Photo by Aaron Burden
Bible Open to Psalms
Twenty-third Sunday after Pentecost October 28, 2018
Psalm 34:1-8
The weekend of October 19-20 marked celebration of the most joyous festival in the Jewish liturgical calendar: SHIMCHAT TORAH---literally, “the joy of the Torah.“
Congregations completed the annual reading of the Torah in Deuteronomy and then started the cycle all over again with with the first reading from Genesis.
On SHIMCHAT TORAH, Torah scrolls are removed from their places in the synagogue, then lifted high by the congregants as they dance and sing their way around the sanctuary. Finally the scrolls are paraded outside up and down nearby public streets.
Professor John Holbert of Perkins School of Theology described being part of the SHIMCHAT TORAH one year in Tiberius, Israel. He said he would never forget the wild joy of the people as they danced through the streets to their holy cemetery where the bodies of some of Judaism‘s most esteemed forebears rest in peace, including Moses Maimonides.
Dr. Holbert said that after seeing that joyous parade and all the gleeful dancing people, he would never again countenance thinking of the Torah as a burden that squeezes the joy out of life.
The Torah, the Psalms, the Law and the Prophets have all been given for our blessing.
In Palestinian synagogues long ago, rabbis would give their students honey so they would “taste and see“ and remember that learning is sweet.
I sought the Lord, and the Lord delivered me from all my fears...O taste and see that the Lord is good… (Psalm 34: 4, 8)
In the struggles in our denomination over sexuality, the Bible is often used extensively---and seems to bring not sweetness and light but bitterness and gloom. Why would any outsider want to join those who use their precious texts to condemn and exclude? We communicate that the Bible is a bludgeon, a brickbat not a blessing. What honest seeker needs that?
According to David Buttrick, early rabbis said the best way to think of the authority of the Bible was as a gift. What do we do with a gift? We unwrap it and play with it and enjoy it. Gifts are given not for our condemnation but our delight.
Of course, we are to bring reason, tradition and experience to our interpretaions of the Bible---and also expanding imaginations, multiple interpretations and our capacity for wonder.
Rabbi Alan Cooper has said that studying the Bible is like holding a gem up to the light and seeing many reflections and many refractions...Meanings are not superceded by augmentation. Scripture has seventy faces.“
May we loosen up and lighten up in our reading of the Bible. An honest encounter with the scriptures never reinforces self-righteousness or moral superiority. Rather we will find ourselves drawn into a dance with others who are also seeking to find their ways through the days of their lives. We‘re in this together. There will be delight. There will be joy.
The Rev. Bill Steward is a retired clergy member of the Iowa Annual Conference.