People of the Book
Nehemiah 7:73b-8:18 and Luke 4:13-21
January 24, 2010
Tupelo High School. Fall of 1999. The last year of the millennium; just over 10 years ago from today. I was sitting in my senior English literature class listening to our upcoming assignments from Mrs. McCarty. On the agenda: The Catcher in the Rye. One of the all-time classic American novels. If memory serves me correctly, Mrs. McCarty had informed our class before starting this book that the novel contained some language and situations that we probably had never experienced before in educational classroom settings.
If there was one surefire way to grab hold of the attention of teenaged kids like me, it was to tell us that something might be objectionable. With my interest, and surely the interest of many other of my classmates now heightened, we were dismissed from class and set about trying to find what might be so upsetting about J.D. Salinger’s novel.
I still harbor a faint memory of cracking open the cheap, bulk binding of the bone-white cover with rainbow streaks in the top left corner and hearing these words of Holden Caulfield bounce about my brain:
“If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.”
The bluntness of the text was refreshing, when compared with the flowery language we frequently stumbled across in other books chosen by our High School English department. And other than a not infrequent smattering of crude language—language that, honestly, we heard everyday in our high school hallways—I had a hard time understanding why this novel needed a disclaimer. If anything, it seemed teenagers would be the best ones to read this work because its subject matter is particularly attuned to the teenage experience: growing up, conflict, maturation, desires for independence, etc.
Mrs. McCarty began our next class period asking questions about The Catcher in the Rye. What is the plot so far? Who are the main characters? What controversy has arisen? Eventually, Mrs. McCarty asked a question to one of two students, both of whom were my friends, sitting quietly in the back of the class. The student couldn’t answer. Mrs. McCarty responded, “Did you not read the material.” “No,” was the rather direct response. “May I ask you why?” Mrs. McCarty continued. “I think it is wrong for me to read things filled with curse words. My faith won’t allow me.” Mrs. McCarty, ever the gracious teacher, replied with courteousness, “Let’s talk about this after class,” but anyone in the room could see the disappointment in her face at the rejection without consideration of a supremely important novel.
Eventually the two students who objected to The Catcher in the Rye were given a different novel to read and our class continued onward discovering with both delight and trepidation the life and perspectives of Holden Caulfield.
It was most likely at this point in my life that I took the position that if a book is banned or censored or challenged then it probably has a remarkable story to tell; a story that touches the depths of the human soul so frightfully and truthfully that it must be worthy of attention. In most instances for me, banned books have been blessed books.
One would think that the United States, where the values of freedom, justice and the pursuit of happiness are elevated, would be the ideal location for the acceptance of many kinds of literary art. Yet, repeatedly, the United States has found itself in a cultural struggle over the banning of books—essentially limiting the freedom of speech.
Of the top 100 novels of the 20th Century chosen by the Radcliffe Publishing Course, now at Columbia University, no less than 42 of the 100 have been either banned or challenged at one time. Of the top 30 novels on that list, 25 have suffered that fate.
Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird
Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby
Alice Walker’s The Color Purple
John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men
Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God
And on, and on, and on…
Of note, Winnie-the-Pooh and Charlotte’s Web fortunately escaped without being either challenged or banned.
Furthermore, I would venture to say that it is Christians who are responsible for most of the bans—folks like my friends in high school English—who feel that the Psalms statement “I will set no vile thing before my eyes“ applies specifically to books.
It is rather ironic that same Christians who actively pursue the removal of books from libraries and schools also find the word of God in a book called the Bible which filled with stories of horrific tortures, rapes, injustices, violence, polygamy, and prostitution.
But why all this talk of books on this Sunday morning? Because the power of the written word is at the very center of both of our biblical stories today. In Luke’s passage it is Jesus’ proclamation that he, a poor carpenter’s son, fulfills the prophecy found in the Book of Isaiah that is the cause of controversy. For those in the assembly hearing Jesus’ words, it was unthinkable that one from such a lowly status, with no access to religious or political power, could fit into the role destined for one of much greater prestige.
“A carpenter’s son?! Impossible!” This was not viewed as a proper role for Jesus. For many, Jesus’ statements were an insult to the Holy Writings themselves. And then Jesus pushes the boundaries again, saying that his hometown of Nazareth was like the widows in ancient Israel who died during a three-year six-month drought or like the lepers who weren’t cleansed in the work of Elisha. Jesus first asserts a position larger than allowed for him and then insults his hometown with words lifted from the very scriptures which they adore. Blasphemy it was!
In other words Jesus is almost hurled off a cliff before his ministry even begins, because of a book. His interpretation of the Holy Scriptures was so unique, that his very life was almost banned, killed, ended by an angry mob acting in loving protection of their sacred scrolls.
Books have caused controversy for thousands of years, though in the case of our stories today, the controversy over books is based on their sacredness and holiness, not their sinfulness—a distinct difference from today’s book bans.
And on the sacredness of books, let us turn now to a book of the Bible we rarely visit, Nehemiah, because it is in this book that we find a unique story of the power of the written word, of God’s own self being revealed in the writings of humans.
Because we are less familiar with this story we need a bit of background. Tens of thousands of Israelites have recently returned to Jerusalem from exile in Babylon. Nehemiah has overseen the reconstruction of the walls of Jerusalem, but inside those walls very few people live and most of the houses have been destroyed by ancient warfare and years of deterioration by abandonment. There is conflict between the Israelites who had grown up in Babylonia and those who had stayed behind in ancient Israel. Bickering and fighting are seemingly constant. And a question begins to emerge from masses: “How can we become the country of old? How can we once again find our common ground and merge together as one people, one faith.”
They find their answer and their hope in a book—or at least their version of book, a scroll. Nehemiah gathers the Israelites together, the caveat that only those with pure lineages may come, and calls the people to come to the old rubble and the new walls of Jerusalem.
Then something miraculous happens. The people themselves, the once-scattered now-gathered multitude of Israelites call for the priest Ezra to bring the Torah to them. They, the people who love the book, instruct him to read from it. So Ezra stands before them with the scroll of the Torah unfurled and he simply and majestically begins to read. From early morning to midday, for six hours, he reads to the men, women, and children a story. The story of who they are. The story of who their God is. The story of their history and the morals of their community. A divine story captured in human words.
Here in the midst of the reconstruction of the people of Israel is a book. It is the book that brings them together. It is a book that binds them to one another; it is a book that shows both the glories and follies of humanity; it is a book that is the yeast leavening the bread; it is a book that helps them forgive sins, reconcile with one another, and recapture the hope of their people.
And here we are today, over 2500 years later still using an expanded version of the very scroll that Ezra read from in Ancient Israel. And still that book speaks to us, still it help us understand our world and our communities. A book is a sacred thing.
Today’s world is noted for the immediacy of which we can find information. The problem is much of the information we take in is not really well thought out. When we receive tweets or Facebook status updates, when we read blogs or listen to opinionated news shows, many times words are poorly chosen, shortcuts are taken, misinformation reigns and truth is sacrificed for instantaneous convenience.
Good books are different. They take time to write. Serious authors are artists of the divine; they search for infinite truths in an ambiguous world. Sometimes the depths of our human languages are scoured for hours on end in an attempt to find exact words that best express the notions of what it means to be human. That type of patience and care is rarely seen in our land of convenience and immediacy. It seems to me that books reveal more deeply than many other forms of media the divinity present in our world and in that way, books are truly sacred.
During the so-called dark ages of the Western World it was often the church, by way of monastic communities holed up in isolated monasteries, that was responsible for preserving and caring for the great literature of the world—the histories of great empires, the exploits of kingdoms past, the debates between theologians and scholars, fabled stories and literature, poetry and mythologies. Books were a precious, invaluable currency because within them were tightly bound the struggles and triumphs of societies past, the stories of humanity, the workings of God in the world.
And our own faith is one tied directly to books. There are sixty-six of them in our Bible today spanning over a thousand years of history. And though our Bibles stopped recording notions of God around 100 BC, the Holy Spirit has certainly not been silent since then. If we believe in God’s living word, if we believe in a God that continues to guide humanity, then we must very well believe that throughout our history insights into the mysteries of God and humanity can be found scattered throughout the books of the world.
The image of God is in humanity. And humanity writes down these glimpses of God in the pages of books. So this week I hope you will take some time to find a good book, perhaps even a banned book. Then I hope you will sit down and I hope you will read it with the sound of silence around you and glorious images dancing in your head. Because it may very well be from the pages of a book that God will speak to you next. Amen.
