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Reflection for August 14, 2005

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For the past 20 years I have been meeting every Saturday AM (at a local restaurant) with a dozen older fellows like myself from several mainstream Christian denominations to read and discuss the Bible randomly and informally. The group had been meeting long before I ever joined it, so that many of its members have long since graduated to a celestial restaurant where, under the more direct guidance of the Holy Spirit, they find the Bible to be even more delightfully complex than they did here on earth. I go because I never come away without some new insight.

For instance, last week a fellow remarked how quick we were as fathers to "get on our kid's case" when he or she misbehaved; but how now as grandfathers we are ever so understanding and even play the advocate on behalf of our kid's children! And I thought: golly, that pretty much sums up the relationship of the Old to the New Testament, doesn't it. The God of the Old Testament relates to us as a father who seems quick "to get on our case" when we misbehave while the God of the New Testament relates to us more like a grandfather, full of grace and empathy. This insight almost makes me want to change the way I say the Our Father to "Our Grandfather who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name" and thereby enjoy the real impact of God's essential goodness and favor when I pray.

But that's not all I took away from last Saturday's meeting. There was also the experience of the 3rd chapter of the Letter of St. James which deals with the human tongue in metaphors worthy of Shakespeare himself. In this St. James was not original. The Wisdom books of the Old Testament offer many a proverb about badmouthing. For instance, "A blow from a whip raises a welt but a blow from the tongue smashes bones" and "Like a glazed finish on earthenware are smooth lips with a wicked heart." But listen to St. James: "If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we also guide their whole bodies. It is the same with ships; even though they are so large and driven by fierce winds, they are steered by a very small rudder wherever the pilot's inclination wishes. In the same way the tongue is a small member and yet has great pretensions."

Or again, "Consider how small a fire can set a huge forest ablaze. The tongue is also a fire." And again, "Every kind of beast and bird . . . can be tamed . . . but no human being can tame the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison. Does a spring gush forth from the same opening both pure and brackish water? Can a fig tree produce olives or a grapevine figs? Neither can salt water yield fresh. Yet with our tongue we bless the Lord and with it we curse human beings who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing."

How much of the Babel we live in today is due to the unbridled tongue so evident in the adversarial discourse of the media, in political rhetoric, punk lyrics, many a letter to the editor and everyday gossip? It makes you long for that overdue alternative way of speaking described in a poem by Anne Porter, which goes: "There was a church in Umbria, Little Portion, / Already old eight hundred years ago. / It was abandoned and in disrepair / But it was called St. Mary of the Angels / For it was known to be the haunt of angels. / Often at night the country people / Could hear them singing there. // What was it like, to listen to the angels, / To hear those mountain-fresh, those simple voices / Poured out on the bare stones of Little Portion . . .? / No one has told us. / Perhaps it needs another language / That we have still to learn, / An altogether different language."

-- Geoff Wood