Moses was told by God to bring the Hebrews out of Egypt. He was to
confront the pharaoh with the repeated divine command: “Let my people go,
that they may serve me!” An early oracle puts it this way:
“Israel is my first-born son. I told you to let my son go, so that he might worship me, but you refused. Now I am going to kill your first-born son” (Ex 4:22-23).
In this oracle the people are spoken of as one person: God’s firstborn son. The reason is partly the prophet’s desire to contrast Israel with the pharaoh’s eldest son. But it shows at the same time that the whole people were thought of as a single entity. They were looked upon as one community.
This can also be seen in the way God concluded his covenant with the people. He made his offer to all of them as one community.
“You saw what I, the LORD did to the Egyptians and how I carried you as an eagle carries her young on her wings, and brought you here to me. Now, if you will obey me and keep my covenant, you will be my own people. The whole earth is mine, but you will be my chosen people, a people dedicated to me alone" (Ex 19:4-6).
By offering them the covenant, God gave the people a new beginning. In fact, through the covenant they became a new community, his community. It was his word that made them the community they were. God created them as a community through his word.
“Listen now, Israel my servant, my chosen people, the descendants of Jacob.
I am the LORD who created you;
from the time you were born I have helped you.
Do not be afraid; you are my servant
my chosen people whom I love” (Is i4:12).Israel, the LORD who created you says,
“Do not be afraid - I will save you
I have called you by name - you are mine” (Is 43:1).
As God created the universe by commanding “Let there be light,” “Let there by a sky,” “Let there be dry land,” so he created Israel through the word of his covenant.
You may wonder why I am reflecting on this aspect of God’s word. The reason is that in our approach to faith and in our spiritual life, we have become very individualistic. We have become very much aware of the value of God’s word for our personal, spiritual good. We read scripture as a word addressed to us personally, and we draw conclusions for our own life. Now there is nothing wrong in this, as long as we do not forget the community-creating function of scripture. The Ethiopian official who was on his way to Gaza was reading excerpts of Deutero-Isaiah. It became the starting point for his conversion and baptism (Acts 8:2640). The Bible is indeed God’s word to individuals but it can and should do more.
It may be useful to review some of the major trends in scriptural spirituality that the church has experienced through the centuries. As I will be condensing very complex movements in just a few sentences, I will, of necessity,oversimplify the presentation. But simple presentations also have their uses. Like caricatures, they may bring out more clearly the salient points. What we are interested in here is understanding how the spirituality which we live can influence our way of reading scripture.
The first stream of spirituality I would like to sketch is what I would like to call the spirituality of sacral realities. In this spirituality, the greatest emphasis is placed on the holiness of God, on his being altogether different and sacred. God’s holiness came among us when God’s Son assumed a human nature. God’s holiness permeates the church in such sacred realities as the sacraments, ordained ministers, canon law and ancient traditions. The closer that Christians moved to these sacred realities, the closer they were to God. Sacred Scripture was seen to be one of these holy realities, and so its sanctifying power was highly appreciated. But, note well, its power was, somehow or other, an external sacramental contact rather than a word or a message.
Perhaps I should be more specific and describe this spirituality in a concrete instance. The European Middle Ages expressed their awe and worship through their beautiful Gothic cathedrals. These buildings themselves are like a prayer. They established a sacred reality in the middle of people’s cities and towns. Within these churches the history of salvation was made visual through sculptures, mural paintings and stained-glass windows. Mass was celebrated in solemn liturgies, the priests wearing embroidered vestments and using plenty of incense. The ordinary people who came to pray in these churches became aware of God’s presence through the sacred realities they saw. The Bible too would come to them in that way. They had never read the Bible, of course; They probably could not read and write, and even if they could, books were very rare and costly. When the Bible was read out in the liturgy, it was read in Latin, a language they could not understand. The priest might explain its contents in his sermon (which might also be in Latin), but ordinary believers were convinced they did not need to know the Bible in that way since its contents were expressed in the church anyway. What they did want was to be blessed by the Bible. At the end of Mass the priest would hold the scroll which had John, chapter one, inscribed on it, while imparting the blessing.
Until about 30 years ago, priests and religious used to recite the breviary in Latin. Many priests could understand the Latin, but some could not; religious lay brothers often had great difficulty about this. I remember one of our professors speaking about this to us when I was a student in the minor seminary: You can have true devotion even if you do not follow the meaning of the text. Once-upon-a-time there was a lay brother who had to recite the psalms in Latin, but who did not understand a word of what he was saying. So he prayed to God for the gift of Latin. God appeared to him and granted him the gift. But when he started saying the psalms with understanding, he began to be terribly distracted by it. So in the end, he asked God to withdraw the gift. He could pray better without it!
Another example from my own experience:
As recently as 1962 a parish priest I knew in the north of Italy used to make his mass servers recite Lauds in Latin before Mass.
“But they don’t understand a word of it!” I objected.
“That does not matter,” he said. “They know these are inspired psalms and the official prayer of the church. God knows what they mean and he will be pleased!”
While this spirituality was still very strong in many traditions of European Christianity, a new spirituality grew up which I would 1ike to characterize as the spirituality of the meeting between God and the soul. Not the ornate cathedral with the pomp and splendor of liturgy, but the bare cell or the simple prayer room became the place of experiencing God’s presence. The whole stress lay on purifying one’s own personality, to embrace Christ in an interior, spiritual union. Sacred Scripture was now seen to fulfill a new role. It was considered to contain the words of Christ, words that should be listened to with great humility and reverence. The Imitation of Christ (A.D.1427) expressed this new perception in conversation between Christ and his disciple:
“My Son, ” says our Lord, “hear my words and follow them, for they are most sweet, far surpassing the wisdom and learning of all philosophers and all the wise men of the world. My words are spiritual and cannot be apprehended fully by man’s intelligence. Neither are they to be adapted or applied according to the vain pleasure of the hearer, but are to be heard in silence, with great humility and reverence, with great inward affection of the heart and in great rest and quiet of body and soul....”
“Speak to me, Lord Jesus. You have the words of eternal life. Speak them to me for the full comfort of my soul and give me amendment of all my past life, to your joy, honour and glory.”
-The Imitation of Christ, Bk.3, ch. 2-3
Such an approach to scripture obviously requires translations in the vernacular. Through the invention of printing and the influence of the Reformation, scripture became more and more the spiritual guidebook for the individual. This was very much in line with other individualizing trends in society and the church. Democracy, freedom and equality for all and the right to education and personal development all helped to strengthen an individualistic approach to spirituality. Scripture was seen as God s word speaking to the person. Preaching in the liturgy, catechetics and various lay apostolates also stressed the need for the individual way.
Meanwhile, a third spirituality had arisen in the church. This spirituality, which I will call the spirituality of belonging to God’s people, has gained momentum in the past decade. It has ancient roots in the early Christian communities, in monastic groups, in popular religious movements. Vatican II gave it a new impulse by redefining the church in terms of people rather than structures. The freedom struggles of South American base communities provided the possibility and need of explicit theological formulation. In this movement of thought and spirituality, scripture is experienced as the charter of God’s people, creating the community through the word. God’s word is not just an intellectual event. It brings about deeds of liberation. It calls for a response from the whole community, in communal sharing and in common action. I am not so much asking, “What is God saying to me individually?” rather, I am constantly listening to the word as a member of the whole community, wondering what he expects from us as a group.
After this lengthy historical footnote, I would like to return to my original observation: namely, that God’s word does, indeed, create community. The most beautiful illustration of this can be found in Nehemiah 8-10 which describes how the reading of God s inspired word made the returned exiles into a new community. I recommend that the passage be read in its entirety. Here I will point out the various community-building aspects that we should pay attention to.
When the exiles had returned to Palestine and settled, they came together in Jerusalem. There they took up the communal reading of God’s word:
“Ezra brought it [the book of the Law] to the place where the people had gathered-men, women, and the children who were old enough to understand. There in the square by the gate he read the Law to them from dawn until noon, and they all listened attentively” (Neh 8:2-3).
The communal character of the reading is further explained. Ezra was assisted by 13 Levites, mentioned by name, who were responsible for different groups of the people, if I understand the text correctly. These Levites had to make sure that the people understood what was read out. “They gave an oral translation of God’s Law and explained it so that the people could understand it”(Neh 8:8). The response of the people is then described. At the end of that first day a community feast arose spontaneously:
All the people went home and ate and drank joyfully and shared what they had with others, because they understood what had been read to them (Neh 8:12).
The common study of the Law continued. People decided to live in tents, as was required for the feast of tabernacles, but which had not been done since the day of Joshua. The festival lasted for seven days. “From the first day of the festival to the last they read a part of God’s Law every day” (Neh 8:18).
Three weeks later they assembled once more for a new ceremony. It focused on dealing with the past.
For about three hours the Law of the LORD their God was read to them, and for the next three hours they confessed their sins and worshipped the LORD their God (Neh 9:3).
From the text that follows it is clear that the event was a community act of reconciliation. Through personal testimonies people acknowledged that they had not been faithful to the covenant and new commitments were made. The prayer of Nehemiah 9:6-37 is an expression of the community’s feelings. It theologizes the past and the present in terms of “we, your people.” It speaks of the people’s problems:“We are slaves in the land that you gave us....we are in deep distress.” Even if some individuals played a leading role in the whole process, they spoke on behalf of the people and from their midst.
Finally, the old covenant was renewed by a written undertaking, signed by the heads of the clans and families. It bound the people to a number of social and religious reforms which had been formulated in response to the Law. The document opens with the phrase: “We, the people of Israel....”
It might be worthwhile to examine which function we ascribe to God’s word in our own spiritual life. Does the reading of the word in the liturgy make the believers into a commity, as it should do? Is there scope for discussion, sharing, a common interpretation of what it means for this group?Does the Word of God lead to a collective response of the community? Have we ourselves learned, and taught others, how the Word of God can make us his people?