Engaging Scripture

When I packed for last week's trip to California, I pulled a couple of books off my "to read" pile and slipped them into the suitcase. I actually finished two of them, mostly on the flights to and from Orange County. It was during the flight back that I read Judith Kunst's The Burning Word: A Christian Encounter with Jewish Midrash. For a book of 150 pages, it is packed with lots of good information, ideas and exercises.

Midrash, writes Kunst in her first chapter, is "a Hebrew word meaning 'to search out.' " She continues

The Holy Scriptures abound with gaps, abrupt shifts, and odd syntax that puzzles, even confounds, any reader of scripture. Jewish Midrash views these troubling irregularities not as accidents or errors or cultural disparities to be passed over, but rather as deliberate invitations to grapple with God's revealed word--and by extension, to grapple with God himself.

Later she writes, "In Judaism, intimacy cannot be separated from argument, nor can reading or study be separated from community." This passage brought to mind a lecture I attended at a local synagogue a few years ago. The guest speaker was Dr. Burton Visotzky who had been one of the collaborators on Bill Moyers' Genesis series on PBS. During his lecture he said similar things.

It's not a received text unless it's debated. You have to go back and read the book with a partner, or two, or three... When we discuss it in community--that's when the revelatory process happens. The ability to hear God happens in the discussion and debate... When I pray, I talk to God; when I discuss, God talks to me.

Visotzky also said to us, "We read the Torah every year, but we are different every year, so we approach it differently; interpret it differently." And so are the commentators down through the ages. As Kunst points out

This intense communal conversation, anchored in Torah, isn't bounded by time or space. It spreads across generations, ethnicities, and languages: The dialogue between two hevrutot is mirrored on the page in front of them in blocks of Hebrew text arranged around each portion of Scripture, presenting commentary by rabbis from many different centuries.

Nor does everyone agree. Nor are answers found for every question. And every story and interpretation can raise even more questions.

"When the Torah was given at Sinai," says the Talmud, "it came with thirteen methods of interpretation, and forty-nine arguments proving that each item is correct and forty-nine arguments proving that it is not." These arguments and more have been carefully recorded down through the ages, but the Talmud rarely if ever declared one interpretation the right one.

Throughout the book Kunst also provides exercises, which she calls "Toward A Personal Practice." These are opportunities for the reader to engage in the process of midrash. Here is the first one:

Find the eighth chapter of Nehemiah in your Bible and read it out loud. Then consider three questions: What in the language seems strange to you? How might God be hiding in these words? If the verse is imagined to be the first comment in a two-way (or more) conversation, what response from you will keep it going?

I found the book challenging, affirming, humorous, and easy to read. The process of reading it helped me look a bit differently at the readings for a sermon I'm working on. It has also given me ideas for working with small groups around scripture.

Go. Read. Enjoy. Discuss. Debate. Argue. Listen. Engage.

Peace,
Jeffri