CHAPTER 1
A House or a Home?
Do you remember any of those animated films where, when the humans are gone forthe night and the house is quiet, the toys, the clocks, and other inanimateobjects come to life and start talking to one another, start exploring thehouse, happy that with human beings out of the way they can be in relationshipwith one another, with the whole house at their beck and call? The Bible is abit like this.
Imagine, if you will, a house containing all the communities that produced thebiblical books. Some of these communities were deeply involved in prayer (thewriters of the Psalms and Lamentations), in worship, and in meditation, bothindividually and with one another. Some of these communities lifted up greatstories with lots of interesting characters: David, Jesus, Jacob, Moses, Joseph,Ruth, Esther, and so many others abound in the pages of the Bible, and in thepreserved memories of these communities. Then there are the communities thatpreserve and lift up the sayings of those who have had prophetic roles—Jeremiah,Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, to name but a few. Sometimes we find these sayings in booksof oracles, or in collections of letters or prayers, or in the gospels. Whereverwe find them, most of the biblical communities refer to and are shaped by thefoundational stories of our faith, remembering Abraham or Jesus or Moses orDavid or Solomon or Peter, or others who speak of past revelation and presentcommitments.
Finally, after a long period of time, we have a complete book, a biblical house,filled with many different testimonies to the power and pertinence of God fortheir lives. The house as we see it now is nicely arranged and ordered, withsome communities of witness given the larger rooms, some medium-sized, and somevery small. Those arrangements change, moreover, as generations of caretakerscome and go and the outside world changes around them. Some generations want andneed prophetic vision and guidance; they are drawn to Jeremiah, to Isaiah, andto some of the sayings of Jesus. Others need the stability of communal valuesand visions found in legal materials and the stories of establishing the cultthey find in Exodus, Ezekiel, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and many of thePauline writings.
And now the house is quiet, and the biblical communities are alone. What willthey say to each other? Will they even recognize one another? What stories andvalues do they share? What distinctive contributions do they bring to living inthat biblical house together?
Now imagine again a similar house containing the communities of the church, withall of their differences and all of their shared commitments, similarly orderedand arranged—with those arrangements changing even more frequently, perhaps,than in the biblical house. Like the biblical house, there are many differencesof history, culture, concepts of God, geography, politics. Where can and does itend? What do these folks share? How will they understand the particularity anddifference within their communities, which both unite and divide?
In one sense we live today in both of these houses, and we need to create theopportunity to explore our own faith and our relationship with others withinthese premises. Dialogue will be essential. Asking questions of why and how thebiblical communities of the Psalms and Job and Paul are related to ourcommunities today, and how we will live together and have communion with oneanother—all of these are the stuff of dialogue in those houses.
Imagine now that these two houses are, or could be, one. Imagine that the manycommunities of the Bible have as much desire and need to speak to us as we do tothem. If we choose to listen to those communities, eventually, in ourconversation, in our earnest agreements and disagreements, in our puzzlement andpleasant surprises, we all just might begin to explore the question of who andwhat brought us all together. And whether the house is dark and we have it allto ourselves, or whether it is open to the whole world with all its hustle andbustle, we might just learn more from one another about God. In so doing, thehouse we have shared with seeming strangers becomes a home where realconversation can occur.
DIFFERENCE IN THE BIBLE: A SKETCH
Difference permeates the Bible. Not only do all the biblical communities andbooks of the Bible differ, different points of view occur, even in the samebook. Consider, for example, these three proverbs:
Those who are greedy for unjust gain make troublefor their households,but those who hate bribes will live. (Proverbs 15:27)
A bribe is like a magic stone in the eyesof those who give it;wherever they turn they prosper. (Proverbs 17:8)
The wicked accept a concealed bribeto pervert the ways of justice. (Proverbs 17:23)
Here it seems clear that the communities that produced these proverbs had somevery different (and contradictory) opinions about bribes. We can find similardifferences in legal collections, in the prayers of the psalmists, in thestories about Moses, David, and Jesus, and in the prophetic books. It seems thatthe biblical witness is anything but uniform, anything but homogenous.
There are many reasons for differences and contradictions in the Bible. Time andhistory are certainly two of these because the writings that make up the Biblewere composed in a period stretching well over a thousand years, conservativelyestimated from the end of the second millennium BCE to the beginning of thefirst millennium CE. In this time period many different cultures with both localand international power struggles play an important role in the world ofbiblical communities. The biblical writings were composed both inside andoutside Israel and at times when Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, andRomans were in control. This formative period also witnesses to the developmentand evolution of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages with both Semitic andIndo-European roots.
On the other hand, many of the reasons for difference in the Bible stem from theparticular characteristics of the small but distinctive land of Israel and thepeculiar experiences of the people who live there. So, for example, thetopography of Israel makes transportation difficult and forces one to followcertain well-worn routes to get from top to bottom or side to side of a verysmall territory. This encourages regionalization and smaller social structures,such as the ancient Israelite tribes—each one of them with their own independentand different traditions. Even when the larger social organizations of Israeland Judah develop, the different traditions of the original tribes often live onin law, liturgy, and story. (Think of the many stories of patriarchs and tribespreserved in Genesis and Judges.) Finally, the rough-hewn character of the land,surrounded by the sea on the east, mountains in the north, and desert in thewest and south, creates polarities between the settled and the unsettled,between those who roam from one established area to another and those who putdown roots in one place. All of this contributes to the diversity we find in theBible.
The Bible has many different ways to talk about God—and about human beings.Consider, for example, the kind of relationship we have with God. Most wouldagree that this relationship depends upon obligation and faithfulness. But whoseobligation?
He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if youare able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be."(Genesis 15:5)
God said to Abraham, "As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and youroffspring after you throughout their generations.... Every male among you shall becircumcised." (Genesis 17:9–10)
In the first of these covenant texts, God is the one who promises much. AllAbraham needs to do is to live faithfully into that promise, given freely by Godwith no strings. God is the covenant partner who is bound by a promise. In thesecond covenant text, however, we find particular stipulations. Abraham'sobligations are much more specific in this covenant. These biblical pictures ofGod as a promise-giver with no strings and as one who exacts much in terms ofspecific obligations are quite different. They both contribute to ourcontemporary understanding of who God is and what a relationship with Godentails.
Biblical attitudes toward fundamental social structures like the monarchy alsodiverge dramatically. In 1 Samuel, after hearing the elders of Israel's demandfor a king, God says to Samuel, "They have not rejected you, but they haverejected me from being king over them" (1 Samuel 8:7). Here is a tradition thatis anti-monarchical. This community is hostile to kingship because it wants toreserve the role of king for God. Yet the second book of Samuel preserves a verydifferent tradition. God speaks to King David through the prophet Nathan:
When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your ancestors, I will raiseup your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body; and I willestablish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establishthe throne of his kingdom forever. (2 Samuel 7:12–13)
Here is a very positive picture of the monarchy and its role, establishing aparticular king and his family over Israel in perpetuity. We may account forthese differences in terms of particular traditions and particular places, butthat does not explain why they were finally kept together in one authoritativebook or what we are to do with them today. But far from creating confusion and alack of clarity for the people of ancient Israel, these theological and socialbiblical differences ultimately contributed to a unity in diversity strongerthan any one single perspective on God and the people could ever have produced.
FROM DIFFERENCE TO COMMUNION
Thus by its very nature the Bible seems to command us to move from the comfortand safety of our own particular perspectives to a place where, through dialoguewith the other, we embrace theological and social diversity. Such a movepromises transformation, taking us to a place where we can celebrate differenceand achieve communion.
There are a few roadblocks in our way. Instead seeing the Bible as a repositoryof important resources for addressing contemporary social and theologicalquestions together, we often use the different voices and perspectives of theBible to fight with one another, to divide, to attack, to put down. Will we, forexample, use the statements of Paul about sexual behavior in Romans to excludehomosexuals from full membership and participation in the church? Will we honorother statements of Paul in Galatians by building communities free of theboundaries and distinctions our society and our church have often imposed?Whether in a pulpit, a legislative session, a courtroom, a family home, or aclassroom, we often use the Bible to justify and authorize very differentopinions about critical issues of our day. In discussing the pros and cons ofslavery, social justice, mission, reform, retrenchment, war, or peace—in all ofthese the Bible provides normative visions and values. So the Bible has been andcan be either an instrument of separation or of communion.
Sometimes theological and social debates within the church are explained andjustified by appealing to our own cultural and regional differences: north andsouth, east and west, black and white. At the same time, as we have alreadyseen, the Bible itself also contains an incredible number of differences aboutGod, social organization, and appropriate behavior in community. Somehow thesedissimilar voices were bound into one body of scripture, put into one house toenrich one another and to create a home for the whole family of God, indeed thewhole world. In living into the church's often stated goal of moving fromdifference to communion, we can learn much from understanding how this actuallyhappened in the Bible.
The question I want to raise is this: how can the Bible become for us both amodel and a guide for dealing with difference in our communities? In order to dothis we will need to understand how disagreement and difference became diversityin the Bible, and how it found a home. That is the story of scripture and theprocess that created it, a process that is mandated for all in the church tocontinue. It is dialogue between text and community, interchange between oldwords and new experiences.
To engage in such a dialogue is in a very real sense to fight with the Bible!Rather than using the Bible as a weapon, or as ammunition in a war with theother, this fight is a struggle with the biblical tradition itself to understandand learn what God would have us do this day. Through it I hope we will findboth clearer direction for our churches and an increased ability to live withothers who are engaged in the same struggle but who come out at differentplaces—just like the communities represented in the Bible.
Biblical Precedents
The post-exilic period, which lasted from the late sixth century BCE to thesecond century of the common era, was a critical time in the history of thepeople of Israel, with many parallels to our present day. After many centuriesof independence, the kingdom of Israel was conquered by the Assyrians, as hadbeen announced by the eighth-century prophets. The people of Israel weredispersed throughout the Assyrian empire. A little over one century later, in586 BCE, the kingdom of Judah fell to the Babylonians. Jerusalem was capturedand destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar, and many of its inhabitants, especiallyartisans and others with special skills, were exiled to Babylon. A significantnumber remained in the land of Judah, however. The years that followed thedefeat, destruction, and exile of the kingdom of Judah were times of uncertaintyand unrest, of questioning and constructing identities, of conflict andpowerlessness, of dreams of restoration and promise. Explanations for defeat andexile ranged from the sin of Israel and Judah in turning away from God to simplybeing at the wrong place at the wrong time. A chasm deepened between the hopesof those in exile and of those left in the land of Israel, with several groupsproposing many different identities and missions for the people, with little orno consensus. Thus post-exilic Israel was in many ways a house divided.
The post-exilic period was also a time when the scriptures of the Hebrew Biblebegan to be shaped. The two first sections of the Hebrew Bible, Torah and theProphets, epitomized the character of Judaism at that time. Torah (Genesis,Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy) contained foundational stories andlaws for the community, wherever it was to be found. The Prophets contained boththe history of the people up to the conquest of Israel and Judah as well as acollection of prophetic sayings and writings stretching from the time of theeighth-century Israelite monarchy into the fifth century and perhaps later. Yes,the people of Israel lived in their land, but it was not under their control.Yes, they had leaders, but they no longer had a king or a state. Torah providedthem with the stories that affirmed their status and role as the people of Godand proclaimed the terms of their covenant with God. All of this gave them anidentity and a way to live faithfully into an uncertain future. The Hebrewprophets, like Jeremiah and Ezekiel, called the people back to the traditionalpromises and stipulations of Torah while at the same time promising newrevelations of God to the people:
A new heart I will give you, and a new spirit I will put within you; and I willremove from your body the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. I willput my spirit within you, and make you follow my statutes and be careful toobserve my ordinances. (Ezekiel 36:26–27)
Here the prophet Ezekiel announces that God must and will do somethingdramatically new. Only action on God's part will allow faithful obedience,finally, to the statutes and ordinances found in Torah.
Thus the hopes of the people in the post-exilic period reflected a tensionbetween the already and the not-yet, between reliance upon normative traditionsof the past ("statutes and ordinances") and the restoration and salvation anddeliverance that God promises for the future. Such a structure contains withinit an abiding tension between all our carefully developed plans and hopes and"the new" that God gracefully and unexpectedly gives us in the future—whichoften upsets those same plans and hopes!
This post-exilic tension also characterizes the contemporary church. We arecaught between the seeming clarity and certainty of our past (scripture andtradition) and the ever-changing and uncertain challenges and opportunitiesgiven to us daily. It was the genius of post-exilic Israel to keep in itsscriptures this tension between the old and the new, between the already-experiencedand the yet-to-be-known. From that time forward every biblicalcommunity would live in this tension; as we will see, often their biggestproblems came from efforts to erase it.
The post-exilic period is important for another reason, however. It was also thetime when biblical diversity became normative for the people. In answering thequestion of how to live in a world filled with the tension between the old andthe new, ancient Israel shaped scripture in a way that permanently reflectedthis tension and contained many ways to try to resolve it. The Writings, thethird section of the Hebrew Bible, contain many different ways to deal with theold and the new. It is an eclectic collection of stories (Ruth and Esther),prayers, songs, and poetry (Psalms, Lamentations, and the Song of Songs),history (Chronicles, Ezra, and Nehemiah), wisdom (Proverbs, Job, andEcclesiastes), and visionary material (Daniel). None of this material containedall the truth; all of it represented ways to move toward truth in a world filledwith uncertainty and division. There was no one way to be God's people, no oneway to interpret scripture, no one perspective on God, no one definitive story—butmany ways, many perspectives, and many stories.
