The single most significant credential needed for comprehending the Bible is an intention to listen to the Word.
For that, a person must not merely desire to hear the Word of God, but must also be free to hear the Word of God. This means becoming vulnerable to the Word, and to the utterance of the Word, in much the same way as one has to become vulnerable to another human being if one truly cares to know that other person and to hear his or her word. In contemporary American culture, whatever the situation in other cultures, though there is much sound, a clamor of noises, and a vast and complex profusion of words, there seems to be relatively little listening amongst human beings.
There is – literally – babel instead of communication; there is frustration instead of relationship; there is violence instead of love. The extraordinary distortions of language which, nowadays, victimize us all, inhibiting our listening to one another as human beings, render it the more difficult to approach the Bible in an attitude of listening, inhibit or otherwise hinder us from becoming open and vulnerable to the Word.
To transcend the babel, to have, as Jesus so often mentioned, the ears to hear the Word, it is essential, for the time being at least, to put aside everything else: distractions whether trivial or important, self serving ideas, arguments, all opinions, preconceptions of every sort, defenses, temptations, mundane occupations. A person must come to the Bible quietly, eagerly expectantly-ready to listen.
One must (as nearly as one can) confront the Bible naively, that is, as if one had not encountered the Bible previously. And, at the same time one must approach the Bible realistically-rather than superstitiously-recognizing that access to the same Word of God which the Bible bespeaks is given to us in the versatility of the presence of the Word of God active in common history: in the event of Jesus Christ, in the incessant agitations of the Holy Spirit, in the constitution of Creation itself. (See John' 1:1-14.) Insofar as we do this, listening happens. Then the Word of God in the Bible can be heard in the Word's own integrity and power and grace.
In what follows, certain accounts from the Gospel According to Luke are commended to your listening in groups, as well as in solitude. These are passages which have been traditionally recited during Advent since the era of the ancient Church. Do not allow their familiarity to interfere with your attention to what these texts actually say. When you initially read them, it is suggested that you do so out loud, whether in company of a group or not, to facilitate hearing the Word.
For that, a person must not merely desire to hear the Word of God, but must also be free to hear the Word of God. This means becoming vulnerable to the Word, and to the utterance of the Word, in much the same way as one has to become vulnerable to another human being if one truly cares to know that other person and to hear his or her word. In contemporary American culture, whatever the situation in other cultures, though there is much sound, a clamor of noises, and a vast and complex profusion of words, there seems to be relatively little listening amongst human beings.
There is – literally – babel instead of communication; there is frustration instead of relationship; there is violence instead of love. The extraordinary distortions of language which, nowadays, victimize us all, inhibiting our listening to one another as human beings, render it the more difficult to approach the Bible in an attitude of listening, inhibit or otherwise hinder us from becoming open and vulnerable to the Word.
To transcend the babel, to have, as Jesus so often mentioned, the ears to hear the Word, it is essential, for the time being at least, to put aside everything else: distractions whether trivial or important, self serving ideas, arguments, all opinions, preconceptions of every sort, defenses, temptations, mundane occupations. A person must come to the Bible quietly, eagerly expectantly-ready to listen.
One must (as nearly as one can) confront the Bible naively, that is, as if one had not encountered the Bible previously. And, at the same time one must approach the Bible realistically-rather than superstitiously-recognizing that access to the same Word of God which the Bible bespeaks is given to us in the versatility of the presence of the Word of God active in common history: in the event of Jesus Christ, in the incessant agitations of the Holy Spirit, in the constitution of Creation itself. (See John' 1:1-14.) Insofar as we do this, listening happens. Then the Word of God in the Bible can be heard in the Word's own integrity and power and grace.
In what follows, certain accounts from the Gospel According to Luke are commended to your listening in groups, as well as in solitude. These are passages which have been traditionally recited during Advent since the era of the ancient Church. Do not allow their familiarity to interfere with your attention to what these texts actually say. When you initially read them, it is suggested that you do so out loud, whether in company of a group or not, to facilitate hearing the Word.
William Stringfellow (1928 - 1985) was an Episcopal lay theologian, attorney and author.
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