Scripture

Recently, on several occasions, I have been struck by the wording in the Prayer Book. It gives me pause when I go to pray for someone sick and the BCP starts talking about the person's sins. This is more easily understandable when praying for an adult, but what about an infant? What sins could this child have committed that would bring about physical ailments? There are other times during the service when the service says something that my brain ties to a previous conversation, I had with someone earlier in the week. Often, I perceive how this person might be hearing this, and it's not what I thought they needed to hear. Many of these times, it gives me a slight pause and maybe even causes me to stumble through the words, but I say them because I know I need to.

     We need to pray the words of the Book of Common Prayer because we are still learning; I am still learning. The BCP is filled with Scripture, it has been compiled by Godly priests and Bishops, and it has been handed down to us through generations as the trustworthy and common form of prayer and worship. If we disagree with it, perhaps, it is we who are in the wrong. We must have a hermeneutic of charity and humility when reading Scripture or the BCP. This way of reading places us under the authority of the Church and ultimately under the authority of God, allowing us to be formed and the means of grace to be worked within us.

     I picked up on an interesting observation when I was working as a chaplain in a hospital. No matter how good they are at their job, many chaplains are formed by their job. They see people dying so often that their pastoral response becomes more and more liberal. I think it is easy for chaplains to become universalists because it is a way of coping with the death they see and gives them an easier "pastoral" response. It, of course, doesn't help that the hospital has them talk in a specific way to avoid lawsuits. My point is, left to our own devices, it is easy to let what we think should be said to form and shape us even if it is wrong. 

     Origen of Alexandria talks about the difficult parts of Scripture being placed there so you have to perceive a more spiritual understanding. When we read something that doesn't make sense to us, or when we have a difficult time figuring out how to understand it in light of the rest of Scripture, it gives us pause. This pause is good because it should disrupt our ability to skim over--I say "should" because we are masters at skimming over Scripture. This halting of our reading often shows that there is an area that requires us to grow in our spiritual understanding. We must wrestle with the text, and in our wrestling, we will grow. We are not trying to explain away or get it to fit nicely into our understanding but rather, we are allowing it to conquer us.

     Does this mean that we should read uncritically? God forbid! Quite the opposite. If you are not reading with a discerning eye, if you are not actually paying attention to the text, then you will never ask the hard questions. And it is these difficult questions that place us in the path of godly formation. The question is, "Where is your heart at when you come to these difficulties?" In fact, this is the question for many of life's hardships, where is your heart? If we jettison our faith for hatred and anger, or to seem more intelligent by the world’s standards, then our conclusions will be hatred, anger, and the worldly consensus. But if by faith we seek understanding then we will come to a knowledge greater than ourselves because our starting point is humility.

Grace and Peace,

Fr. Aaron