Practicing Progressive

February 5, 2007
Issue 9

Now that we’re all agreed that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, isn’t it about time we starting finding other names?

This past week I attended a book-study led by a kindly Episcopalian priest. He was the quintessential old cleric complete with Albert Einstein hair and Jerry Garcia beard. Laden down with books and papers, he more than occasionally seemed to forget where he was and why we were all staring in his direction. But, as I say, a kindly man indeed and it was a pleasure to share a couple of hours with him.

During our time together, however, I did find myself pursuing a theological tangent or two. The first was generated by my instructor’s insistence, over and over again, that the Bible is a book filled with metaphor. For every sticky biblical wicket, be it Adam and Eve in the garden or Jesus’ turning water into wine, our teacher stopped to remind us of the metaphorical meaning of the story. It was a classically liberal interpretative stance and, by and large, I agreed with his conclusions. Still, I wondered, what is it about liberal Christians that has them happily musing metaphorically through the Bible, tossing out this tale or that story in a anti-literalistic bliss but always seeming, to me anyway, to stop too soon and too short.

It is easy to knowingly smile at the foolishness of taking the virgin birth as fact or the stilling of the storm as history but why then isn’t that same perceptive perspective carried out in the liturgies of our liberally enlightened congregations? A Sunday morning prayer that has us begging for divine mercy or a liturgical recitation that has us mechanically announcing Jesus’ descent into hell or rocketing up to heaven is hardly illustrative of a metaphorical mindset. Hymns that continue to thank the deity for sacrificing a child for the sins of the world seems dramatically out of step with priestly protestations about the metaphorical meanings found in scripture.

Each Sunday as we reenact Jesus’ last night on earth, we employ language that sounds anything but metaphorical to me: “Take and eat; this is my body given for you…This cup is the new covenant in my blood, shed for you and for all people for the forgiveness of sin.” Indeed, a good deal of our church history includes extensive arguments over precisely at what point the bread becomes flesh and the wine, blood. A few centuries of doctrinal debate involved the exact nature of the trinity; a few others were spent on a most particular Christological formulation. Hardly the stuff, it seems to me, of metaphor.

Still, when I confess my curiosity over such inconsistencies, many of my Christian friends cannot understand my failure to appreciate the obviously, to them at least, metaphorical language of the liturgy. Surely I am not the only confused worshiper. I would hazard a guess that there are more than a few who, like me, have sat in the pew and wondered why we continue to use language and imagery that obfuscates rather than illuminates the teachings of Jesus.

If we have to keep reminding ourselves that our metaphors are metaphorical then it is long past time to find new and more illustrative ways of proclaiming the good news of Jesus.

P.S. On an entirely different note, a pastor friend of mine sent this to me and I send it now to you. Please take a few minutes to watch it. http://www.lucasgray.com/video/peacetrain.html