I have been hurt, most certainly disappointed, confused and healed by the church. Over the years it has been helpful to become exposed to several congregations as well the global church and to a lesser extent, interfaith dialogue and interaction for shalom or the common wealth of community. Healing has come through regular worship, service, and the Eucharist. I especially prefer the Communion format process we experience at the (rail) the table this past Sunday. Come to the table. Thank you Messiah Community Church for inviting the community to the Lord’s table weekly!

As biblical scholars develop tools which help them analyze texts and authorship more and more accurately, archaeologists discover more artifacts referred to in writings, and historians, using texts from a variety of sources, are able to piece together customs, traditions, and how life was lived outside the royal household, more and more of the Bible seems to be falling away from “fact.” When literal interpretation based on “fact” is no longer valid, then one is compelled to take a closer look at what is really going on.

At the 2008 Fall Meeting of the Westar Institute, (as reported in Vol 22, #2 of The 4th R) the Fellows and Associates agreed that, based on text analysis, anachronistic ceremonies, and uncorroborated or conflicting statements from other texts, chunks of Acts (Acts 5:17-33, Acts 12:1-17, and Acts 16:13-40) are “Lukan fiction.” Does this make Luke a liar? Well, if he was writing history, then, perhaps, but history is written by the “winners”and he was included in the New Testament canon. Like the other Gospel/New Testament writers, Luke’s agenda was theology, not history. They had the “facts” of several common stories, but their interpretation of those facts led to differing theologies. As with any piece of writing, we need to look at who the intended audience was. For example, Shakespeare knew that the King was going to see performances of his plays, so, of course, he wrote glowingly of the King’s ancestors and condemned with unjustified harshness those who were not such as Richard III. According to Margaret Nutting Ralph’s “Discovering the Gospels: Four Accounts of the Good News,” Mark’s audience was persecuted Christians, so his theme is “Why should anyone suffer?” Matthew’s audience is the Jewish Christian and the theme that Jesus is the new Moses with authority from God to give the new law (which is why his Gospel isn’t such Good News to non-Christian Jews and has lead to 2000 years of violent anti-Semitic action on the part of Christians.) Luke was writing to the Gentiles and his theme is that the covenant relationship is universal. One elephant. Six blind men describing it.

So, when reading and trying to understand the stories in the Bible, as with any piece of writing, we need to read it in its historical context with a knowledge the author’s intended audience and that there are a variety of literary devices (metaphor, poetry, parable…) to get across an idea.

But the church can be part of the healing process. Whether people stay in the church or not is not the issue; we don’t just heal the people who are going to stay with us. We offer repentence and ask for forgiveness of those we have limited, restricted, harassed or even killed. I believe this is a difficult, but fulfilling job for the church…it is what we are called to do as followers of Christ. Would Christ do any less?