The Moral Encyclopedia

And He said: ‘Incline thine heart to every word which I shall speak to thee on this mount, and write them in a book in order that their generations may see how I have not forsaken them for all the evil which they have wrought in transgressing the covenant which I establish between Me and thee for their generations this day on Mount Sinai.  Jubilees 1:5

In a book – Once before we heard Frederick Buechner describe our frustration with religious communication.  Perhaps we need to hear it again.

“It’s difficult to help people see that the Bible isn’t really a book of moral platitudes, full of plaster saints and moral exemplars and boringness, as the rather dreary format so often suggests.  It’s difficult to speak of holy things through the traditional language of doctrine and the language of biblical faith, trying to re-animate it, trying to get people interested in it, trying to see that it’s not quite as bankrupt as they had been led to believe, very often led to believe by people who themselves loved it but weren’t very good at conveying it.  And that is certainly one of the languages in which we speak about religion—the formal religious language.  But the trouble is, of course, that for many people the language of doctrine, the language of Zion, the religious words, the biblical categories and so on are like coins that have been handled so long that the images rub off.  You don’t know what they are, you can’t read them anymore, they’re rubbed smooth.  You don’t know what they’re worth.  You’ve heard these words, and you’ve heard them, and heard them, and heard them to the point where they lose their currency.  They don’t have the power they once did.”[1]

It’s all too familiar, isn’t it?  We heard the same sermons year after year, the same repentance appeals, the same Christmas story.  In Bucharest I went to several Russian Orthodox churches.  I noticed that every one had the same icons and every congregant went through the same physical rituals.  Kissing the image, bending to the floor, making the sign of the cross—routines upon routines.  I also noticed that most of the attendees were older.  The rituals have lost their power.   Younger generations are leaving them behind.  They’re worn out.  Once they were alive with spiritual energy.  Once they were the difference between faith and failure.  Once they were the bonds that kept us together.  But now—now we have social media and government welfare.  We don’t need the “church” anymore and in particular we don’t need religious language that doesn’t mean anything.  The “Book,” the Bible, is just an outdated moral encyclopedia for grandfathers and grandmothers.  Ink and paper without compelling engagement.  A reading ritual.

When the author of Jubilees penned this verse, he was already on the road to communication extinction.  Writing it in a book means shelving it, turning it into history, into something to be studied, examined, dissected.  Books aren’t life.  What we lack are living manuscripts called prophets, rabbis, teachers—neighbors.  The only book most people read is the life you live.  Before God’s word became pen and ink it was electrified voice.  Thunder.  Lightening.  Wind.  Whisper.  Before it became a text it was testimony.  That’s what we lost when we wrote it down.

Topical Index: book, text, ritual, Buechner, Jubilees, 1:5

[1] Frederick Buechner  The Remarkable Ordinary: How to Stop, Look, and Listen to Your Life (Zondervan, 2017), pp. 56-57.

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