Category Archives: Poetry
How I read the Bible
The Bible is not a flat book. It’s all God’s word, but every verse is not equal to every other verse. Love your neighbor is more important than don’t eat shrimp.
I’ve heard many people say, “I don’t interpret the Bible, I just read it.” I may well have said it myself. But, that’s simply not possible. All of us read through the lens of who we are and what we’ve experienced.
We all have a perspective. Everything we read or hear comes to us through the filter of our background, influences, preconceptions, and worldview.
I have to listen deeply when I read scripture or hear a sermon or lecture. When it comes to the Bible, I’m learning to ask questions – How do we know that’s true? What’s the context of this passage? What kind of literature is this? To whom was it originally written? What do I know about them? How would they have read and understood this text? How does this passage point me to Jesus? How am I to apply this passage in my life? What do a wide variety of commentators say about this passage?
When I scan the collection of books in my library, I notice a commonality. The majority of commentaries and books on Christian living were written by affluent heterosexual men of northern European decent. That’s because those were the only people who had the means to gain the education, the time to write books, and the connections to get them published. It’s not that there was necessarily any overt plan to exclude others, nor any conscious racism. Nevertheless, as a result, the only voices available all shared the same perspective. I never thought to ask how a biblical text might look through the eyes of a Native American, a descendant of African slaves, or a woman.
Moreover, there’s the danger of reading our favorite theological position into the text. The original authors knew nothing of Calvinism, Arminianism, Catholicism, or Pentecostalism.
Over the last decade or so, I’ve made a conscious effort to expose my mind to brilliant scholars from widely diverse backgrounds. The result is amazing. When the rains fell on the rich soils of the northern plains, the farmers in my congregation used to say you could hear the corn growing. I can almost hear myself growing spiritually, emotionally, and intellectually because I’m listening to voices across the ethnic, economic, gender, cultural, political, social, and theological spectra. Diversity is a vital divine gift. I’m trying to learn to listen to and learn from everyone I meet.
But then, how does one sort out the true from the false?
We have to start with who God is. God is love. Jesus is God incarnate, God in human flesh. God is exactly like Jesus. There is nothing unchristlike in God. We have an amazing and historically accurate record of what Jesus spoke and did.
When reading the Bible, I try to filter the text through Jesus, through the loving incarnate God. I’m learning to read the Bible with a cruciform hermeneutic, to look at every text in light of the cross.
I read the Bible this way because Jesus said to. All scripture is divinely inspired, and all scripture points to Jesus. Jesus challenged the religious scholars: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me,” (John 5:39)
Jesus changed everything on the cross. All evil was absorbed and obliterated. Perfect self-sacrificing, enemy-forgiving love conquered sin and satan.
Eternal life is not in reading the Bible. It is in Jesus. The Bible points us to the true, eternal, infallible Word of God, whose name is Jesus. Every passage in the Old Testament bears witness about Jesus. The Gospels are the stories of the life of Jesus. The rest of the New Testament points us back to Jesus. What does this passage mean in light of the cross? How can I see the love of God behind every Bible passage?
Doing so takes a great deal of deconstruction. I’m learning to recognize and set aside my biases, to acknowledge my natural lenses. I’ve dispensed with a lot of dogma.
And, I try to be humble – to keep an attitude of teachableness, of recognition that I have a lot to learn, and some of what I think is true may need adjusting.
An Outpouring of the Spirit
Only the most skilled
Clamp on their ice-spikes and
Venture to the inaccessible heights of
The Himalayans, but even they are
Unaware that far beneath the ice and
Snow on which they climb lie
Granite fissures that slowly sip the
Pure snow being gently warmed by
Molten fires miles below.
Just a trickle of pristine water,
Clearer than the clearest crystal,
Finds it’s kind deep inside the
Towering peaks and forms a
Rivulet that bubbles to the
Surface thousands of feet
Below the crest to form a
Perfect untainted mountain spring.
Millions of years, glaciers, snows, rains, and winds
Carved the crevice that separates the
Singular spring into two.
One falls violently. The other with grace.
Religion
One becomes angry as it absorbs
Man’s pollutants from soil and air.
It fights and rages against the
Injustice, ripping trees and boulders,
Stirring sands, campsites, and trash
Until the dam.
But it is not placid, nor will it surrender
To the dullness of the choking reservoir.
The bitterness stirs deep within until,
Aided by torrential rains sent by
Furious gods, it rips and explodes the
Concrete wall and ferociously takes
Revenge on downstream towns
Inhabited by the species that
Polluted its ancestors.
It is at war.
The Way
High above, its sister took a different path.
Unobtrusive, it winds its unsullied water
Along gentle paths dotted with
Kindly sprays of quiet falls
Through alpine flowers where
Fawns and lambs quench their
Thirst, bulbul and monal dance,
Home to mahseer, baby rabbits,
Red panda, tahr, snow leopard and
Snow partridge. Warmed by thermal
Features below and summer sun above,
It softly cascades into a transparent
Pool where naked lovers play.
Jesus Wept
Tears
Under skies brushed with
Shades of white and grey the
Yellow-rumped warbler sings a
Song of rebirth as cherry-blossom
Petals float past bluebirds and
Goldfinch taking nourishment from
Offerings displayed on red-buds
Concentric circles formed by
Raindrops push white and pink
Segments of corolla to the edges of a
Verdant ostracod universe where the
Untrained eye imagines a
Mechanistic world where blood-oil
Consequentialism triumphs
Religion honors the wealthy and
Powerful by justifying, even
Deifying, the dominant while
Babies being crushed by war machines
Elicits joyous patriotic pride and
Even an occasional tear on an
Old man’s cheek
But those tears are an acid rain of
Carcinogenic mercury belched from the
Stacks of empires of injustice –
Tears that amplify the inhumanity that
Causes opossum and grouse to
Unite their voices with oaks and birch in
Groans of lament
Like the teenage mother in labor
Agonizing in anticipation of the
Manifestation of the children of
God who cry night and day,
“As in heaven so on earth,” echoed by
Every cayote howl and reflected in
Every refugee’s eyes
Herald bids, “Look closer,” the
Drops of rain are playing in an
Inner world brimming with the
Freedom of the birdsong, a tulip’s
Delicate beauty, the fragrance of
Sage and myrrh, and a vast eclectic
Seascape of dancing color
From whence comes this
Kingdom of love where
Grace and mercy flow like
Rivers into cascades of joyous
Abundance and sacrificial love,
Where beauty begets exquisite
Beauty and kindness is the only sword?
It is born of the tears of every
War, every death, each loss, of
Rachel weeping for her children
Under overseers’ whips and
Burning child in ruined hut and
Sobbing heart at every grave
Which mingle with the
Groans of each bludgeoned seal,
Harpooned whale, gunshot stork,
And felled tree forced to release
Life to feed the greed of conquerors
Whose gods insatiably demand sacrifices
From those who can only hear the
Banshee’s brutal laugh.
Tears of woods and gardens, of
Parents and lovers, of the
Broken homeless, are kept by
God in a bottle of remembrance and
Mingled with the tears of the One who
Wept over Jerusalem and sobbed with
Martha at graveside
Tears that Mary mingled with her own
Precious nard in anticipation of the
Ultimate death that would end
Death.
Forever.
And so, the warbler sings and the
Cherry tree makes its glad offering
(LRT April 10, 2021)
