Listening and asking questions in Bible study

ON LISTENING AND ASKING QUESTIONS IN BIBLE STUDY

Chapter Four

from “COMMUNICATING THE WORD OF GOD. Practical Methods of Presenting the Biblical Message” by J N M Wijngaards, Theological Publications in India, Bangalore 560 055, 1974. First published in Great Britain in 1978 by MAYHEW-McCRIMMON LTD Great Wakering, Essex, England.

The whole book can be found online here: http://www.johnwijngaards.com/contents-communicating-word/ .

Scripture is God’s Word to man. It has a definite message. It is proclaimed with divine sanction. It would hardly be correct to reduce it to a mere stepping stone in our own process of thinking. The Bible is much more than a collection of useful examples and stories. The biblical text is a sacrament that somehow conveys God’s own Word to us, however much its literary origins are human. The inspired message of Scripture is not to be questioned by man, but to be received with faith and obedience.

All this is right in theory, but in practice much goes wrong. Quite often our proclamation of the scriptural message turns into a monologue that defeats its own purpose. To be humanly effective, human speech should include both statement and response, should be a cycle in which communication flows between speaker and listener. Monologues are ineffective because the listener tends to disregard their message.

An ordinary Sunday sermon may provide a classical example of one-way communication. The priest talks for ten minutes without questions, responses or interruptions. Our Catholic audiences have grown accustomed to sitting rigid through the performance. A cautious smile may be tolerated. Relaxed laughter or applause are definitely out. The preparation of the message and its delivery are one hundred per cent the work of the priest. The faithful share in the process only by listening, which they have to do in a posture of frozen immobility.

Such a situation is highly unsatisfactory, especially today. The monologue type sermon or lecture smacks of paternalism and the establishment. In the minds of people it is readily associated with the pre-democratic forms of communication prevalent in the past. It seems to perpetuate the unwanted distinction between an omniscient clergy and an ignorant and docile laity. For such reasons this very process of communication arouses resentment and resistance among thinking Catholics, particularly if they are young. It is not leadership or authority itself that is questioned here, but the un democratic and condescending way in which it is exercised.

The problem mentioned here affects sermons and other forms of instruction, whatever their topic may be. But when the topic is taken from the Bible, the problem is often aggravated by the way scriptural authority is understood and presented. If all the stress is laid on obedience to God’s Word and passive submission to whatever it decrees, resentment and irritation will be unavoidable. If such feelings of resistance are provoked, the real authority of Scripture, its effective influence on people, will be weakened. It is useful to reflect a little on the implications of all this.

If the Bible is a way in which God communicates with man, it is implied that the person who reads or hears Scripture proclaimed also has a part to play. Effective communication comes about only when both partners have an equal share. The question of the authority of one partner does not diminish the share to be given to the other partner. Even if the brigadier gives orders to a corporal, the corporal will have to contribute actively by asking for clarifications, by providing complementary information or making alternative suggestions when required. The final decision of what should be done may be the brigadier’s; the process of communication between the two belongs to both.

Sacred Scripture and its pastoral use demand a very active involvement of the person who is to benefit from them. Proclaiming the Word of God does not necessarily mean therefore adopting an authoritarian model of preaching or instruction. The Word of God is like a grain of wheat gently thrown on a piece of soil in the hope that it may grow. It is like an invitation to share in a wedding feast. Although the Word of God is God’s and has, therefore, a message of its own, it does not address man in a uniform and stereotyped way. It doesn’t speak only to instruct or command; it also questions, suggests, prods and persuades.

THE PREACHER AS COMMUNICATOR

It is difficult to trace the exact origins of the classical form of the sermon, such as is still associated in the minds of many with the proclamation of Scripture. Probably it arose during the Middle Ages and was a combination of the art of homily popular with the early Fathers of the Church, and classical oratory as it had been taught by Greek and Roman masters.

It may not be altogether a waste of time to read a satirical description of the ‘oratorical sermon’ given by Erasmus in his book Praise of Folly (1508).

Tell me, my friend, what comedian, what vendor in the market place would you not prefer to these gentlemen who in their sermons make such a farce of public speech, while to everyone’s entertainment, they claim to follow the rules laid down by the ancient masters of oratory? Good Lord, see how wildly they gesticulate; how they vary the pitch of their voice according to circumstances; how melodiously they speak on other occasions; how they sway with their bodies; how they pull a variety of faces; how they fill the whole church with their cries! And this art of preaching is handed down from one monk to another as if it were a great secret!

Although I am not really supposed to know anything about it, I will tell you all about it, basing myself on guess-work of course. First, they invoke help from above, a habit they learnt from poets. Then, if they wish to speak about Christian charity, they will refer in their opening words to the Egyptian river the Nile; or if they intend to expound the mystery of the Cross, they consider it a brainwave to take their opening from the Babylonian dragon Bel; or if they want to discuss fasting, they will start with the twelve signs of the Zodiac; or again, if they have chosen Faith as their topic, their introductory reflections will be about the squareness of a circle. I was myself once among the audience of a preacher who was utterly stupid -I am sorry, I meant to say who was very learned — who claimed before a huge number of people that he was going to explain the mysteries of the Blessed Trinity. To give evidence of his extraordinary learning and to please the theologians who were present, he adopted an entirely new approach. Namely, he began to discuss letters, syllables, and words; he then discussed how noun and verb should be in agreement, and that the same is true of noun and adjective. Many were puzzled at all this; some could be heard to mutter to themselves the ancient saying of Horace: “What is all this nonsense going to lead to!” Eventually the preacher reached the conclusion that the image of the Trinity could be traced in such striking similarities in the first principles of grammar that no mathematician could have drawn it more clearly on a blackboard

After this unusual introduction, everyone, including the theologians, was listening with open mouths, overcome by amazement ……… And their appreciation was justified. For had ever anyone, even the famous Demosthenes among the Greeks, or Cicero among the Romans, invented such a clever introduction?

These ancient masters considered an introduction defective if it was not ade- quately connected with the main topic; they were of the opinion that also swine herds begin in this fashion, whose only master is nature. But these learned scholars of our own time are of the opinion that their forerunner’ – for this is what they call the introduction – only satisfies the demands of oratory if it has nothing in common with the rest of their sermon, so that their hearers may full of surprise, utter the well- known words: “What on earth is he driving at?” In the third part of their speech – which is actually the sermon part itself – they explain a small passage from the Gospel, but they do this quickly and superficially, whereas in fact this should have been their main task. Then, when the fourth part of the sermon comes round, the speaker assumes a new character and introduces a theological question, normally one which floats between heaven and earth, obviously convinced that tackling such a question is also part of preaching. This is the moment when real theological pride manifests itself. They throw about their splendid titles at this

Fig. 7. Demosthenes, the model of many preachers. Greek statue (300 B.C.).

juncture, such as: sublime teachers, profound and super profound teachers, indisputable teachers, etc. Then they bamboozle the simple people with syllogisms, majors, minors, conclusions, corollaries, suppositions and more such scholastic nonsense.

The only thing that still remains is the fifth part of the sermon; in which the preacher has to prove himself a perfect artist. Here they produce one or other daft and stupid fairy tale, derived, unless I am mistaken, from the ‘Historical Mirror’ or the ‘Acts of the Romans’. Somehow they succeed in drawing an allegorical, moral and religious message from it. . . . They have also learnt that joking is one of the requisites of oratory and so they attempt to spice their words with a few witty statements here and there. But, dear Venus, their jokes are so witty and so to the point that one can characterise them best with the saying:

“It’s like an ass playing the lyre”. .. In this way they succeed in making their sermon a chimera, a monster such as even Horace could not have imagined when he described a painting in which a being appeared with a woman’s head on the rump of a horse. . . Now you will understand, I believe, what an impression this sort of person makes on me, especially because by their ludicrous pomposity and loud-mouthed, ridiculous stupidities they impose a kind of tyranny on the world. And then they imagine themselves to be preachers like Paul and Anthony of Padua!’

Erasmus had a sharp tongue. His criticism is cutting. For all we know, his remarks may do an injustice to many sane and biblical preachers of his age. What strikes me most in his sketch of the preacher is how the classical art of oratory had begun to dominate the scene. Preachers would adopt the oratorical sequence of having an introduction, a ‘corpus’, additional reasons and a peroration. They tried to follow the rules laid down by Greek and Roman masters as closely as possible. Even Erasmus, in spite of his criticism, refers to these classical teachers when he seeks a norm of evaluation. From this we can see that gradually a certain ‘model’ of preaching was universally accepted which became the standard almost to our own days.

Of course, there were variations on the model. John Wesley, a great preacher in a later century, was much more biblical and had a style of his own. Yet, in one way he and other evangelical preachers like him confirmed the ‘model’ of the preacher who tells people what is wrong with their lives and who proclaims the truths of Scripture.

Wesley was extraordinarily successful. Preaching in halls and prisons, in open spaces and among the toiling, uneducated masses, he drew crowds of up to 80,000. It is said that, before he died in 1791, he had travelled 225,000 miles within Britain and preached 50,000 sermons. Preaching the Word of God to others with this charism of prophetic authority also extended itself outside the Sunday service in church. Teachers would ‘preach’ to their pupils; catechists would ‘preach’ to catechumens; even parents in their homes shared in this universal charism by ‘preaching’ to their children.

I hope the reader understands that I am not against preaching as such, which we will have to do from time to time, but against the stereotype ‘model’ that has somehow for many people become identical with ‘communicating the Word of God’. In their mind’s eye they see the preacher as a stern and sincere individual who feels called upon to impart to others truths and commandments revealed by God, which have to be accepted unconditionally. And for many, consciously or unconsciously, this image of the preacher is projected back on to Jesus. They imagine that Jesus was, to an extreme degree, such a ‘preacher’. After all, Jesus knew what is right and wrong; he knew everything, didn’t he? So in the Gospel we find that Jesus preaches all the time …

JESUS’ MODELS OF PREACHING

If we study the gospels we find that Jesus did not have one single, uniform way of communicating the Word. On the contrary we find him adopting quite different styles according to the needs of his audience. (As I will draw my illustrations mainly from St Luke’s Gospel, references after a text in brackets refer to this gospel, unless another evangelist is indicated).

Jesus spoke in the synagogues during the sabbath service (6,6; 14,10; etc.). On those occasions Jesus followed the procedure of rabbis in his day. As he did in Nazareth (4,16-30), he would first read out a Scripture passage and then give his commentary on it. People admired the easy and gracious manner in which Jesus spoke. His style was different from that of the scribes, because he taught with authority (4,31-32).

Another kind of situation described in the gospel is Jesus ‘speaking to the crowds’. People flocked to him from all directions and wanted to hear his instruction. Jesus would then sit down in their midst and address them. At times this was done outside in an open space (6,17-19); at other times in a house (5,17-26; 8,19-21); sometimes from a boat while people stood on the shore (5,1-3) or in the Temple (19,47; 21,38). Here also Jesus spoke as a prophet; he taught with authority (Mt 7,28-29). But all the same there were important differences in his approach. No longer is Jesus simply a ‘preacher” who imposes ideas on others. No, he feels himself the responsible ‘elder brother” who wants his ‘family members’ to discover for themselves what is the truth.

Fig. 8. Jesus the Teacher. Quinten Matsys (1465-1530)

Hardly ever do we hear Jesus quote the Old Testament when addressing the ordinary people. Rather, he begins his instructions from observations that reflect their own culture and thinking. He speaks about their everyday experience, about the flowers in the field, about sowing and reaping, about a shepherd looking after his sheep, about the village girls going to a marriage, about fishermen hauling in their net, about the experiences of travellers on a lonely road. For Jesus such realities of daily life are not just the wrapping in which he presents divine teaching; no, he teaches the crowds how they can infer the nature of religious realities from their daily experiences. “If you then, bad as you are, know how to give your children what is good for them, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (11,13).

Jesus begins the process of thought with the needs of the people. This is seen best in the way his miracles come about. Jesus’ miracles never start with an idea launched by Jesus himself. They always respond to a need; to people being hungry, to a boat being threatened by a storm, to a mother who weeps over her son at his burial, to blind persons, lepers, paralysed or hunch-backed individuals who suffer and need his help. Much of Jesus’ preaching is done by these acts of genuine concern. Again, we would be wrong to think of Jesus’ miracles as diplomatic proofs invented to support his doctrine; rather. Jesus thinks with the people and knows that his actions are governed by their needs.

Jesus wanted the people to think for themselves, that is why he taught them in parables. The apostles were surprised at this. They would have expected plain language. Jesus realised that people would only accept his message if he could make them think for themselves. In order to understand, they should listen and listen again; in order to perceive, they should see and see again. Only then would they be converted and healed (Mt 13,10-15).

When Jesus speaks to the Twelve, whom he has chosen to be his close companions, he pours out his heart with extensive explanations (Mt 13,18-23; 36-43) and detailed instructions (Mt 10,1-42; 18, 1-35; etc.). Frequently these instructions are very similar to his personal talks with individuals, such as the rich young man (18,18-23), Nicodemus (Jn 3,1-16), the Samaritan woman (Jn 4,1-26), Mary and Martha (Lk 10,38-42). Here again we find that in every single case Jesus listens as much as he speaks. His words are provoked by the needs of the person in question, not prompted by a preconceived ideal that he wants to impose.

Jesus adopts a totally different style when he is confronted with the scribes and pharisees. Let us remember that they were well- educated and learned, the scholars of their time. They were critical and sceptical about many things Jesus did. Frequently they would raise objections, which they would present in the form of questions: “Why do you eat with sinners and tax collectors?” (5,30). “Why do your disciples eat corn on the sabbath?” (6,2), “Why do you not wash your hands before the meal?” (11,38). “What authority do you have for acting like this?” (20,2) and many others. “The scribes and the pharisees began a furious attack on Jesus and tried to force answers from him on innumerable questions, setting traps to catch him out in something he might say” (11,53).

It is fascinating to see how Jesus meets the challenge put by these men who lived in their own world of intellectual doubts, queries and arguments. He counters their questions with other questions. “Have you not read what David did when he and his followers were hungry, how he went into the house of God, took the loaves of offering and ate them and gave them to his followers, loaves which only the priests are allowed to eat?” (6,3-4). “Which one of you, if his son falls into a well, or his ox, will not pull him out on a sabbath day without hesitation?” (14,5). “I too will ask you a question. Tell me: did John’s baptism come from heaven or from man?” (20,3). “Show me a denarius. Whose head and name are on it?” (20,24). Sometimes Jesus himself challenged them with an unexpected question. “What is your opinion about the Messiah? Whose son is he?” and then “If David can call him Lord, then how can he be his son?” Jesus’ questions were so disturbing to the scribes, who thought that by their reasonings they had worked out everything to perfection, that “no one any longer dared to ask him any questions” (20,40).

The scribes often attacked Jesus and, especially during the last weeks of his public ministry, Jesus was forced to assume a position of self-defence. However, this should not make us lose sight of the admiration for, and sympathy with, the scribes’ function which Jesus had. In Jesus’ eyes it was the scribes’ duty to ask questions and produce arguments. Very often Jesus must have listened attentively to what the scribes had to say and learnt from their wisdom. Jesus acknowledged their authority because they were “sitting on the seat of Moses” (Mt 23,2). Jesus compared a scribe who becomes a disciple of the kingdom of heaven to a householder who brings out from his storeroom things both new and old (Mt 13,52). Jesus praised a scribe who had given the right answer to a difficult question (Lk 10,28). Most of all, Jesus himself acted like a scribe in many ways: he allowed people to call him ‘Rabbi’ (Mt 26,25 etc.). By putting forward questions in reply to the questions posed by the scribes, Jesus was not putting on an act. At that moment he identified himself with them: he doubted and questioned and argued like them.

The most striking passage to underline this role of Jesus is found in St. Luke’s gospel. Luke narrates what must have been an ancient tradition, namely, that Jesus stayed back in the Temple when he went up for the first time as a boy of twelve years old. He then describes Jesus as follows:

Three days later, they found him in the Temple, sitting among the doctors, listening to them and asking them questions; and all those who heard him were astounded at his intelligence and his replies’. (Lk 2,46-47).

Jesus listened and asked questions. Surely Luke is not presenting the boy Christ as the omniscient Word of God playing a game with the scribes. No, here we are presented with Jesus ‘growing in wisdom’ (Lk 2,52) by sharing the searchings of learned men. And as with every mature and educated person, the habit of listening and asking questions must have remained with Jesus throughout his life. Although on many occasions he could teach with authority and act with prophetic determination, on other occasions he knew the doubt of the seeker. “Father, what should I say? Should I say: save me from this hour?” (Jn 12,27). “God. my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27,46).

The picture of Jesus the communicator that emerges from the above considerations is not the one of a ‘preacher’ who proclaims the same message on every occasion. The authoritarian model of‘Take it or leave it; this is the Word of God’, popularly attributed to Jesus, is not reflected in his way of announcing the message. In every situation

Fig. 9. A questioning Scribe. Unknown artist, 1500 A.D.

Jesus seems to have had his actions and words guided by the needs of the particular people he met. When he spoke to the ordinary people, he identified with them. He saw their needs. He took examples from their everyday lives and presented parables that would force them to think. When he was in the company of scribes, he listened to their questions, argued with them and raised questions himself. When he was with his disciples or other personal friends, he would share their aspirations and worries and make his instructions respond to these. Just as Jesus himself, the Word of God, was not imposed on mankind from outside, but became one of us, in the same way the word that Jesus spoke was born from his natural relationships with the people; it responded to their needs.

LET THE AUDIENCE SPEAK

If we want to avoid talking in monologues, we have to promote methods by which our audience can speak to us. If we want to escape from the one-sided model of ‘preaching’, we have to learn how to identify ourselves with the persons we address. Feedback from the audience is essential to any healthy form of communication and it applies also to communication of God’s Word.

It goes without saying that, whenever we can arrange our communication on the Bible in the form of a real dialogue or shared discussion, this opportunity should not be missed. In the classroom the teacher can encourage the discussion of topics in workshops or smaller groups. In a eucharistic celebration for small groups, the priest can lead a shared reflection on the readings in such a way that the participants can take a full share in the development of thought.

As this book is specially written for those whose task it is to communicate the Word of God by oral communication in other situations than ‘sharing’, I will not enlarge on this topic further (see the companion volumed Prayer with the Bible). For our present discussion we will put ourselves in the position of those for whom such a realistic ‘sharing’ is not possible.

Let us begin with the realization that, although sharing meets the requirement of feedback to a great extent, it also has its limitations. Sharing is impossible when the group is too big. Moreover, quite a few people are inhibited and do not really open up even though they are invited to do so. A forced situation of sharing may in actual fact leave such a person with more doubts and greater dissatisfaction than when the Word of God has been presented in a straightforward way. Then again, sharing may not leave sufficient room for the role of prophet and teacher to be played by certain persons in the community. Sharing is therefore not the universal answer to our problem, nor the most important one.

Some people have experimented with the so-called ‘interview’ sermon in which two people ascended the pulpit, one to ask questions and the other to reply. The attempt proved a failure. People experienced it as something that was staged and unreal.

The solution actually lies in making our audience speak in our own presentation. This is what Jesus did in all his preaching. The ordinary people heard themselves reflected in what he said. The scribes saw their own questions and doubts met by the counter questions posed by Jesus. Our speaking will no longer be a monologue if we allow our audience to speak through our words. The model of the sacred minister ‘preaching’ to those living in the world will make place for the rapport of a dialogue between the people themselves and the Word of God.

What we have to do, in fact, is never to forget the needs and doubts and queries of our people. Whenever we proclaim the Word of God, we should take our starting point from them. We should ask ourselves what questions they ask of God and his words. We should try to determine how Scripture and its message can fulfil their desires or allay their fears.

We have to aim at verbalising the questions of the audience in our own words. We can present the audience’s point of view by introducing a case history. Or we can explicitly pose the questions just as our audience would like to ask them. We should formulate the message of Scripture in the thought patterns and expressions people themselves use. If we do this well, we will, in a certain sense, be acting also on behalf of our audience and thus rendering them a great service. Some of the things we can say on their behalf may be so delicate that people themselves would not dare to speak of them except in a very intimate talk. We should in this way make our monologue into a dialogue: all the time confronting the people’s way of thinking with the Word of God.

Experience has shown that we may be more out of touch with our audience than we realise. Even when we try to prepare our communication from a receptor-oriented, rather than source-oriented approach, we may still be far from touching on the actual problems and longings of the people to whom we speak. Before preaching a sermon, it has proved an excellent idea to give our topic a ‘test run’ in a trial group of people representative of our audience. In the same way teachers could assess the problems that exist in the minds of their pupils by having periodical ‘buzz sessions’ in which the pupils can express their doubts and queries. Teachers can also get a valuable feedback at the end of a lecture period by allowing spontaneous reactions and free discussion. The teacher can evaluate the relevance of the presentation by this means and also collect information on topics to be discussed in future periods.

1. a verbalised process of learning
2. which puts into words people’s problems and aspirations
3. and which introduces the message from Scripture as an important element in fulfilling the desire or solving the problem
4. and which anticipates in words the successful execution of what needs to be done to fulfil the desire or solve the problem.

People’s hearts and minds are the soil in which the Word of God has to take roots and grow. As communicators we can do no more than sow the seed, making sure that it touches the soil.