Although I have written on this several times before, it is a subject constantly on my mind. Until more modern times, the Word of God was primarily heard, not read. When the shift happened and people began to think of God's Word primarily as a written word on a page, a number of things happened. First of all, the focus shifted to what the word says. At this point the textual expert and Biblical scholar intervened to tell us what the Word was. . . and what it was not. From that point on the issue was not on what was heard and what does this mean but what is the text and what does it actually say. The Scriptures became an idea to be understood more than a voice to be heard. The Bible became merely a book -- like any other book -- whose meaning and import was decided by the reader. It became a book to be searched for texts -- texts that were meant to impart knowledge for understanding or inspiration but not living voices that were actually speaking. The second thing that happened is that the sermon changed. Preaching became an argument to convince rather than the voice of God addressing God's people with His Word. Even conservative denominations with a traditionally high view of Scripture succumbed to the idea that the Bible was mostly words about things instead of a living voice of the living Savior.
Sadly, I fear the problem today is that we think we hold to a high view of Scripture but the reality is that we have surrendered God's Word as a living and efficacious voice. It is, at least to most of us, an informational Word but not a sacramental one. We preach ideas to people instead of preaching Christ. We preach to convince with our erudition rather than so God may be heard. We appeal less to the God who works by the Spirit in the Word than to the strength of our ideas, the courage of our convictions, and the persuasiveness of our argument. Our people do not expect to hear God's voice in Scripture read and preached and so they don't. They hear the preacher. Instead of being invisible, we as preachers have come to overshadow the Word. In part, it is our own fault. We think the Word needs our help. We are less its servants than we are its masters. We decide what it says and we decide what it means. In this way the Word of God is relative to the individual and the time and subject to our minds and hearts. God's Word does not tabernacle within us but visits us from time to time as if to give us something to think about, to consider, and to decide upon.
It should not be this way for Lutherans. Of all Christians, we ought to be the ones reminding the world what most Protestants have forgotten and most Roman Catholics have not really considered -- that the Word of God speaks. We encounter that Word primarily in our ears. By the ear the Holy Spirit enters us, enlightening our minds and building faith and trust in our hearts. The Battle for the Bible was supposed to preserve the authority of Scripture and its trustworthiness but instead it has left us with an inerrancy tied more to the historicity of events than to the power of a living voice. I wish that it were not so but I fear we have lost more than a battle over the factual truthfulness of what God's Word says and have ended up with an infallible Word that doesn't do anything. If I had to choose, I would rather have a Scripture we believed was a powerful and living voice than one which was a truthful record of past events.
On a typical Sunday when the Scriptures are read, people are not listening. They are not hearing. They are reading along on the paper or Bible in front of them. Their heads are down and they are reading to themselves rather than hearing God speak to them. Think of the ceremonies attached to the Word. We answer the clarion call of the reader who says "The Word of the Lord" with a "Thanks be to God." We stand for the Gospel and as it is introduced we respond not to a Jesus out there somewhere but to the voice or Word of God "Glory to You, O Lord." At the end of the reading we respond to the God in our ears by saying "Praise to You, O Christ." When a Gospel procession takes the Word into our midst, we stand and watch as the Word of God is brought down to us. We turn away from the altar and everything else to focus on the Word -- the voice of God in our midst through the speaking of the Pastor. When the Gospel book is returned to its place on the lectern or altar, we remain standing. We cannot be comfortable and sit down until God's Word rests where it belongs. The pastor may kiss the book as a symbol of the affection and fealty of the entire congregation. But none of this means anything except show unless we recognize, believe, and proclaim that God's Word is more voice than book, that the power of the Word comes to us in our ears, and that reader has become a tool of God through which He still addresses us with His grace, mercy, and power.
This is precisely a lex orandi lex credendi issue. What we say we believe will be reflected in how we worship and how we worship will reflect what it is we believe, teach, and confess. Central to all of this is the fact that God's Word is a living, two edged sword, that never fails to accomplish God's purpose in speaking it and that is the way God deals with us as people (by the Spirit). Lutherans need to wake up and smell the roses. We cannot say we believe that God works through His Word and then treat it as if it were merely a book communicating ideas and truths. If God works through His Word then the voice we hear is God's and God enters us through our ears. This life-giving and salvation imparting and sin forgiving Word is not simply true but efficacious. When we recover this, we will have made the first step toward better preaching and better hearing.
"Until more modern times, the Word of God was primarily heard, not read. When the shift happened and people began to think of God's Word primarily as a written word on a page, a number of things happened."
ReplyDeleteWhat you refer to as "modern times" was actually in the 16th century, when the brains in Europe (and later in America and elsewhere) began to be altered by the process of learning to read. Prior to that time, even with the printing press, only about 10% of the people could read.
And the person primarily responsible for the fact that today, along with most other people, your literate brain has also been altered and neurologically rewired, is none other than Martin Luther. Luther translated the Bible into the German language, encouraging people to read the Bible, promoted schools for educating boys and girls to read, wrote tracts in German to be read by the German people, and prepared the Small Catechism, which was to be read and used by parents in the instruction of their children.
You can read the details about your brain's alterations and rewiring in the 700-page book, The WEIRDest People in the World, by Joseph Henrich, or you can get a quick overview in Henrich's February 17, 2021, article, "Martin Luther Rewired Your Brain."
Something contributing to the problem you discuss is that in some congregations the OT and Epistle lessons are read by laymen who do not read very well. They may stumble over quite ordinary words, not just unfamiliar personal and place names. The effect is very much that of a reader of a text and not much that of the audible Word.
ReplyDeleteIt might do some good if the pastor coached the reader ahead of time and had him read the passage aloud until it sounded right. This might be more likely to come about if the congregation regarded these lay readers as lectors and not just volunteers or as men asked to take care of this "small" aspect of the liturgy.
In my experience, too often the lessons that need context do not have it, and lessons likely to raise questions (e.g. about divorce) do not receive clarification and answer.
Improvement of the oral presentation of the lessons really is needed, otherwise they seem to be a preliminary to the sermon as the more important thing. Is it not really closer to the truth that the sermon is an exposition of the text(s) that have been read and which are more fundamentally important? But it never "feels" like that to the layman, I suspect.
Dale Nelson
I am not sure that the 16th century had many who were literate. Most sources suggest that only between 10-15% of the population were reading and that this did not change uniformly until the 18th century and later with the industrial revolution. Even then, it was not typical for all countries but some, including Germany, were better at public education than others. So, in relative terms, modern is accurate.
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