The suitability of words for Word of God Sunday

The question I pondered yesterday was the suitability of words to convey what really matters, or even to hand on anything at all. It just so happens, that this Sunday, the Third Sunday of Ordinary Time, is for Roman Catholics throughout the world, Word of God Sunday. And so, it is appropriate to look at the usefulness of words from a different perspective, the perspective of the scriptures.

Christians call the collection of texts we believe to be inspired "the Bible." "Bible," of course, simply means "book." Referencing 2 Timothy 3:16, the scriptures are described as θεόπνευστος- theopneustos, that is, "God-breathed."

It is important to note that Christians don't read the Bible in the same way many Muslims read the Qu'ran or how many Jewish people read the Tor'ah. This is just to say that for Christians, the Bible is not a rulebook. This reminded me of a remark made by Reverend Lovejoy on a long-ago aired episode of The Simpsons. Picking up a Bible, he said something like, "According to this thing, we're not even supposed to go to the bathroom." Yes, this is funny. It is even funnier when taken as a satire of how many people, Christians and non-Christians, who think like this concerning the Bible. Oh, you might be relieved to know that nowhere in the Bible is the morality of relieving yourself called into question.

As the Second Vatican Council teaches in its Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, Dei Verbum, in order to discover the applicability of the sacred text for our lives, it is first necessary to understand the words not only in their context but in the milieux in which they written (see Dei Verbum, sec. 12). Failure to do this is catastrophic for faith and, therefore, for the Church.

An easy example can be found in our Gospel for this Sunday, taken from the first chapter of Saint Mark's Gospel. It is Mark's account of the beginning of Jesus's public ministry. In a mere twenty verses, the inspired author takes us through John the Baptist's ministry, Jesus's baptism by John and subsequent forty days in the desert, he Baptist's arrest by Herod, the beginning of the Lord's public ministry in his native Galilee, and the calling of one-third of the Twelve. The author of Mark captures Jesus of Nazareth's message in a mere fifteen Greek words: Πεπλήρωται ὁ καιρὸς καὶ ἤγγικεν ἡ βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ· μετανοεῖτε καὶ πιστεύετε ἐν τῷ εὐαγγελίῳ (Mark 15, Nestle 1904 New Testament Greek New Testament).

Those Greek words and, backing up to the beginning of Mark 1:15, three more words, translate into English as something like: "The proper time has been fulfilled and the Kingdom of God has drawn near; change your hearts and have faith in the good tidings" (David Bentley Hart, The New Testament: A Translation, 64). Perhaps a more literal translation of the phrase "in the good tidings," or "in the good news," is "in the well-message." Jesus brings and is the message of well-being, of wholeness, of communion.

But the aspect I want to focus on is that of repentance. "Repent" in Mark 1:15 is the Greek word πιστεύετε, which transliterates into English as metanoeite. It comes from the Greek word metanoia. While it may certainly include forsaking your sins, more accurately it means to completely transform your outlook in light of the arrival of God's Kingdom in the person of Jesus Christ. It means to see others, yourself, the world, and even God in a new light. It means to view reality according to all the factors that constitute it. This means to see things how they really are.

In the text, both repenting and believing are used in the continuous sense: "be repenting and be believing." It is also worth noting that repenting comes before believing. I think it is important to point this out because we tend to be so risk averse. We want to know, to believe, before we act. This is demonstrated in our Gospel by Peter and Andrew as well as James and John who dropped everything and followed him at his call.

Jesus is autobaselia, the Kingdom of God in person. Wherever Christ is, there is God's Kingdom. Of course, the Holy Spirit is Christ's resurrection mode of being present among, in, and through those who receive the Gospel. But God's Kingdom is never limited by boundaries human beings try to create. This was what Jesus fought very hard against in the disputations in which he engaged throughout his public ministry. This why Jesus could point to those considered to be the worst sinners in his society (i.e., prostitutes and tax collectors) and say they were closer to God's Kingdom than those who considered themselves righteous, especially those who sought to be arbiters of God's law, the ones who sought reduce God to their own measure by establishing boundaries.

In a letter to a woman who asked him if the Bible was "infallible," C.S. Lewis replied:

It is Christ Himself, not the Bible, who is the true word of God. The Bible, read in the right spirit and with the guidance of good teachers will bring us to Him. When it becomes really necessary (i.e. for our spiritual life, not for controversy or curiosity) to know whether a particular passage is rightly translated or is Myth (but of course Myth specially chosen by God from among countless Myths to carry a spiritual truth) or history, we shall no doubt be guided to the right answer. But we must not use the Bible (our fathers too often did) as a sort of Encyclopedia out of which texts (isolated from their context and not read without attention to the whole nature & purport of the books in which they occur) can be taken for use as weapons