Scripture Only Makes Sense on Sundays
a critique of literal-mindedness
According to Christian tradition, our relationship with God is, as Fr John Behr has put it, “in a broad sense, literary.”1 For that reason, to read the Scriptures literally—that is, unimaginatively, expecting the only meaning that matters to be unmistakable, to present itself to us unearned, without effort—is to refuse to read it on its own terms, the terms the Spirit has wisely set for us.
The problem is, many of us were conditioned to believe the ideal text has only a single, obviously meaning (somehow deeply meaningful for all peoples of all times and places); that the ideal interpretation is instantaneous and effortless (but also somehow life-changingly powerful); and that the ideal reader is unschooled, self-authorized, and certain (but also somehow knowledgeable, skilled, and humble). Inasmuch as our hearts and minds are controlled by these ideals, we simply will not be able to read the Scriptures as scripture.
To be literal-minded is death.
The saints are not literalists. Elie Wiesel learned this truth from his grandfather: “an objective Hasid is not a Hasid.”
The saints are not literalists and we ourselves will never become saints so long as we engage the sacred texts literally.
Literal-mindedness is a kind of stupidity, or, better, a kind of stupor, an insensibility or deadness of spirit brought about by the shape our lives have been forced to take by the pressures of the world we have made for ourselves through violence and irresponsibility, vanity and abuse, ingratitude and unchecked ambition, consumption and apathy.
The saints, set on fire by the vision of God, reveal alternative ways of living, ways lively and life-giving. They can live such lives because they do not live to themselves and they do not die to themselves. They are in the fullest sense worldly because they are in the truest sense churchly (and therefore not in the least churchy).
In a letter to a friend and collaborator, Franz Rosenzweig insisted that the meanings of sacred texts are revealed only in sacred contexts:
All the days of the year Balaam’s talking ass may be a mere fairy tale, but not on the Sabbath wherein this portion is read in the synagogue, when it speaks to me out of the open Torah. But if not a fairy tale, what then? I cannot say right now; if I should think about it today, when it is past, and try to say what it is, I should probably only utter the platitude that it is a fairy tale. But on that day, in that very hour, it is—well, certainly not a fairy tale, but that which is communicated to me, provided I am able to fulfill the command of the hour, namely, to open my ears.
Within the context of the liturgical reading of the Torah, “a unique order of reality is opened” in which the worshippers not only “imagine the ass speaking but even hear her speak…not only to Balaam but also to them!”2
What is true for Jews is true for Christians as well. Hence, as Rowan Williams says, Scripture “works” in the context of the Eucharist, the gathering of the church in prayers of praise and intercession:
The summons to the reader/hearer is to involvement in the Body of Christ, the agent of the Kingdom… and that Body is what is constituted and maintained by the breaking of bread and all that this means. For Paul… what is shown in the Eucharist is a community of interdependence and penitent self-awareness, discovering the dangers of partisan self-assertion or uncritical reproduction of the relations of power and status that prevail in the society around. So if Scripture is to be heard as summons or invitation before all else, this is what it is a summons to. And the reading and understanding of the text must be pursued in this light… Take Scripture out of this context of the invitation to sit at table with Jesus and to be incorporated into his labour and suffering for the Kingdom, and you will be treating Scripture as either simply an inspired supernatural guide for individual conduct or a piece of detached historical record—the typical exaggerations of Biblicist and liberal approaches respectively. For the former, the work of the Spirit is more or less restricted to the transformation of the particular believer; for the latter, the life of the community is where the Spirit is primarily to be heard and discerned, with Scripture an illuminating adjunct at certain points. But grasp Scripture as part of the form taken by the divine act of invitation that summons and establishes the community around the Lord's Table, and the Bible becomes coherent at a new level, as a text whose meaning is most centrally to do with the passage from rivalry and self-assertion and the enmity with God that is bound up with these to the community in which each, by the influx of the Spirit, takes responsibility for all, and all for each. The context of the Eucharist, in which everyone present is there simply because they are guests by the free generosity of the host, obliges a reading of Scripture in which what is decisive is always this shared dependence on God's initiative of welcome which removes pride and fear.3
What this means is that the Scriptures only make sense—the sense they’re meant to make, the sense that makes us sensitive to the Spirit, the sense that makes us sensible in the Spirit—on Sabbaths and Sundays.4
John Behr, “Scripture, the Gospel, and Orthodoxy”; available online: https://orthochristian.com/7163.html.
Steven Kepnes, Jewish Liturgical Reasoning (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), vii-viiii.
Rowan Williams, “The Bible Today: Reading and Hearing”; available online: http://rowanwilliams.archbishopofcanterbury.org/articles.php/2112/the-bible-today-reading-hearing-the-larkin-stuart-lecture.html.
I hope you’re not taking that literally…
Thank you for this. We have lost so much in "evangelical churches" by not focusing on the Eucharist during each Sunday. I long for this. I am asked to speak in churches but what can I offer when we are called to feast at the table of Christ, with Christ and to look to Christ.