• Nehemiah 8: 1-3,5-6,8-10

The return of God’s people from exile in Babylon happened sporadically and with some difficulty.  The rebuilding of the Temple and the city of Jerusalem with the re-establishment of religious and civic order made progress and then failed repeatedly.  Likewise, the accounts of the return in the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah are compiled texts of widely varying and confusing kinds.  Contained in this compilation, however, is a singular, stirring seminal event: Ezra reads the rediscovered ” book of the Law” in the public “square before the Water Gate” in Jerusalem “from early morning until midday….”  With  a gesture appropriate to the occasion, Ezra ceremoniously opens the book “and all the people stood up,” lifted their hands and together said, “Amen, Amen….”  Then Ezra, Nehemiah and “the Levites” read the texts and provide commentary: “they read from the law of God with interpretation.”  Mark this day and remember it, the people are told, because “This day is holy to the Lord….”  It should be a day of feasting and joy.  (Gabriel Josipovici writes: this scene “dramatizes within the Bible how the Bible itself will be treated by wise men [and women], both Jewish and Christian, in ages to come.”  And, he notes, “Their explanations and interpretations form the basis of sermons right down to the present day.” [The Book of God, p.137])

• Psalm 19

No doubt or ambiguity here: the psalmist perceives perfectly, even without words, “God’s glory” everywhere around him.  But then the poem shifts to that other, comparable assurance of God’s benevolent presence in human life– the Lord’s teaching, which is perfect/restorative/pure/unblemished/just.  Yet, the psalmist confesses, his interpretations are susceptible to “unwitting” misuse of the Lord’s teaching and he prays that his “utterances” may be “pleasing” to the lord.

• I Corinthians 12: 12-31a

Paul has just argued that the messy diversity in the church has the same source– “the Spirit”– and operates under the same rubric for all believers– “Jesus is Lord.”  Now he offers an analogy of the church to the human body.  Each part is vital to the other and to the whole.  All suffer together and all thrive  (“Rejoice”) together.

• Luke 4:14-21

Luke’s placement and his twist on the story of the return of Jesus to his hometown after his reputation had begun to spread throughout the area is consistent with the narrative’s overarching theme.  Immediately after the arrest of John the Baptizer and Satan’s tests of Jesus in the wilderness, Luke writes that Jesus “returned in the power of the Spirit into Galilee” and word spread quickly of his authoritative teaching and powerful healing.  (Matthew’s and Mark’s version of this return home come later in their narratives and focus on the rejection of Jesus by his hometown.)  In Luke’s version, Jesus has gone to the synagogue on the Sabbath “as was his custom.”  He stood up, read the reading of the day, which Luke identifies as an excerpt from Isaiah [61:1-1;58:6), in which the prophet declares “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me,” empowering the prophet to preach, heal and liberate those who were oppressed and to proclaim a year of jubilee, “the acceptable year of the Lord.”  When it came time to offer an interpretation of this text, Jesus said simply: You are hearing/seeing this text fulfilled today!

In that pivotal scene from Nehemiah, the public reading of God’s word followed by interpretation brings a response form the people, who celebrate that they have had an encounter with something that is human, fundamental, necessary and life-giving/transformative that day.  Even with her caveat, (that she might be susceptible to “unwitting” misinterpretation), the psalmist still offers her own best, honest interpretation.  Luke, with the story-telling skill of a major playwright, provides a few bland details about Jesus making a return visit to his hometown synagogue, where he presumably learned God’s word as a child, and functions as the lector that day before Jesus delivers that unforgettable line– Today, right here before your eyes and within earshot, you have witnessed that this text is fulfilled!  Today’s appointed readings and gospel, as well as many, many more throughout the biblical texts, establish the premise that reading and interpreting the texts in public is the Bible’s self-authorized means for bringing current readers/hearers into direct contact with the prospect of the original human encounter with the divine that inspired the text to be written in the first place!

Hannah Arendt collected the essays of Walter Benjamin after his death and had them published under the title, Illuminations, (Harry Zohn, trans., New York: Shocken Books, 1968).  Her introductory essay, which was also published in The New Yorker, has become famous for the following passage:

“Like a pearl diver who descends to the bottom of the sea, not to excavate the bottom and  bring it to light, but to pry loose the rich and strange, the pearls and the coral, in the depths, and to carry them to the surface, this thinking delves into the past– but not in order to resuscitate it the way it was and to contribute to the renewal of extinct ages.  What guides this thinking is the conviction that although the living is subject to the ruin of time, the process of decay is at the same time a process of crystallization, that in the depth of the sea, into which sinks and is dissolved what once was alive, some things suffer a sea-change and survive in new crystallized forms and shapes that remain immune to the elements, as though they waited only for the pearl diver who one day will come down to them and bring them up into the world of the living– as ‘thought fragment,’ as something rich and strange, and, perhaps as everlasting Ur phenomenon.”  (pp 50-51)

After the texts were read in public and interpreted– bringing to the surface the ‘crystallized fragments’ –the people celebrated because something new had happened, the book of Nehemiah records.  After Jesus read that passage form Isaiah, which defines how one can know for certain that she has heard the Word of God– healing, justice, liberation break out– Jesus declares that this venerable text is not just an inspiring fragment from the past, it is fulfilled here and now, this day.  Preachers (who fulfill the function of “pearl diver”) and congregations are engaged in a risky exercise when  the biblical texts are read and interpreted in public.  Something “new and strange” might/should happen!  Again!