At College prayers today we were being helped to think about the parable of the Good Samaritan. It was pointed out by our prayer leader of the day, that having read the parable many and many a time, it had just dawned on him what Jesus asked the lawyer. "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?"
"How do you read it?" This is not an innocent, but a loaded question. Jesus isn't prompting an unusually slow on the uptake might be disciple. Lawyers, especially those skilled interpreters of the Torah, were expert readers. When they read the law they did so with practised skill, encyclopedic knowledge of cross references, and all the confidence of the consummate exegete. If anyone could nail down the meaning of a verse, it would be a lawyer like this one. But Jesus doesn't ask what do you read - but how do you read?
Reading is easy. Knowing what it means, and what it means for how we live - now that's different, and difficult. "How do you read?" And the lawyer reads out what the Law says, about loving God completely and the neighbour as yourself. But Jesus isn't asking about what it says, but how you live what it says - and at that point biblical interpretation stops being theory and starts becoming personal, disturbingly and disruptively personal. And if the parables of Jesus are aimed at anything, it is at disturbing, disrupting, subverting, how we read!
Cardinal Newman once offered good advice for when we read Scripture, especially when we read it assuming we know how to read what we read. "The All-wise, All-knowing God cannot speak without meaning many things at once." Scripture is too replete with truth, too richly textured with meaning, too adaptable and applicable to the purposes of God, for any one person to reduce the text to a definitive meaning. And our lives are too limited, the reach of our minds too constrained, the capacity of our hearts too finite, for us ever to control the undomesticated freedom of Scripture. John Wesley recognised the original and continuous inspiration of Scripture; "The Spirit of God not only once inspired those who write it, but continually inspire, supernaturally assists, those who read it with earnest prayer." How do you read - with the help of the Spirit and with earnest prayer - and yes with the mind open to truth and disciplined in the work of exegesis, but exegesis towards practice, interpretation that finds fulfilment in a life that embodies the Word of God in faithful action.
That is what the parable is about. All the details of seeing the broken traveller, anointing his wounds, giving him transport to the inn, leaving his credit card details as guarantee that he would pay any extra on his return. OK, the credit card is a gloss on the text, but the man's promise to pay whatever it takes isn't. How do you read? It's an important question, because how you read will affect how you live. The fecundity of Scripture ensures that the sacred text never runs out of relevance, can't ever be exhausted of the truth we need to be told, yet always remains beyond our urge to reduce its subversive energy to the shrinkage of our own thoughts.
Ephrem the Syrian, one of the early monastic fathers, celebrated the many meanings of Scripture:
If there existed only a single sense for the words of Scripture, then the first commentator who came along would discover it, and other hearers would experience neither the labour of searching, nor the joy of finding.
How do you read, the story of the Good Samaritan. What you can be sure of is that how you read Scripture will reflect on how you live; and if you read this parable of the Good Samaritan well, it will be a story you enact, perform, embody. Each act of love for your neighbour will become your unique reading of the parable. And every time you reach out in neighbour love you will read it again, only differently. And slowly but surely, the Word will become flesh as we go and do likewise. How do you read? With expression, with passion, with interest, with the thrill of recognition as we hear the voice the speaks the Word - and says go, and do likewise.
Posted by Jim Gordon
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