Our message from Sunday, September 15, 2019 came from Karen Wilk, who serves as Team Leader for Go Local, part of Resonate Global Mission, a ministry of the Christian Reformed Church of North America, our denomination.
Karen introduced her message to us this way: Will will approach the text by way of Midrash, the Jewish form of Scripture interpretation. Midrash opens up an ongoing conversation with the text which is unencumbered by the need to find the right answer, get everything ‘to fit’ or avoid the tensions and questions in the passage. As Rachel Held Evans explains in her book, Inspired: Slaying Giants, Walking on Water, and Loving the Bible Again (2018):
Midrash, with its imaginative engagement of the Bible’s stories, reminds us that biblical interpretation need not be reduced to a zero-sum game, but rather inspires endless insights and challenges, the way a good story does each time it is told and retold. Our relational God has given us a relational sacred text, one that, should we surrender to it, reminds us that being people of faith isn’t as much about being right as it is about being a part of a community in restored and restorative relationship with God. (25)
We have begun to wrestle or Midrash the text with the practice of dwelling that we experienced as a community last week. Today, we’ll dig around the first four verses (1-4a) of the passage you read, Luke 10:1-12, pondering and engaging with its context and ours, inviting the Spirit to help us explore and participate in God’s story and– its’ implications as we seek to be a community bearing witness to ‘The Kingdom of God come near’ right where we live (Luke 10:9, 11).
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