three thousand years.

How should we approach the Bible? As a progressive, radically-inclusive community, how can we, with love and integrity, understand the origin, authority, and interpretation of this anthology of writings we call the Bible?

Christians have long referred to the Bible as the “Word of God.” We hear that today in the passage from Psalm 119: “Oh, how I love your law!… Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” The Psalmist was referring to the Torah or “the Law,” contained in the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Remember that when the Psalms were written, that was the sacred text for the Israelites. The Hebrew Scriptures as we know them did not exist. There were other writings, of course, but none had the authority of the Torah. Until the Enlightenment, almost every Christian believed that all of the Bible originated with God. In fact, a very large proportion of Christians still do today. And both the Hebrew Scriptures provide them many warrants for this belief. In the Second Letter of Timothy we hear “All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.” But just because the Bible says something, does not mean it is true (!) or that the way we interpret it is settled for all time.

Okay, there’s no easy way to say this. I am just going to rip the bandaid off. The Bible is a human product. The Bible is not Divine, in the traditional sense. Yet, it contains the powerful record of generation upon generation of our spiritual ancestors in their seeking for God, in learning how to treat one another with love and justice, and in grasping the purpose and meaning of their lives. Biblical scholar Marcus Borg has written that the Bible,

“contains the voices of our spiritual ancestors in ancient Israel and early Christianity. It tells us about their experiences of God, their thoughts about God, their understandings of what life with God is about, their praise and prayers, their wisdom. We hear their voices, their witness and testimony. And [we hear] their limited understandings, their blindness and conventions, their desires for protection and vengeance against their enemies. It’s all there.” [1]

And every word of scripture was shaped by human beings’ evolving relationship with and understanding of the Divine. Christians today are part of that ongoing, evolving relationship. Certainly, many parts of the Bible were composed and shaped by the interaction of human authors with the Spirit of God and their experience of the Divine. Some of the writing are just plain harmful, patriarchal, oppressive, and dangerous. And much of the Bible is not literally or factually true. But, just because many of the stories, poems, historical narrative, and metaphors are not literally true, does not mean they do not convey profoundly true meaning for us. To view the Bible as literally true in every way actually undermines its richness and value.

But, if the Biblical library is not authored by God, then why should we give it authority in our lives and our community? I believe the Bible is authoritative because the church and Christian people have given it authority and have done so for centuries. We give it authority because we have claimed it as our story too. We struggle with it, but we also resonate with so much of it. It speaks to us and God speaks to us through it. We are called not to worship a book, but to love and be in relationship with God to which this book points. 

I consciously interpret the scriptures using progressive lenses. I need them to see well. I said “lenses” plural because I use more than one hermeneutical lens everytime I approach the Bible. Using progressive, inclusive, and justice-oriented lenses allows me to appropriate parts of the Bible in new ways. As I have studied and listened to voices of marginalized, formerly colonized, or oppressed peoples and their perspective on scripture, I learn to widen my own vision.

And don’t let anyone tell you there is something wrong with using these new-fangled lenses. The truth is there is no reading of the Bible and is not an interpretation. Everyone reads with an interpretive lens and usually with more than one, whether they recognize it or not. We must be attentive to not just what the Bible brings to us, but what we bring to it. In fact, the Bible itself gives us many examples of re-examination, re-interpretation, and revised understandings of God and God’s relationship with humanity. Even the law of the Torah was not unchanging. For example, the prophet Isaiah overturned the law excluding foreigners and the eunuchs from worshipping in the temple that was proclaimed at an earlier time in the Book of Deuteronomy. This is seen in Jesus own actions. The Gospel of Matthew quotes Jesus saying, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.” Yet, he was constanting re-interpreting their meaning and application and challenging religious authorities rule-bound rigidity around the sabbath, ritual purity, and other concerns. 

Moreover, the bible contains not one theology, but many theologies and understandings of God, our relationship with God, and how we are called to be with one another and the world we inhabit. The authors of the Biblical writings often disagree and contend with one another. They tell the same stories in different orders and with different facts. For those who see the Bible and one unified book, they have to either ignore these seeming contradictions, or explain them away. But seeing the Bible as a collection of writings arising out of very different historical, cultural, social, and political contexts, we can see why these disagreements exist. And doesn’t this very accurately reflect our own experience of all religions today? The writings in the Bible truly are our story. 

The Bible did not exist in its current form until long after Jesus. So remember that none of the authors of the Biblical writings wrote with the goal of being included in this library. We label this collection, the Canon. These writings were canonized.  They were the ones that were approved for inclusion in the final version. Of course, that means many other writings were lost or left out, including some we still value. And those decisions were made exclusively by men. So I think of the canon as both a gift and a curse. I cherish the Biblical writings, but we also need to expand our library. We need to include in that library writings of those whose voices have been silenced or discounted over the centuries in the pursuit of orthodoxy. We need to include authors who taught us about the Social Gospel. We need many volumes on the liberation theologies and biblical interpretations from Latin America, Africa, Asia, and from marginalized people in places that have been dominated by white Europeans or their descendents. We need to bring in the voices of feminists, womanists, indigenous peoples, etc. 

Although I do not see the Bible as God inspired in the evangelical sense, I do believe that God speaks to us through our grappling with the scriptures. I believe that the Word of God is not captured in or limited to any set of writings, but is eternal and speaks to us through all sorts of means: art, nature, literature, history, music, community, and sacred scriptures. So when we responded to the reading of the Psalm today with the words, “This is a Word of God’s Constant Guidance,” that was our attempt to capture in human language, something so much bigger than words. 

The Bible is endlessly “strange and new.” [2] We ought to be ready at all time to be surprised again by what it contains. We ought to embrace, with seriousness and also joy, the need to wrestle with the “witness and testimony of our spiritual ancestors.” We ought to relish the opportunity to approach it with openness to hearing something fresh each time we read it. And we should do this mainly not individually, but in community, so that we can test our understanding with others. Bible scholar Walter Brueggemann wrote: 

“Mostly, my continuing education has come through the writing and witness of people who are empowered by the [Bible] to live lives of courage, suffering and sacrifice, people who have found this book a source and energy for the fullness of true life lived unafraid.”

I think it is a privilege and a great responsibility to treat the Biblical writings as living documents that call us to grapple with traditions and yet also seek to interpret them in new ways, in new contexts, and for new generations of readers.

So, I echo the sentiment of Psalm 119. Oh, how I love the scriptures! I love the Biblical writings, not because they are the literal “Word of God,” but because in our continuing to grapple with their interpretation in new historical, cultural, economic, and social contexts, God continues to revealing Godself to us as the God of justice, grace, forgiveness, and most of all unconditional love. 

Copyright © 2019 by Jeff Wells
All rights reserved.

[1]  Marcus Borg, “What the Bible Is,” Progressive Christian website, January 22, 2014
[2] Walter Brueggemann quoting Karl Barth.

Recommended Resources:
Walter Bruggemann, “Biblical Authority: A Personal Reflection"

https://covnetpres.org/2000/11/03/biblical-authority-a-personal-reflection/
This is an excellent article on authority and interpretation. 
Bruggemann is Emeritus Professor of Old Testament, Columbia Theological Seminary

Marcus Borg, Reading the Bible Again For the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously But Not Literally (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2009)

Borg was a Biblical scholar, theologian, and key member of the “Historical Jesus” movement. He offers a cogent proposal for reading the Bible for the 21st century. He argues that the Bible is a human product and also a great “treasure in earthen vessels.”  

Miguel De la Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2002)

De la Torre is a scholar-activist and professor of social ethics and Latinx studies at Iliff School of Theology. This book examines how issues involving race, class, and gender influence our interpretation of the Bible.

Rob Bell, What Is the Bible?: How an Ancient Library of Poems, Letters, and Stories Can Transform the Way You Think and Feel About Everything (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2017)

Bell is a pastor from an Evangelical tradition, but has put a lot of distance between himself and conservative evangelical theology and Bible interpretation. His exploration of meaning in the scriptures is sophisticated, but very accessible and even fun. 

            201 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011               
212.243.5470