When the lectionary lops off the hard bits of scripture
When the lectionary lops off the hard bits of scripture
Psalm 139, ugly feelings, and the God who transforms
Gentle reader,
I’m thinking about the parts of scripture we don’t read.
I love a lectionary (a schedule for reading the scriptures in church), and I’m all in on the idea that it can be a good thing for pastors to have the scriptures chosen for them, rather than picking and choosing for themselves (though there are times which call for the latter, of course). I love how a lectionary leads the church through the whole story of scripture, again and again.
But we do have to deal with the way the lectionary so often lops off the hard bits of scripture. (And, let’s face it, the lectionary isn’t the only place we see those hard bits unread, unquoted, uninterpreted.)
Take a beloved Psalm, the 139th.
Psalm 139
For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
15 My frame was not hidden from you
when I was made in the secret place,
when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my unformed body;
all the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
17 How precious to me are your thoughts,[a] God!
How vast is the sum of them!
18 Were I to count them,
they would outnumber the grains of sand—
when I awake, I am still with you.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
For the Revised Common Lectionary, the reading schedule for the Psalm looks like this:
In year A, in Pentecost, we read verses 1-12 and 23-24.
For year B, the second Sunday after Epiphany, we read verses 1-6 and 13-18.
And in year C, Pentecost again, we repeat with verses 1-6 and 13-18.
So, in a three year cycle, we get the “searched me” and “know me” section three times (once, including the longer reflection about fleeing from God’s presence), and twice, we get the part about the “inmost being.” Once, we get the last two verses, asking God to search us.
Leaves Excised from a Psalter c. 1260 Flanders, Liège(?), 13th century, Tempera and gold on vellum.
Verses 19-22 never make it into our church reading.
It’s no surprise. They’re hard to read and hard to interpret, and they express feelings we find inappropriate and don’t want to express, even if we might have them.
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
But chopping bits off is not the way to deal with difficult parts of scripture; interpretation is the way to deal.
Otherwise, we’re left without any theological controls on what gets chopped off and what gets left behind. We may find ourselves with Thomas Jefferson’s cut-and-paste deist Bible:
the 77-year-old Jefferson used a razor to cut passages from six copies of the New Testament—two in Greek and Latin, two in French and two in English—and rearranged and pasted together the selected verses, shorn of any sign of the miraculous or supernatural in order to leave just the life and teachings of Jesus behind.1
Even worse, we may be left with Bibles as edited by slaveholders in order to reinforce the evil of slaveholding. Consider this description of a “Bible” “selected for the use of” enslaved persons:
About 90 percent of the Old Testament is missing [and] 50 percent of the New Testament is missing . . . there are 1,189 chapters in a standard protestant Bible. This Bible contains only 232.2
So, if we’re not to chop things off, if we’re not to shape our reading according to our own sinful predilections, then what do we do with something like Psalm 139:19-22?
First, it’s fine not to know what to do with it. Not knowing is better than omission based on a sense that we do know, and we don’t like what we know.
But we also have ways of interpreting hard scriptures. One of the most timeless and reliable is this rule:
That is, if we don’t know what to make of something in scripture, we can look to the rest of scripture for interpretive guidance. Paying attention to the whole of scripture also means paying attention to the big picture story of scripture and to that which is most central to scripture, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
So, what to do with Psalm 139:19-22?
19 If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
20 They speak of you with evil intent;
your adversaries misuse your name.
21 Do I not hate those who hate you, Lord,
and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
22 I have nothing but hatred for them;
I count them my enemies.
We could admit that we resonate with the Psalmist’s feelings?
We could rejoice in the fact that scripture welcomes us to bring our most ominous feelings before God.
We could interpret in light of what Jesus teaches us about enemies; “But to you who are listening I say: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you” (Luke 6:27-28).
And we could interpret in light of what immediately follows, the Psalm’s last two verses:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
If I’ve been calling brimstone down on God’s enemies, have I stopped to ask whether I might, myself, be among those enemies? Have I stopped to ask how to love my enemies? Including myself?
Have I asked God to search me?
To test me?
To transform me from enemy of God and self and others to friend of God as God leads me in the way everlasting?
Grace & peace,
BFJ
This piece contains associate links.
If this piece has been good to you, please share, forward, and subscribe.
Back in the mid 1990’s I took my favorite study Bible and highlighted all the non-lectionary verses. Now, I automatically read more than just the lectionary passages. It just makes sense. Thank you for this post!