We study these texts in order to be changed. We seek not just to understand the Bible better, or to become biblically literate, but rather to be transformed. How we approach the text becomes all important. Curiosity is not enough. Every reading of scripture needs to be like a pilgrimage.
We go to the text reminding ourselves of our own felt needs. We open ourselves to the Holy Spirit, praying that we might somehow hear what we need to hear. We acknowledge at the outset that we do not know how to read the text, that its truth will inevitably escape us if we come to it confident in our spirituality, our biblical expertise, or our faith. It is only as the poor of spirit that we discover ourselves blessed.
Take on, therefore, a beginner's mind. Come to these texts like a child, full of wonder, awe, and readiness. Expect surprise. Here, not knowing is the only way to know.
October 4: We Have Enough Faith
Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17:5-10
The apostles say, "Increase our faith." Examine their presuppositions. They feel they don't have enough yet. That whatever the crisis, it will require more. That Jesus had more. That he could give them more. That faith is quantitative.
But how much would be enough? That whole way of looking at it puts the accent on our doubts. Would 51 percent faith be enough? 65 percent? 90 percent? Will we ever have enough? Will we ever be good enough?
Jesus' response demolishes their presuppositions. If you have any faith at all, you can do stupendous miracles. (Note the present tense; he is not slamming them for having no faith. After all, they had gone out healing and exorcising on several missions.) Move trees into oceans, or mountains into oblivion. All it takes is a minuscule amount, no more than that symbolized by a tiny mustard seed.
For faith is not quantitative, but qualitative. It is not a matter of how much you have, but of having any at all. Even the slightest amount can be overwhelmingly effective, because it is not faith in our own faith, but simply faith in God, faith that God is God, that God is able to act in the world. If we believe in God even just a little bit, it is enough.
Truth is, we always have faith. The problem is that we have faith in the wrong things. We believe in money, or power, or seduction. We trust that things will turn out bad. And our faith becomes, to a degree unknown to us, self-fulfilling. What are your negative beliefs?
If, in all that welter of negative faiths, we have even an inkling of trust in God and the brazenness to exercise it, that, says Jesus, will be enough to change the very face of reality. Do you have evidence in your own life that this is true?
October 11: Divine Source, Human Means
Micah 1:2, 2:1-10; 2 Timothy 2:8-15; Luke 17:11-19
The healing of the leper is packed with insights about healing. First, Jesus is not afraid of contamination. He does not regard holiness as separation, as did the Pharisees and Essenes. He understands it rather as the mighty power of God to heal. He rejects the notion that external things defile or pollute a person's essential being (Mark 7:15; Matthew 15:11).
In contrast to the traditional view, Jesus regards holiness/wholeness--not uncleanness--as contagious. Thus, Jesus touches the leper, the unclean, women, the sick, without fear of contamination. Holiness is not something to be protected; rather, it is God's numinous transforming power.
Second, Jesus does not use healing to bring others under the spell of his own charisma. He merely sends these lepers on their way to the priest. Their going, their trust, their acting on his command activates their healing. He is not content merely to heal, but to restore their own sense of power: "Your faith has made you well."
Third, there is healing, and then there is wholeness. Only one leper, recognizing his healing, returns to give thanks and praise. There is an aching sadness in Jesus' question, "But the other nine, where are they?" He had empowered them, and they think they healed themselves. So quickly they forget! They are still spiritual lepers. Why was it the lone Samaritan among them that returned? What is the difference between being cleansed (v. 14) and being made whole/well/saved (v. 19)?
Who are the people in your life who have been agents of healing for you? Have you glorified God for your healing? Have you thanked the people? Would a letter be appropriate?
October 18: Pray Obnoxiously
Habakkuk 1:1-13, 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5; Luke 18:1-8
This parable, and the one that follows, are the only ones Luke explains in advance of telling. How could we miss the point? This judge, unscrupulous, hardened, cynical, does justice solely because he is badgered by a powerless widow. This widow, with no male to represent her case, discovers nonviolent direct action out of sheer desperation (if she can't recover her dowry, she will have nothing on which to live).
Legal recourse having been denied, she swallows her pride and makes a grand nuisance of herself. The judge cannot leave home, walk the street, enter his chambers or re-emerge without this woman sticking to him like a shadow, berating and scolding him for refusing to give her the justice that the parable assumes is rightly hers. Finally the judge concedes, not out of a guilty conscience, but simply to relieve himself of this pestilence.
Perhaps it is now clearer how some might miss the point. One should not, after all, pray to God this way! Badger God, hound God, throw all God's promises into God's face and demand that the Judge of the universe do right? Far be that from us, for whom decorum determines godliness. God hears us the first time we pray! Admittedly the judge was evil; but isn't this a contrast parable, implying how much more quickly God will answer our prayers?
Why then this delay in the coming of the Human One ("Son of Man")? Why do they pray day and night? Why is this widow's behavior made exemplary for our prayers, as Luke insists in verse 1?
Have we perhaps fallen under the spell of Stoic metaphysics, with its unchangeable God and its fatalism, which make intercession impossible? Have we sold out to decorum, when we ought to be, like this widow, storming the gates of heaven? Is Jesus asking us to join in the struggle for God's domination-free order by a kind of shameless, aggressive, obnoxious, world-defying brashness before God? Doesn't he know that Christians are too proper to do that?
October 25: The End of Breast-Beating
Zephaniah 3:1-9; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14
Luke tells us that this parable is about self-righteousness. But this Pharisee's behavior would have been regarded as exemplary by contemporaries. What we hear Jesus saying through the Pharisee is not a message about egotism and spiritual pride.
As Henry Mottu notes, these are not the Pharisee's words, but something speaking through him: an entire religious and class perspective that regarded divine acceptance as an economy of scarcity that requires some to be "in" and others "out." The Pharisee defines himself by what he is not; he determines who he is by reference to "other people."
The Temple is more than a mere backdrop; it determines the rules of the game. It makes the Pharisee who he is and the tax collector who he is. Both have defined their self-understanding in terms of a God who demands death as satisfaction for sins. Sacral violence--the slaughter of thousands of animals and birds as substitutes for ourselves--is the whole point of the Temple cultus. The Pharisee feels right at home here. He has found a way to satisfy himself that he has satisfied God.
The tax collector goes home justified, says Jesus, to the astonishment of all his hearers. But does the tax collector know that he goes home justified? Isn't Jesus the only one who truly knows where the tax collector stands before God? The tax collector is surely no model for our behavior.
Jesus is not teaching us to stand at the margins and beat our breasts as a way of gaining religious certitude. He is shattering the whole idea of an economy of scarcity in the realm of divine grace. He is overthrowing the notion that holiness and purity are determined by anything we do. He is declaring a new economy, one that neither character recognized. For the tax collector had also internalized the social identity epitomized by the Temple. It is not the tax collector's speech, but Jesus' "I tell you" that marks the irruption of the truth here.
How cheap then, to identify with the sinner here and pour scorn on the Pharisee. Both are victims of the domination system. Both need deliverance. How do we let ourselves be defined by "Christianity," or doctrine, or a dread-inducing picture of God? Who are those whose self-righteousness makes us self-righteous? How have we used this parable anti-semitically?
Walter Wink was professor of biblical interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City and the author of Transforming Bible Study (Second Edition, Abingdon Press, 1990) when this article appeared.
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