Boylston Street Letter #7

Continuing backtracking ... see Boylston Street Letter #4.

The week of Feb. 26-March 2, 2007

The faith sharing and Bible study group meetings have been slimly attended the last few weeks. If not for the pastoral intern from Harvard Divinity School, there would have been no Bible study on the 23rd. This past Friday one guest joined the Harvard intern and me, which was a blessing, but this guest proceeded to monopolize the discussion (unknowingly). He does brilliant exegesis; however, his tendency to read all of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels through the lens of the book of Revelation, combined with his inability to yield to others in the group, made for a stifling and unspiritual experience on Friday. This is ironic, given this guest’s repeated affirmations of the presence of the Holy Spirit in his life! I cannot speak for the Harvard intern, but I was relieved when our hour together was over: I, for one, no longer felt suffocated.

Strange that I should have wished for this Scripture savant to be quiet, isn’t it? He could speak with authority about the Bible, yet it did not feel like he was sharing with us … it felt more like he was displaying the most precious jewels of his erudition. Impressive? Without a doubt. Inspiring? Not at all, which leads me to wonder whether his is genuine authority. He could communicate conviction, but he could not communicate faith. If I were not already a Christian, I would not have tolerated his holding forth, and I sure would not have been moved toward belief by this guest’s exposition of Scripture.

This reminds me of what another guest, a keen observer of public affairs, told me earlier that morning: for the last 40 years, progressives have been the best recruiters for the far right, because the vehemence with which they promote their generally sensible causes scares away many sympathetic citizens. Progressive politics puts off the people who can and ought to be considered part of the “grass roots” but who are consistently talked down to or chastised or ignored entirely. I must confess that it discouraged me to hear him say that, and I countered him with this question: what about the need to speak a prophetic word for the common good, disturbing as it may be? He did not reply directly to this question, but he stated in words similar to mine that institutions which claim to promote the common good must aim at putting power to work instead of preserving their own power. In other words, if the institutions are not prophetic, the prophetic words of those serving in those institutions will come to naught, especially the words of the zealots.

How I wish to teach as one having authority, and not as the scribes! How difficult it seems some days to know just how to speak radically, lovingly, and constructively! You want God’s word and will to be accepted, but you know the sacred history of the law and the prophets tells you otherwise. The Christ-event assures you God’s word and will cannot fail to be fulfilled, and this I believe. Yet the silence and the violence….