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miriam bier – texts in conversation

Dec 6th, 2011
by Miriam Bier.
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One of the things I’ve enjoyed about going along to an Anglican church this year is knowing that in every service, every week, we’ll hear from the breadth of Scripture before anyone even gets up to preach. There’s always a Psalm, an Old Testament reading, an epistle, and then the capstone, a Gospel reading. Every single week, witness to Christ from the full reach of Scripture is read out in church.

Well that’s not entirely true. As Andrea MacDougall pointed out in an earlier post, the lectionary is censored, with all the “bad” bits of the Bible painted out. But the idea is there, all the same. The scope and the spectrum of Scripture are canvassed widely, every single Sunday.

For the preacher, then, it seems like there is plenty of biblical fodder from which to choose. Now, in the church I currently go to, the sermons seem to focus primarily on the Gospel readings – and rightly so, I suspect. Sometimes the collection of texts drawn upon seem to have no obvious connection, and not even a less-than obvious connection, in cases. It’s much more straightforward, and wiser perhaps to go with the Gospel presentation!

But it gets me to thinking: what might it look like to preach, not just one text, but a number of texts in conversation? To see how the Old Testament reading feeds in to the New, or how the Gospel might address the sentiments of a Psalm, or some other such conversation?

Too hard, you might say; it’s difficult enough squeezing a message out of single biblical passage! But I reckon there are conversations to be had, lying latent in the biblical text, that might be well worth exploring with our congregations.

Sometimes the connections might seem obvious. Coming up to Christmas, at least, there are all sorts of prophetic sources that are drawn upon to make sense of this coming of Jesus. Sources, it’s fair to say, that did not have Jesus in mind to start with. Just think of Isaiah 9:6-7. And when Paul draws on the Scriptures of his tradition, our Old Testament, there’s an evident conversation going on within his recontextualisation.

But what other biblical conversations might be worth having? This Bible we preach speaks with more than one tone and timbre. What might it look like to purposefully draw on more than one of those voices and observe the way they interrelate?

What do you think?

miriam bier – handle with care

May 9th, 2011
by Miriam Bier.
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I believe in biblical preaching. I believe, I think, in biblical preaching from the entire Bible. I believe that God can, and does, in some mysterious manner, Speak through Scripture and its faithful exposition.

And yet, there is all sorts of muck in there that – perhaps appropriately? – seldom rates a mention in weekly sermons. War, rape, genocide, discrimination, vengeance – the whole gamut of destructive human and divine behaviour cuts a swathe through our Bible. This is particularly so in the Testament we evangelicals call “Old” but still – in theory, at least – affirm as an essential part of our sacred book. And so we politely put these texts aside, figuring that they are simply too hard to handle.

Andrea McDougall has recently picked up on this in her observations of the “censoring” of lectionary readings. The rejected passages she mentions are Psalm 58 and parts of Psalm 137. These and other challenging passages – those that call for vengeance, those that advocate bloody genocide in God’s name, those that degrade women or others – are all examples of passages I have dubbed the “handle with care” texts.

They are texts that are uncomfortable (perhaps even dangerous?) because they are so foreign to our understandings of Jesus and his message from the Gospels and from Christian theology. They threaten to challenge what we thought about God and what we thought about humanity. But they, too, appear in our Book. How, then, might such “handle with care” texts be carefully handled in faithful preaching and exposition?

A friend of mine once preached on Ezekiel 16, a chapter that is full of explicit sexual imagery and perversion. He warned his congregation the week before, that it would be “Adults Only,” and contain content that “some listeners might find disturbing.” Is this an appropriate approach?

When I preach on Lamentations, a book that often portrays God in a less-than-flattering light, I leave space for response and discussion. I am careful not to decree, but to ask questions of the text and of the congregation. Is this an appropriate approach?

Conversely, might it sometimes be more appropriate to take a stand against the text? To state unequivocally that actually, this kind of conduct – vengeance, genocide, discrimination – though seemingly sanctioned in sacred text, is NOT, in this day and age, okay?

Or perhaps, as the lectionary has done, it would be more appropriate to set these difficult texts aside. Given so little time on a Sunday morning in which to encourage and equip congregations for their working weeks, why dwell on a “handle with care” text anyway? Why look at things that are disturbed and disturbing? Why preach something that requires so much extra sensitivity when there are plenty of positive, uplifting, and purposeful passages from which to choose?

But what are the perils of neglecting a Judges 19, a Psalm 137, a Lamentations 2?

Perhaps the Bible doesn’t just/always describe/prescribe life as it should be; but also as it actually is. Often broken; sometimes hoping.

Perhaps it presents us with problematic, “handle with care” texts because life is, for most us at least some of the time, problematic.

Perhaps the raw emotion and inner darkness of a “handle with care” text might connect with people in their own times of darkness, indicating that this darkness, too, is under the care and concern of the God of the text.

Might “handle with care” texts, perhaps, speak something of the reality of God-Who-Is, into the reality of situations that Are?

I believe in biblical preaching. I believe, I think,
in biblical preaching from the entire Bible. I believe that “handle with care” texts, along with the more obviously “useful” bits of the Bible, might also be sites from which God may Speak.

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Miriam is a beginning scholar, a sometimes preacher, and a constant writer; for the moment mostly on Lamentations (her PhD thesis). She’s also an excellent babysitter and a passionate puddingologist.