The hearing of the Word

Father Stephen's words came to me this morning as a drink from that well that springs unto life eternal that the Lord offered the woman of Samaria. I can't help but quote most of what he wrote, but if you want to read everything, here is the link. Italics in the following text are mine.

I am convinced after years of preaching and listening to preaching that the bulk of Scripture has become lost to our ears. We hear it, but fail to “hear” it. And I do not mean this merely in the moral sense (doubtless we fail to be “doers” of the word). Rather, I am aware of a kind of dullness, of seeing a very narrow set of things that become the lens through which we see and understand. We read amazing statements as though they were commonplace, and we make commonplace that which should be utterly astounding.

Much of my conviction on this matter has come in the last 12 years or more and my immersion into the services of the Orthodox Church. These services, long and with ample “hymnography” that is but a poetic commentary on the Scriptures and doctrines that surround any particular feast, are probably the richest surviving engagement with the Word of God to be found in a 21st century Church. Here no Reformation has occurred and reduced all Scripture to a “riff” on Justification by Faith, or a subset of Calvin’s paradigms. Here no Enlightenment has shown with its darkness of doubt and obfuscation.

Instead, there is a constant wonderment at the Scriptures themselves, as if the hymnographer were discovering something for the first time or had found a rare gem to share to any willing to listen – and all in the form of praise and thanksgiving to God.

It is true to say that in Orthodoxy, “Theology sings.” It is possible to be lulled into a near trance as the choir or chanter utters mysteries to God and to miss treasures that should truly astound. But careful attention is always rewarded with something you never considered.

I am further convinced that our modern complacencies have made us deaf to the form and shape of Scripture so that we listen like sceptics and frown like Pharisees. In our modern context most people have either been shaped by fundamentalist literalism; by modernist historical criticism; or by nearly nothing at all. In each case the Scriptures will not sing – they will not yield up their treasures.

…

The inspired (I know no other word) imagination of the early Church that took the “Apostolic Hypothesis,” as St. Irenaeus would call it, and fashioned the framework on which the Old Testament would be read, is the same early Church that gave us the Gospels (inspired indeed) and the other writings of Scripture. Their treatment of prophecy is not obvious. Where is the three day resurrection prophesied (only in Jonah’s sojourn in the belly of the whale – now that is inspired interpretation)? The writers of the New Testament believed that everything in the Old, when read rightly would yield insight into the Messiah and the mystery of our salvation. But their creative insight (again, I believe it is inspired) is far removed from the flat-footed nonsense that we hear out of modern fundamentalist “prophetic” scholars, whose reading of the Old Testament is almost as poorly constructed as the 19th century false prophecies of the book of Mormon! Neither bear any resemblance to the treatment of prophecy found in the New Testament.

And thus I return to my original point. We have become deaf. We listen with ears either hardened by modernist scepticism, or by a false literalism that has substituted Darbyite nonsense for the Apostolic faith, or reduced Scripture to delicate harmonizations. None of them have the boldness and audacity of the patristic hymnographers who stood in the proper line of succession, proclaiming the faith as it had been taught and received and continuing to expound its mysteries.Thank God that somewhere in this modern world, you can still stand and listen to the wonders of our salvation, sung and unraveled before the unbelieving heart of man. Glory to God who has so loved mankind!

— Fr. Stephen, Glory to God for All Things

"The boldness and audacity" of the fathers, who are described elsewhere as "notoriously holding to the faith once delivered to the saints" is the mark of biblical, apostolic and orthodox Christianity, the Orthodoxy that I affirm and in which I hope to finish my race. Grace, peace and courage, brethren, as we now enter into the week of the mysteries of Christ's last week before His passion. Let's pray for each other as we go to meet the Lord on the hill of our own Calvary, and after the three-day burial, find ourselves together, in the light, awakened to gaze upon His likeness.

Now the hour has come

for the Son of Man to be glorified.

I tell you most solemnly,

unless a wheat grain falls on the ground and dies,

it remains only a single grain;

but if it dies,

it yields a rich harvest.

Anyone who loves his life loses it;

anyone who hates his life in this world

will keep it for eternal life.

If a man serves Me, he must follow Me,

wherever I am, My servant will be there too.

John 12:23b-26a Jerusalem Bible