Live fully in the community God has designed for us

I greatly appreciated the opportunity to preach at the Indiana District Regional Encounter in Greencastle, recently. In this series, I'll share with you what I shared with the women who gathered at TheStorehouse that day on what it means to live fully in the diverse community God has designed for us. Enjoy and I welcome your comments for further discussion.

Dr. Mark A. Powell, professor of New Testament at Trinity Lutheran Seminary, explains the concept of social location and biblical interpretation in a short video produced by Seedbed. “Social location,” he says, “refers to those various factors that identify one person as distinct from others in society.” These factors include, but are not limited to, gender, marital status, nationality, age, and economic status.

Scholars have long recognized the connection between understanding social location and proper biblical interpretation. Suffice it to say, any first year theology student or indeed, anyone with a rudimentary grasp of the basic steps of biblical interpretation recognizes the need to scope out the who, what, why, and where of a biblical author and their intended audience.

Yet now, Dr. Powell states, scholars are paying closer attention to the social location of the modern reader and how their personal experiences, collective memory, and cultural backgrounds affect their interpretation of biblical stories.

In other words, if we as a group of adults and adolescents, or women and men, or blue collar and white collar workers all read the same Bible story, it's possible we will all derive a different meaning because our social location influences which details we notice in the story and which details we fail to consider.

Dr. Powell tested the veracity of this idea with three separate classrooms in three different cultural settings. Beginning with a familiar Bible story, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, Dr. Powell asked the same question to each of his students to see how their social location would influence their answers.

The Prodigal Son Among Swine, by Max Beckmann

First, Dr. Powell asked his students in the United States to write down on an index card their answers to the question, “In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, why does the young man end up starving in the pigpen?” Almost every one of his American students wrote the same response, “Because he squandered his wealth.” In wild living, no less!

Is that what you thought? Me, too. I don't think I've ever heard a sermon about the prodigal son without a preacher condemning the son for demanding his inheritance from his father and then foolishly spending it all. If he's starving in a pig pen, we Americans like to opine, he's got no one to blame but himself. Right?

A seminary class in St. Petersburg, Russia gave Dr. Powell another opportunity, as well as a very different cultural context, to ask a different group of students the very same question concerning the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

In the same way, the Russian students wrote their answers on index cards, but unlike their American counterparts, the vast majority of the Russian students expressed a completely different answer to the question, "Why does the young man end up starving in the pigpen?"  Instead of saying, "He wasted all his money," they replied, “Because there was a famine in the land." And indeed, if you look up the text, Jesus explicitly states, “About the same time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve.”

Interesting, right? So, what influenced the majority of the Russian students to notice this particular detail while the American students ignored it? History

During World War II, Dr. Powell explains, the German army laid siege to the city of Leningrad, blockading roads and refusing to allow food to enter for almost three years. Between September 1941 and January 1943, historians estimate at least 600,000 people – 25% of the population – died because a great famine swept over the land we now know as St. Petersburg.

Social location and biblical interpretation. Who we are, where we live, what we remember affects our reading of scripture.

Lastly, Dr Powell taught a class in Tanzania, East Africa. Curious to know if the Tanzanian students would respond as the Americans or the Russians he asked them the same question, “In the Parable of the Prodigal Son, why did the young man end up starving in the pigpen?” Their response may surprise you.

The Tanzanian students overwhelmingly replied, "Because no one gave him anything." Surprised? Go ahead, read the parable again. This little tidbit is there as well. In fact, the Tanzanian students expressed shock at the inhospitality of a country (a country without honor) who would refuse aid to a stranger in need.

The Prodigal Son Among the Pigs, by Rembrandt Harmensz. van Rijn

Social location and biblical interpretation. It matters. To be true to the interpretation of scripture we need to be aware that our experiences, inherent bias, and cultural conditioning affect our reading of it. 

In Dr. Powell's experiment, every student in each classroom gave a perfectly acceptable answer. However, and this is important to note, none of the students gave a complete answer. Not one. Hear me now. Each student had a correct answer, but not one had a complete answer. Why? Because our cultural perspectives, collective memory, and social interactions affect which details we notice and which we disregard as a group.

If we, as students of the Bible, desire more than just a correct answer but a complete answer, then we must study and interpret scripture in community. God purposefully designed a diverse community for his people to depend on one another and learn together. In other words, we cannot consistently read and interpret scripture alone nor solely with people who always look and sound just like us. Not if we truly hunger for a more thorough and honest rendering of God's word.

Dr. Powell's experiment is just one example of why we need to live fully in the diverse community God has designed for us. We all have some vague notion that the idea of community is important, but in the next few weeks, I will endeavor to convince you that learning to live fully in the diverse community God has designed for us is not just a good idea, but absolutely essential to our health and well-being as the body of Christ.

Part 2