A Gospel Harmony

On your first week, usually your first day of seminary, all students are filmed on camera. You are given a portion of scripture to read; they stand you at a podium, you give the title of the passage, and then you read it. Nothing more. But everyone does it. 

At the end of the first year, in the last week, you do the same thing. You are filmed reading a passage of scripture. But after the second time something happens. This time the professor has you come and listen to yourself. There is critique, feedback, often encouragement. But then they do something quite dramatic. They play a copy of your first reading. They play the recording of you bumbling and stumbling and being quite awful. You are raw and quite unrefined

This is painful. You rush.  You stop when there is no reason to pause. Important words are mumbled while inconsequential words "the" "and" "but" are highlighted.  There is gravity, pomposity in the voice of the first-day-student.  After begging for the recording to stop and offering money for it to be burned, the light bulb goes on. 

              First you realize these people can teach; they brought you a long way in nine months.  It's remarkable.  Next you get to hear your real voice.  It's not a reading voice, an actor's voice, not a "preacher" voice from on high, it is you.  Your voice is clear.  They have helped you find your voice.  Last, but not least, in the second recording you can now hear the voice of scripture.  They helped find your voice while at the same time trained you to let the text speak for itself. Before any interpretation, any quest for meaning, or exegetical rendering, the words of the evangelist, the apostle, the prophet, Moses or David, speak.  Their voice is heard.

              The key to reading the bible or teaching the bible, and certainly preaching the bible, the key is to learn how to listen for the voice of Matthew or Luke.  You need to train your ear to listen for Paul or Peter.  The key to reading Revelation is not making heads or tails of dragons and seas of fire and scarry horses, the key is to learn how to listen to the poet.  It's poetry.  If you want to understand you need to first learn how to listen for a poetic voice.

              Strangely, this is also true of bird watching.  People who are great at finding birds, identifying birds, people who are great birders look with their ears.  I remember the first time I heard this.  I knew a lovely man, Clint McCoy.  Clint loved people, loved fishing, and he loved birding.  Clint drove a lot for his job as a presbyter and he told me he was listening to recordings of bird calls as he drove. He was quite excited about this.  I found this quite odd, so I asked, "Why are you listening to birds when you drive Clint?"

              He said, "great birders look with their ears before they look with their eyes."  He explained that birds are distinct in appearance, but also in their song.  If you learn to listen for them, it is as if they are inviting you to find them. They are calling out to you, saying, "hey, I am over here."

              While I have yet to reach this level of devotion, I listening to recordings of birds as I drive, I have made some progress looking with my ears.  In the morning I walk our pup which is good exercise for both of us.  Yet, what I am really doing is listening for birds.  Cardinals, robins, the terrible Blue Jay.  There are the sweet squeaks of the finch, the repetitive sound of the woodpecker's call which mimics the sound they make as they peck at a tree.

              There is one moment in our walk that is consistently a challenge.  There is a cherry tree just as you enter Roosevelt Park off Woodbridge.  In this cherry tree I have heard robins, jays, cardinals.  But I have never seen them.  When I look to find them, there is a pesky mockingbird.  The mockingbird made all those calls.  Usually I find this delightful. One morning I was a bit annoyed.  I thought I heard a cat bird.  Cat birds are not as common, so I was excited.  As I neared the tree, I spied the mockingbird, and it was as if he was gloating.  Gotcha!  You thought I was a cat bird. I did. He was right.

              Like birds there are a variety gospel voices. Four gospels.  Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  In essence they all tell the same story; they are all birds.  And there is a fair amount of overlap in the first three, known as the synoptic gospels which means they are so close to each other they can be seen together, syn-optic means to see with.  John, who is rather unique, even in his gospel there is a basic similarity, a common talk. 

              In the history of the church there have been attempts to harmonize the gospels. Blend them together, smooth their differences.  In the second century a church father tried to edit them into one continuous gospel by removing the repetitions and arranging the sequence of events to overcome how each gospel differed from the other.  That you may never have heard of the Diatessaron of Tatian suggests it was not a complete success. 

              In art the four gospels are often seen by different symbols: Luke is an ox, Matthew a human, Mark a lion, and John is an eagle.  The first three are bound by the earth; the fourth soars over the rest.  These symbols are a way of recognizing each gospel as unique but also similar.

              Recently, by recent I mean in the last century, the attempt to harmonize has been to atomize.  The gospels have been broken down into categories of authenticity.  Some sayings of Jesus in the gospels are highly likely to have been spoken by him, other passages are highly unlikely.  Much of the gospels' accounts and teachings and claims fall somewhere in between the highly likely and the highly unlikely.  Thus most of the gospels are deemed ambiguous or uncertain.  This reflects more of who we are, our lack of trust, cynicism, confusion; this atomization reflects who we are more than it captures the spirit of the gospels.

              There are two ways of listening to our reading from Luke today.  The first is to simply hear the themes, the underlying claims Luke records.  There are three themes: courage, revelation, and humility.  The church, the seventy who go out and come back, found courage; they faced the demons and won.  The second theme, revelation, is heard when Jesus prays and reveals his identity; he is the son of the father; he is the intent of God, the plan of God.  Here is the revelation for the church.  Lastly, we can hear the theme of blessedness.  The seventy are humble children of wisdom.  They have eyes to see what prophets only dreamed. The church is so blessed.

              This is what the text says, the meaning. How this is recorded, though, is unique to Luke.  No other gospel accounts for the mission of the seventy.  This is unique to Luke. The themes though are not unique to him.  Courage, God as acting and revealing, the life of the believer as blessed by humility, these are common themes, shared themes of all the gospels.  Yet, how Luke puts this forward is unique and quite important.

              In our reading today we could listen to the theme, but we he can also hear how he recorded them.  It is as if Luke has captured the song of each gospel, their voice, like a bird. Luke is like the mockingbird.  Each theme has a particular sound, voice, call to it.  He is harmonizing the voices.

              The first voice is Mark.  Satan falling from the sky, the snakes and scorpions, the fearless encounter with demons, this is Mark's voice.  You will find this voice in the 16th chapter of Mark.  The second voice is John.  Jesus' cryptic claims of revelation, spontaneous prayer to the sky, this is John's gospel, his voice.  And the blessing at the end, this is Matthew.  It is as if Luke is offering a lost piece of the Beatitudes, like a song left off the album.

              Years ago I explored these voices with a confirmation class.  We learned to listen to Mark.  We did this by making bread.  Each Sunday at 2:00 we baked bread.  The confirmands would proof their yeast, knead their dough, let it rise twice, and then they baked it.  Each week it was a different type of bread, but the process was the same.  Yeast, knead, rise, rise again, bake. 

              If you have made bread like this, you know it takes about three hours.  The actual time spent with the dough is brief, but the waiting is long.  In the time of waiting the confirmands read the gospel of Mark in readers' theater form.  Each script had portions marked so every confirmand read different parts each week.  Sometimes they were the narrator, sometimes Jesus, sometimes the disciples and pharisees. 

              It takes about an hour and half to read the gospel of Mark, so many Sundays we would start the gospel and finish it while the bread was rising and baking. At the end of confirmation students offered the gospel to the congregation in the readers' theater style.  Many remarked how they had never heard the whole gospel before.  They had never heard the voice of Mark.

              What was most important though was to watch the confirmands find Mark's voice.  By the end of the class, it was unlikely that we would read the whole gospel in one sitting.  We were slowed down because Mark's voice was now in their midst.  His questions, his demands, his account of Jesus were alive. 

              Our lesson today can be read by listening to the themes. Courage, revelation, humility.  These are the shared values of all the gospels.  Finding courage, trusting God's intent, learning to live in humility, these are essential to being born anew.  This is more than enough.  But what is so powerful is the other way to read this passage.  We can listen to how Luke has made his own gospel harmony.

              He has captured the voices of the other evangelists. He is inviting them into his gospel. It is as if he is saying, let's sing together, let's find the beauty of harmony. I want to hear your voice as your voice.  He is more than a mockingbird. He is a master of song.

              So often it is unclear how we are to grow in faith.  How is it we become a better Christian?  What does it mean to have more faith?  Many times I have heard people lament their lack of progress, their lack of confidence in following Jesus. I get it.  How does faith become new when you are seventy? 

              Consider this: read the gospels.  Read them through.  Not once, but many times.  Don't try to read the bible.  Simply read Mark.  Read him until you find his voice and then move to Matthew.  Read Matthew until you find his voice.  And then read Luke.  Same purpose.  Don't worry about the meaning or the differences, don't be surprised if there are great parts of the gospels you didn't know were there.  Simply find their voice.  Then, and only then, if you have all three of them, be so bold to walk with John for a time.  You will be amazed at his voice, how different and mysterious it is. 

              Read them.  Find their voice.  Trust me.  Such is the path of freedom.  If you do this, your faith will increase.  And, perhaps, perhaps you will hear your voice as you hear theirs.  Great is the voice of faith in you. Amen.