Rev. Marlayna read a story sermon from the point of the innkeeper who missed Jesus’ birth because he was busy with everyday concerns. I noticed several anachronisms – such as the innkeeper “doing the books” at a time when a “book” (“biblos” in Greek and “liber” in Latin) would have been a painstakingly handwritten manuscript, and accounts, if kept at all, would have been scratches on reusable clay tablets. Anachronisms can help move the story along – as long as you don’t take them as hard facts.
It was a weekend of small earthquakes, and I thought of predictions that movements of the North American tectonic plate would eventually cause “the big one” in the Boston area. Fast forwarding a few thousand years, I imagined archaeologists digging in rubble of our church building which would be covered with a many feet of dirt, decayed plant life, and junk accumulated over post-earthquake centuries. I imagined that the building’s stones and metal siding collapsed in a way that sealed off the contents of the Faith Development Room, saving part of the library there.
The future archaeologists discover partially preserved copies of books, including The Five Gospels and The Acts of Jesus. These contain explanations that different colored print indicates the authors’ conclusions about the historical accuracy of each passage. There is a letter revealing the donors’ connection to the scholars. They also find a copy of the story sermon about the innkeeper. Once these treasures have been preserved, deciphered, and read, future researchers conclude that the innkeeper’s story is part of the scholarly collection and adds important factual information about the time of Jesus’ birth. They start looking for other evidence to support someone’s theory that formal account-keeping was much older and wide-spread than had previously been assumed. The innkeeper becomes a sophisticated businessman whose bottom line depended on taking advantage of ignorant travelers. A new study subject has been born.
This may sound far-fetched, but it is probably not much different from how “facts” have been added to the original stories memorialized in our Bibles. How difficult it is to know what really happened two, three, or four millennia ago! But, really, the facts do not matter as much as the ideas and lessons we find preserved in the collection that we, today, call “The Bible.”
May we search for meanings instead of facts in our holy books.
Lyn Pickhover, Digging