Grounded Scriptures: Humus humans

Many of us have heard too many times in the Adam & Eve story that “Adam means dirt.” Humans are made of humus, blah de blah. How cool and ancient and mythical and overimaginative of those ancient Hebrews – right?

No, there’s a little more to it than that.
First of all – “dirt.” Mistranslated “dust of the ground” by King James and the RSV family of Bibles, the word means “fertile soil.” Adamah in the Hebrew (you see how closely it’s related to Adam). This is a particular word, not just any old dirt. It is soil – arable land. Think not about the dust of a desert, but about potting soil… an obviously fertile soil, the stuff from which all land plants and animals ultimately take their nourishment. But our potting soil is usually pretty blackish brown, and this is not the adamah’s color. The words adam and adamah are not only related to one another, but are related to the word adom, “ruddy,” reddish. This is particular soil – for the Israelites this is the color of the hills of home.
It tells them not only THAT God made them, but WHERE God made them. Egyptian soil and Babylonian soil have nothing on that particular soil from which a chosen group of people were made.

We can all say that God made us here – on this earth. Some of us have (over the millennia) wandered to northern regions where our skin didn’t need the melanin so much, and so we got a little paler, and so it’s funny, nearly ridiculous, to say white people were made from soil. Contrary to the pictures in many a Children’s Bible, however, people in biblical times didn’t have that problem. They understood that they belonged to that land, as surely as their skintone matched the fertile soil.

In a world of cheap travel, adventure, frequent voluntary relocation, and of the nonvoluntary diaspora and exile of many people-groups… we lose our sense of belonging to a land.

Where do you belong? Where were you made? What color is your dirt? What is the land you cannot abandon?

New series: Grounded Scriptures

Hi folks! I’m Talitha, a seminarian, a New Yorker transplanted in California, a musician, a Sunday School teacher, a feminist, and an aspiring farmer.
Whaa? You may ask. What kind of well-educated, urban, pulpit-bound woman aspires to spend her days digging in the dirt? What kind of feminist is eager to do more canning and preserving than her grandmother did? Odd, I know. I often keep this part of my self-identity under wraps, because people do just that – “Whaa?” … and then I have to explain about how I might not have to operate a tractor, it could be urban community gardens, or how I could have a seedling nursery… But the fact remains, surprising many – I want to farm. I'm itching for more than a few square feet of land to do it on.


I have to blame a lot of the “why” for this unfortunate vocation on the Bible. Ever since my Old Testament professor Marvin Chaney shouted at our Prophets class “you can’t read this in stained-glass language!” about the sin of land-grabbing, I have had a vivid sense that the Way described and commanded in the biblical texts had plenty to do with how we work, live, spend our money, relate to our neighbor, and how we eat… perhaps more than with how we pray. And through reading (lots of Ellen Davis) and learning (with the Presbyterian Hunger Program roadtrip) I’ve come to believe that the particular realm of how we grow and distribute food in America is drastically opposed to the ideals set out in the Bible.

The rubber hits the road in my new blog series, posted here & elsewhere on Wednesdays, “Grounded Scriptures.” I will search each week for a Bible verse we tend to read in that “stained glass language,” extricate it from my piously cerebral assumptions, and look for a way to understand it in terms of the relationship of God’s people to the land, the soil, and the plants and creatures that grow in and on it. Read & join in!

Read and Learn -- Children's Curriculum and the Great Stories

Last week Jan Edmiston of A Church for Starving Artists posted about trying to find a curriculum for use with children that taught the great Bible stories. For most of Christian (and Jewish) history the Bible stories were extremely well known. Most people weren't literate. The stories were read in church, they were depicted in public art. They were memorable.

I grew up in Sunday School using a story based approach to the Bible. Some of my earliest church memories are of coloring pictures of the stories while the teacher read the story aloud to us. I grew up and read those stories in context. So, I know where they are in the Bible and how they fit into the story. A lot of the people I grew up with know the stories, but they don't know the context. To them the stories are isolated snippets that they can't visualize in a bigger picture. Then, we have a lot of people younger than I am who just never learned them at all.

So, what do we do about this? Read Jan's post and the comments there, any ideas?

JusticeSeeker
JusticeSeekerOK@aol.com

Read and Learn -- Short List This Book

General disclaimer, I love Richard Foster -- not that I've actually met him or anything. That being said, his book Life With God seems to have been written for the Frozen Chosen.

Several weeks ago my Church's Sunday bulletin included a list of three books the preaching Pastor considered his short list of books to suggest to people looking for help in growing closer to God. I wasn't nuts about his list, and that got me thinking about what books I would put on that list. Then I read Life With God. It definitely makes the list.

We are Presbyterians. That means, almost by definition, we are intelligent, well-read, better educated, rational to a fault and much more head-oriented than heart-oriented. The basic thrust of Foster's book is how to read the Bible in order to find what Foster calls the "with God life" rather than simply accumulating more knowledge of facts and history. First, Foster distinguishes the practice of reading the Bible to gain information or knowledge or to find some formula that will provide an easy answer to the problem at hand. Both of these practices leave the reader in charge and may produce educated, informed people; but are not likely to produce evidence of real spiritual transformation.

Then, Foster describes in a very intellectually accessible way why we want to find more in the Bible. He describes in great detail the process (Lectio Divina). He provides examples and detail. What frequently comes across in other books as too mystical and touchy-feely for the Frozen crowd is intellectually accessible and perfectly rational. Instead of writing a single chapter about Lectio Divina, as he did in his fabulous book on prayer, Foster uses most of this book to draw the reader into the idea, to make the reader want more, to walk the reader carefully through the process and through the books of the Bible in terms of the story to be found there -- both Testaments. I think many Presbyterians would rather have a well indexed User's Guide than the collection of stories, history, prophecy, poetry, law, etc. that we call the Bible. Foster takes that attitude head-on showing the stories, meaning, experiences and relationship available throughout this wonderful collection of stories and lives we call Scripture.

The book does make mention of Spiritual Disciplines in general in a number of places and a couple of the last chapters deal with disciplines specifically, although more as a framework on which to build than anything else. This is not, however, a book on fasting or solitude. This is a book on finding a relationship with the Living God in his written word.

JusticeSeeker
JusticeSeekerOK@aol.com

Sunday Devotional - Would Christianity Survive without the Bible?

Colossians 2:17 These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ. (NIV)

Someone recently posed the question: could Christianity survive without the Bible? That’s a tough question to answer. For three thousand years, God’s people have looked to the sacred scriptures to build a foundation of faith and tradition in order to give their lives meaning and purpose.

The stories of the Bible have become timeless examples of how ordinary people overcome their troubles in extraordinary ways. How solid would our faith be without the heroic exploits of Noah and his ark; of Joseph and his brothers; of Daniel in the lions’ den? These ancient tales of faith have inspired generations of God’s people in every country and culture throughout the earth.

But what if the Bible suddenly disappeared from our world? What would happen if we as Christians could no longer read the Gospels? What would our faith become? Could it survive?

If we look back to the faith of the first Christians, we come across an amazing fact: they didn’t have any scriptures to sustain their beliefs. The Gospels were written thirty years after the Church was established. The Old Testament wasn’t canonized in its present form until AD93. This must mean that the first Christians established their faith on maintaining their relationship with Christ. Their reality of faith depended upon their connection to His Spirit and not to words written on a scroll of papyrus.

I’m not advocating that we do away with the Bible. It is very important as a guide book for how we ought to live our lives, but in the end it will not be our knowledge of scripture that will get us into heaven. It will be our living, day-to-day relationship with Christ that will secure our salvation. He is the Eternal Word of God – the true Word that is alive, dynamic, and everlasting. Jesus is not someone who is confined to the pages of history, nor is He a mere character in a holy book. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, in whom our faith abides and through whom Christianity survives.

The scriptures are a shadow of the things that were to come, and as Paul would say, “the reality, however, is found in Christ.”Books will one day turn to dust, and even our computers will become redundant and decay, but the Living Word of God, Jesus Christ, will never pass away.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, we thank You for the scriptures and for the many things with which they teach us about You, about Your messages, and about Your mighty deeds. These sacred words bring us closer to You, but they are not the source of our salvation. Only Your Spirit can connect us to God; only Your power can restore us to His favor. Enable us this day to grow closer to You in prayer, in devotion, and in service. In Your Holy Name, we pray. Amen.

Stushie writes week day devotionals at the Heaven's Highway blog.