“YOU’RE SO VAIN, (YOU PROBABLY THINK THIS VERSE IS ABOUT)” OR THE SACRAMENTAL INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE AND THE RENEWAL OF THE CHURCH
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We may be witnessing a renaissance of the Daily Office in the Episcopal Church. For many parishes, Morning Prayer has become the temporary principal service on Sunday. Throughout the week the Offices proliferate online. The absence has been excruciating, but when the Eucharist is impossible, we can be assured that Christ is made present to us in Word and Sacrament. We can devote ourselves to forms of worship that primarily call us to prayerful engagement with Scripture, such as Morning Prayer, trusting that Jesus will meet us there as surely as at the altar rail.
Some folks aren’t buying it. Some apparently equate the temporary suspension of the Eucharist with a temporary suspension of grace. Some want to see the faithful providing their own bread and wine at home while priests broadcast the prayer of consecration from another location, despite this being improper according to our Prayer Book. Opponents of this so-called virtual consecration have been accused of not having faith in the Spirit’s power to consecrate the elements across distances, but that argument cuts both ways. What about a lack of faith in the power of the Spirit to manifest Christ’s presence to us across space and time through the proclamation of Holy Scripture? This in no way diminishes the power and centrality of the Eucharist or any Christian’s need for the same. However, if we are unwilling or unable to feast on the spiritual food that is set before us now (and always) in the words of Scripture, what makes us think we are prepared or even capable to properly feast on the Eucharist?
What we lack is an emphasis on the spiritual food of Scripture. For too long we have treated Scripture as an archeological dig; an academic exercise that has little or nothing to do with spiritual reality. Historical-critical dalliances sometimes function as padding to soften any moral claims Scripture makes on us by finding a convenient loophole in the “original intent” of the author or the “context” of the original audience. It’s like wrapping the Sword of Truth in a pool noodle so no one gets hurt. In this attempt to buffer ourselves from the discomfort and conviction of reading Scripture seriously, we also buffer ourselves from its healing balm and sacramental power. For Scripture to nourish us sacramentally we must acknowledge its spiritual claim on us. This entails recovering a spiritual, sacramental way of reading Scripture that opens us to the experience of God’s grace. A sacramental reading understands the words of Scripture as outward and visible signs that are transformed by the Holy Spirit to be inward and spiritual grace for us. The words of God and God’s people recorded in Scripture are sacramentally transformed into the Word of God, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12).
We are admonished to be sacramental readers by our Lord Himself. While walking with two disciples on the Emmaus road, Jesus “interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures” (Luke 24:27). Christ opened up Scripture for them in a way that was just as important as the breaking of bread for the subsequent realization that their travelling companion was indeed the Risen Lord. Again, right before He ascended to heaven, Christ charged His disciples to be witnesses not only to the Passion and Resurrection, but to how those events fulfilled “everything that was written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms” (Luke 24:44).
Before you start singing, “You’re so vain (you probably think this verse is about you)” to Jesus, note how transformative it was for the early Church to follow Jesus’ interpretative program once they were empowered by the Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. Shortly after the Holy Spirit descended in Acts 2, Peter addressed the crowd that had gathered. His preaching consisted of a sacramental reading of the psalms which reveals the Risen Lord to those who listen. It is Christ who “has not been abandoned to Hades” (Psalm 16:10), who was resurrected on the third day instead. It is Christ who ascended to heaven and welcomed by God the Father with these words from Psalm 110, “Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool.” The Risen Lord was made present through this preaching and 3,000 people were baptized and became followers of Jesus. The Eucharist undoubtedly proceeded from there, but the foundation for the growth of the Church was laid by the sacramental reading and proclamation of Scripture.
For Peter and other New Testament authors, the Psalter was a special locus for the spiritual interpretation of Scripture. Their reading did not negate or erase the text’s original meaning and function. Certainly, the psalms still retain all their humanity and original specificity. The entire range of human emotion and experience is expressed incomparably in the psalms. The Church’s sacramental reading proclaims that all these human emotions and experiences have been undertaken, subsumed, and finally transformed by the incarnation of Jesus Christ. For broken and hurting people wondering how the pieces will ultimately come back together, this is Good News. Jesus will not fail to meet any of us if we seek Him, reading the psalms in the context of devotion and prayer. The Daily Office is designed for just such an encounter.
The New Testament and other writings of the earliest Christians are replete with this way of reading the whole Hebrew Scripture through the lens of the Risen Lord. Christ is the bridegroom of the Song of Solomon; the stone that the builders rejected who has become the chief cornerstone (Psalm 118, Acts 4:11); Zion’s precious foundation (Isaiah 28:16, 1 Peter 2:7); Daniel’s rolling rock, uncut by human hands, who knocks down the idolatrous empires of this world (Daniel 2:34). Christ is the suffering servant of Isaiah; the slaughtered Lamb (Isaiah 53:7; Revelation 5:6) and simultaneously the Shepherd who leads us in paths of righteousness (Psalm 23). Christ is the second Adam and the new Moses. His exaltation upon the cross was prefigured in the brazen serpent lifted up in the wilderness to bring healing to all who turn to Him (John 3:14). Reading sacramentally identifies how our baptism into Christ is prefigured in the crossing of the Israelites through the Red Sea (1 Corinthians 10:1-2), and the drowning of sin by Noah’s flood (1 Peter 3:20-1). As John Behr writes,
“[Christ] is the treasure hidden in scripture, and so scripture, in turn, is the treasury in which we find him. Scripture is a compendium of the words and images with which we, as it were, articulate the mystery of Christ, the Christ proclaimed ‘in accordance with the scriptures.’” (1)
I’ve been using the words sacramental and spiritual but there is other associated terminology. Figural, allegorical, typological, these and other terms each have particular nuances, but they all endeavor to make the Risen Lord the lens through which we read Scripture and all of history, thereby allowing us to understand the meaning of our individual and corporate lives.
With this serious business comes serious dangers. Idiosyncratic readings easily lead astray. All interpretations must be measured by the rule of faith and this work ought to be done with significant guidance from our ancestors in faith. We have a great company of saints, so we never have to read the Bible or pray alone.
A particular distortion to shun is the practice of reading Jewish people out of their own story and their own sacred text. Some of the Church’s spiritual interpretations of Scripture have been used over the years to justify anti-Semitism. Of course, that demon is just as comfortable with source criticism or other modernist innovations in Scripture reading, as many an erudite sermon from the pulpits of Europe and America can illustrate. All such evil must be actively resisted. Our interpretations must be taken captive in obedience to Christ (2 Corinthians 10:5) and our prejudices seared away by God’s consuming fire (Malachi 3:2-3).
We need not totally eschew critical inquiries into the historical contexts of the Bible, but it is high time to recognize they are not the only legitimate, coherent, or most important ways of reading Scripture for Christians. It’s time to admit that higher criticism is a provincial Western enterprise not shared by most Christians in any place or time. A return to the spiritual interpretation of Scripture positions us to better pursue reconciliation and ecumenism with Christians of all varieties, especially in the majority world.
Reading Scripture sacramentally helps us to integrate Scripture into our prayers and integrate our prayers into our lives. When we prayerfully behold Christ revealed in Scripture, we see and experience how His incarnation has integrated humanity into the Triune God’s vision for communion and wholeness. The sacramental reading of Scripture needs to be a regular feature of our preaching, Bible studies, and adult forums so that all Christians can learn to practice it in their daily lives. It will surely be a foundational aspect of the renewal of the Church in the 21st century.
The Mystery of Christ: Life in Death. Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press (2006), 55.
