More than words

Languages and words have always fascinated me. The way one word in one language is not easily translatable in another language. The way words are not merely words. The way we communicate with more than our speech or our writings. In high school and college the Spanish language held my attention. In seminary it was Greek and Hebrew. Creole when traveling to Haiti; Norwegian when traveling to Norway. I have come to understand that language is more so much more than words.

This was made even more clear to me recently when listening to the Irish storyteller, Peter Rollins, reflect on what he discovered about language when he came to the United States. He shared how in Ireland, when someone offers you food, it’s customary to refuse, “Oh no, thank you for the offer.” Then they offer again, and again it’s customary to refuse, “Really, I just couldn’t eat a thing.” But the third offer is accepted, “Oh thank you. I really am quite hungry.” On his first trip to the United States he was offered food, said “Oh no, thank you,” and was quite astonished when they took they food away. “How rude!” he thought. Something in the interaction was missing. Outside of his familiar context, his words didn’t mean what they’d always meant to him. The meaning he assumed was quite different than what the other person received.

The point being that there is much more going on in the interchange and experience of words and language. It’s the same when we come to ancient written texts, especially sacred texts like the Bible (originally written primarily in Hebrew and Greek). A faithful approach to these texts acknowledges the presence of similar subtle interplays of words, how they might mean one thing in a particular context but something else entirely in another.

God still uses these ancient texts to speak to us. My faith, however, is not in the words – but in the One to whom they point. As a follower of Christ, I experience God’s word revealed as Jesus the Christ. I experience God’s word illumined by the power and presence of the Holy Spirit, especially when revealed in community, in conversation.

On the one hand, the sacred texts of the Bible cannot be detached from the cultures and contexts of various ancient Hebrew- and Greek-speaking peoples. At the same time, the still-speaking reality of God is not imprisoned on a page, forever stuck in the Middle Eastern/Mediterranean world. Our times, our cultures, our various contexts are necessary holy conversation partners.

Why am I sharing all this with you? Because I grow increasingly frustrated with the ways people use and abuse sacred texts to hurt others, to subjugate, to exploit, or to justify positions of hate and exclusion that I’m pretty sure Jesus would be turning over some tables about. The texts are meant to give life, to point us to the Source of all life. If that’s not happening, then what do we think we’re doing?