The Peripatetic Preacher
The obvious reason for choosing this passage in the Lenten season is found at Gen.15:6. The NRSV translates as follows: “And he (Abram) believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.” However, this translation has been made primarily under the influence of the Septuagint, that 4th- 3rd century BCE Greek translation of the Hebrew, necessitated by the Greek takeover of the known world by Alexander of Macedon. The LXX (Septuagint) name is based on the myth that 70 translators went into 70 different chambers and produced exactly the same translation. For those of us who have done any translation work, we know all too well that two translators, facing one another across a table, can hardly produce identical translations! Still, a translation of the LXX of Gen.15:6 reads: “And Abraham believed in God, and it was reckoned to him unto righteousness.” Both Paul (Rom.4:3 and Gal.3:6) and James (2:23) repeat this LXX rendering.
However, the Hebrew text is far more complex and quite difficult to translate. One reading might be: “And Abraham went on believing in YHWH, and he (who?) reckoned it (what?) to him (to whom?) righteousness.” (This is the reading of JJ Scullion in The Anchor Bible Dictionary). But the text could also be translated as follows: “Abraham went on believing in YHWH, and he (Abraham) reckoned it (YHWH’s promise of a son and descendants) to him (YHWH) as (no preposition occurs in the Hebrew) fidelity (or “dedication”).” That would mean that YHWH’s promise of many descendants for Abraham (Gen.12:1-3), in the face of the stark reality that Abraham attests to YHWH at Gen.15:3 that no heir is forthcoming, is still believed by Abraham, and further that YHWH has remained faithful to the divine promise. Of course, both Abraham and Sarah will later voice their doubts again concerning their ability to produce a son and heir (see their laughter at Gen.17:17 and 18:12). This alternate reading focuses as much on the faithfulness of YHWH as it does on the model faithfulness of Abraham.
Both Paul and James, because they are clearly reading the LXX of Gen.15:6, use the text as a powerful statement of the faith of Abraham as he attempts to continue belief in the God of promise despite God’s ongoing delay in the gift of the son to the aging couple. At the famous Romans 4:3, Paul employs the LXX translation to prove that Abraham’s faith, and not his labors, led to his justification by God. That is, faith alone is the road to justification, a momentous belief in the history of Christianity. Martin Luther based much of his break with the Roman church in the 16th century on this conviction that faith alone was needed to connect believers with God. However confused Luther may have been about his perceptions about the Roman church, namely that it was so starkly different than his theological ideas concerning faith, the Catholic-Protestant split found much of its force in this understanding of the Gen.15 passage.
To the contrary, James found in the passage proof that faith without works is dead, as he so memorably put it. He states quite plainly at 2:24: “You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone.” How startling it is to see two such diametrically opposing views rising from the same biblical passage. Indeed, it may have been James 2:23-24 that caused Luther to excoriate the letter of James as “an epistle of straw.” James was not included in the portions of scripture that Luther prized, and these disparate understandings of the LXX of Gen.15:6 explain why.
Just why have I spent so much time on the intricacies of Bible translation and interpretation when what you want is fuel for the sermon? I find this a parade example of why careful Bible study is so crucial for our preaching. If you are not a reader of Hebrew, you may now see clearly that Paul and James were also not readers of that ancient language but only appropriated its words through the vehicle of Greek, a language they did read. But because that is true, we can be reminded again of how dependent we are on those who are able to assess the original languages. In this case, that I hope I have helped you to understand at least a little, the various ways that the texts may be translated, read, and understood largely determine how serious believers have been and are lead to appropriate them during their individual journeys of faith.
This is one more instance of the conundrum that is our Bible. As I have often noted, the Bible is the most purchased and least read of any book in the history of literacy. It has enlivened and strengthened millions of believers, but at the same time has served as a weapon to dehumanize and attack millions more. Once again, at the most recent General Conference meeting of my denomination, the United Methodist Church, some employed the Bible as a club to batter untold numbers of faithful Christian believers. Employing the crudest forms of proof texting, tearing passages from their contexts, and universalizing ideas from an ancient culture, superimposing them onto a modern world that now knows far more than the older writers could ever have known about human sexuality, these delegates to the conference imposed their arcane and fundamentalist viewpoints on an entire denomination and thereby forever painted us all with the thick brush of bigotry and exclusion. This was a tragic and horrifying misuse of the sacred scripture by those purporting to be lovers and defenders of that same scripture but became in fact nothing less than abusers of their fellow Christians.
There have been any number of reputable and faithful scholars who can demonstrate that the biblical texts used to attack LGBTQIA Methodist Christians do not say what these so-called Bible believers claim they say. Why can we not admit that no one of us knows all we need to know carefully and judiciously to evaluate the Bible, but are always in need of those who have spent their lives reading and studying these ancient documents? Where is our humility in the face of such arrogance that leads some to parrot what they have heard from others with only a partial knowledge of the complex texts from the Bible, rather than turn and listen to those whose study has enriched the world of those who truly care for and revere the glorious Bible? Why do we continue to listen to such mountebanks who claim knowledge that is at best only partial and at worst only pernicious and self-serving? I have spent 50 years reading and studying the Bible, but I by no means have full access to its multiple riches. I need always to read my scholarly colleagues and thereby grow with the help of God in my understanding of the biblical text. I urge each of you to take with great seriousness the words of your own Bible teachers who I am sure urged you to be life-long students of the Bible as you then expound its wonders from your pulpits and classrooms. The author of Genesis, Paul, and James, along with Luther and his successors, would expect nothing less.
(Images from Wikimedia Commons)
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In